be viewed as being of but doubtful authenticity. Its owner described it in Notes and Queries, Sept. 22 and Dec. 1, 1860, as portraying a gentleman decidedly like Goldsmith, "in a fantastic dress, playing the flute. He wears a handsome scarlet robe, or roquelaire; and a fur cap, with gilt tassel, on his head." It is added that "the style of the colouring resembles that of Sir Joshua Reynolds." Nothing more seems to be known of this portrait. There is no picture of the kind included in the lists of Reynolds's works. The peculiarities of the flute and red roquelaire (the physician's red cloak which Goldsmith is said sometimes to have worn) of course favour the idea that this portrait is meant for the poet; but then it may be merely a fancy sketch. To the above, however, should be added some mention of Nollekens' medallion portrait, on the monument in Westminster Abbey. Though no doubt in the main a study of Reynolds's picture, this is considered a good likeness.- ED. HORACE WALPOLE ON GOLDSMITH. (See Life,' p. 47.) Horace Walpole's saying that Goldsmith was an "inspired idiot," is almost as well known as the Monument on Fish-Street Hill, yet it may not be a fact quite so demonstrable. Mr. Forster quotes the saying, and gives as a reference Davies's Life of Garrick,' vol. ii., p. 152; but he omits to say that neither the second edition, 1780, nor the enlarged edition, 1808, of Davies's book has the remark. It certainly will be found in the third and fourth editions, dated 1781 and 1784 respectively; but why was the passage afterwards cut out? Perhaps the following will help us to the reason. Davies died in 1785, the year after the publication of his fourth edition; and Walpole survived till 1797. As the paragraph containing Walpole's remark does not appear in the 1808 edition, may it not have been struck out by Davies himself, and that, perhaps, upon Walpole's own disavowal of it? Often as the "inspired idiot" quotation is made, we have never yet seen Walpole's chapter and verse given for it. In his 'Letters' we find Walpole saying (addressing Mason, Oct. 8, 1776): "Goldsmith was an idiot, with once or twice a fit of parts." Previously, in the same collection, we find (April 27, 1773): "I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly Dr. Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright gleams of parts," &c. Later the same year, in an account of a dinner at Beauclerc's, where he met Goldsmith, Walpole says: “Goldsmith is a fool, the more wear[y]ing for some sense. And again, in a letter dated April 7, 1774, he comments upon Goldsmith's death thus: "The poor soul had sometimes parts, though never common-sense." These utterances of course give somewhat the same meaning, but neither can be said to be the epigram in common circulation. It may be, indeed, that Walpole's bad repute as a sayer of ill-natured things has in this case done him—as well as Goldsmith-an injustice.-ED. DR. JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH. (See 'Life,' p. 58.) Dr. Johnson's omission of Goldsmith from his 'Lives of the English Poets,' the first edition of which appeared 1779-81, has been sometimes remarked upon as singular; but Malone has very effectually explained the omission, in a note to Boswell's 'Johnson' (Bohn's edition, vol. vi., p. 250) as follows: "Dr. Johnson was not the editor of this collection of the English Poets; he merely furnished the biographical prefaces with which it is enriched, as is rightly stated in a subsequent page [Boswell, vol. viii., pp. 1, 2, &c]. He, indeed, from a virtuous motive, recommended the works of four or five poets, whom he has named [in his 'Life of Isaac Watts:' they were Watts, Blackmore, Pomfret, and Yalden], to be added to the collection; but he is no otherwise answerable for any which are found there, or any which are omitted. The poems of Goldsmith (whose life I know he intended to write, for I collected some materials for it by his desire) were omitted in consequence of a petty exclusive interest in some of them vested in Mr. Carnan, a bookseller." Carnan was the partner of Francis Newbery when the letter succeeded to the St. Paul's Church-yard business of his uncle, John Newbery.-ED. ['The Vicar of Wakefield' was first published on March the 27th, 1766. The second and third editions followed in the same year, and the sixth was issued in the year of the author's death, 1774. Up to 1792 the publishers had sent forth twenty-two editions; and by that time several translations had also been published in France and Germany. For the story of the sale of the work to its first publisher, Francis Newbery, by Dr. Johnson, when its author was under a species of arrest for debt by his landlady, see the Life of Goldsmith,' ante, p. 20. Our text is mainly that of the fifth edition, which is the last Goldsmith might have revised. He seems, however, to have made very few alterations after the second edition. We give the chief variations of text in the early editions in our Appendix, p. 236. A passage in the 'Memoirs of Goldsmith's friend Cradock (1828, v. iv. p. 279), suggests that the real scene of the story of the Vicar of Wakefield' was the neighbourhood of Wakefield, in Yorkshire, Goldsmith having been, so Cradock seems to assert, in that part of the country when the tale was written or finished. This passage, however, is very vague. We notice it further in the Appendix, p. 237, and in a note to the Letters' at the end of the present volume.-ED. 66 , An objection has been made to the latter part of the story, by the Edinburgh Review (art. on Standard Novels, Feb. 1815), viz. that it is an almost entire plagiarism from Wilson's account of himself, and Adams's domestic history," in Fielding's 'Joseph Andrews.' This, however, is an idle charge. A similarity may indeed be traced in some of the incidents; and the character of the Vicar may have been suggested, indeed probably was, by that of Parson Adams; but in other respects, the resemblance is too slight to warrant the charge of plagiarism. Goldsmith and Fielding both copied too closely after nature not to have many casual resemblances in painting the same class of characters. The author has been guilty of a strange oversight in describing Sir William Thornhill as a man under thirty years of age, while his nephew, Squire Thornhill, who must necessarily be supposed to have been the son of a younger brother, is introduced at the same time as having already run a long course of debauchery and profligacy. Sir William's masquerading among his tenants has also been justly objected to by Sir Walter Scott, as a little too improbable. The character of the Vicar is one of the finest compliments ever paid to human nature. Humble and generous in his prosperous circumstances, dignified in his humble fortunes-tempering the impatience of his feelings as a man, with the remembrance of his duty as a Christian minister-intolerant of vice, yet patient with the vicious -pious and learned-deeply imbued with Christian knowledge, and adorned with the graces of the Christian character,— -we see him Try each art, reprove each dull delay, The great excellence of the Vicar of Wakefield, which depends so little on intricacy of plot and the succession of surprising events, consists in its exquisite touches of pathos—its quiet humour-the amiable picture which it draws of domestic life, and the lessons of virtue which it inculcates in so engaging a form as to win the heart, and with so much dignity as to command the respect even of the profligate.-B.] ADVERTISEMENT. THERE are an hundred faults in this thing, and an hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth: he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach, and ready to obey: as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity. In this age of opulence and refinement, whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life, will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fire-side; such as mistake ribaldry for humour, will find no wit in his harmless conversation; and such as have been taught to deride religion, will laugh at one, whose chief stores of comfort are drawn from futurity. OLIVER GOLDSMITH.1 1 Goldsmith's advertisement appears as above in the first as in the fifth and the intermediate editions, and it so seems to acknowledge by anticipation the errors and shortcomings of the story that have been pointed out: see the introductory note on the preceding page, and the Appendix, p. 237. The title page we affix to the present edition is that of the fifth edition. That to the first and other previous editions differed slightly. The title of the first edition ran as follows:-The/ Vicar/ of/ Wakefield :/ A Tale./Supposed to be written by Himself. / Sperate miseri,cavete fælices.] [Imprint] Salisbury :/ Printed by B. Collins,/ For F. Newbery, in PaterNoster-Row, London./ MDCCLXVI.—ED. |