The World's Greatest Books - Volume 9 Part 21

_May_ 29, 1660. This day his Majesty Charles II. came to London after a sad and long exile and calamitous suffering both of the king and church, being seventeen years. This also was his birthday, and with a triumph of above 20,000 horse and foot, brandis.h.i.+ng their swords and shouting with inexpressible joy; the ways strewed with flowers, the bells ringing, the streets hung with tapestry, fountains running with wine; the mayor, aldermen, and all the companies in their liveries, chains of gold, and banners; lords and n.o.bles clad in cloth of silver, gold, and velvet; the windows and balconies all set with ladies; trumpets, music, and myriads of people flocking, even so far as from Rochester, so as they were seven hours in pa.s.sing the city. I stood in the Strand and beheld it, and blessed G.o.d.

_January_ 6, 1661. This night was suppressed a b.l.o.o.d.y insurrection of some fifth-monarchy enthusiasts.

I was now chosen a Fellow of the Philosophical Society, now meeting at Gresham College, where was an a.s.sembly of divers learned gentlemen; this being the first meeting since the king's return; but it had been begun some years before at Oxford, and was continued with interruption here in London during the Rebellion.

_January_ 16. I went to the Philosophic Club, where was examined the Torricellian experiment. I presented my Circle of Mechanical Trades, and had recommended to me the publis.h.i.+ng of what I had written upon chalcography.

_January_ 30. This day--O the stupendous and inscrutable judgements of G.o.d!--were the carcases of those arch-rebels Cromwell, Bradshawe, and Ireton dragged out from their superb tombs in Westminster among the kings, to Tyburn, and hanged on the gallows there from morning till night, and then buried under that ignominious monument in a deep pit; thousands of people who had seen them in all their pride being spectators. Look back at November 22, 1658, and be astonished! And fear G.o.d and honour the king; but meddle not with them who are given to change!

_July_ 31, 1662. I sat with the commissioners about reforming the buildings and streets of London, and we ordered the paving of the way from St. James's north, which was a quagmire, and also of the Haymarket about Piqudillo [Piccadilly].

_August_ 23. I was spectator of the most magnificent triumph that ever floated on the Thames, considering the innumerable boats and vessels, dressed and adorned with all imaginable pomp, but above all, the thrones, arches, pageants, and other representations, stately barges of the Lord Mayor and Companies, with music and peals of ordnance from the vessels and the sh.o.r.e, going to meet and conduct the new queen from Hampton Court to Whitehall, at the time of her first coming to town. His majesty and the queen came in an antique-shaped open vessel, covered with a canopy of cloth of gold, made in the form of a cupola, supported with high Corinthian pillars, wreathed with flowers and festoons.

_IV.--Plague and Fire_

_July_ 16, 1665. There died of the plague in London this week 1,100, and in the week following above 2,000.

_August_ 28. The contagion still increasing, I sent my wife and whole family to my brother's at Wotton, being resolved to stay at my house myself and to look after my charge, trusting in the providence and goodness of G.o.d.

_September_ 7. Came home from Chatham. Peris.h.i.+ng near 10,000 poor creatures weekly. However, I went all along the city and suburbs from Kent Street to St. James's, a dismal pa.s.sage, and dangers to see so many coffins exposed in the streets, now thin of people; the shops shut up, and all in mournful silence, as not knowing whose turn might be next. I went to the Duke of Albemarle for a pest-s.h.i.+p, for our infected men.

_September_ 2, 1666. This fatal night, about ten, began that deplorable fire near Fish Street in London.

_September_ 3. After dinner I took coach with my wife and son, and went to the Bank Side in Southwark, where we beheld the dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water-side.

The fire having continued all this night, which was as light as day for ten miles round, in a dreadful manner, I went on foot to the same place.

The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonished, that from the beginning they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without attempting to save even their goods. It leapt after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other. Here we saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all the barges and boats laden with what some had time and courage to save. And the fields for many miles were strewn with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! London was, but is no more!

_October_ 17, 1671. My Lord Henry Howard would needs have me go with him to Norwich. I was not hard to be persuaded, having a desire to see that famous scholar and physician, Dr. T. Browne, author of the "Religio Medici," now lately knighted. Thither, then, went my lord and I alone in his flying chariot with six horses.

