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deal of work, including (if an old tradition, which Mr. Charles Welsh has supported by many strong arguments, may be credited) the tale of "Little Goody Twoshoes," which has earned the heartfelt approbation of so many juvenile readers. Among his pieces of honest journey-work, executed not for fame, but to meet his incessant calls on his purse, may be mentioned the "History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son," which was published anonymously, and by many attributed to Lord Lyttleton (1762); "History of Rome" (1769); "History of England,” in four volumes (1771); "History of Animated Nature" (1774). Neither in his historical nor in his scientific productions did Goldsmith make any profession of original research; what he aimed to do, and what he succeeded in doing, was to give a clear, concise, and readable account of his subject. Johnson excited the astonishment of Boswell by preferring Goldsmith as an historian to Robertson; but there is more to be said for Johnson's opinion than may at first sight appear possible.

We turn to the writings to which Goldsmith owes his immortality. In 1764 appeared the "Traveller," the first work to which he prefixed his name. He lived, as he himself often pointed out, both in writing and in conversation, in an age singularly deficient in poetry of any high order of merit. Versifiers there were in abundance, men destitute alike of imagination, spirit, and sensibility, but Goldsmith himself was the only writer who deserved to be called a poet in any high sense of the word. It may be granted at once that he does not reach to very lofty heights, and that his range was somewhat limited; but our literature does not afford an instance of a poet to whose writings we constantly return with greater pleasure, or who (with the possible exception of Mr. Tennyson) has written fewer imperfect lines. The powers displayed in the "Traveller" astonished all Goldsmith's friends, and raised him at once from the position of a scribbler to the booksellers into that of a literary lion of some magnitude. Its success led to the publication in 1766 of the "Vicar of Wakefield," which had been written two years previously. One day Johnson

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received a message from Goldsmith that he was in great dis tress, and begging him to come to him as soon as possible. Johnson sent him a guinea, and promised to call on him directly. When he arrived, he found the unfortunate author in a violent passion, because he had been arrested by his landlady for his rent. "I perceived," relates Johnson, "that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty guineas. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." This novel was the "Vicar of Wakefield," which the purchaser did not venture to publish till after the assured success of the "Traveller." Its reception soon made him ashamed of his over-cautiousness. Within a year it went through three editions, and has always since remained popular. Samuel Rogers, the length of whose literary experience is illustrated by the fact that he contrived to pay a call on Samuel Johnson, and lived to prophesy the future greatness of Algernon Charles Swinburne, declared that of all the books which, during the fitful changes of three generations, he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the "Vicar of Wakefield" had alone continued as at first; and that could he revisit the world after an interval of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished. The plot contains many incongruities and absurdities, but these are forgotten or unnoticed amidst the delight afforded by its sly humour, its inimitable sketches of character, its geniality, and its perfect purity of tone, affording so pleasing a contrast to most of the works of fiction that had preceded it. It is a book which has charmed young and old, rich and poor, the learned and the ignorant. A child of twelve years old may read it with pleasure; such a man as Goethe did not scruple

"Vicar of Wakefield," "Deserted Village." 255

to declare how much he owed to it. The characteristics that distinguish the "Vicar of Wakefield " are conspicuous also in . Goldsmith's two comedies, the "Good-Natured Man” (1768), and "She Stoops to Conquer" (1773). The second is considerably the superior, both in the construction of the plot and in humorous effect; but they alike display a great power of good-humoured satire, a healthy and genial tone of mind, and (as indeed is the case with all Goldsmith's writings) a disposition to make literary capital out of his own early scrapes. and peccadilloes. The mistaking of a private house for an inn, the incident upon which the plot of "She Stoops to Conquer" turns, was suggested by Goldsmith's having actually made the same mistake himself when a raw youth of sixteen.

