wisdom and simplicity, of vanity and unselfishness, of shrewdness and benevolence the Vicar of Wakefield.-STODDARD, FRANCIS HOVEY, 1900, The Evolution of the English Novel, p. 48.

THE HERMIT

1766

The best things in it are some neat turns of moral and pathetic sentiment, given with a simple conciseness that fits them for being retained in the memory. As to the story, it has little fancy or contrivance to recommend it.-AIKIN, JOHN, 1805? An Essay on the Poetry of Goldsmith. Any reader of the ballad who pleases may make a wry face, along with Kenrick of Grub street, at the insipidity of Dr. Goldsmith's negus, and may seek elsewhere some livelier liquor. We feel differently, for we have heard this ballad in the open air from Mr. Burchell's manly throat, while Sophia in her new ribbons languished in the hay. To us, the love-lorn stranger is an eighteenth-century cousin and so perhaps a little modish-of Rosalind and Viola. Those earlier disguisers bore themselves no doubt more gallantly, with more of saucy archness; but none was more sweetly discovered than Goldsmith's pretty pilgrim by her mantling blush, and bashful glance, and rising breast.-DowDEN, EDWARD, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. III, p. 372.

At most we can allow it accomplishment and ease. But its sweetness has grown a little insipid, and its simplicity, to eyes unannointed with eighteenth-century sympathy, borders perilously upon the ludicrous.-DOBSON, AUSTIN, 1888, Life of

Oliver Goldsmith, p. 108.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE
1770

What true and pretty pastoral images has Goldsmith in his "Deserted Village!" They beat all: Pope, and Phillips, and Spenser too, in my opinion;-That is, in the pastoral, for I go no farther.-BURKE, EDMUND, 1780, Letter to Shackleton, May 6; Correspondence, vol. II, p. 347.

"The Deserted Village" is a poem far inferior to "The Traveller," though it contains many beautiful passages. I do not enter into its pretensions to skill in poetical economy, though, in that respect, it contains a strange mixture of important truths. My business is with the poetry.

Its inferiority to its predecessor ["The Traveller'] arises from its comparative want of compression, as well as of force and novelty of imagery. Its tone of melancholy is more sickly, and some of the descriptions which have been most praised are marked by all the poverty and flatness, and indeed are peopled with the sort of comic and grotesque figures, of a Flemish landscape.-BRYDGES, SIR SAMUEL EDGERTON, 1808, Life of Goldsmith, Censura Literaria.

A little poem, which we passionately received into our circle, allowed us from Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" necessahenceforward to think of nothing else. rily delighted every one at that grade of cultivation, in that sphere of thought. Not as living and active, but as a departed, vanished existence was described, all that one so readily looked upon, that one loved, prized, sought passionately in the present, youth. Highdays and holidays in the to take part in it with the cheerfulness of country, church consecrations and fairs, the solemn assemblage of the elders under the village linden-tree, supplanted in its turn by the lively delight of youth in dancing, while the more educated classes show their sympathy. How seemly did these pleasures appear, moderated as they were by an excellent country pastor, who understood how to smooth down and remove all that went too far, --that gave occasion to quarrel and dispute. Here again we found an honest Wakefield, in his wellknown circle, yet no longer in his living bodily form, but as a shadow recalled by the soft mournful tones of the elegiac poet. The very thought of this picture is

one of the happiest possible, when once the design is formed to evoke once more an innocent past with a graceful melancholy. And in this kindly endeavour, how well has the Englishman succeeded in every sense of the word! I shared the enthusiasm for this charming poem with Gotter, who was more felicitous than myself with the translation undertaken by us both; for I had too painfully tried to imitate in our language the delicate significance of the original, and thus had well agreed with single passages, but not with the whole.-GOETHE, JOHANN WOLFGANG, 1811-31, From My Own Life, tr. Oxenford, bk. xii, vol. 1, p. 474.

In Goldsmith's "Deserted Village,"

by the more ambitious masters of verse. He is strikingly free from foreign airs, uses no metrical variations caught from the Continent, and yet, by skilfully varying his pauses, avoids monotony throughout. He has a poet's mastery of epithet.. "The Deserted Village" deserves our careful attention from the deep feeling in its thought, the music in its lines, and its entire freedom from affectation. It stands for itself, a graceful example of true English literature.-GREGORY, WARREN FENNO, 1894, ed. Oliver Goldsmith's Traveller and Deserted Village, pp. 43-44.

We do not read "The Deserted Village" for its Political Economy: we read it for its idyllic sweetness; for its portraits of the village preacher, of the village schoolmaster, of the country inn; for its pathetic description of the poor emigrants; for the tender and noble feeling with which Goldsmith closes the poem in his Farewell to Poetry.-SYLE, L. DUPONT, 1894, From Milton to Tennyson, Notes, p. 70.

