It is easy to see from these and other characteristic lines of this self-revealing poem the influences, gained in his early years, which remained to buoy and steady Goldsmith through the many vicissitudes of his troubled life. How easy would it have been, in the temptations and tribulations of his earlier London years, for him to have failed in the same degrading manner as Charles Churchill failed, and Richard Savage; or in a similar weakly and pitiful way to that in which his contemporary, Thomas Chatterton, failed! He had every opportunity : for sinking to the gutter-life. Extreme hardship, poverty, want, hack-work, debt; but there is no thought of surrender. Goldy just went on. When he had earned, he spent, and gave; but certainly he gave; his left hand not knowing what his right hand did; which is the reason why, when he was famous as a novelist, essayist, playwright, and poet-not to mention the doctorate in medicine and the authority in learning, neither of which was really anything, although, doubtless, they had their passing moderate influence at the time-he still was inevitably hard-up. He gave to the necessitous. There is no knowing how foolishly or generously he gave, for those are actions not spoken of or written about by such as he. With his natural extravagance, over food and display in dress, of which there can be no denial, his later financial difficulties were largely due to an unheeding benevolence.

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The strength of his more ambitious poetry rests in his humanity, sincerity, and simplicity; and those are the essentials of all living art, as of all truly great men. His verse was published during a period of elaborate E artifice, when the qualities of humanity, sincerity, and simplicity were neither popular nor common among poets and men. To be witty and consciously clever was the evident aim; while affectations were generally 8admired as somehow signifying culture. All the more remarkable, then, that Goldsmith, while using the rhymed iambic pentameter, the particular metrical vogue of the time, was able to use it only for the expression of humane thoughts with direct truth and an ever-genial simplicity. It is unnecessary to quote from his verse, whether it be the greater poems or the jeux d'esprit, like the 'Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog,' the satirical

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'Description of an Author's Bedchamber,' or Olivia's little song 'When lovely Woman stoops to Folly,' because it all is so well known; but be it humorous, gay, or serious, the work invariably was natural, simple, and true. He wrote out of his tender and sensitive heart, and there again Goldsmith was largely a pioneer breaking through the literary conventions of the time; but that truth also has not generally been recognised, mainly because of the insistent tendency to apology which grudged him the credit for originality, and for wisdom and sometimes for wit. Yet the assertion is true; and

- centenary celebrations are helpful and fortunate when they permit of the re-estimation of old values, and enable a man to be set in, or restored to, his proper place.

With the plays we come to another aspect of Oliver Goldsmith. His intention in writing them was only to amuse; and although there is in 'The Good-Natured Man' and 'She Stoops to Conquer' plenty of sentiment with an easy moralising that often degenerates to sentimentality, capable of being pompously mouthed, there is nothing exactly to move the heart as there is in 'The Vicar' and 'The Deserted Village'; other, that is, than to mirth. It is curious, when looking back upon those ultra-fashionable times, with their licentiousness combined with the determination to be 'genteel,' to see how 'in deference to the public taste, grown of late, perhaps, too delicate, the scene of the bailiffs was retrenched in the representation'; for few scenes of The Good-Natured Man' are more frankly comic than that in which Mr Honeywood endeavours to pass off the bailiff-in-possession and his follower 'honest Mr Flanigan; a true English officer, madam--' of the Fleet, as his friends. Of course, it is vulgar, as all Cockney humour, like that of Sam Weller and Dick

e Swiveller, is vulgar; but essentially it is not so vulgar as the minds of those who condemned it; for it is simply and manfully true of life. Happily, Goldsmith was not afraid of broad fun, and was quite without base vulgarity. His wit did not snigger; his humour did not degrade. Take Tony Lumpkin. There again is Goldsmith himself, with an added bold assurance. His humour had plenty of body. His practical joking was sheer impishness, robustly carried through. He enjoyed the common company at the Three Pigeons - Dick Muggins the exciseman, Jack Slang the horse doctor, little Aminidab that grinds the music box, and Tom Twist that spins the pewter platter'; he liked singing his chorus-song, and confessed to thinking sometimes of 'Bet Bouncer and the miller's grey mare'; but it is all honestly amusing; the expression of natural vitality and strong life, the humour of a laughing heart, with no indecency; and that is the reason why, after more than a hundred and fifty years, 'She Stoops to Conquer' is still alive, enjoyable and popular.