In 1770 appeared Goldsmith's finest poem, the "Deserted Village," full of tender recollections of his beloved native country, which he was never again to behold. In 1774 he wrote that admirable series of poetical characters called "Retaliation," of which posterity has endorsed almost every word. The poem was, alas! never finished. That hand, which had never lost its cunning, was not destined to write more. On 4th April 1774 poor Goldsmith expired. "He died of a fever," wrote Johnson to Boswell, "made, I am afraid, more violent by uneasiness of mind. His debts began to be heavy, and all his resources were exhausted. Sir Joshua [Reynolds] is of opinion that he owed no less than two thousand pounds. Was ever poet so trusted before?" Though, during the latter part of his life, Goldsmith was making an income sufficient to maintain him in comfort if not in affluence, his affairs were greatly embarrassed, owing to his boundless charity and never-failing goodness of heart, which made him treat his friends to sumptuous banquets, and, from his incapacity to turn a deaf ear to a touching tale, rendered him the dupe of many designing rogues.

Though undoubtedly the greatest poet, and, with only one or two exceptions, the greatest prose writer of his time, Goldsmith was generally spoken of by his contemporaries with a kind of supercilious condescension, which, though in the highest

degree unjust, is not difficult to account for. Impulsive, reckless, and generous, his character was of the kind which commands affection rather than respect; he lacked that worldly wisdom which is often so much more serviceable to its possessor than higher and better qualities; and though his biographers have gallantly attempted to prove that his contemporaries were mistaken in supposing him to be a poor talker, it is impossible not to credit the practically unanimous testimony of the latter, summed up by Johnson's remark, "Sir, no man was ever so foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or so wise when he had one." The homeliness of his appearance no doubt contributed not a little to diminish the esteem felt for his conversation. "In person," writes Judge Day, "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 language would lead us to expect."

A very different man from Goldsmith was another distinguished member of the Literary Club, his countryman Edmund Burke, the greatest writer on political philosophy in our language, and, if Mr. Matthew Arnold's judgment be accepted, the greatest master of English prose style that ever lived. Unlike Johnson and Goldsmith, he had not to pass his youth in a bitter apprenticeship to want and "the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes," for his parents were, if not wealthy, at least well-to-do people. He was born in Dublin in 1729, received most of his elementary education at a school in Kildare kept by Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, and in 1743 entered Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained for five years. His University career, if not brilliant, was far from an idle one; though he did not apply himself very closely to the studies of the place, he read largely and acquired a fund of miscellaneous knowledge. In 1750 he

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came to London to study law at the Middle Temple; but he soon found that legal studies were irksome to one of his discursive temper, and began to cast longing eyes upon the more pleasant field of general literature. He used to boast that "he had none of that master-vice sloth in his composition," and with perfect justice, for, while neglecting the study of the law, his time, instead of being spent in idleness or dissipation, was employed in amassing those vast stores of knowledge which called forth the admiration of his contemporaries, and fitted him for the great career on which he was soon to embark. During this period no doubt he scribbled much, but he did not formally appear before the public as an author till 1756, when he published two, works, “A Vindication of Natural Society," and "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful." The first of these productions is a short tract, designed as a parody on the style and mode of thinking of Lord Bolingbroke, whose works were then considerably in vogue. Bolingbroke in his writings had attempted to render religion ridiculous by an exaggerated view of its abuses. Adopting the same course of argument, Burke endeavours to show that as civil society carried in its train a number of evils, it would be well to return to a state of savage nature. The pamphlet received the highest praise it could possibly have gained in being taken by many for a genuine production of Lord Bolingbroke. The essay on the sublime and beautiful is an interesting contribution to a subject on which many able and subtle writers have discoursed; but though it contains several striking passages, it cannot be said to show much philosophic depth or precision. Burke himself is said to have thought little of it in his latter years. In 1758 he was engaged by Dodsley to edit the "Annual Register." He is said to have written the whole of the volumes for 1758 and 1759; he contributed largely to it for a good many years afterwards.

These occupations soon introduced him into literary society, where his width of knowledge and powers of conversation eminently qualified him to excel. In that year he became