NOTES. The numbers at the beginning of paragraphs refer to the pages. Frontispiece. The frontispiece is a portrait of Goldsmith etched by Harry G. Webb, after Reynolds. Notes. Some of the notes are based upon those of previous editors, but the majority of them are new. Text.-The Bee originally appeared in threepenny weekly numbers from 6th October to 24th November, 1759. It was issued in December as a duodecimo volume under the title, The Bee. Being Essays on the Most Interesting Subjects. The publisher was J. Wilkie, at the Bible in St Paul's Churchyard. The following is a list of the "Contents," those papers which have been omitted on the present occasion being wholly in Italic type: [No. 1.] Introduction. Epigram on a beautiful Youth struck blind with Lightning. Imitated from the Spanish. [See Poems, (Temple Classics), p. 75.] Another. In the same Spirit. Remarks on our Theatres. (Latin, not printed.) The Story of ALCANDER and SEPTIMIUS. lated from a Byzantine Historian. Trans A Letter from Mr VOLTAIRE to M. D'ARGET, of A Letter from a Traveller. A short Account of the late Mr MAUPERTUIS. [No. 2.] On Dress. Some Particulars relating to CHARLES XII. not commonly known. R 257 The Gift. To IRIS, in Bow Street, Covent Garden. [See Poems (Temple Classics), p. 76.] Happiness in a great Measure dependant upon Constitution. On our Theatres. A Letter from Mr VOLTAIRE to M. TIRIOT. (Not printed.) [No. 3.] On the Use of Language. The History of HYPASIA. On Justice and Generosity. On Wit. By Mr VOLTAIRE. (Not printed.) A Flemish Tradition. The Sagacity of some Insects. The Characteristics of Greatness. A City Night-Piece. [See Citizen of the World (Temple Classics), ii. p. 277.] An Elegy on that Glory of her Sex, Mrs MARY BLAIZE. [See Poems (Temple Classics), p 82.] [No. 5.] On Political Frugality. A Resverie. A Word or two on the late Farce, called High Life Below Stairs. On Unfortunate Merit. [No. 6.] On Education. On the Contradictions of the World. From Voltaire. (Not printed.) On the Instability of Worldly Grandeur. [No. 7.] Of Eloquence. Custom and Laws compared. Of the Pride and Luxury of the Middling Class of People. SABINUS and OLINDA. The Sentiments of a Frenchman on the Temper of the English. (Not printed.) Copied, with little altera- English and French Nations, London, 1747, i. [No. 8.] On Deceit and Falsehood. (Not printed.) Copied, with some variation, from The Humourist, 3rd ed. 1724. An Account of the Augustan Age of England. (Not printed Goldsmith's authorship being somewhat doubtful.) Of the Opera in England. The above comprise all the papers included in the original "Contents" of The Bee of 1759. In the case of those papers reprinted in the Essays of 1766, the text here given (with the exception of that of the following Introduction) is the later one. (See notes to separate Essays.) 3. Introduction.-This was afterwards included in the Essays, but while the other papers are printed from the later versions, it has been judged expedient to give this one as it appeared in No. 1 of The Bee. 4. Vastly low."Low," as opposed to "genteel," was a popular form of eighteenth-century criticism, especially with the would-be votaries of "high life." Goldsmith had already touched upon the subject in the Present State of Polite Learning, 1759, PP. 154-5 :— "By the power of one single monosyllable, our critics have almost got the victory over humour amongst us. Does the poet paint the absurdities of the vulgar; then he is low: does he exaggerate the features of folly, to render it more thoroughly ridiculous, he is then very low. In short, they have proscribed the comic or satyrical muse from every walk but high life, which, though abounding in fools as well as the humblest station, is by no means so fruitful in absurdity." "There's nothing comes out but the most lowest stuff in nature," says Lady Blarney later in the Vicar (Temple Classics), p. 61; and in 1768, the London Chronicle declared Goldsmith's own Bailiff Scene in the Good Natur'd Man to be "uncommonly low." He was in good company, according to George Borrow. "Homer himself has never yet entirely recovered from the injury he received by Lord Chesterfield's remark, that the speeches of his heroes were frequently exceedingly low" (Lavengro, ch. xli). 4. a dab at an index.-i.e. an expert. "The Great Men themselves, who are (to fetch a Phrase from School, a Place not improperly mentioned on this Occasion) great DAвs at this kind of Facetiousness (Fielding's Essay on Conversation, Miscellanies, 1743, i. p. 173). 4. Colonel Charteris.—An infamous profligate, satirised alike by Pope's pen and Hogarth's brush. He died in 1732; and Arbuthnot made him the subject of a scathing epitaph. 5. Like the Bee. -The motto of The Bee was from Lucretius: "Floriferis ut Apes saltibus omnia libant, Omnia Nos itidem." 6. a bon-mot. This sentence suggests the "Different longitude, different latitude" of the dramatist T. W. Robertson. See also Shakespeare on "a jest's prosperity" (Love's Labour's Lost, Act V., Sc. ii., 1. 871). 6. four extraordinary pages of letterpress.-Goldsmith repeats this jibe at the artless seductions of his contemporaries in a later paper (see p. 71). "All this, together with four extraordinary pages of letterpress, a beautiful map of England, and two prints curiously coloured from nature, I fancied might touch their very souls" (Bee, No. IV., Saturday, October 27th, 1759). 7. sad stuff.-These were the words which, according to Mrs Carter, the "fine folks" applied to Fielding's Amelia (Letters, 3rd ed. 1819, i. p. 368). 7. Bayes, in the "Rehearsal."--Goldsmith had probably in mind this passage from Act iii., Sc. i. of Buckingham's play: "My Play is my Touch-stone. When a man tells me such a one is a person of parts; is he so, say I? What do I do, but bring him presently to see this Play: If he likes it, I know what to think of him; if not, your most humble Servant, Sir, I'l no more of him upon my word, I thank you "(Arber's reprint, 1869, p. 73). 9. Our theatres are now opened. The Haymarket opened on the 17th September with a Burletta entitled Galligantus; Drury Lane on the 22nd with Farquhar's Recruiting Officer; and Covent Garden on the 24th with the Miser (see note to p. 11). 9. Grub Street. The Grub Street of fact is now Milton Street, Cripplegate. Johnson, who defined it in the Dictionary as "a street. . . much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems," according to Miss Burney, had never been there himself (Diary, i. p. 415). 9. as a manager, so avaricious.-This was a common charge against Garrick (cf. Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, iii. p. 71). 9. Palmer. John Palmer, the Elder, died in May 1768. He was an excellent Plume in Farquhar's Recruiting Officer, but a coxcomb on and off the Stage. "PALMER! Oh! PALMER tops the janty part," says Churchill (Poems, 4th ed. 1769, i. 3). 9. Holland.-Charles Holland died of smallpox in December 1769, aged 36. Churchill accuses him in the Rosciad of being merely a servile copy of Garrick, some of whose favourite characters he played successfully. "I hate e'en GARRICK thus at second hand" (Poems, 4th ed. 1769, i. p. 17). 9. Shuter.-Edward, or more familiarly, Ned Shuter (1728-76), who afterwards played "Croaker" in the Good Natur'd Man, and " Mr Hardcastle" in She Stoops to Conquer. Garrick called him "the greatest comic genius he had ever seen," and Dibdin says he was "one of the best burletta singers in the world." 10. Though it would be inexcusable.-This-technically known as "gagging "— -was Shuter's worst fault : "SHUTER, who never car'd a single pin 11. The Miser.This was a version by Henry Field |