HISTORY OF ENGLAND

1771

I have published, or Davies has published for me, an "Abridgment of the History of England," for which I have been a good deal abused in the newspapers, for betraying the liberties of the people. God knows I had no thought for or against liberty in my head; my whole aim. being to make up a book of a decent size, that, as Squire Richard says, would do no harm to nobody. However, they set me down as an arrant Tory, and consequently an honest man. When you come to look at any part of it, you'll say that I am a sore Whig.-GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 1772, Letter to Bennet Langton, Sept. 7.

The History on the whole, however, was well received; some of the critics declared that English history had never before been so usefully, so elegantly, and agreeahly epitomized; "and, like his other hisSpense gs, it has kept its ground" the pastoral, for

WASH

EDMUND, 1780, Letter to Shackl 6; Correspondence, vol. II, p. 347 P. 301. omplishes "The Deserted Village" is a poot promferior to "The Traveller," thoug he promtains many beautiful passages. ets which enter into its pretensions to skill he shapes economy, though, in that respec 's own. tains a strange mixture of truths. My business is with nd Essays,

In Goldsmith's "History of England" no mention is made of the great plague or the great fire of London. -KEDDIE, WILLIAM, 1854, Cyclopædia of Literary and Scientific Anecdote, p. 272.

RETALIATION

1774

In fact the poem, for its graphic truth, its nice discrimination, its terse good sense, and its shrewd knowledge of the world, must have electrified the club almost as much as the first appearance of "The Traveller," and let them still deeper into the character and talents of the man they had been accustomed to consider as their butt. "Retaliation," in a word, closed his accounts with the club, and balanced all his previous deficiencies. IRVING, WASHINGTON, 1849, Oliver Goldsmith, p. 405.

Plutarch, as a character-painter, is a dauber to Oliver Goldsmith; nor has Reynolds himself, in those portraits of his in which, according to Burke, he has combined the invention of history and the

amenity of landscape, "excelled these lit

tle sketches, where the artist not only draws the literal features, but gives at once the inner soul and the future history of his subjects." The character of Garrick and Burke have never been surpassed, and have been approached only by Lowell, in his "Fable for Critics"-a poem formed upon the model (and the motive, too), of "Retaliation."-GILFILLAN, GEORGE, smith, Collins and T. Warton, p. xxv. 1854, ed., The Poetical Works of Gold

"Retaliation" is the most mischievous, and the most playful, the friendliest and the faithfulest of satires. How much better we know Garrick because Goldsmith has shown him to us in his acting off the stage! And do we as often think of Reynolds in any attitude as in that of smiling non-listener to the critical coxcombs. "When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios and stuff,

He shifted his trumpet and only took snuff." Would that portraits of Johnson and Boswell had been added!-DOWDEN, EDWARD, 1880, The English Poets, ed. Ward, vol. 111, p. 372.

ANIMATED NATURE

1774

Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings, neither congenial with his studies,

nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chamber in the Temple, he shewed me the beginning of his "Animated Nature;" it was with a sigh, such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow, he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table.-CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, 1806, Memoirs, Written by Himself, vol. I, p. 352.

The descriptions and definitions are often loose and inaccurate, and the chief defect of the work arises from its being a mere compilation from books. It has therefore none of the freshness of personal observation; nothing which awakens the curiosity and inspires the confidence of the reader, as in the delightful pages of White, Montague, or Rennie.-MITFORD, JOHN, 1831, Life of Goldsmith.

Of all his hack labours for booksellers that which seems to have been written with the greatest good-will. The work contains many exquisite passages, and as it is not very probable that it will ever be reprinted in extenso, those passages in which the writer appears to the greatest advantage richly deserve to find a place in any edition of his writings. -CUNNINGHAM, PETER, 1853, ed., The Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Preface, vol. I, p. viii. COMEDIES

dull

Goldsmith in vain tried to stem the torrent by opposing a barrier of low humour, and dulness and absurdity, more and absurd than English sentimental Comedy itself. PINKERTON, JOHN (ROBERT HERON), 1785, Letters of Literature, p. 47.

Goldsmith was, perhaps, in relation to Sheridan, what Vanburgh was to Congreve. His comedies turn on an extravagance of intrigue and disguise, and so far belong to the Spanish school. But the ease of his humorous dialogue, and the droll, yet true conception of the characters, made sufficient amends for an occasional stretch in point of probability. If all who draw on the spectators for indulgence, were equally prepared to compensate by a corresponding degree of pleasure, they would have little occasion to complain.-SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 1814-23, The Drama.

His two admirable Comedies of "The Good Natured Man," and "She Stoops to Conquer," are the greenest spots in the Dramatic waste of the period of which we are speaking. They are worthy of the Author of "The Vicar of Wakefield;" and to praise them more highly is impossible. Wit without licentiousness; Humour with out extravagance; brilliant and elegant dialogue; and forcible but natural delineation of character, are the excellencies with which his pages are prodigally strewn.-NEELE, HENRY, 1827, Lectures on English Poetry, p. 152.

