only exhibited great variety and excellence, but earned the unusual distinction of being equally admired in poetry and in prose." In each of these departments of literature, so rarely united in a high degree of merit in the same individual, Goldsmith attained to eminence. As a prose writer, he combined— with the graces of a style that charms by its elegance, its simplicity, and its purity-sentiments refined without false delicacy, pathos that was never overwrought, and humour that was never forced; a moralist without hypocrisy, a teacher without pedantry, a reformer without intolerance, and a satirist without bitterness. As a poet, we must assign him a higher place still-perhaps the highest in that class which he may be almost said to have created in England. In power of description, whether it be the delineation of nature or of humanity, he is a master; his paintings are all portraits-true, vigorous, characteristic, and finished, with the most effective arrangement of light and shade, of warmth and colour. Here, too, as in his prose, he exhibits his great mastery over the passions; stirring our hearts with the deepest pathos, and moving us with the liveliest humour; all welling up, unbidden and unrestrained, from the sensibilities of a finely-organised and imaginative nature. In the finish and harmony of his versification he is inferior to none; and he rises at times to a sublimity of thought and a grandeur of diction that is equal to the best. There is no poet who holds a wider and a firmer grasp of the sympathies, the affections, and the intellect of every class of readers. While we cannot place him. in the highest rank as a dramatist, it must be admitted that he produced one of the most successful comedies of his day, abounding in happy strokes of wit, sprightly dialogue, admirable delineation of character, and humour which, though broad and farcical, is never gross or licentious. To sum up in the words. of Johnson:-"Whether, indeed, we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey; and every year he lived would have deserved it better."

And of the man, too, we must speak. Let us do so in truthfulness, yet in love. If ever there was one by whose virtues and merits the world has been the gainer, while his faults and his foibles have chiefly injured himself, that man was Oliver Goldsmith. Neither in his own day nor in ours have there been wanting those who have exaggerated his failings and his follies. Garrick has described him-let us hope, more in the spirit of playful satire than with a conviction of its truth-as

Scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gamester, and poet;"

while Macaulay, with no friendly pen, has written that "he was vain, sensual, frivolous, profuse, improvident." Scholar and poet he was; and Christian, too, let none be hardy enough to deny him to have been in whom so many Christian virtues shone out. That he was a rake, we have no evidence; and there is much in his character to lead us to believe the contrary. With still less

justice can he be accused of sensuality; for he was moderate, and often abstemious, in the enjoyments of the table, and rarely exceeded in the use of wine. That he was vain is true-the vanity of the child, who knows not, in his simplicity, how to conceal the foible that the grown man of the world cherishes but hides. That he was a dupe, is true also-to the shame of those who duped a candid and truthful nature; and it cannot be denied that the love of excitement, and not the spirit of avarice, drew him often to the gambling-table. Nor can the honest biographer acquit him of improvidence, recklessness, and profuseness: these, indeed, were his most grievous errors, from which he never extricated himself through life, and which brought him prematurely to his grave. This is the sum of the charges that can be brought against him. He had no envy, for it is an error to call that envy which was but the exhibition of an over-honest nature, that could not conceal the pain of slighted merit.

And his virtues?

and forming our

"If that was envy, envy ne'er before

So much the look of wronged affection wore;
And ne'er did bee such golden honey bring

To ruder hands—yet, writhing, leave no sting."*

Shall not they be taken into account, in striking the balance estimate? Benevolent, generous, loving, and forgiving; frank, and true, and simple; with an independent spirit, that scorned to prostitute his genius to power, or to barter the liberty of a poor but free man for the ease of a pensioned slave. Let us think of all this, and think how lovable he must have been, when we know how much and by whom he was beloved. “Think of him,” said Thackeray, "reckless, thriftless, vain, if you like; but merciful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our life, and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the poor pensioners, weeping at his grave; think of the noble spirits that admired and deplored him; think of the righteous pen that wrote his epitaph, and of the wonderful and unanimous response of affection with which the world has paid back the love he gave it: his humour delighting us still; his song fresh and beautiful as when first he charmed with it; his words in all our mouths; his very weaknesses beloved and familiar. His benevolent spirit seems to smile upon us; to do gentle kindnesses; to succour with sweet charity; to soothe, caress, and forgive; to plead with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor." Let not his frailties be remembered," said Dr. Johnson; "he was a very great man." "Let them be remembered," says Washington Irving, "since their tendency is to endear.” We would say, in what we believe a fitter spirit than either, Let them be remembered in regretful love, while we think, with grateful admiration, of his virtues and his genius; and acknowledge how surpassingly great he would have been with a more regulated mind and a stronger nature.

