upward from our contented littleness,-and in our faith and self-reliance is the beginning of our completest successes. And this is one of the uses of great men.

Moreover, these men teach us how to succeed, as well as that uccess is possible. Aspiration is not inspiration-nor a desire to be great, greatness. Still, we do not attach so great an importance to this sort of teaching. True genius needs but to be waked out of its sleep, and it will scek it own ways and spheres of activity. Your little men, and your middle men, need to be told what they may become, and how they may become such. Your truly great men need only to be made to feel what they are. Humility and industry must be the allies of genius; but as to rules, guides, maps of life and the like-it is "a law unto itself." But Oliver Goldsmith was far from being a truly great man.

The qualities by which a man becomes illustrious may be all perverted. Excellence-moral quality of any sort-belongs not to powers, but to the use of them. The archangel may become an arch-fiend. The goodliest vessel makes the noblest wreck-and there are solemn teachings echoed back to us from stately and deserted ruins.

Was Oliver Goldsmith an instructor of this soft? Is his power indicated only in the strength of his evil - and are we to admire only what he might have been as shown to us in gigantic crimes, which must have needed the prostitution of sublimest faculties? Surely no! He had nothing of this bad eminence.

He is neither a splendid edifice, nor a dismantled ruinneither a proud ship nor a drifting wreek-he is rather a something well planned, indeed, but left unfinished: generous --but at the expense of justice,- benevolent, but lacking discretion. His great characteristic was, indeed, that he was in some very important respects without a characteristic. A man's characteristics are those marks upon him which distinguish him from other men. They have something abiding in them, they explain the present,-they contain the seeds and a prophecy of the future. But Goldsmith was a creature of impulse; he had no deep convictions - at least none of any practical value. His life had no worthy object steadily pursued, unless it were barely to tire. We say it with sincere sorrow, but we believe even his best performances to have been more nearly allied to the instincts of animals than to the reason of men. But this, and much more, should have been written in conclusion, rather than introductory. We say it now, however, that we may prepare our readers to expect no unmingled eulogy. The author of the "Vicar of Wakefield" and the "Deserted Village," was a man who could be either greatly blamed or extravagantly praised, just as the speaker or the writer sympathised with his short-comings, or condemned his frailties; and an equal degree of truth would attach to either opinion. Perhaps the most charitable view of the character of Goldsmith, is the popular one-that he was "more sinned against than sinning."

Oliver Goldsmith was born in the hamlet of Pallas, er Pallasmore, county Longford, in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728 (though about this there is some uncertainty). His father was the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, very poor and very improvidenta village minister, "passing rich on forty pounds a-year." But improvidence seems to have been a kind of heir-loom in this strange family, and the less they had to spend, the more recklessly they appear to have spent it. Two years after Oliver's birth his father removed to Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath, having succeeded by the death of his wife's uncle to the rectory of Kilkenny West. This Lissoy is supposed to be the original of the Auburn of the “Deserted Village," with what reason is a sort of literary dispute to this day. Much of what has in Auburn "a local habitation and a name," was in Lissoy an "airy nothing." Indeed, speaking of the depopulation deplored in the poem at a time when he had not been in Ireland for twenty years, Goldsmith says, "I have taken all possible pains in my country excursions for these four or five years past to be certain of what I allege." Aubura indeed was a poetic creation - with Lissoy and many an English hamlet having equal share in its origination.

Oliver commenced his education under the fostering care of an accomplished dame, Mrs. Elizabeth Delap, and obtained considerable credit-for his extreme dulness. When he had attained the goodly maturity of six years, he was removed to the sterner government of Mr. Thomas Byrne, a quondam quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. Here he became remarkable chiefly for idleness and smallpox, but also for a clever repartee and a knack at scribbling verses. The repartee gained him a reputation in his own family, and they determined to send him to the university,-an advantage which had been already obtained for his elder brother Henry to the great dilapidation of the paternal resources. His friends, however, contributed to Oliver's expenses, and especially his generous uncle, the Rev. Thomas Contarine.

