we are less disposed to acknowledge the irresistible influence of an uncongenial time. Every age appears with a certain set of moulds into which it is necessary that those should fit who are to attain success, and those who fail to accommodate themselves to these conditions are thrown out. They may perform some work which their contemporaries will spurn, but which another generation may admire; yet we shall always have to regret their incompleteness, their tragic loneliness.

If all the world is a stage, a good many people are cast into the wrong parts, and Gray was a melancholy example of this uncongeniality. He was continually groping for a subject; and the whole endeavor of his life was to find something more truly poetical than the display of wit and reason. Goldsmith's remarks, already quoted, show this, and you will notice the dexterity with which he taunts those who take "pains to involve [the language] into pristine barbarity." The remote past was tabooed, and the obvious horrors of the tomb were chanted with cloying monotony, while the elegiac beauty of Gray's short poem was almost the single valuable contribution to poetry for many years.* The only other prominent example was Collins's beautiful odes (1746), which have that rare touch of classic beauty which is precision without pedantry, beauty without exaggeration, simplicity without commonness. They had no following, however, in their own time.

ascent of Mt. Ventoux, "De Rebus Familiaribus," lib. iv. ep. 1. See Quarterly Review, July, 1882.

*Gray is often mentioned as the first of English poets to return to old Norse themes (thus Gosse, "Gray," English Men of Letters Series, p. 163). But see Dryden's "Miscellany Poems," vi. 387 (ed. 1716), for a translation from the Hervarer Saga. This collection contains numerous old songs and ballads, and selections from Ben Jonson and Donne

CHAPTER IX.

I. I HAVE already spoken of Goldsmith's taunts about those who formed the new school, and he frequently expressed very genuine impatience with his contemporaries. Sometimes he seems to have written as if Dr. Johnson were looking over his shoulder, and there is an air of solemnity and authority about him which can scarcely have been natural. Yet his position on the conservative side in the literary controversies made him assume the tone of a teacher, and his own work is full of the influences of his time. It is not surprising that he was vexed with the somewhat formless utterances of his fellow-bards, for in his hands the measure which had already been employed by so many poets acquired new grace. The "Traveller" (1765) leaves us cold, although there are good lines here and there for we no longer seek "to find that happiest spot below," nor could we rest satisfied with the lingering optimism which persuaded Goldsmith that,

And that,

"perhaps, if countries we compare,

And estimate the blessings which they share,
Though patriots flatter, still shall wisdom find
An equal portion dealt to all mankind;
As different good, by art or nature given,
To different nations make their blessings even."

"every state to one lov'd blessing prone,
Conforms and models life to that alone.
Each to the favorite happiness attends,

And spurns the plain that aims at other ends;

Till carried to excess in each domain,

This favorite good begets peculiar pain."

We seem to be remote from the new spirit of poetry as we read this rhymed thesis with which the simplehearted, childlike, merry young Irishman made his appearance as a poet. In order to be esteemed he suppressed all naturalness and simplicity, and posed for a philosopher, with a full command of rhetorical devices. The "Deserted Village" (1769), four years later, sounds another note. The poem has delighted nearly all its readers, for with exactness of form, and a form, too, generally associated in our minds with artificiality, it has pathos, simplicity, love of nature, and little touches that no one can be wholly insensible to. Indeed, it is a most fortunate thing for us that the heroic verse, which has been so unjustly decried, contains a poem so full of the very beauties which are often hastily denied it.

It also bears marks of the influence of his romantic contemporaries—e. g. :

And,

"Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go,

Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe."

'Farewell, and O! where'er thy voice be tried,

On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side."

Yet, while the poem is full of the sentimentality which was making its appearance in literature, it is amusing to see how wholly unconscious Goldsmith's reason was of the changes in men's thoughts and feelings. An appeal to his inquiry into "The Present State of Polite Learning" (1759) may be hardly fair, because an appeal to a poet's arguments in support of his views is tolerably certain to be misleading; but here we have Goldsmith's views expressed very clearly. "Rousseau, of Geneva;" he says, "a professed man-hater; or, more properly speak

ing, a philosopher enraged with one half of mankind, because they unavoidably make the other half unhappy. Such sentiments are generally the result of much good nature and little experience." But more striking than this is the following; he is speaking of the writers of France, who, he says, "have also of late fallen into a method of considering every part of art and science as arising from simple principles. The success of Montesquieu, and one or two more, has induced all the subordinate ranks of genius into vicious imitation. To this end they turn to our view that side of the subject which contributes to support their hypothesis, while the objections are generally passed over in silence. Thus one universal system rises from a partial representation of the question, a whole is concluded from a part, a book appears entirely new, and the fancy-built fabric is styled for a short time very ingenious. In this manner we have seen, of late, almost every subject in morals, natural history, economy, and commerce treated; subjects naturally proceeding on many principles, and some even opposite to each other, are all taught to proceed along the line of systematic simplicity, and continue, like other agreeable. falsehoods, extremely pleasing till they are detected."

I quote this long passage, not for the purpose of casting scorn on poor Goldsmith's hack-work-for to condemn him for faulty philosophy would be scarcely wiser than condemning Montesquieu for his bad poems-but to show the average conservative view of Goldsmith's time regarding the one great step which science was then making towards simplification. Let us not exult too loudly it is still possible to find mixed companies in which there are people who shudder if they hear Darwinism mentioned, and who have prejudices against the word evolution. Let us call it growth, and no one will be

pained; it was this notion of growth that he found fault with for being too simple. Yet no one reads Goldsmith for his views on any subject. They were as little a part of him as was his wig, and like that article they bore marks of conventionality. In his "Vicar of Wakefield," for instance, there is no faintest trace of the pompousness that lay heavy on the conservative part of his generation. Goldsmith is as simple, as winning, as delightful as a child, and his book is consequently one of the masterpieces of English literature. The fact that it described the life of a humble family, with ordinary incidents, and especially that it described the Vicar's career in a prison, excited some opposition. The book was looked upon as "low" by the fashionable critics.* Nowhere, perhaps, did it have more influence than on the Continent, and especially in Germany. How much Goethe was moved by it when, four years later, Herder read him the German translation, we may see in his "Wahrheit und Dichtung,” bk. x. Yet, while the story remains unrivalled, we may notice that it belongs in many respects to the period in which it was written. In execution it is a model for all time; in plan and aim it belongs to its own day. Its idyllic tone was essentially that which we frequently observe in literature before the French Revolution. There are the mutterings of that storm, too, in the denunciations of the rich which are to be found in the

* Goldsmith himself said in the preface: "In this age of opulence and refinement whom can such a character please? Such as are fond of high life will turn with disdain from the simplicity of his country fireside,"

etc.

Mr. Wm. Black, in his "Goldsmith" (English Men of Letters Series), says, "Mme. Riccoboni, to whom Burke had sent the book, wrote to Garrick, "Le plaidoyer en faveur des voleurs, des petits larrons, des gens de mauvaises mœurs, est fort éloigné de me plaire.""