OLIVER GOLDSMITH.* " THE most beloved of English writers," says
Mr. Swinburne, "may be Goldsmith or may be Scott; the best beloved will always be Charles Lamb." Any kind of comparison between three such literary favourites must, it seems to us, be idle, and cannot be just. Scott's imaginative work is so much wider in extent than that of Goldsmith or Lamb, and Lamb, the greatest of essayists, is so unlike Goldsmith, and so inferior to him in other departments of literature, that the affectionate feeling each of the three inspires is different in kind as well as in degree. Scott touches us at the most points. He gives us more to think about and enjoy by widening our range of vision, and has produced more lifelike and splendid creations than any English author except Shakespeare ; when we think of him, we think of the immortal beings of his fancy, and of the joy they have been to us all our lives through. Not one • (1.) "Great Writers:" Life of Goldsmith. By Austin Dobson. London : Wa!ter Scott.—(2.) Goldsmith: Selected Poems. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Austin Dobson. Oxford: Clarendon Press. of them, perhaps, is dearer than the " Vicar ;" but many are as dear, and the ample wealth of Sir Walter's genius is more satisfying. Lamb's art is like one of those rare and infinitely precious wines that we drink in small glasses. Of its kind it is incomparable. Nothing like " Elia."
exists in our literature ; but it is not for all tastes, perhaps not for all moods. He writes for the elect ; and the world, which can give its measure of applause to Scott though it prefers Dickens, and to Goldsmith though it prefers Mr.. Haggard, gives only conventional praise to Lamb.
Mr. Swinburne, in his remark, was no doubt thinking of Goldsmith, Scott, and Lamb as men as well as writers. For two of them our love is strengthened by admiration. By prosperity Scott was unspoilt, in adversity he became heroic ; while Lamb's life, at once the most painful and beautiful in our literature, was one of unselfish affection, of unfaltering self-denial. We do not respect Goldsmith's character ; but why do we love the man so much, and even when summing up his faults can say no harsh word against him ? Partly, we think, this is because all his faults were on the surface, while his heart was sound and true. He was not like Sheridan, an agreeable scamp ; rather like Sir Richard Steele, while often failing, he always meant to do right. Not all his littlenesses and vanities make us look upon him as contemptible, and if he was not thinking of himself when he said of the Auburn parson that his failings leaned to virtue's side, we invariably think of him upon reading the line. Great was Goldsmith's folly, but he was never false ; and the charm, the irresistible charm, of his writings is due in a measure to the sweetness of disposition reflected in his pages. Considering his wayward- ness and inexactness in the affairs of life, it is striking to note the felicity of arrangement and the judicious art he displays upon taking up the pen. The reader feels he is in the hands of a master whose delicacy and yet firmness of touch are beyond praise ; he is conscious, too, that, thanks to this happy art, Goldsmith's likelihood of lasting fame is far stronger than that of many men whose intellectual wealth and genera I literary capacity are greater. The Vicar of Wakefield, which awoke the imaginative life of Goethe, will continue to be a. joy and poetical delight to all readers capable of loving the charms of simplicity and the most genial humour. The Citizen of the World would suffice of itself to ensure the literary reputation of any author, and Mr. Dobson's estimate of this remarkable work is so admirable, that we shall quote from it a passage of some length, more especially as the Chinese philosopher is not, it may be suspected, a familiar figure to the modern reader :— "The mind of the author, stored with the miscellaneous obser- vations of thirty years, turns from one subject to another, with a freshness and a variety which delight us almost as much as they must have delighted the readers of his own day. Now he is poking admirable fun at that fashionable type, already the butt of Hogarth and Reynolds, the fine-art connoisseur, whom he ex- hibits writing enthusiastically from abroad to his noble father to tell him that a notable torso, hitherto thought to be a Cleopatra bathing,' has turned out to be a Hercules spinning;' now, in an account of a journey to Kentish Town after the manner of modern voyagers, he ridicules the pompous trivialities of travellers. Another paper laughs at the folly of funeral elegies upon the great ; another at the absurdity of titles. More than one of the Chinese philosopher's effusions are devoted to contemporary quacks, the Rocks and Wards, and so forth, who engross the advertisement sheets of the day; others treat of the love for monsters, of the trains of the ladies, of their passion for paint and gaming. There is an essay on the behaviour of the congregation at St. Paul's, to which it would be easy to find a counterpart in Steele ; there is another on the bad taste of making a show out of the tombs and monuments in Westminster Abbey, which recalls Addison. Literature, of course, is not neglected. Some of its humbler professors are hit off in the description of the Saturday Club at The Broom, near Islington ;' other and graver utterances lament the decay of poetry, the taste for obscene novels (Tristram Shandy, to wit), the folly of useless disquisitions among the learned, the impossibility of success without means or intrigue. The theatre also receives its full share of attention, as do the coronation, the courts of justice, and the racecourse at Newmarket. Mourning, mad dogs, the Marriage Act, have each and all their turn, nor does Lien Chi Altangi omit to touch upon such graver subjects as the horrors of the penal laws and the low standard of public morality. But what perhaps is a more interesting feature of the Chinese philosopher's pages than even his ethical disquisitions, is the evidence they afford of the coming creator of Tony Lumpkin and Dr. Primrose. In the admirable portrait of the • Man in Black,' with his reluctant goodness' and his Goldsmith family traits, there is a foretaste of some of the most charming characteristics of the Vicar of Wakefield ; while in the picture of the pinched and tarnished little beau, with his mechanical chatter about the
Countess of All-Night and the Duke of Piccadilly, set to the Yorlorn burden of lend me half-a-crown,' he adds a character- sketch, however lightly touched, to that immortal gallery which 'contains the finished full-lengths of Parson Adams and Squire Western, of Matthew Bramble and my Uncle Toby.' From the Tact that he omitted the third of the 'Beau Tibbs' series from the later 'Essays' of 1765, it would seem that he thought the other -two the better. It may be that they are more finely wrought ; but the account of the party at Vauxhall, with the delightful .sparring of the beau's lady and the pawnbroker's widow, and the utter breakdown in the decorum of the latter, when, constrained 'by good-manners to listen to the faded vocalisation of Mrs. Tibbs, she is balked of her heart's desire, the diversion of the waterworks, is as fresh in its fidelity to human nature, and as eternally 'effective in its artistic oppositions of character, as any of the best efforts of the great masters of fiction."