He

Now it is not difficult to say what use a young man of spirit and principle would have made of this generosity. And what Oliver Goldsmith did was the reverse of this. trifled away his time, and fooled away his scanty resources. He pawned the books he should have studied, and spent his money on dinners and dances of men and girls in his college chambers. Meantime his father had died, and his mother was enduring all the anguish of widowhood and the straits of poverty.

And what is the palliation of all this cruelty and folly? College duties were irksome, and Oliver had a natural aptness for singing a good song, and enjoying a good dinner; and so we must just excuse him that he paid for all this out of the pockets and the heart of a widowed mother. It is a severe reflection, but we fear it is a just one.

He ran away from college, enraged at the unceremonious dismissal of his dancing party, and would have embarked for America, or any place else that offered, but that he loitered in Dublin, playing the foal as often as possible, until his resources (come of borrowing and pawning), were reduced to one shitting sterling. He was almost brought to destitution-but his brother Henry gave him kind assistance, and mediating with tolerable success between him and his college tutop-rescued him just in time. II. remained at the University two years longer, with no great success, with an unhonoured degree, which, under his circumstances, partook not a little of the nature of a disgrace.

By this time everybody had begun to despair of Oliver, except his uncle Contering: his affection still cherished hope, and furnished resources something more solid. The nephew was prevailed upon to qualify himself for holy orders-poor scapegrace as he was-though, to do him justice, he had no great liking for this clerical profession. "To be obliged," ho says, "to wear a long wig when I liked a short one; or a black coat when I generally dressed in brown, I thought such a restraint upon my liberty, that I absolutely rejected the proposal." He changed his mind, however, as to the "absolutely rejecting" it. He consented to qualify. And this he accomplished in something of his usual felicity of appropriate means. He had two years of probation to get through, and he frolicked them away partly at Lissy, partly at the Goblinhouse at Pallas, chiefly, perhaps, at "the Three Jolly Pigeons" at Ballymahon, made immortal by that genuine comedy "She Stoops to Conquer." Here his taste for theology and fitness for the church were doubtless increased by constant intercourse with his relation Bob Bryanton.

It is not surprising that he was rejected when he made his application to the Bishop of Elphin for ordination, especially when we remember that he appeared before that dignitary in the becoming attire of scarlet breeches. All his friends were very properly disgusted and very bitterly diappointed, except his all-believing uncle Contarine. He obtained him a situation as tutor in the family of one Flinn (a queer family to take him). He threw up this place, however, because he deemed himself cheated at cards, and was so rich when he had received his salary, that after buying a horse he was in possession of thirty pounds. This he would most likely have applied to mitigate the distresscs of his widowed mother, as generosity and benevolence were his most marked characteristics; but he seemed fated to sympathise only with unworthy

objects, and to forget the claims of those who had most right to expect that he should remember them.

So he set off on a rambling expedition, which lasted for three or four weeks, and returned to his wondering friends with no money, and a wretched brute of a pony that he had named "Fiddleback." This gross unkindness he explains in a whimsical letter to his mother, written in his usual happy style, but which, indeed, does him very little credit.

It was next resolved that he should make trial of the law, and he was furnished with £50, and set off to London to the Temple. He spent this, however, in Dublin with some gambling companions, and finally returned to his unele disgraced and penniless.

