ment on the 'father of the feast,' and turned his astonished guests neck and heels out of doors." -Irving. Mortified at this indignity, Goldsmith left College, but lingered in Dublin until reduced to the extremity of destitution. His last shilling and most of his clothing gone, hungry and half naked, he set out for Cork, and on the way was saved from actual starvation by a handful of gray peas given him at a wake by a kind-hearted peasant girl. He declared afterwards, when in the height of his renown, and revelling at the luxurious banquets of the great, that he had never tasted anything equal to those gray peas.

Various Other Experiments. By the kind interposition of his brother, Oliver was reinstated in College, and remained there two years longer, at the end of which time he managed to take his degree. By the persuasion of his uncle, he began studying for the church, and at the end of two years presented himself to the Bishop for examination, "but appearing in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected." The Bishop probably had an intimation that the indiscretions of the candidate extended to other things than the color of his breeches. The persevering benefactor, his uncle, then procured him a position as private tutor, but Oliver quarrelled with one of the family over a game of cards, and lost his position. He had, however, at the time of his dismissal, thirty pounds in cash, which seemed to him a mint of money. But in the course of six weeks he squandered it all, and returned to his mother without a shilling in his pocket. Once more the patient uncle conceived that the young spendthrift might perhaps succeed at the law, and supplied him accordingly with fifty pounds, wherewith to make a beginning. The fifty pounds were spent at the gaming-table, and Goldsmith was again at the verge of ruin. The next experiment of Oliver's friends was to set him up as a Doctor of Medicine. They put together what few guineas they could spare, and sent him to Edinburgh. Here he did not entirely throw away his time, but attended some lectures during the eighteen months of his residence. He could, however, tell a good story and sing a capital Irish song, and he shone accordingly in social circles more than in the halls of science. Travels.. A roving disposition impelled him to travel, and he is next found on the continent, sometimes at seats of learning, picking up scraps of knowledge at the lectures of great scholars, but more frequently travelling through the country on foot, and getting his meals and lodgings by making himself agrecable to the peasants with his musical abilities and his other skill in the arts of entertainment. When he left Leyden for the purpose of making a journey through Europe, his finances, wardrobe, and furniture amounted to "a guinea

in his pocket, a shirt on his back, and a flute in his hand." During this nomad life, he took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at one of the foreign Universities.

Career as an Author. — Returning to England in 1756, at the age of twenty-eight, Goldsmith made his way to London, only to meet starvation in the face. For the next two or three years his struggles for the means of bare subsistence were extreme. He did all kinds of book work for the publishers, - whatever would bring a few pounds or even shillings. His first work of any note was An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. It was savagely attacked by one of the critics, but it made the author known, and on the whole was well received. In 1760, he wrote for a popular periodical a series of letters purporting to come from a Chinese philosopher living in London, and giving his countrymen an account of what he was seeing there. These are known as The Chinese Letters. They were collected and published in a book with the title: The Citizen of the World, or Letters from a Chinese Philosopher residing in London to his friends in the East. The work displayed unusual ability, and brought the author offers of employment of a somewhat more lucrative kind. The first decided lift that he received, however, was his making the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson. Johnson took to Goldsmith almost from the first of their acquaintance, and he never faltered in the friendship which was the result. The occasions of Goldsmith's needing help were seldom long wanting. One of these led to Johnson's interposition for the sale of the manuscript of The Vicar of Wakefield. The incident is thus told by Johnson himself:

"I received one morning a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and as it was not in his power to come to me, begged that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means whereby he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill."— Boswell's Johnson.

the

The Traveller, his first considerable poem, followed soon after. Notwithstanding its extraordinary merits, and the zealous efforts of Johnson to bring it into notice, it won its way to public favor by only slow degrees. Its success, however, was steady and sure, and in the end

triumphant. The exquisite ballad of The Hermit, or the story of Edwin and Angelina, confirmed his reputation as a poet of the first order of excellence.

After this, Goldsmith was in constant demand, at remunerative prices, but his habits of easy improvidence kept him always in want, or in arrears. He was among the acknowledged celebrities of the day, mingling freely and on equal terms with the authors and artists who revolved about Dr. Johnson.

