Images of the Orient: Goldsmith and the Philosophes

Images of the Orient:mlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Goldsmith and the Philosophes SAM U EL H. W O O D S, JR.gfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Goldsmith's Oriental pieces, especially RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA T h e C it iz e n o f t h e W o r ld and also some shorter, journalistic pieces like "The Proceedings of Provi­ dence Vindicated" are among the very few eighteenth-century British Oriental works still actively read and studied by undergraduates, graduate students, and professors, with Samuel Johnson's R a s s e la s about their only rival. The great mass of other eighteenth-century British writings with Oriental settings lie mouldering unread, except when they attract the attention of the student of some specialized feature of eighteenth-century life and culture. In addition, Goldsmith is, I believe, the only major British writer of the period to use both Chinese and Persian material, although as is well known, he drew heavily on Montesquieu, Voltaire, and especially the Marquis d'Argens, as well as Louis Le Comte and J. B. Du Halde, as R. S. Crane, Arthur Lytton Sells, Hamilton J. Smith, Arthur Friedman, and others have clearly shown.1 Thus, his writing, especially T h e C it iz e n o f t h e W o r ld , served as a principal conduit for British readers to receive ideas from the French P h ilo s o p h e s , the older generation of deists like Montes­ quieu and Voltaire, but even more extensively from the younger gen­ eration of atheists, especially d'Argens, although most of these works were also quickly translated into English so that the general ideas of the P h ilo s o p h e s were directly available to the eighteenth-century Brit­ ish reader. Goldsmith's images of both China and Persia differ mark­ edly from those found in Montesquieu, Voltaire, and d'Argens in that 257 258 / mlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA w o o d s gfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Goldsmith presents China especially as a despotic, cruel tyranny, not a benevolent monarchy governed by a philosopher-god-king and ad­ ministered by mandarin sages. William W. Appleton and especially Basil Guy have carefully traced the way the RQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA P h ilo s o p h e s used the material compiled by the Jesuits Louis Le Comte and J. B. Du Halde to support an image of China where benevolent authority and morality prevailed with a minimum of dog­ matic religion or even no religion at all.2 Appleton notes that by the eighteenth century, "In the character of Confucius they [the English] had found an amalgam of the qualities of the good man of the eigh­ teenth century: the detachment of the Spectator, the personal de­ voutness of William Law, and the compassion and understanding of Parson Adams."3 A close examination of Arthur Friedman's notes to his edition of T h e C it iz e n o f t h e W o r ld shows that Goldsmith's three principal sources for specific Chinese material were Le Comte, Du Halde, and d'Argens. He used Louis Le Comte's N o u v e a u x m e m o ir e s s u r I ' e t a t p r e s e n t d e la C h in e , Paris, 1697; the 1724 English translation of Du Halde's D e s c r ip ­ t io n o f C h in a a n d C h in e s e - T a r t a r y , and the 1755 edition of d'Argens' L e t t r e s C h in o is e s , o u C o r r e s p o n d a n c e p h ilo s o p h iq u e , h is t o r iq u e & c r it iq u e , e n t r e u n c h in o is v o y a g e u r a P a r is & s e s c o r r e s p o n d a n s a...