No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

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Oliver Goldsmith, if not the greatest, is at least the most versatile and pleasing writer of the eighteenth century. Whether as essay writer or dramatist, poet or novelist, he put his hand to nothing that he did not impress with a certain indefinable charm. Of critical faculty or accurate knowledge, he had almost nothing, nor was he by any means a deep thinker. Yet he was easy, simple, and natural; and, as Irving suggests, he identified himself with his writings in such a way as to make us "love the man at the same time that we admire the author." His style has been well characterized as full of “humanity and grace, of simplicity and picturesque sweetness." His life was a singular mixture of comedy and pathos, and has always been a favorite theme of essayist and biographer. We can give here only the briefest outline.

1728-1752. Goldsmith was born in 1728, in Pallas, a small Irish village where his father was a poor Protestant clergyman. Two years later the family moved to the village of Lissoy, and here the boy received his early schooling, some reflection of which we find in The Deserted Village. At the age of seventeen he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar, or charity student. He seems to have been shiftless at college, but was finally graduated at the age of twenty-one, the lowest in his class. The next three years he spent ostensibly in preparation for holy orders, but really in idleness.

1752-1759. - Goldsmith's uncle, who had helped him through college, now gave him fifty pounds with which to enter upon the study of law in London; but Oliver proceeded in this career no farther than Dublin, where he gambled away his money in a single night. The uncle again to the rescue, Oliver then tried his hand at medicine, and spent two years at Edinburgh, afterwards two more strolling from university to university on the continent, in pursuit of a warrant to practise. Finally, somewhere in Italy, he succeeded in capturing a medical degree, — at least so he claims, - and he was thereafter "Dr. Goldsmith." We now see Goldsmith, at the age of twenty-eight, back from his travels and trying in every conceivable way to make a living, - as apothecary's assistant, as tutor in a school, and, finally, as hack reviewer for a bookseller. Thus his energies were at last directed into their proper channel, for, incidentally to his hack-work, he succeeded in writing, and getting a

publisher for, his Enquiry into the State of Polite Learning in Europe. With this naïvely pretentious essay, about a subject of which he knew next to nothing, his career as an author commenced.

1759-1774. During the later years of his life, amid any quantity of literary drudgery, a History of England, a History of Animated Nature, and the like, - he found time to produce several works which were real literature, - some genial and sprightly essays, two very good poems beside other worthy bits of verse, two comedies which still stir the world with laughter and delight, and an idyllic romance whose charm can never grow old. He was an honored member of the famous literary club of Dr. Johnson and his friends. He earned at times considerable sums of money, but through personal extravagance and reckless generosity he was constantly in debt. Yet he was never so poor but that he would lend his last penny to some Irish relative poorer still. His affectionate and confiding nature, his simple-heartedness and sunny disposition, won and kept for him a host of friends. It is pleasant to contemplate this shy, awkward, pock-marked, improvident Irishman, winning his way to the hearts of London's greatest literary men. He impressed himself upon others not by presumption or by assertive wit, but by a humor which widened sympathy while it wakened laughter. His literary style, like his personality, was irresistible, because its charm was natural. He was in the estimation of his friends, as Dr. Johnson said, a very great man"; and when he died, in 1774, at the early age of forty-five, the grief of Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and the rest was very deep and sincere.

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The student who takes up the reading of Goldsmith's works will soon find that he has entered upon what is not a task, but a delight. In both verse and prose he is a most important figure in the transition from the later Classical school to the new Romantic of the nineteenth century. The Traveller (1764) for reflective poetry, The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) for the story, and She Stoops to Conquer (1773) for the drama, are representative works which all should read. But the most popular of his writings is undoubtedly The Deserted Village. It is also the most painstaking and artistic of his poems, and therefore deserves especial attention.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE

SWEET Auburn! loveliest village of the plain;
Where health and plenty cheared the labouring swain,

Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid,

And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed:

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,
Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green,
Where humble happiness endeared each scene!
How often have I paused on every charm,
The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age and whispering lovers made!
How often have I blest the coming day,
When toil remitting lent its turn to play,
And all the village train, from labour free,

Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree,
While many a pastime circled in the shade,

The young contending as the old surveyed;

And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground,

And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.
And still, as each repeated pleasure tired,

Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired;
The dancing pair that simply sought renown
By holding out to tire each other down;
The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
While secret laughter tittered round the place;
The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love,

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The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.
These were thy charms, sweet village! sports like these,
With sweet succession, taught even toil to please :
These round thy bowers their chearful influence shed:
These were thy charms - but all these charms are fled.
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green:

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One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.

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No more thy glassy brook reflects the day,
But, choaked with sedges, works its weedy way;

Along thy glades, a solitary guest,

The hollow sounding bittern guards its nest;
Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,
And tires their ecchoes with unvaried cries:
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall;
And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand,
Far, far away thy children leave the land.

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade-

A breath can make them, as a breath has made -
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man :
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life required, but gave no more;
His best companions, innocence and health,
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

But times are altered; trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain;
Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose,
Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,
And every want to opulence allied,
And every pang that folly pays to pride.
These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
Those calm desires that asked but little room,
Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene,
Lived in each look, and brightened all the green, -
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
And rural mirth and manners are no more.

Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,

Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here, as I take my solitary rounds

Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds,
And, many a year elapsed, return to view

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Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,

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Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.
In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs — and GOD has given my share —
I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose:
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,
Around my fire an evening groupe to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ;

And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return and die at home at last.

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline,
Retreats from care, that never must be mine!
How happy he who crowns, in shades like these,
A youth of labour with an age of ease;
Who quits a world where strong temptations try,
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly!
For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep;
No surly porter stands in guilty state,
To spurn imploring famine from the gate;
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending Virtue's friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose.

There as I past with careless steps and slow,
The mingling notes came softened from below:
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung,
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young,

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