Goldsmith

Goldsmith, by William Black

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Goldsmith, by William Black This
eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Goldsmith English Men of Letters Series
Author: William Black
Editor: John Morley
Release Date: July 27, 2006 [EBook #18917]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
GOLDSMITH ***

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier, Sankar Viswanathan, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

English Men of Letters
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY

GOLDSMITH

BY
WILLIAM BLACK

London
MACMILLAN AND CO
1878
* * * * *

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
CHAPTER III.
IDLENESS, AND FOREIGN TRAVEL
CHAPTER IV.
EARLY STRUGGLES.--HACK-WRITING

CHAPTER V.
BEGINNING OF AUTHORSHIP.--THE BEE
CHAPTER VI.
PERSONAL TRAITS
CHAPTER VII.
THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD.--BEAU NASH
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ARREST
CHAPTER IX.
THE TRAVELLER
CHAPTER X.
MISCELLANEOUS WRITING
CHAPTER XI.
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD
CHAPTER XII.
THE GOOD-NATURED MAN
CHAPTER XIII.
GOLDSMITH IN SOCIETY
CHAPTER XIV.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE
CHAPTER XV.
OCCASIONAL WRITINGS
CHAPTER XVI.
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
CHAPTER XVII.
INCREASING DIFFICULTIES.--THE END
* * * * *

GOLDSMITH
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
"Innocently to amuse the imagination in this dream of life is wisdom."
So wrote Oliver Goldsmith; and surely among those who have earned
the world's gratitude by this ministration he must be accorded a
conspicuous place. If, in these delightful writings of his, he mostly
avoids the darker problems of existence--if the mystery of the tragic
and apparently unmerited and unrequited suffering in the world is
rarely touched upon--we can pardon the omission for the sake of the
gentle optimism that would rather look on the kindly side of life. "You
come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings
to you," says Mr. Thackeray. "Who could harm the kind vagrant harper?
Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon save the harp on which
he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young
and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the fire, or the
women and children in the villages, at whose porches he stops and

sings his simple songs of love and beauty." And it is to be suspected--it
is to be hoped, at least--that the cheerfulness which shines like sunlight
through Goldsmith's writings, did not altogether desert himself even in
the most trying hours of his wayward and troubled career. He had, with
all his sensitiveness, a fine happy-go-lucky disposition; was ready for a
frolic when he had a guinea, and, when he had none, could turn a
sentence on the humorous side of starvation; and certainly never
attributed to the injustice or neglect of society misfortunes the origin of
which lay nearer home.
Of course, a very dark picture might be drawn of Goldsmith's life; and
the sufferings that he undoubtedly endured have been made a whip with
which to lash the ingratitude of a world not too quick to recognise the
claims of genius. He has been put before us, without any brighter lights
to the picture, as the most unfortunate of poor devils; the heart-broken
usher; the hack ground down by sordid booksellers; the starving
occupant of successive garrets. This is the aspect of Goldsmith's career
which naturally attracts Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster seems to have been
haunted throughout his life by the idea that Providence had some
especial spite against literary persons; and that, in a measure to
compensate them for their sad lot, society should be very kind to them,
while the Government of the day might make them Companions of the
Bath or give them posts in the Civil Service. In the otherwise copious,
thorough, and valuable Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith, we find an
almost humiliating insistance on the complaint that Oliver Goldsmith
did not receive greater recognition and larger sums of money from his
contemporaries. Goldsmith is here "the poor neglected sizar"; his
"marked ill-fortune" attends him constantly; he shares "the evil
destinies of men of letters"; he was one of those who "struggled into
fame without the aid of English institutions"; in short, "he wrote, and
paid the penalty." Nay, even Christianity itself is impeached on account
of the persecution suffered by poor Goldsmith. "There had been a
Christian religion extant for seventeen-hundred and fifty-seven years,"
writes Mr. Forster, "the world having been acquainted, for even so long,
with its spiritual necessities and responsibilities; yet here, in the middle
of the eighteenth century, was the eminence ordinarily conceded to a
spiritual teacher, to one of those men