Next morning I went to see Sir Thomas Browne. His whole house and garden were a paradise and cabinet of rarities, especially medals, books, plants, and natural things. Sir Thomas had a collection of the eggs of all the birds he could procure, that country being frequented by several birds which seldom or never go farther into the land--as cranes, storks, eagles, and variety of waterfowl. He led me to see all the remarkable places of this ancient city, being one of the largest and n.o.blest in England.

_January_ 5, 1674. I saw an Italian opera in music, the first that had been in England of this kind.

_November_ 15, 1678. The queen's birthday. I never saw the court more brave, nor the nation in more apprehension and consternation. t.i.tus Oates has grown so presumptuous as to accuse the queen of intending to poison the king, which certainly that pious and virtuous lady abhorred the thought of. Oates probably thought to gratify some who would have been glad his majesty should have married a fruitful lady; but the king was too kind a husband to let any of these make impression on him.

However, divers of the Popish peers were sent to the Tower, accused by Oates, and all the Roman Catholic lords were by a new Act for ever excluded the Parliament, which was a mighty blow.

_May_ 5, 1681. Came to dine with me Sir Christopher Wren, his majesty's architect and surveyor, now building the cathedral of St. Paul, and the column in memory of the City's conflagration, and was in hand with the building of fifty parish churches. A wonderful genius had this incomparable person.

_January_ 24, 1684. The frost continuing more and more severe, the Thames before London was planted with booths in formal streets, all sorts of trades and shops furnished and full of commodities, even to a printing press. Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, as in the streets; sleds, sliding with skates, bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet plays, cooks, tippling, so that it seemed to be a carnival on the water; while it was a severe judgement on the land, the trees splitting, men and cattle peris.h.i.+ng, and the very seas locked up with ice. London was so filled with the fuliginous steam of the coal that hardly could one see across the streets, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles, so as one could scarcely breathe.

_V.--Fall of the Stuarts_

_February_ 4, 1685. King Charles II. is dead. He was a prince of many virtues, and many great imperfections; debonair, easy of access, not b.l.o.o.d.y nor cruel; his countenance fierce, his voice great, proper of person, every motion became him; a lover of the sea, and skillful in s.h.i.+pping; he loved planting and building, and brought in a politer way of living, which pa.s.sed to luxury and expense. He would have been an excellent prince had he been less addicted to women, who made him always in want to supply their immeasurable profusion.

Certainly never had king more glorious opportunities to have made himself, his people, and all Europe happy, had not his too easy nature resigned him to be managed by crafty men, and some abandoned and profane wretches who corrupted his otherwise sufficient parts.

I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and, as it were, total forgetfulness of G.o.d (it being Sunday evening) which day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, a French boy singing love-songs, in that glorious gallery, while twenty great courtiers and other dissolute persons were gaming at a large table, a bank of at least 2,000 in gold before them. Six days after all was in the dust!

_November_ 5, 1688. I went to London, heard the news of the Prince of Orange having landed at Torbay, coming with a fleet of near 700 sail, pa.s.sing through the Channel with so favourable a wind that our navy could not intercept them. This put the king and court into great consternation.

_November_ 13. The Prince of Orange is advanced to Windsor, and is invited by the king to St. James's. The prince accepts the invitation, but requires his majesty to retire to some distant place, that his own guards may be quartered about the palace and city. This is taken heinously, and the king goes privately to Rochester; is persuaded to come back; comes on the Sunday, goes to ma.s.s, and dines in public, a Jesuit saying grace. I was present.

_November_ 18. All the world go to see the prince at St. James's, where there is a great court. He is very stately, serious, and reserved.

_November 24_. The king pa.s.ses into France, whither the queen and child were gone a few days before.

_May_ 26, 1703. This day died Mr. Sam Pepys, a very worthy, industrious, and curious person; none in England exceeding him in knowledge of the navy, in which he had pa.s.sed through all the most considerable offices, all of which he performed with great integrity. When King James II. went out of England, he laid down his office, and would serve no more; but, withdrawing himself from all public affairs, he lived at Clapham with his partner, Mr. Hewer, formerly his clerk, in a very n.o.ble house and sweet place, where he enjoyed the fruit of his labours in great prosperity. He was universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things, skilled in music, a very great cherisher of learned men.