The following are Goldsmith's principal works, in addition to those already named: The Deserted Village, the most beautiful of all his poems; The Haunch of Venison, a playful piece of pleasantry, acknowledging, in graceful verse, a gift of venison; Retaliation, a goodnatured satire, in which he paid off a few of the endless jokes against himself by drawing in turn a caricature of some of his friends; The Good-Natured Man, A Comedy, which was not successful as an acting play, but was published, and brought the author £500; She Stoops to Conquer, a Comedy, which had an immediate and brilliant success on the stage, and brought the author a net profit of £800; Popular Histories of Greece, Rome, and England; and lastly, A History of Animated Nature, in 8 vols., 8vo. He wrote many other things, but these are the chief. As an historian and a writer on natural history, he made no pretence to original research. Ile was a mere compiler. But he had a wonderful skill in the art of composition; and taking the materials collected by others, he worked them into forms of grace and beauty. His histories became text-books, his Animated Nature had the attraction of a work of fiction.

"He died in the midst of a triumphant course. Every year that he lived would have added to his reputation. There is assuredly no symptom of decadence in the picturesque pages of his last work, The History of Animated Nature: a book which, not possessing, indeed, the character of authority only to be granted to faithful reports of personal observation, is yet unequalled for clearness of expression, and all the charms of a most graceful style. Northcote tells us that he had just begun a novel before his death; and a second Vicar of Wakefield may have been buried in the tomb of Goldsmith."- Prof. Buller.

"It [The Animated Nature] is to science what his abridgments are to history; a book which indicates no depth of research or accuracy of information, but which presents to the ordinary reader a general and interesting view of the subject, couched in the clearest and most beautiful language, and abounding with excellent reflections and illustrations. It was of this work that Johnson threw out the remark which he afterwards interwove in his friend's epitaph,- He is now writing a Natural History, and will make it as agreeable as a Persian tale."— Sir Walter Scott.

"As a dramatist, Goldsmith is amusing; and if to excite laughter be, as Johnson asserts it is, the chief end of comedy, Goldsmith attains it. His plots, however, are extravagant, and his personages are oddities rather than characters. Goldsmith's plays want the contrivance which belongs to highest art; but they have all the ingenious

accidents that are notable for stage effect. They are, in fact, deficient in that insight which pertains only to great dramatic genius. Both of them [The Good-Natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer] abound in drollery and strong touches of nature; but they do not give the author an exalted position among dramatists, and they do not promise that he could have reached it."- Henry Giles.

"It is needless to expatiate upon the qualities of a work [The Vicar of Wakefield] which has passed from country to country, and language to language, until it is now known throughout the whole reading world, and is become a household book in every land. The secret of its universal and enduring popularity is undoubtedly its truth to nature, but to nature of the most amiable kind: to nature such as Goldsmith saw it. Rogers, the Nestor of British literature, whose refined purity of taste and exquisite mental organization rendered him eminently calculated to appreciate a work of the kind, declared that of all the books which, through the fitful changes of three generations he had seen rise and fall, the charm of the Vicar of Wakefield had alone continued as at first; and could he revisit the world after an absence of many more generations, he should as surely look to find it undiminished."- Washington Irving.

"The Traveller has the most ambitious aim of Goldsmith's poetical compositions. The author, placed on a height of the Alps, muses and moralizes on the countries around him. His object, it appears, is to show the equality of happiness which consists with diversities of circumstances and situations. The poem is, therefore, mainly didactic. Description and reflection are subservient to an ethical purpose, and this purpose is never left out of sight. The descriptive passages are all vivid, but some of them are imperfect. Italy, for instance, in its prominent aspects, is boldly sketched. We are transported to the midst of its mountains, woods, and temples; we are under its sunny skies, we are embosomed in its fruits and flowers, we breathe its fragrant air, and we are charmed by its matchless landscapes; but we miss the influence of its arts, and the solemn impression of its former grandeur. We are made to survey a nation in degeneracy and decay; but we are not relieved by the glow of Raffael, or excited by the might of the Coliseum."- Henry Giles.