* "St. Stephen's," p. 67.

66

In closing this brief memoir, I have to acknowledge my obligations to the biographers that preceded me, and whose labours in the field have left but little for me to glean after them. The accurate and exhaustive volumes of Sir James Prior must be considered as the foundation upon which all subsequent biographies of Goldsmith have been built up. The genius of Irving has invested every well-known incident with picturesque attraction; while the philosophic and discursive work of Mr. Forster is deservedly popular. My task has been chiefly that of condensation and selection. If I have corrected an occasional error, or added one or two facts to the stock of former knowledge, I shall not have written in vain.

JOHN FRANCIS WALLER.

as permanent as it is widely diffused. We may not predicate a time when it shall cease to be read, or a class or an age which it shall not instruct and delight. It charms the boy to-day, as it delighted Goethe throughout life.

It would be easy to multiply the testimony which great writers in every country have borne to the charms of this composition; but it is needless. We can well understand how, notwithstanding the fears of Dr. Johnson, this tale stole silently upon the world without the eulogy of critics or the appreciation of wits, till it struck its roots deep into the soil of the English heart, and became perennial. Faults it has, but they are few and trifling-forgotten in the charm of style and sentiment by all save the critic. Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, command now not one reader for every hundred who read this tale of Goldsmith. This need not excite our wonder. He paints Nature as truly as any of them, but without the sententious formality and wearisome particularity of the first, or the coarseness and pruriency of the others.

"The Vicar of Wakefield" is a domestic epic. Its hero is a country parson-simple, pious, and pure-hearted-a humorist in his way, a little vain of his learning, a little proud of his fine family-sometimes rather sententious, never pedantic, and a dogmatist only on the one favourite topic of monogamy, which crops out now and then above the surface of his character only to give it a new charm. Its world is a rural district, beyond whose limits the action rarely passes, and that only on great occasions. Domestic affections and joys, relieved by its cares, its foibles, and its little failings, cluster around the parsonage, till the storms from the outward world invade its holiness and trouble its peace. Then comes sorrow and suffering; and we have the hero, like the patriarchal prince of the land of Uz, when the Lord "put forth his hand and touched all that he had," meeting each new affliction with meekness and with patience-rising from each trial with renewed reliance upon God, till the lowest depth of his earthly suffering becomes the highest elevation of his moral strength.

In this charming work we see the moral nature of Goldsmith more translucently than in anything else that he has written-that thorough honest, unsophisticated nature, full of truth and hope, and love and charity, unsordid and unselfish, improvident yet resilient, rising ever with elastic rebound the moment that the pressure is removed from his spirit; and then the tale flows gracefully, easily along, as some full, clear stream wanders through a varied landscape, now calmly over the daisied meadow, now troublously between rocks and wooded hills, now in light and now in shadow, but always clear and pure, reflecting the heavens over it and the scenes around it. Here we have satire, the gentlest that ever fell from pen; pungent, but the pungency of a pleasant acid, without one drop of gall; humour, the quaintest, the simplest, the slyest; wit that sparkles like dew-drops; pathos that makes its way right to the heart; and with all and above all, an exquisite power of delineating the foibles that make one smile, as well as the fortitude that makes the eye moist all these render "The Vicar of Wakefield" the most readable, the most lovable, the most imperishable of novels.

NOTE. The fifth edition (1773) has been adopted in the present publication.