its richest and most accessible materials. The liquid notes of his own flute, had he touched it with the finest finger, breathe not a sweeter air of feeling, a more touching and tenderer melancholy, than do his writings when the theme is the goodness and happiness of the poor.

On returning to England in 1756, he began to write for the booksellers, and obtained a precarious subsistence by contributing to the Monthly Review.' With a moderate degree of economy and foresight, Goldsmith's charming style would have soon enabled him gradually to obtain competence as a writer; but economy and foresight were words unintelligible to "poor Goldy," whose Irish heart could never resist the temptation of vanity or pleasure for himself, or of an almost insane liberality to others. He was himself exceedingly fond of fine clothes, had the fatal propensity of the gambler, and his heart was so extravagantly tender, that he perpetually gave his last guinea to the first object which awakened his morbid sympathies. Thus devoid of care for the future, and yielding to present impulses, his benevolence was neither just to himself nor useful to others; and he may be charged with heartlessness and ingratitude to those who had the greatest claims on his assistance and respect. The same cause kept Goldsmith always poor and plunged in debt; and though he remained for many years the most admired and popular writer of his time, he never ceased to be a bookseller's hack, and closed a life of fruitless and severe exertion in indigence and ruin.

In 1758 he attempted to pass the medical examination qualifying him as surgeon's mate in a ship of war, but was rejected; and so poor was he at this time that he was obliged to borrow a suit of clothes from a bookseller to appear in before the court, which suit he afterwards pawned. A letter is still preserved, written by him to the person he had so dishonestly deceived, full of the most passionate expressions of despair.

It was now that he commenced that rapid succession of easy and delightful writings, in prose and verse, which have rendered his name so dear to all who appreciate unaffected grace, delicacy and humour. We shall specify only the more remarkable. The 'Chinese Letters,' afterwards known under the title of The Citizen of the World,' are full of the sweetest touches of character, and are written in a truly attractive and pure style. Goldsmith's manner of writing resembles, at least in those points which are not peculiar to him, at once that of Addison and that of Steele ; but possessing a warmer and more genial tone than the writings of the former, and an infinitely greater purity and elegance than those of the latter. It is more transparent than Addison, less prim, less formal; and far fuller of sentiment, more ideal, than

anything of Steele's, between whose character and Goldsmith's there was a strong resemblance.

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Goldsmith then wrote a short and familiar History of England;' a mere compilation as to the matter, but related in such exquisitely easy and amusing language, that it is a model of the art of narrative. Johnson said justly that Goldsmith could make even the driest and most repulsive subject as amusing as a Persian tale." And certainly nothing but his inimitable ease and grace of narration could make us forgive-as we do in spite of ourselves -the shallow crudeness of his learning, and the total want of grasp and system in his views.

It was now that appeared the first of his two memorable poems, 'The Traveller,' a meditative and descriptive work, embodying the impressions of human life and society which he had felt in his travels and in his early struggles. Neither the ideas nor the imagery are very new or striking, but it is exquisitely versified (in the rhymed couplet); and its ease, elegance, and tenderness have made many passages pass into the memory and language of society. It is peculiarly admirable for the natural succession and connection of the thoughts and images, one seeming to rise unforcedly, and to be evolved, from the other. It is also coloured with a tender haze, so to say, of soft sentiment and pathos, as grateful to the mind as is to the eye the blue dimness that softens the tints of a distant mountain-range. It is a relief to the reader after Pope, in whom the objects stand out with too much sharpness, and in whom we see too much intense activity of the mere intellect at work. Pope is daylight; Goldsmith is moonlight.

The

In 1766 appeared the immortal tale which all the world has read, translated and admired- The Vicar of Wakefield.' subject is nothing. A worthy, simple country parson is reduced to the deepest and most unmerited distress, and again restored to happiness. But the charming character of the hero-a kind of more refined Parson Adams-the exquisitely drawn portraits of his family, the natural incidents, the true and tender pathos, and the gentle humour-who knows not these? The style is perfection itself; and the adventures, though not always quite probable, are sufficiently so to maintain the reader's interest.

In the following year Goldsmith, as if not contented with the glory of being the most delightful narrator and the finest painter of character of his day, now aspired to the more poignant rapture of theatrical applause. His first comedy was 'The Good-natured Man;' and the hero was undoubtedly a dramatised portrait of the author himself, with his unthinking easiness of temper, and his culpable imprudence and generosity. The piece has the defect chargeable against many similar works, particularly on the French stage, namely, the taking of some mental quality as the subject,

around which are grouped the inferior characters and interests, and which the dramatist has an irresistible and incessant temptation to exaggerate and caricature. This is not so injurious to nature and probability (the prime requisites of comedy) when the species of folly chosen is of a graver and more reprehensible kind, when it is a vice, in short, instead of a mere absurdity; but when it is a mere obliquity of taste, the more forcible and vivid the delineation, the less interest do we feel in it. Harpagon is always amusing, because we detest as well as laugh at him; but the weakness of Arnolphe in the Malade Imaginaire,' though we may laugh heartily at the oddity of the incidents and dialogue, is not of sufficient solidity and consistency to carry the weight of a comic plot. But 'The Good-natured Man' is lively and gay, and some of the inferior characters, particularly Croaker, are touched with a humour that makes us pardon the rather tiresome uniformity of Honeywood's exaggerated generosity and self-abnegation.