His library and collection of other curiosities were of the most considerable, the models of s.h.i.+ps especially.

_October_ 31, 1705. I am this day arrived to the eighty-fifth year of my age. Lord teach me so to number my days to come that I may apply them to wisdom!

JOHN FORSTER

Life of Goldsmith

John Forster is best remembered as writer of the biographies of the statesmen of the commonwealth, of Goldsmith, Landor, d.i.c.kens. To his own generation he was for twenty years one of the ablest of London journalists. In his later days, as a Commissioner in Lunacy, he had time to devote himself more closely to historical research. He was born at Newcastle on April 2, 1812, was turned aside from the Bar by success in newspaper work, and became editor first of the "Foreign Quarterly Review," then of the "Daily News," on which he succeeded d.i.c.kens, and lastly of "The Examiner." His "Life of Goldsmith" was published in 1848, and enlarged in 1854.

Forster was different from all that he looked. He seemed harsh, exacting, and stubborn. He was one of the most loyal of friends, and tender-hearted towards all good fellows, alive or dead. His picture of Goldsmith is an understanding defence of that strangely-speckled genius, written from the heart.

Forster died on February 1, 1876, two years after his retirement from official life.

_I.--Misery and Ill-luck_

The marble in Westminster Abbey is correct in the place, but not in the time, of the birth of Oliver Goldsmith. He was born at a small old parsonage house in an almost inaccessible Irish village called Pallas, in Longford, November 10, 1728. His father, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, was a Protestant clergyman with an uncertain stipend, which, with the help of some fields he farmed, averaged forty pounds a year. They who have lived, laughed, and wept with the father of the man in black in the "Citizen of the World," the preacher of "The Deserted Village," or the hero of "The Vicar of Wakefield," have given laughter, love, and tears to the Rev. Charles Goldsmith.

Oliver had not completed his second year when the family moved to a respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a boy; he seemed impenetrably stupid."

Yet all the charms of Goldsmith's later style are to be traced in the letters of his youth, and he began to scribble verses when he could scarcely write. At the age of eight he went to the Rev. Mr. Gilpin's superior school of Elphin, in Roscommon, where he was considered "a stupid, heavy blockhead, little better than a fool, whom everyone made fun of." Indeed, from his earliest youth he was made to feel an intense, uneasy consciousness of supposed defects. Later he went to school at Athlone and at Edgeworthstown, and was in every school trick, either as an actor or a victim. On leaving the school at Edgeworthstown, Oliver entered Dublin University as a sizar, "at once studying freedom and practising servitude." Little went well with him in his student course.

He had a menial position, a savage brute for a tutor, and few inclinations to the study exacted. But he was not without his consolations; he could sing a song well, and, at a new insult, could blow off excitement through his flute. The popular picture of him in these days is of a slow, hesitating, somewhat hollow voice, a low-sized, thick, robust, ungainly figure, lounging about the college courts on the wait for misery and ill-luck.

In Oliver's second year at college his father died suddenly, and the scanty sum required for his support stopped. Squalid poverty relieved by occasional gifts was Goldsmith's lot thenceforward. He would write street-ballads to save himself from actual starving, sell them for five s.h.i.+llings a-piece, and steal out of the college at night to hear them sung. It is said to have been a rare occurrence when the five s.h.i.+llings reached home with him. It was more likely, when he was at his utmost need, to stop with some beggar on the road who had seemed to him even more dest.i.tute than himself.

He took his degree as bachelor of arts on February 27, 1749 and returning to his mother's house, at Ballymahon, waited till he could qualify himself for orders. This is the sunny time between two dismal periods of his life--the day occupied in the village school, the winter nights in presiding at Conway's inn, the summer evenings strolling up the banks of the Inny to play the flute, learning French from the Irish priests, or winning a prize for throwing a sledge-hammer at the fair.

When the time came for Goldsmith to take orders, one report says he did not deem himself good enough for it, and another says that he presented himself before the Bishop of Elphin in scarlet breeches; but in truth his rejection is the only certainty.