In all Goldsmith's imaginative works there is a youthful freshness which is unaffected by time, and this is especially -evident in that most mirthful of comedies, She Stoops to
Conquer. "I know of no comedy for many years," said Dr. Johnson, "that has answered so much the great end of comedy, —making an audience merry," and we, after the lapse of more than a century, cannot recall one comedy, unless it be The School for Scandal, which was acted three years after
Goldsmith's death, which approaches it in humorous incidents -and felicitous dialogue. And Sheridan's play, unlike Gold- *mith's, is open to objection from a moral point of view.
As a poet, too, how enviable, if comparatively humble, is the place he occupies ! The tender beauty and sweet flow of the
poet's verse in The Traveller and The Deserted Village will always yield delight. The writer's heart was in every line, and that heart was a large one. When Johnson said of The 'Traveller that it would not be easy to find anything equal to it
:since the death of Pope, he praised the poem far too cautiously, -and it is remarkable how many lines there are both in this piece and in The Deserted Village which have a household familiarity. Similar praise cannot be given to The Hermit, which was in the taste of the age, and attracted much atten- tion. The poet was proud of it, and thought that it could not be amended ; but Mr. Dobson justly says that "its sweetness has grown a little insipid, and its simplicity to eyes unanointed with eighteenth-century sympathy borders perilously on the ludicrous." Of .Retaliation, the last production of his pen, "which is to-day one of the most graphic picture-galleries of his immediate contemporaries," the biographer, as might be -expected, writes with the keenest appreciation, and he con- siders that the mingling of satire, compliment, and faithful -characterisation probably reaches its acme in the admirable lines on Garrick. These and the lines on Burke and Reynolds are, indeed, indelibly associated with the men they portray. What a pity Goldsmith did not live to finish the poem, which was published shortly after the author's death ! A portrait of Johnson from his hand could hardly have failed to be lifelike. On the whole, while fully recognising the limitations of Goldsmith's art, it is no presumptuous prophecy to say that when the laborious and eccentric efforts of several of our living verse- writers are forgotten, Goldsmith will keep his place as one of the most delightful of the minor poets.
The story of Goldsmith's life is like a romance, and has been often told. We all know what a madcap, hare-brained, thoughtlessly generous and culpably extravagant fellow he -was, how he tried in vain one profession after another, wan- dered about Europe as an itinerant musician, and after a series 'of blunders such as only an Irishman could make, settled in Mondon, if, indeed, he could be said to settle anywhere, lived the life of a literary drudge, and died two thousand pounds in debt. All the details of the biography are full of the interest we feel for the course of a voyager sailing upon strange seas ; -and if Goldsmith had written his autobiography at large, anstead of merely giving us glimpses of his experience, the book would have been fascinating. Mr. Dobson, it is scarcely neces- -sary to say, has written this monograph with accuracy and appreciation. He is uniformly sensible and just, and if a .critic's work is to discover faults, he will find his occupation gone upon reading this volume. All the latest knowledge on the subject is introduced, and two or three of the poet's letters are published for the first time. Neither does Mr. Dobson .omit to notice an ingenious speculation of Mr. Ford in the _National Review, in which the writer suggests that to an actual
tour in Yorkshire the incidents and names of The Vicar of Wakefield are due.
In the pretty-looking volume of selected poems, the editor writes a second, but, of course, brief Life, and the poems are
amply illustrated with notes, for which all prominent editions of the poet have been consulted. Mr. Dobson is careful, how- ever, to observe that many of the illustrations and explana- tions now supplied are not due to any earlier editor.
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