his political opponents, he often exasperated hostility by setting them all at open defiance, and would frequently pour out the most bitter scorn and invective, when the most guarded and temperate style of expression was essential to success. Never checking the impetuosity of his passions, he often contended for mere trifles with a pertinacity which could only have been justified in the defence of principles of vital importance; trifles, the timely and graceful concession of which would have insured success, which would have far more than counterba'anced such a sacrifice. He never seemed nicely to calculate, with a view to his own conduct, the temper and conduct of the House, or the exact relation of parties in it; thus he never cared to conceal or disguise his opinions on any subject whatever, but uniformly expressed them boldly and fully. Now, though we may admire the blunt honesty of such conduct, none can commend its prudence; nothing but the most imperious necessity could justify it."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1728-1774.

Goldsmith's life offers an exception to the usual even tenor of the literary career. His fortunes were as chequered as restless imprudence and romantic generosity could make them. His father was a gool-hearted Irish clergyman, the supposed original of Dr Primrose in the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' and of the kindly old preacher in the 'Deserted Village.' Oliver was born at Pallas, in Longford, the fourth of a family of seven. When he was two

years old his father removed to the more comfortable living of Lissoy, in West Meath. His first teacher was a garrulous old soldier, who had served under Marlborough, and delighted to entertain the boys with tales of marvellous adventure. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar, in the year of the great Jacobite rising, 1745. What he afterwards said of Parnell's college course may be applied to his own-" His progress through the college course of study was probably marked with but little splendour; his imagination might have been too warm to relish the cold logic of Burgersdicius, or the dreary subtleties of Smiglesius; but it is certain that as a classical scholar few could equal him.' He had no liking for mathematics, but, as he afterwards boasted, he could "turn an ode of Horace with any of them." He is said to have more than once been in difficulties with the heads of the college from his love of boisterous frolic. He left college with no fixed aim. His father designed him for the Church, but after he had spent two years at home in preparation, he failed to give satisfaction to the bishop, and could not obtain orders. He next thought of the law, and set off for London; but falling into good company at Dublin, he spent all his money there, and returned

home in disgrace. He was then fitted out for the study of medicine in Edinburgh, but was much too restless to pass decorously through the ordinary curriculum and settle down into a quiet practice. After studying (or at least staying) two years in Edinburgh, he went off to the Continent, and spent some time in the medical schools of Leyden and Louvain. Thereafter, in a restless spirit of adventure, he wandered through Switzerland, Italy, and France, supporting himself mainly, it is said, by playing on the flute for food and lodging. In 1756 he returned to London, and there tried various ways of making a livelihood; being successively assistant to an apothecary, physician (among the poorer orders), proof corrector in Richardson's press, usher in Dr Milner's school at Peckham, critic for the 'Monthly Review,' and usher again. In 1758 he tried to pass at Surgeon's Hall as a hospital mate, but was rejected, and thus driven back finally on literature. His first independent work was 'The Inquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe,' which appeared anonymously in 1759. From that date till his death, in 1774, he received steady work from the booksellers, and but for his imprudent generosity and love of finery, might have lived in comfort, if not in luxury. His chief productions were The Bee,' a weekly periodical, which reached only eight numbers, lasting through October and November, 1759; 'Chinese Letters,' contributed to Newbery's 'Public Ledger' in 1760, and afterwards published separately under the title of The Citizen of the World'; 'The History of England, in a series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son,' 1762; 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' written and sold in 1764, but not published till 1766; "The Traveller,' 1764; the comedy of The Good-Natured Man,' performed in 1768; History of Rome,' 1769; "The Deserted Village,' 1770; History of England,' in four volumes, 1771; 'She Stoops to Conquer,' performed in 1773; 'History of Animated Nature,' 1774.

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"The Doctor," as he was called, had not a handsome exterior. Miss Reynolds once toasted him as the ugliest man she knew." Boswell says "His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of the scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman." Judge Day's description is more favourable: "In person he was short-about five feet five or six inches; strong but not heavy in make; rather fair in complexion, with brown hair-such, at least, as could be distinguished from his wig. His features were plain but not repulsive certainly not so when lighted up by conversation. His manners were simple, natural, and perhaps on the whole, we may say, not polished; at least, without the refinement and good-breeding which the exquisite polish of his compositions would lead us to expect."

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His naturally strong constitution was soon impaired by his hardships. At the age of thirty-one he wrote thus to his brother: Though I never had a day's sickness since I saw you, yet I am not that strong active man you once knew me. You scarcely can conceive how much eight years of disappointment, anguish, and study, have worn me down." The climate of London was trying to him, and he frequently had to recruit by taking lodgings in the country.

The strong points of Goldsmith's intellect centred in his power of easy and graceful literary composition. He was not a profound scholar, and his mind was neither very comprehensive nor very productive. His fame rests upon the charms of his style: he tried nearly every kind of composition-poetry, comedy, fiction, history, essay-writing, natural science--and, as Johnson said in his wellknown epitaph, "whatever he touched he adorned." He criticised, as he wrote, with exquisite taste. The fragments that Mr Forster has reprinted from the Monthly Review,' Goldsmith's earliest performances, are models of just criticism. His delicately sympathetic nature was a peculiar qualification for appreciating, the works of others. This also gave him his singular power of reading character. His drawing of the members of the Literary Club, in the poem "Retaliation," is a supreme work of art. On the strength of Garrick's well-known epigram

"Here lies poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,

Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll ”—

it has sometimes been said that he was very dull in conversation, and that in the Literary Club he was often made a butt. As Boswell admits, his conversational dulness has been much exaggerated. Undoubtedly he was quicker with his pen than with his tongue. A man of fine taste needs time to mature his thoughts; and Goldsmith, careless of his reputation, often opened his mouth without the least premeditation. As to his being made a butt, it was part of his peculiar humour to sacrifice himself for the amusement of the company by affecting ridiculous vanity and stupidity. Many of the anecdotes of his vanity bear evidence of the stolidity of the narrators-their incapability of understanding a joke or entering into the fun of humorous affectation.