His next attempt was medicine - in Edinburgh, with a trifle less than his usual indiscretion. Then he started for the continent, to complete his education at Lyden; there he arrived after a few whimsical adventures, and remained about a year. His money was, of course, soon spent-more was borrowed and gambled away; so he left Leyden, and set off on the tour of the continent with one shirt, one guinea, and a flute,this last was the most precious, - and after somewhat longcontinued roving, which originated "The Traveller," he found himself finally in the great Metropolis -"leaving hardly a kingdom in Europe where he was not a debtor." This sort of "philosophic vagabondising" appears to possess a peculiar charm for men of Goldsmith's turn of mind. It was at Padua that Goldsmith obtained his doctor's degree. "My skill in music," says he, in the Philosophie Vagabond,' "could avail me nothing in a country where every peasant was a better musician than I; but by this time I had acquired another talent, which answered my purpose as well, and this was a skill in disputation. In all the foreign universities and convents there are, upon certain days, philosophical theses maintained against every adventitious disputant: for which, if the champion opposes with any dexterity, he can claim a gratuity in money, a dinner, and a bed for one night. With the members of these establishments I could converse on topics of literature, and then I clways forgot the meanness of my circumstaneca."

We shall pass by his divers adventures until we have to speak of him as a writer. Literature was in a sorry plight when Goldsmith began to write. It was a period of transition. The system of patronage was dying out, and the reading public was yet growing up. Literature had been so long held in leading-strings by royal and noble nurses, that when they with drew their aid, it was well-nigh tottering to its fall. The change was doubtless ultimately conducive to its good, bus in the interval the authors were left in a sorry plight. They were much in the position of the handloom weavers after Arkwright's great invention; the public was about to be benefitted at the cost of their temporary suffering. This was the period when Grub-street garrets became famous, and when literature as a profession acquired that character for hardship and precariousness from which it has never since recovered. He who then embraced it had a bitter cup to drink, and in truth Goldsmith drained it to the very dregs. He was at the mercy of the booksellers, at no time a very tender-hearted race, but now right wolfish, getting little and giving less. They had literary men at their mercy. The lords had abandoned them, and the public, who now can put down the mightiest combinations of "the trade," did not trouble themselves about the trials or sufferings of a class with whose feelings and pursuits they felt but little sympathy.

Griffiths, the proprietor of "The Monthly Review," met Goldsmith at the table of Dr. Milner. This (1756) was a period prodigiously fertile in periodicals, and Griffiths was compelled to recruit his staff of writers that he might successfully compete with powerful opponents. Thus Oliver became one of his contributors--at a small salary, with board and lodging, residing at the Dunciad, Paternoster-row. Booksellers had signs to their houses in that day, as publicans have The Crown and Cushion may still be scen over the door of Messrs. Rivingtons in "The Row."

now.

Goldsmith was now approaching an age when, if a man has not laid the foundations of his fame or fortune, he never does. At eight-and-twenty, we find him a mere literary hack, writing to order - as, alas! is the fate of too many of the author class even in the present day-for so many hours a day, at an inadequate rate of remuneration. It was not likely that a man of Goldy's disposition could be tied to a desk with a man like Griffiths the bookseller for ever at his elbow, ready to accuse him of idleness and being above his situation. And more than this, there was a very uncongenial Mrs. Griffiths, who, besides treating him with little ceremony in household arrangements, actually presumed to meddle with his literary contributions. Is it any wonder, then, that after five months' probation, our poor friend broke away from the restraint of the Review, and set up as an author on his own account? It does not appear, however, that there was any anger on either side, as we find Goldsmith often writing for "the illiterate, bookselling Griffiths," as Smollett calls him, after the fame of the poet was fully established. Smollett's estimate of the bockscller was most likely a partial one, as he was himself a contributor to a rival publication called the "Critical Review," in which he "thanks Heaven" that the writers are independent of each other, unconnected with booksellers, and unawed by old women!

Thrown once more upon his own resources, Goldsmith commenced a series of those miscellaneous efforts so ceminon to the litterateur in his first start -now writing a few articles for the "Literary Magazine" of John Newberry, of famous memory; now assisting in establishing one or other of the many ephemeral publications of the day; now obtaining just enough literary job-work to keep him from want; and again resuming his medical practiec, with but poor success. Goldsmith's best friend at this period seems to have been this same John Newberry, the bookseller, who, by all accounts, must have been a real authors' friend. Goldsmith humorously introduces him in the "Vicar of Wakefield: ""This person was no other than the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's churchyard, who has written [published:] so many little books for children; he called himself their friend, but he was the friend of all mankind. He was no sooner alighted than he was in haste to be gone; for he was ever on business of importance, and was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of one Mrs. Thomas Trip. I immediately recollected this good-natured man's red-pimpled face." For this good-natured man, Oliver, "For shortness called Nol,

Who wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll,"

is said to have written the veritable history of “ Goody Twó Shoes!"