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The year 1770 gave to the world the companion poem to 'The Traveller,' The Deserted Village,' a work similar in tone, but immeasurably superior in distinctness of aim and felicity of idea. It depicts the sentiments of a wanderer, who, on return to his native place, which he left a smiling pastoral hamlet, finds nothing but ruin and desolation, or relics of former happiness more sad and painful still. "Sweet Auburn" is supposed to have been painted from Goldsmith's own recollections of the village of Lishoy, where his brother had the living; and as The Deserted Village' is more distinct and concentrated in its subject, and more homely in its details, than The Traveller,' it is incomparably more touching and more beautiful. Goldsmith was one of the first English poets of this age who had taste and feeling enough to rely for effect upon simple and unornamented descriptions of natural, ordinary objects and persons. He threw aside all that false and vulgar affectation which thought it necessary to clothe such objects in a parade of declamatory language; and his poem is exquisitely pathetic. He-and the numerous great men who followed him in this true conception of poetical art-did nothing else but restore the manner of our greater and more ancient writers, who find, in the commonest and most familiar images, an inexhaustible source of the most powerful emotions-the tenderest beauty and the sublimest terror.

Not very long after this poem appeared 'She Stoops to Conquer,' one of the most amusing comedies which the English stage possesses. The action of this piece is exceedingly animated and laughable, and the absence of any moral aim, the renunciation of any attempt to draw, in a principal or leading character, a portrait of some particular folly, is singularly advantageous to its effect, however it may degrade the work as a psychological embodiment.

The personages are very numerous, and sketched with felicity; the booby Squire and his pot-house companions, the prosy and hospitable Mr. Hardcastle, his foolish wife, and the equivoques produced by Marlow's extravagant bashfulness-all these, if not of the higher order of comedy, are abundantly laughable and well managed.

In concluding our remarks on this author, it will only be necessary to mention a number of histories written merely as booksellers' task-work-mere compilations as regards the matter, but exhibiting Goldsmith's never-failing charm of style: this circumstance, together with the absence of any very oppressive degree of erudition, has rendered them peculiarly well adapted for classbooks in schools; a place they will retain till the more accurate and profound method of modern historical investigation shall have been communicated even to the elementary instruction of the young. Besides the History of England,' Goldsmith successively published that of Rome,' of Greece,' and of Animated Nature,' the last being for the most part a condensation of Buffon.

Our industrious writer (whose life was embittered, notwithstanding his great reputation, activity, and success, by perpetual debts and difficulties) died in 1774, having hastened, if not produced, his own decease, by injudiciously and obstinately taking a powerful medicine; and left behind him a reputation as well deserved as it is universal. There are very few branches of literature which he had not cultivated, if not with unparalleled, at least with more than ordinary success. In all he was above mediocrity, in some he reached excellence, and in one work (the delightful Vicar') he has left us a masterpiece of originality and grace.

CHAPTER XV.

THE GREAT HISTORIANS.

David Hume-As Historian-As Moralist and Metaphysician-Attacks on Revealed Religion-William Robertson--Defects of the "Classicist"--Historians-Edward Gibbon-The Decline and Fall-Prejudices against Christianity -Guizot's Judgment on Gibbon.

THE character of the English people is marked by singular inconsistencies: there is no nation which exhibits so much reluctance to pursue to their utmost consequences the deductions of

any new system or chain of arguments. The English temperament is at once bold and timid; at the same time penetratingly far-seeing, yet almost slavishly devoted to prescription and authority. Nowhere is a new theory in legislation or in science more freely and candidly discussed; nowhere the true sifted from the false with a more industrious activity; nowhere does a new truth find a more enlightened and ready acceptance; but, at the same time, nowhere is there a greater dread of innovation, or a more determined adherence to the forms of particular systems or institutions.

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Of these remarks the story of David Hume is a striking example. He was sprung from an ancient and noble Scottish family, and was born in 1711. The greater part of his life was passed abroad, chiefly in France. Hume was happy and tranquil in the possession of an income so small that hardly all his national prudence sufficed to make it a competence. What is still more to his honour, he supported, during the early part of his literary career, a degree of neglect and failure which the consciousness of his talents must have rendered exceedingly bitter-this severe trial he bore, if not without a deep and very pardonable discouragement, yet with great manliness and dignity. His first work, A Treatise on Human Nature,' published in 1737, was received with absolute neglect; and though recommended by an exquisite refinement of style, and by great novelty of views, and a bold acuteness of argument, it "fell still-born from the press.' Five years after this appeared his Essays, Moral and Philosophical,' which contained a great variety of refined and original speculations, often on subjects previously considered as "hedged in" and defended by an insurmountable barrier of sanctity and prescription. During this part of his life he appears to have had most difficulty and discouragement to struggle with; for he was for some time obliged to accept the most painful of human occupations, the charge of a madman. This was the young Marquis of Annandale, in attendance upon whom the future historian remained a year. Hume was soon afterwards appointed to the post of secretary to General St. Clair, whom he accompanied, first to Canada, and afterwards in his embassy to Vienna and Turin. In 1751 was republished, under the title of 'An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,' much of the substance, though now considerably altered and almost recast, of the not very popular or successful treatise which had appeared fourteen years before: and about this time he gave to the world his Political Discourses.' Having caused himself to be appointed librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, an office which he fulfilled gratuitously for the opportunity of making use of the books under his care, he now entered upon a new path, a path in which he was to more