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brightest ornament of the eighteenth century." His influence is harder to summarise and to define than that of any of the others. For it was not exerted by Johnson directly as an artist or as a thinker: yet it was exercised more directly perhaps than the influence of any of the others, through the medium of literature in the largest sense, and in ultimate effect it may prove to be the most powerful and most penetrating of them all.1

"Such was Johnson's Life: the victorious Battle of a true Man. Finally he died the death of the free and true: a dark cloud of Death, solemn and not untinged with haloes of immortal Hope, 'took him away,' and our eyes could no longer behold him; but can still behold the trace and impress of his courageous, honest spirit, deeplegible in the World's Business, wheresoever he walked and was."

1 Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., "the life of a mountebank and his zany," as Walpole called it, first published in May, 1791, does what is done in a greater degree perhaps by some sacred books, and in a lesser degree by Pepys, by Rousseau, and by Borrow-it transmits a personality-the heart of the secret in literature. Among professional authors Johnson will always be held in highest honour: for is he not one of the victorious champions of the dignity of the craft and mystery of letters? Wherever literature is well esteemed his famous letter to Chesterfield shall never be read without a glow of generous enthusiasm. Together with Milton's Areopagitica, Hood's Epistle to Rae Wilson, and Stockdale v. Hansard, it is one of the title-deeds of English Letters.

"Feb. 7th, 1755.

"MY LORD,—I have been lately informed by the proprietor of the World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

"When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the

enchantment of your address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre-that I might obtain that regard for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in public, I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron before. "The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found him a native of the rocks.

"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.

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Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long awakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, my lord, "Your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, "SAM JOHNSON." (1740-1795) Samuel

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To James Boswell of Auchinlech Johnson's debt is incalculable: for to the Anecdotes (1785) of Mrs. Piozzi (formerly Thrale), and the Life of Johnson (1787) by Sir John Hawkins, Bozzy' " is as Renan is to Farrar. This incredible product of Edinburgh High School and Univer

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sity, when the century was at its meridian, born traveller, dilettante, gossip, cicisbeo, quidnunc, sycophant, man about town and society journalist, Boswell first met Johnson in Tom Davies's back parlour on May 16th, 1763 (it was on May 16th, just twenty-eight years later, that the immortal Life appeared). To the notorieties of his day Boswell attached himself with a glutinous adhesiveness. He initiated autograph hunting. He had the colossal impertinence to ask Lord Chatham to "honour him with a letter now and then." Such vagaries led even sound Johnsonians like Crocker, Macaulay, and Carlyle to treat him respectively as an idiot, a fribble, and a mere fool. Dissipated, drunken, and vain as he was, with a large portion of Sterne's semi-hysterical sensibility, there is equally no doubt that Boswell was a very great writer, an Aubrey and Pepys in one, a pioneer in the portrayal of literary personality, such an artist in reporting that we cannot displace a single word without manifest loss: in a word, the author of the liveliest biography on record. The editions of Boswell's chef d'œuvre are as follows: Malone's four editions (1799, 1804, 1807, 1811); Chalmers (1822); Oxford (1826); Crocker's three (1831, 1835, 1848); Carruthers' (1852); Fitzgerald's (1875 and 1888); A. Napier's (1884); Dr. Birkbeck Hill's (the fullest and best, 6 vols., 1887)*; the Globe (1893); Mr. Birrell's (1900); abridged by Roger Ingpen, with useful notes (in Hutchinson's Standard Shilling Biographies, 1906). See also Percy Fitzgerald's agreeable gossipy Life of Boswell, Stephen's Johnson (Men of Letters), Seccombe's Age of Johnson. The writers are indebted to Mr. H. Spencer Scott and Mr. Henry Davey for suggestions.

CHAPTER VIII

OLIVER GOLDSMITH AND R. B. SHERIDAN

"It is not to be described,-the effect that Goldsmith's Vicar had upon me, just at the critical moment of mental development. That lofty and benevolent irony, that fair and indulgent view of all infirmities and faults, that meekness under all calamities, that equanimity under all changes and chances, and the whole train of kindred virtues, whatever names they bear, proved my best education."-GOETHE.

Goldsmith's Life-The Critical Review-" The Citizen of the World"-Goldsmith's Poems and Plays-Retaliation-The Vicar of Wakefield-Sheridan's Comedies.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, born at Pallasmore, County Longford, on November 10th, 1728, was the fifth of the numerous children of Charles Goldsmith, who was parson of Pallas, and in 1730 became rector of Kilkenny West. The family income was raised by this change from £40 to nearly £200, and the Goldsmiths moved from a parsonage that resembled a cottage to one that more nearly approached a farmhouse in the neighbourhood of Lissoy ("Sweet Auburn "). Oliver was taught at the village school, at a larger school at Elphin, and in 1739 was sent to a better school at Athlone. Finally he was transferred to Edgeworthstown, and at all these schools, until he was about sixteen and his muscles began to develop, Oliver was laughed at for his ugliness and his uncouth manner. In June, 1744, he obtained a sizarship at Trinity College, Dublin, where he took his degree of B. A. on February 27th, 1749. Oliver now spent three years in idleness at the college of Ballymahon, whither his mother had retired

after his father's death. In 1751 the time was ripe for Oliver to make application to the Bishop of Elphin for orders. Whether as Whether as a protest against unseemly attire (scarlet breeches are alleged) or the applicant's profound ignorance of divinity, his application was refused. Oliver, in no way dismayed, but encouraged rather by his uncle Contarine, was now sent out to commence life as a tutor. He obtained a good appointment, but the harmony of the family was disturbed (as one would expect to find in County Galway as described by Charles Lever), by disagreements as to cards between the tutor and his pupil. Subsequently he set out to America, but got no farther than Cork; and started for the Temple with fifty pounds, but got no farther than Roscommon, whence he returned with four and twopence. One learned profession still remained. It was determined to make a doctor of Oliver. The family oracle, Dean Goldsmith of Cloyne, was consulted, and gave it as his opinion to Mr. Contarine that "his young relative would make an excellent medical man." He got to Edinburgh this time, and during 1753 we have some fascinating letters from him to his uncle, written with a purity and simplicity of style which were hereafter to make him famous. At the end of the year he drew a final twenty pounds from his uncle, and set out for Leyden, where he soon seems to have forgotten. all about his medical degree. In February, 1755, he left Leyden with a guinea in his pocket, and practically no luggage save his flute. He travelled on foot through the Low Countries and France, begging his way from village to village with the aid of a trifling skill in music, and in Italy a "pretty skill in disputation." Hence Boswell's saying to Johnson, "Sir, he disputed his passage through Europe." On February 1st, 1756, he landed at Dover. For a time after his arrival in London he appears to have been almost starved, and lived, as he once astonished well

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