Goldsmith has written the history of his own life in his works. This period of his struggling existence he has well pourtrayed in "The Inquiry into the State of Polite Literature," written many years after :

"The author, unpatronised by the great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot, perhaps, be imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and for the other to write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the author bids adicu to fame; writes for bread; and for that only imagination is seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep in her lap."

"Those who are unacquainted with the world are apt to fancy the man of wit as leading a very agreeable life. They conclude, perhaps, that he is attended with silent admiration, and dictates to the rest of mankind with all the eloquence of conscious superiority. Very different is his present situation. He is called an author, and all know that an author is a thing only to be laughed at. His person, not his jest, becomes the mirth of the company. At his approach the most fat, uthinking face brightens into malicious meaning. Evén alder.

men laugh, and avenge on him the ridicule which was lavished on their forefathers."

"The poet's poverty is a standing topic of contempt. His writing for bread is an unpardonable offence. Perhaps, of all mankind, an author in these times is used most hardly. We keep him poor, and yet revile his poverty. We reproach him for living by his wit, and yet allow him no other means to live. His taking refuge in garrets and cellars has of late been violently objected to him, and that by men who, I have hope, are more apt to pity than insult his distress. Is poverty a careless fault? No doubt he knows how to prefer a bottle of champagne to the nectar of the neighbouring alehouse, or a venison pasty to a plate of potatoes. Want of delicacy is not in him, but in those who deny him the opportunity of making an elegant choice. Wit certainly is the property of those who have it, nor should we be displeased if it is the only property a man sometimes has. We must not underrate him who uses it for subsistence, and flees from the ingratitude of the age, even to a bookseller for redress."

"If the author be necessary among us, let us treat him with proper consideration as a child of the public, not as a rentcharge on the community. And indeed a child of the public he is in all respects; for while so well able to direct others, how incapable is he frequently found of guiding himself. His simplicity exposes him to all the insidious approaches of cunning; his sensibility to the slightest invasions of contempt. Though possessed of fortitude to stand unmoved the expected bursts of an earthquake, yet of feelings so exquisitely poignant, as to agonise under the slightest disappointment. Broken rest, tasteless meals, and causeless anxieties shorten life, and render it unfit for active employments; prolonged vigils and intense application still farther contract his span, and make his time glide insensibly away."

But while Goldsmith, at this period, was too poor to “hail" from any better place than a coffee-house, his friends in Ireland imagined him to be getting on amazingly; and actually sent his younger brother Charles-a youth of twenty-one-to London, to be helped into something for a living. But Charles found Oliver poor, and in a garret, and but little able to take care of himself. But the careless good-humour of the man was seldom disconcerted. "I shall be richer by-and-bye, my boy," he would exclaim; "all in good time."

Charles, finding no chance of a living in London, and ashamed of trespassing on his brother's scanty means, departed suddenly for the West Indies, and was lost to his family for thirty years. After his departure, Goldsmith wrote a letter to his brother-in-law, Hodson, which will sufficiently explain his situation at this time :

"I suppose you desire to know my present situation. As there is nothing in it at which I should blush, or which mankind could censure, I see no reason for making it a secret. In short, by a very little practice as a physician, and a very little reputation as a poet, I make a shift to live. Nothing is more apt to introduce us to the gates of the muses than poverty; but it were well if they only left us at the door. The mischief is, they sometimes choose to give us their company to the entertainment; and Want, instead of being gentleman usher, often turns master of the ceremonies.

