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import and significance. When Collins saw the hopes of his youth in the cold light of the world's indifference, with a mixed impulse of despair and revenge he collected the unsold edition of his hapless Odes and Eclogues, and with a savage delight beheld them slowly consume, as, in his own room, he made a bonfire of them. When Goldsmith was visited with a like weakness, something of a like result foreboded; but the better part was forced upon him in his own despite, and in the present most affecting picture of his patience the hectic agony of Collins is but an idle frenzy. Steadily gazing on the evil destinies of men-ofletters, he no longer desires to avoid his own; conscious of the power of the booksellers, he condemns and denounces it; without direct hope, save of some small public favour, he protests against cruelties for which the public are responsible. The protest will accompany us through the remainder of his life and be remembered as well in its lightest passages, as in those where any greatness of suffering will now be less apparent than a calmness of endurance; a resolute quiet temper, in which he will front and foil Adversity.

Such, at the worst, is the resource of a healthy genius. It works evil into good, and has within it a principle of sustainment and of self-consolation. The more particularly does it become the world to take note of this, as a party far more deeply concerned than bookseller or than author. That cry of Goldsmith is little for himself. Who wins his passage to the goal, may little care at the close for a larger

suffering or a less: the cry is raised for others, meanwhile perishing by the way. When Irene failed, and Johnson was asked how he felt, he answered 'like the Monument;' but when he had arrived at comfort and independence, and carelessly taking up one day his own fine satire, opened it at the lines which paint the scholar's fate, and the obstructions, almost insurmountable, in his way to fortune and fame, he burst into a passion of tears. Not for what he had himself endured, whose labour was at last victoriously closed; but for all the disastrous chances that still awaited others. It is the world's concern. There is a subtle spirit of compensation at work, when men regard it least, which to the spiritual sense accommodates the vilest need, and lightens the weariest burden. Milton talked of the lasting fame and perpetuity of praise, which God and good men have consented should be the reward of those whose published labours have advanced the good of mankind; and it is a set-off, doubtless, in the large account. The two carriages' and the 'style' of Griffiths are long passed away into the rubbish they sprang from, and all of us will be apt enough now to thank heaven that we were not Griffiths. Jacob Tonson's hundred thousand pounds are now of less account, than the bad shillings he insinuated into Dryden's payments; and the fame of Mr. Secretary Nottingham is very much overtopped by the pillory of De Foe. The Italian princes who beggared Dante are still without pity writhing in his deathless poem, while Europe looks to the beggar as to a star in heaven; nor

has Italy's greater day, or the magnificence which crowded the Court of Augustus, left behind them a name of any earthly interest, to compare with his who restored land to Virgil, and who succoured the fugitive Horace. These are results which have obtained in all countries, and been confessed by every age; and it will be well when they win for Literature other living regards, and higher present consideration, than it has yet been able to obtain. Men of genius can more easily starve, than the world, with safety to itself, can continue to neglect and starve them. What new arrangement, what kind of consideration may be required, will not be very distant from the simple acknowledgment that greater honour and respect ARE due.

This is what Literature has wanted in England, and not the laced coat and powdered wig which have on rare occasions been substituted for it. The most liberal patronage vouchsafed in this country to living men-of-letters, has never been unaccompanied by degrading incidents; nor their claims at any time admitted without discourtesy or contumely. It is a century and a half since an Act of Parliament was passed to 'protect' them, under cover of which their most valuable private rights were confiscated to the public use; and it is not fourteen years since another act was passed with a sort of kindly consideration on their behalf, by favour of which the poet and the teacher of writing, the historian and the teacher of dancing, the philosopher and the royal coachman, Sir Christopher Wren's great grand-daughter and the descendant of Charles the

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LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. [BOOK II.

Second's French riding-master, are permitted to appear in the same annual charitable list. But though statesmen have yet to learn what the State loses by such unwise scorn of what enlightens and refines it, they cannot much longer remain ignorant to what extent they are themselves enslaved by the power they thus affect to despise, or of the special functions of government and statesmanship which it is gradually assuming to itself. Its progress has been uninterrupted since Johnson's and Goldsmith's time, and cannot for as many more years continue unacknowledged. Pitt sneered when the case of Burns was stated to him, and talked of Literature taking care of itself. It can do so, and in a different and larger sense from what the minister intended; but can Society take care of itself, is also a material question.

Toward its solution, one sentence of Goldsmith's protest is an offering from his sorrow in these times of Authorship by Compulsion, not less worthy than his more cheerful offerings in those days of Authorship by Choice, to which the reader is now invited. An author 'An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legislature. He acts not 'by punishing crimes, but by preventing them.

END OF SECOND BOOK.

BOOK THE THIRD.

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