John Forster | Page 3

magazines as he had." It was, indeed, a most amusing and characteristic controversy.
At this time the intimacy between Boz and the young writer--two young men, for they were only thirty-six--was of the closest. Dickens' admiration of his friend's book was unbounded. He read it with delight and expressed his admiration with an affectionate enthusiasm. It was no wonder that in "gentle Goldsmith's life" thus unfolded, he found a replica of his own sore struggles. No one knew better the "fiercer crowded misery in garret toil and London loneliness" than he did.
TO CHARLES DICKENS.
Genius and its rewards are briefly told: A liberal nature and a niggard doom, A difficult journey to a splendid tomb. New writ, nor lightly weighed, that story old In gentle Goldsmith's life I here unfold; Thro' other than lone wild or desert gloom, In its mere joy and pain, its blight and bloom, Adventurous. Come with me and behold, O friend with heart as gentle for distress, As resolute with fine wise thoughts to bind The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind, That there is fiercer crowded misery In garret toil and London loneliness Than in cruel islands mid the far off sea.
March, 1848. JOHN FORSTER.
It will be noted what a warmth of affection is shown in these pleasing lines. Some of the verses linger in his memory: the last three especially. The allusion to Dickens is as truthful as it is charming. The "cruel islands mid the far off sea" was often quoted, though there were sometimes sarcastic appeals to the author to name his locality.
This Life and Adventures of Oliver Goldsmith is a truly charming book: charming in the writing, in its typographic guise, and its forty graceful illustrations by his friends, Maclise, Leech, Browne, etc. It appeared in 1848. A pleasing feature of those times was the close fellowship between the writers and the painters and other artists, as was shown in the devoted affection of Maclise and others to Dickens. There is more of class apart nowadays. Artists and writers are not thus united. The work has gone through many editions; but, after some years the whim seized him to turn it into an official literary history of the period, and he issued it as a "Life and Times," with an abundance of notes and references. All the pleasant air of story telling, the "Life and Adventures," so suited to poor Goldy's shiftless career, were abolished. It was a sad mistake, much deprecated by his friends, notably by Carlyle. But at the period Forster was in his Sir Oracle vein and inclined to lofty periods.
"My dear Forster," wrote Boz to him, "I cannot sufficiently say how proud I am of what you have done, and how sensible I am of being so tenderly connected with it. I desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the contrast of my love of order, than such a biographer--and such a critic. And again I say most solemnly that literature in England has never had, and probably never will have, such a champion as you are in right of this book." "As a picture of the time I really think it is impossible to give it too much praise. It seems to me to be the very essence of all about the time that I have ever seen in biography or fiction, presented in most wise and humane lights. I have never liked him so well. And as to Goldsmith himself and his life, and the manful and dignified assertion of him, without any sobs, whines, or convulsions of any sort, it is throughout a noble achievement of which, apart from any private and personal affection for you, I think and really believe I should feel proud." What a genuine affectionate ring is here!
Later Forster lost this agreeable touch, and issued a series of ponderous historical treatises, enlargements of his old "Statesmen." These were dreary things, pedantic, solemn and heavy; they might have been by the worthy Rollin himself. Such was the Life of Sir John Eliot, the Arrest of the Five Members, and others.
No one had been so intimate with Savage Landor as he had, or admired him more. He had known him for years and was chosen as his literary executor. With such materials one might have looked for a lively, vivacious account of this tempestuous personage. But Forster dealt with him in his magisterial way, and furnished a heavy treatise, on critical and historical principles. Everything here is treated according to the strict canons and in judicial fashion. On every poem there was a long and profound criticism of many pages, which I believe was one of his own old essays used again, fitted into the book. The hero is treated as though he were some important