Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/786

Rh 762 accurate research or grave disquisition he was not well qualiﬁed by nature or by education. He knew nothing accurately; his reading had been desultory; nor had he iiieditated deeply on what he had read. He had seen much of the world ; but he had noticed and retained little more of what he had seen than some grotesque incidents and characters which had happened to strike his fancy. But, though his mind was very scantily stored with materials, he used what materials he had in such a way as to produce a wonderful effect. There have been many greater writers; but perhaps no writer was ever more uniformly agreeable. His style was always pure and easy, and, on proper occa- sions, pointed and energetic. His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum, hardly to be expected from a man a great part of whose life had been passed among thieves and beggars, street- walkers and nierryandrews, in those squalid dens which are the reproach of great capitals. As his name gradually became known, the circle of his acquaintance widened. He was introduced to Johnson, who was then considered as the ﬁrst of living English writers; to Reynolds, the ﬁrst of English painters ; and to Burke, who had not yet entered parliament, but had dis- tinguished himself greatly by his writings and by the eloquence of his conversation. 'ith these eminent men Goldsmith became intimate. In 1763 he was one of the nine original members of that celebrated fraternity which has sometimes been called the Literary Club, but which has always disclaimed that epithet, and still glories in the simple name of the Club. By this time Goldsmith had quitted his miserable dwell- ing at the top of Breakneck Steps, and had taken chambers in the more civilized region of the Inns of Court. But he was still often reduced to pitiable shifts. Towards the close of 1764 his rent was so long in arrear that his landlady one morning called in the help of a sheriff’s omcer. The debtor, in great perplexity, despatched a messenger to Johnson; and Johnson, always friendly, though often surly, sent back the messenger with a guinea, and promised to follow speedily. He came, and found that Goldsmith had changed the guinea, and was ra.iling at the landlady over a bottle of Madeira. Johnson put the cork into the bottle, and entreated his friend to consider calmly how money was to be procured. Goldsmith said that he had a novel ready for the press. Johnson glanced at the manu- script, saw that there were good things in it, tool: it to a bookseller, sold it for £60, and soon returned with the money. The rent was paid _; and the sheriff’s officer with- drew. According to one story, Goldsmith gave his land- lady a sharp reprimand for her treatment of him _: accord- ing to another, he insisted on her joining him in a bowl of punch. Both stories are probably true. The novel which was thus ushered into the world was the Vicar of Walte- ﬁeld. But before the Vicar of ll'al(ﬁ'ehl appeared in print, came the great crisis of Golds-niitli’s literary life. In Christmas week 1764 he published a poem, entitled the Traveller. It was the ﬁrst work to which he had put his name, and it at once raised him to the rank of a legiti- mate English classic. The opinion of the most skilful critics was that nothing finer had appeared in verse since the fourth book of the ])uncimI. In one respect the Traveller differs from all Goldsmith’s other writings. In general his designs were bad, and his execution good. In the Traveller, the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same GOLDSMITH time so simple. An linglish wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries nieet-, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our own minds. While t.he fourth edition of the Traveller was on the counters of the booksellers, the Vicar of ll'(il-q/z'rl(I appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to o11r own time. and which is likely to last as long as our language. The fable is indeed one of the worst t-hat ever was constructed. It wants, not merely that probability which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, but that consistency which ought to be found even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies. But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy. Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and his niouogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony. the squire proving from Aristotle that rela- tives are related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the contro- versy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great ladies with their scandal about Sir Toinkyu’s ainoiirs and Dr Burdock’s verses, and Mr Burcliell with his “ Fudge,” have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been caused by ma.tter packed into so small a number of pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. As we ap- proach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker, and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer. The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist. He wrote the Goodnalurecl Jllcm, a piece which had a worse fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it at Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly received. The author, however, cleared by his beiiefitnights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than £500, ﬁve times as much as he had made by the Traz-eller anrl the l'z'car of ll'aK'qﬁel¢l together. The plot of the Gooclnalured Jllan is, like almost all Goldsmith's 1-lots, very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous,———-much more ludicrous indeed than suited the taste of the town at that time. A canting, niawkish play, entitled False Delicacg/, had just had an immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies ; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the Goodnatzn-ed .l[an, that in which Miss Ilichland finds her lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff’s follower in full court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night. In 1770 appeared the Dcsezterl Villcrge. In mere dic- tion and versilication this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior, to the TravrlIcr_.- and it is generally pre- ferred to the "rm-eller by that large class of re-.iders who think, with Bayes in the Relwarsal, that the only use of a plan is to bring in ﬁne things. More discerning judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by one unpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The fault which we mean is not that theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been censured by political economists. The theory is indeed false ,' but the poem, considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse on that account. The finest poem in the Latin lan- guage,—indeed, the finest didactic poem in any language,——- was written in defence of the silliest and meanest of all