-a

Goldsmith's immediate predecessors were the playwrights of the sentimental school. His literary taste and keen sense of humour revolted against their general badness and their bathos, and he went back for models to the dramatists of the Restoration, a term, be it observed, which has much more than a chronological significance, and both Goldsmith and Sheridan may in a sense be taken to be the last representatives of the great Restoration School of Comedy.-CRAWFURD, OSWALD, 1883, ed., English Comic Dramatists, p. 214.

THE GOOD-NATURED MAN

1768

The town will not bear Goldsmith's low humour, and justly. It degrades his Good natur'd Man, whom they were taught to pity and have a sort of respect for, into a low buffoon; and, what is worse, into a falsifier, a character unbecoming a gentleman.-HOADLY, JOHN, 1768, Letter to Garrick, Garrick Correspondence, vol. I, p. 506.

Is labored and vaguely portrayed.EMERY, FRED PARKER, 1891, Notes on English Literature, p. 78.

Honey-wood (the Good-Natured Man) is not a successful bit of painting; it is impossible to feel that there is reality or naturalness in the character. As the leading lover, also, Honey-wood should exact our sympathy in his misfortunes, instead of which he represses it. When he entertains the idea of giving up the woman he loves to such a creature as Lofty, we are offended with him, but later on, when he actually pleads for his rival to Miss Richland (she taking it for his own declaration), his conduct provokes disgust. Goldsmith seems to have felt

that the character was not satisfactory, if we may judge by the attempts made to justify it, in the speeches at the end of the play given to Sir William Honey-wood. As it stands, Croaker (originally played by Shuter) is the best acting part in the piece. Collaboration would not have been easy with Goldsmith, but it might in many respects have improved "The GoodNatured Man."-ARCHER, FRANK, 1892, How to Write a Good Play, p. 83.

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
1773

Dr. Goldsmith has written a Comedyno, it is the lowest of all farces. It is not the subject I condemn, though very vulgar, but the execution. The drift tends to no moral, no edification of any kind. The situations, however, are well ⚫ imagined, and make one laugh, in spite of the grossness of the dialogue, the forced witticisms, and total improbability of the whole plan and conduct. But what disgusts me most is, that though the characters are very low, and aim at a lower humour, not one of them says a sentence that is natural or marks any character at all. It is set up in opposition to sentimental comedy, and is as bad as the worst of them.-WALPOLE, HORACE, 1773, To Rev. William Mason, May 27; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. v, p. 467.

The whole company pledged themselves to the support of the ingenious poet, and faithfully kept their promise to him. In fact he needed all that could be done for him, as Mr. Colman, then manager of Covent Garden theatre, protested against the comedy, when as yet he had not struck upon a name for it. Johnson at length stood forth in all his terrors as champion for the piece, and backed by us his clients and retainers demanded a fair trial. Colman again protested, but, with that salve for his own reputation, liberally lent his stage to one of the most eccentric productions that ever found its way to it, and "She Stoops to Conquer" was put into rehearsal. We were not oversanguine of success, but perfectly determined to struggle hard for our author: we accordingly assembled our strength at the Shakespear Tavern in a considerable body for an early dinner, where Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of a long table, and was the life and soul of the corps: the poet took post silently by

his side with the Burkes, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Caleb Whitefoord and a phalanx of North-British pre-determined applauders, under the banner of Major Mills, all good men and true. Our illustrious president was in inimitable glee, and poor Goldsmith that day took all his raillery as patiently and complacently as my friend Boswell would have done any day, or every day of his life. In the meantime we did not forget our duty, and though we had a better comedy going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we betook ourselves in good time to our separate and allotted posts, and waited the awful drawing up of the curtain. As our stations were pre-concerted, so were our signals for plaudits arranged and determined upon in a manner, that gave every one his cue where to look for them, and how to follow them up. All eyes were

roar.

upon Johnson, who sate in a front row of a side box, and when he laughed everybody thought themselves warranted to . We carried our play through, and triumphed not only over Colman's judgment, but our own.-CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, 1806, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 366, 368, 369.

That delightful comedy, "She Stoops to Conquer," would indeed deserve a volume, and is the best specimen of what an English comedy should be. It illustrates excellently what has been said as to the necessity of the plot depending on the characters, rather than the characters depending on the plot, as the fashion is at present. What a play! We never tire of it. How rich in situations, each the substance of a whole play! At the very first sentence the stream of humour begins to flow. FITZGERALD, PERRY, 1870, Principles of Comedy and Dramatic Effect, p. 91, 98.

He at least lived long enough to witness the brilliant beginning of a dramatic triumph which has lasted till our day, and which only one other comedy written since, "The School for Scandal," can be Isaid to have rivaled. Macaulay calls it "an incomparable farce in five acts;" its rollicking drollery and sparkling wit are fitting to amuse all generations, and its dramatic skill is a victory of true inventive genius-TOWLE, GEORGE M., 1874, Oliver Goldsmith, Appleton's Journal, vol. 11, p. 461.