In the matter of emotion, he was one of those beings that are often found in extremes. When fortune went well with him, he was as happy as the day was long. So mobile were his sympathies that he could not be sad in merry company, and was easily beguiled out of his sorrows. Yet he was also easily dispirited, and often took dark views of the future. Self-respect kept him from making many confidants of his heartless anticipations. He often assumed an appearance of gaiety when there was no small anxiety

within; but we find him, in an affectionate letter to his brother in Ireland, complaining of a "settled melancholy" and "gloomy habits of thinking"; and he sometimes laid his cares before his sturdy friend Johnson. After a happy deliverance from gloomy apprehensions, he would entertain his friends with ludicrous pictures of his previous distress. He was a warm friend and a His

generous enemy; quick to take offence and easily pacified. heart overflowed with tenderness: he loved the happy faces of children, and could not bear to see misery. With his rare skill in divining the thoughts of others, and detecting what they prided themselves upon, he might have been a stinging satirist; but his tenderness, though it could not restrain, always induced him to soften the dart.

The imprudence of his conduct has often been dilated upon. As a young man he was flighty, and more bent upon seeing the world than willing to subside into a staid professional career. His life was one long battle with imprudence. He was thirty-one when he finally settled down to authorship; and then he never thought of laying up money for an evil day, but spent faster than he earned, and died two thousand pounds in debt. "His purse replenished," says Judge Day, "the season of relaxation and pleasure took its turn, in attending the theatres, Ranelagh, Vauxhall, and other scenes of gaiety and amusement. When his funds were dissipated-and they fled more rapidly from his being the dupe of many artful persons, male and female, who practised upon his benevolence he returned to his literary labours, and shut himself up from society to provide fresh matter for his bookseller, and fresh supplies for himself." There are several well-known anecdotes of his imprudent generosity. On one occasion about the beginning of his career as an author, he pawned a suit of clothes that he had on loan to save his landlady from an execution for debt. Throughout all his struggles he continued to send money to his poor mother in Ireland; and when he died, "on the stairs of his apartment there was the lamentation of the old and infirm, and the sobbing of women, poor objects of his charity, to whom he had never turned a deaf ear.'

He was

Opinions.-Goldsmith is not known to have held strong opinions, as Johnson did, either in politics or in sectarian religion. more of an observer than of a doctrinaire. He had seen much of mankind, and interested himself more in noting characteristic expression and conduct than in gaining adherents to any favourite views. The point of view of the Chinese Letters is characteristic. Himself emancipated by temperament and education from nearly every mode of traditionary prejudice, he regarded as absurd and mischievous many of the English opinions, customs, and institu

tions. But he did not attack these directly, as Mr Matthew Arnold has lately done, in his own proper person. He assumed the person of a philosophic Chinaman, and showed, in the form of letters to friends in the East, how English ways appeared in the eyes of a "Citizen of the World." In these letters he not only expresses surprise at superficial absurdities in dress, in public ceremonies, and suchlike, and at such incongruities as charging admission-fees to tombs and other memorials of great men, but also strikes at graver subjects, at the law of divorce, at iniquities in the administration of justice, at the abuses of Church patronage, at the frivolous causes of great wars, and similar matters of more serious import.

ELEMENTS OF STYLE.

Vocabulary.-The best evidence of Goldsmith's wide command of language is his excellence in so many different kinds of composition. The remarkable thing is his combination of purity with copiousness. He is more copious than Addison; and, while no less simple than that master of simple language, he never is affectedly easy, never condescends to polite slang. One is safe to assert that no writer of English is at once so copious and so pure.

Sentences and Paragraphs.—The light and graceful structure of Goldsmith's sentences cannot be too much admired. It would be interesting to find out what preceding writer he is most indebted to. We may concede to Boswell and to Dr Nathan Drake that in some respects he belongs to the "Johnsonian school." Had Goldsmith written before Johnson, he would probably have constructed his sentences as loosely as Addison. He may have learnt from Johnson to observe grammar more strictly than was usual with the Queen Anne writers, to balance clauses, and to round off his sentences without leaving inelegant tags. Probably he caught these parts of his skill from Johnson, though none but the greater grammatical accuracy can be said to have been originated by "the great lexicographer." But in other respects his style is so unlike Johnson's that it needs some practice in criticism to discover any resemblance whatsoever. Not to speak of Goldsmith's simple diction and exquisite melody, which make a sufficient disguise for the general reader, his sentences are much shorter, less condensed, and less abrupt. When we remember Goldsmith's acquaintance with French literature, we can hardly help ascribing some of the merits of his style to the influence of the French.

In the following specimens of his style, taken from his earliest work, the Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,' we catch an occasional echo of Johnson; but the general structure is much lighter and more graceful :

"If we examine the state of learning in Germany, we shall find that the