"Thus, upon learning I write, no doubt you imagine I starve; and the name of an author naturally reminds you of a garret. In this particular I do not think proper to undeceive my friends. But, whether I eat or starve, live in a first floor or four pairs of stairs high, I still remember them with ardour; nay, my very country comes in for a share of my affection. Unaccountable fondness for country, this maladie du pays, as the French call it! Unaccountable that he should still have an affection for a place, who never, when in it, received above common civility; who never brought anything out of it except his brogue and his blunders. Surely my affection is equally ridiculous with the Scotchman's, who refused to be cured of the itch, because it made him unco' thoughtful of his wife and bonny Inverary.

"But now, to be serious: let me ask myself what gives me a wish to see Ireland again? The country is a fine one,

perhaps? No. There is good company in Ireland? No. The conversation there is generally made up

the vivacity supported by some humble cousin, who had just folly enough to earn his dinner. Then, perhaps, there's more wit and learning among the Irish? Oh, Lord, no! There has been more money spent in the encouragement of the Padareen mare there in one season, than given in rewards to learned men since the time of Usher. All their productions in learning amount to perhaps a translation, or a few tracts in divinity; and all their productions in wit to just nothing at all. Why the plague, then, so fond of Ireland? Then, all at once, because you, my dear friend, and a few more who are exceptions to the general picture, have a residence there. This it is that gives me all the pangs I feel in separation. I confess I carry this spirit sometimes to the souring of the pleasures I at present possess. If I go to the opera, where Signora Columba pours out all the mazes of melody, I sit and sigh for Lissoy fireside, and Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night' from Peggy Golden. If I climb Hampstead Hill, than where nature never exhibited a more magnificent prospect, I confess it fine; but then I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lissoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature.

·

"Before Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severer studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest. No alterations there. Some friends, he tells me, are still lean, but very rich; others very fat, but still very poor. Nay, all the news I hear of you is, that you sally out in visits among the neighbours, and sometimes make a migration from the blue bed to the brown. I could from my heart wish that you and she (Mrs. Hodson), and Lissoy and Ballymahon, and all of you, would fairly make a migration into Middlesex; though, upon second thoughts, this might be attended with a few inconveniences. Therefore, as the mountain will not come to Mohammed, why Mohammed shall go to the mountain; or, to speak plain English, as you cannot conveniently pay me a visit, if next summer I can contrive to be absent six weeks from London, I shall spend three of them among my friends in Ireland. But first, believe me, my design is purely to visit, and neither to cut a figure nor levy contributions; neither to excite envy nor solicit favour; in fact, my circumstances are adapted to neither. I am too poor to be gazed at, and too rich to need assistance."

But Goldsmith, fertile in expedients, was seldom in actual want. About this time, too, he was promised, through the influence of his friend, Dr. Milner, a medical appointment in India. Here was a chance. Sanguine and impulsive, and apt to calculate on results without reference to means, he indulges in all kinds of romantic day-dreams, and builds castles in the air without number. His future prospects were, he said, in writing to his friends, brilliant in the extreme, and there was little doubt that he should succeed in obtaining the appointment. But he reckoned without his host, as usual. How could he obtain the wherewithal for a voyage to India? He thought of his uncle Contarine, but that generous friend had sunk into a state of second childishness, from which death soon released him. Literature would serve poor Goldsmith's need, and so he would write an essay on the Polite Literature of Europe, which would at once furnish him with means for making the journey. And that his countrymen in Ireland should both benefit by his labours and save themselves the trouble of reprinting the work, and thereby injuring the author, for the copyright act did not then extend to the sister kingdom,-Goldsmith wrote to his cousin, Jane Lauder, requesting her to use her influence in circulating his proposals. In this letter he speaks of his own shortcomings in the most candid manner possible, and promises amendment with the greatest apparent fervour. "Instead of hanging my room with pictures," he says in a half-serious kind of raillery, “I intend to adorn it with maxims of frugality. These will make pretty furniture enough, and won't be a bit too expensive; for I will draw them all out with my own hands, and my landlady's