Goldsmith | Page 9

hated for my ugly face
by the mistress, worried by the boys"--if that was his life, he was much
to be pitied. But we cannot believe it. The Milners were exceedingly
kind to Goldsmith. It was at the intercession of young Milner, who had
been his fellow-student at Edinburgh, that Goldsmith got the situation,
which at all events kept him out of the reach of immediate want. It was
through the Milners that he was introduced to Griffiths, who gave him
a chance of trying a literary career--as a hack-writer of reviews and so
forth. When, having got tired of that, Goldsmith was again floating
vaguely on the waves of chance, where did he find a harbour but in that
very school at Peckham? And we have the direct testimony of the
youngest of Dr. Milner's daughters, that this Irish usher of theirs was a
remarkably cheerful, and even facetious person, constantly playing
tricks and practical jokes, amusing the boys by telling stories and by

performances on the flute, living a careless life, and always in advance
of his salary. Any beggars, or group of children, even the very boys
who played back practical jokes on him, were welcome to a share of
what small funds he had; and we all know how Mrs. Milner
good-naturedly said one day, "You had better, Mr. Goldsmith, let me
keep your money for you, as I do for some of the young gentlemen;"
and how he answered with much simplicity, "In truth, Madam, there is
equal need." With Goldsmith's love of approbation and extreme
sensitiveness he no doubt suffered deeply from many slights, now as at
other times; but what we know of his life in the Peckham school does
not incline us to believe that it was an especially miserable period of
his existence. His abundant cheerfulness does not seem to have at any
time deserted him; and what with tricks, and jokes, and playing of the
flute, the dull routine of instructing the unruly young gentlemen at Dr.
Milner's was got through somehow.
When Goldsmith left the Peckham school to try hack-writing in
Paternoster Row, he was going further to fare worse. Griffiths the
bookseller, when he met Goldsmith at Dr. Milner's dinner-table and
invited him to become a reviewer, was doing a service to the English
nation--for it was in this period of machine-work that Goldsmith
discovered that happy faculty of literary expression that led to the
composition of his masterpieces--but he was doing little immediate
service to Goldsmith.
The newly-captured hack was boarded and lodged at Griffiths' house in
Paternoster Row (1757); he was to have a small salary in consideration
of remorselessly constant work; and--what was the hardest condition of
all--he was to have his writings revised by Mrs. Griffiths. Mr. Forster
justly remarks that though at last Goldsmith had thus become a
man-of-letters, he "had gratified no passion and attained no object of
ambition." He had taken to literature, as so many others have done,
merely as a last resource. And if it is true that literature at first treated
Goldsmith harshly, made him work hard, and gave him comparatively
little for what he did, at least it must be said that his experience was not
a singular one. Mr. Forster says that literature was at that time in a
transition state: "The patron was gone, and the public had not come."

But when Goldsmith began to do better than hack-work, he found a
public speedily enough. If, as Lord Macaulay computes, Goldsmith
received in the last seven years of his life what was equivalent to
£5,600 of our money, even the villain booksellers cannot be accused of
having starved him. At the outset of his literary career he received no
large sums, for he had achieved no reputation; but he got the
market-rate for his work. We have around us at this moment plenty of
hacks who do not earn much more than their board and lodging with a
small salary.
For the rest, we have no means of knowing whether Goldsmith got
through his work with ease or with difficulty; but it is obvious, looking
over the reviews which he is believed to have written for Griffiths'
magazine, that he readily acquired the professional critic's airs of
superiority, along with a few tricks of the trade, no doubt taught him by
Griffiths. Several of these reviews, for example, are merely epitomes of
the contents of the books reviewed, with some vague suggestion that
the writer might, if he had been less careful, have done worse, and, if
he had been more careful, might have done better. Who does not
remember how the philosophic vagabond was taught to become a
cognoscento? "The whole secret consisted in a strict adherence to two
rules: the one always to observe that