"All the characteristics of the first poem [The Traveller] seem to me developed in the second; with as chaste simplicity, with as choice selectness of natural expression, in verse of as musical cadence, but with yet greater earnestness of purpose, and a far more human interest. Within the circle of its claims and pretensions, a more entirely satisfactory delightful poem than the Deserted Village was probably never written. It lingers in the memory where once it has entered; and such is the softening influence (on the heart even more than the understanding) of the mild, tender, yet clear light which makes its images so distinct and lovely, that there are few who have not wished to rate it higher than poetry of yet higher genius."— John Forster.

Gray.

Thomas Gray, 1716-1771, gained for himself the very highest renown as a lyrical poet by his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

Career. Gray was born in London, and educated at Cambridge. He began the study of law, but conceiving a dislike for it accepted an invitation of Horace Walpole to accompany him on a tour upon the continent. After an absence of two years, Gray returned to England,

and at the age of twenty-five took his degree of Bachelor of Civil Law. He also settled in Cambridge, where he remained, with occasional intervals, to the end of his life. In 1757, on the death of Cibber, the post of Poet-Laureate was offered to Gray, but he declined it. In 1769 he received the appointment of Professor of Modern History, and he began the preparation of a course of lectures on the subject, but did not live to carry the project into effect.

Character and Standing.-Gray was distinguished for the accuracy of his classical scholarship, and for his varied learning, and he formed many magnificent projects of works that never saw the light. His chief excellence is as a lyric writer, and in this line he stands among the first. The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is one of the poems of all time, and is just as sure of immortality as anything written by Horace or by Pindar. One familiar and remarkable tribute to the merit of this poem is the great number of translations of it which have been made into the various languages of Europe, ancient and modern. It has been translated into Hebrew, the words and phrases being taken, as far as possible, from the classical idioms of the Old Testament; into Greek, 7 different versions; into Latin, 12 versions; into Italian, 12 versions; into French, 15 versions; into German, 6 versions; into Portuguese.

His Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is only second to the Elegy in popularity. His other lyrical pieces are the following: Ode on Spring; Hymn to Adversity; Ode to Vicissitude; The Progress of Poesy, a Pindaric Ode; The Bard, a Pindaric Ode. The Pindaric Odes have less of the elements of popularity than any of his poems.

An amusing evidence of the popularity of his best poem is proved in what happened at the sale of the original manuscript, in 1845. "The original manuscript of Gray's Elegy was lately sold at auction in London. There was really 'a scene' in the auc tion-room. Imagine a stranger entering in the midst of a sale of some rusty-looking old books. The auctioneer produces two small half-sheets of paper, written over, torn, and mutilated. He calls it a most interesting article,' and apologizes for its condition. Pickering bids ten pounds! Rodd, Foss, Thorpe, Bohn, Holloway, and some few amateurs quietly remark, twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, and so on, till there is a pause at sixty-three pounds! The hammer strikes. 'Hold!' says Mr. Foss. 'It is mine,' says the amateur. No, I bid sixty-five in time.' 'Seventy-five,' says Mr. Foss; and fives are repeated again, until the two bits of paper are knocked down, amidst a general cheer, to Payne & Foss, for one hundred pounds sterling! On these bits of paper are written the first drafts of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, by Thomas Gray, including five verses which were omitted in the publication, and with the poet's interlinear corrections and alterations, certainly an 'interesting article;' several persons supposed it would call for a ten-pound note, perhaps even twenty. A single volume, with 'W. Shakespeare' in the fly-leaf, produced, sixty years ago, a hundred guineas; but probably, with that exception, no mere autograph, and no single sheet of paper, ever produced the sum of five hundred dollars.”

Mason.

Then I bid seventy.'

WILLIAM MASON, 1725-1797, was a minor poet of the last century, whose name is indissolubly associated with that of his friend Gray.

Mason wrote two Dramas on the model of the Greek, Elfrida, and Caractacus; The English Garden, a Poem in Four Books; A number of Odes and Anthems; Essays on