The impishness of Tony Lumpkin was an unsubduable characteristic of Oliver Goldsmith, and often found play, although Boswell, having the Scotsman's proverbial sense of humour, sometimes took it seriously. It was such impishness as led him to poke fun even at Johnson as, for instance, over the number of rumps that would be necessary to reach to the moon. The real trouble was that too often the sense of humour of others was not in sympathy with his; and as William Black pointed out in his revealing volume on Goldsmith in the 'English Men of Letters' series-a book which began the true rehabilitation-Oliver must often have been bothered by the density of those with whom he had played. He would talk joyful nonsense deliberately and find the fools taking it as if it had been seriously meant. No wonder, as William Black suggests, that sometimes he must have drawn back pained at such wanton obtuseness and hopeless lack of frolic imagination. He would fancifully talk of money being 'born'; and the precisians would correct him and protest that, of course, he should have said 'coined'; just as, in the same way, his passage in the fifty-eighth letter of the 'Citizen of the World,' The Doctor, now looking round, found not a single eye disposed to listen,' would have been condemned as containing a terminological inexactitude; although the same academic dullards would not have objected to Milton's use of the similar expression, 'Blind mouths,' in 'Lycidas,' because they knew that he, at any rate, had humour and that Ruskin had commented eloquently upon the expression. But, of course, Goldy liked to use inordinate words, simply because he was Irish, playful, and imaginative.

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He had at times something of a Puckish spirit, and it was fortunate that he was so blessed, as otherwise almost certainly he must have succumbed to the anxieties and troubles that crowded on him thickly during nearly the whole of his life through the faults of his own improvident and ebullient temperament, of course. But beside that happiness of heart, which took the knocks of adversity with humour and good humour, he had also a great courage. He could not be finally beaten ; at least until Death-who is not a fair competitor, for he holds all the trump cards-took a hand in the game. Goldy was not suppressible or suppressed; and with all his shyness and sensitiveness, for he was more shy and sensitive than many have seen, he had plenty of selfreliance and independence of character.

A beautiful and a revealing light is shed on his unselfishness and steadfastness by the story of his approaching the Earl of Northumberland to solicit patronage1 for his brother. When remonstrated with afterwards for not having used the opportunity to serve himself, he merely protested and protested truly, 'As for myself, I have no dependence on the promises of great men. I look to the booksellers for support.' It was a fine answer and true; for by fighting his way through, he morally defeated Grub Street; and proved that he possessed a great, proud, and generous soul. With all his weaknesses and vanities, as they appeared to his contemporaries-there was the wearing of the loud coloured clothes, the small and futile attempts at selfassertion under the discouragement of the company of the friends and worshippers who rightly had established Johnson as their Great Cham, and the rest of it, so much talked about he had, we easily dare to assert, not much weakness of character and very little vanity.

Boswell's passing gibes do often suggest an abundant conceit in Goldsmith; but really that was nothing more than a moral protest against persistent depreciation and indifference from his fellows, who should have known better. Ever since his childhood, when he was taken as the fool of the family, he had been encouraged to develop what now we cleverly call an inferiority complex; and himself knowing his true powers of mind, having in memory experiences and adventures gained through Vol. 251. No. 498.

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a fairly courageous wandering; having also in his thoughts and heart ideas which eventually were to blossom into life through his mind-children, the Primroses, the Hardcastles, the Lumpkins, and others of that company of many kinds and conditions who marched out of his imagination into the region of romance and into the hearts of his readers, we can see that he had a right to be impatient over the belittlement he suffered, and then shyly, impulsively, it may be not too adroitly, should endeavour to assert himself with those, his friends as he regarded them, whose brains were possibly keener than his, because their hearts assuredly were colder.

He was a very great man, as Johnson saw when the natural mistakes of his life were forgotten through the intervention of Death. Clean-hearted and large-hearted, with never the faintest breath of scandal to tarnish his name; using his pen always, even in his hackwork, for the pure enjoyment or the instruction of his readers, while in his best work championing frankly and courageously the right human causes; ever simple, true, and kindly, unspeakably generous, humble-minded and unaffected-except when it seemed necessary for Dr Goldsmith to let those who decried him see that he was an opinionated and a capable fellow-and very often very lonely. His best works are as rich a delight now as ever they were; not so much because they are intellectual achievements compelling admiration for their cleverness and power; but because with those qualities they are informed and inspired with his own natural sweet and gallant personality. In those respects Goldy is to be bracketed with Elia, and possibly-to enter another realm of art-with Mozart. Such as they are the most beneficent sons and spirits of the Earth ; for, through their works and especially through their characters, they have strengthened the foundations on which the best and noblest purposes and truest wellbeing of humanity are established.

MARTIN G. WELSH.