The rest of his life, spent
principally
in or near
London, is associated with his literary career.
London, is associated with his literary career.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v11 - Fro to Gre
Brandes writes of Goldschmidt that: "In
spite of his cosmopolitan spirit, he has always loved two nationalities
above all others and equally well,- the Jewish and the Danish. He
has looked upon himself as a sort of noble-born bastard; and with
the bat of the fable he has said alternately
to the mice, I am a mouse,' and to the
birds, 'I have wings. ' He has endeavored
to give his answer to the questions of the
Jew's place in modern culture. »
Goldschmidt was born on the 26th of
October, 1819. His early childhood was
spent partly in the country, in the full free-
dom of country life, and partly in the city,
where he was sent to school in preparation
for the professional career his father had
planned for him, in preference to a business
life like his own. Goldschmidt took part
in the religious instruction of the school, at
the same time observing the customs of the
Jewish ritual at home without a full understanding of its meaning,-
somewhat as he was taught to read Hebrew without being able to
translate a word of it into Danish. In the senior class his religious
instructor let him join in the Bible reading, but refused to admit him
to the catechism class; as a consequence he failed to answer a few
questions on his examination papers, and fell just short of a maxi-
mum. This made him feel that he was ostracized by his Jewish
birth, and put an end to his desire for further academic studies.
At the age of eighteen he began his journalistic career as editor
of a provincial paper, the care of which cost him a lawsuit and sub-
jected him to a year's censorship. Soon after, he sold the paper for
two hundred dollars, and with this money he started the Copenhagen
weekly The Corsair, which in no time gained a large reading public,
GOLDSCHMIDT
## p. 6494 (#480) ###########################################
6494
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
and whose Friday appearance was awaited with weekly increasing
interest. The editorials were given up to æsthetic and poetic dis-
cussions, and the small matter treated the questions of the day
with a pointed wit that soon made The Corsair as widely feared
as it was eagerly read. He had reached only the third number when
it was put under censorship, and lawsuits followed in quick suc-
cession. Goldschmidt did not officially assume the responsibility of
editor, although it was an open secret that he was author of most of
the articles; publicly the blows were warded off by pretended owners
whose names were often changed. One of the few men whom The
Corsair left unattacked was Sören Kierkegaard, for whose literary and
scholarly talents Goldschmidt had great respect. That The Corsair
was under the ban of the law, so to speak, and had brought him
even a four-days' imprisonment, was a small matter to Goldschmidt;
but when Kierkegaard passed a scathing moral judgment on the paper,
Goldschmidt sold out for four thousand dollars and started with this
sum on his travels, "to get rid of wit and learn something better. "
In 1847 he was again back in Copenhagen, and began life anew as
editor of North and South, a weekly containing excellent æsthetic
and critical studies, but mainly important on account of its social
and political influence. Already, in the time of The Corsair, Gold-
schmidt had begun his work as novelist with A Jew,' written in
1843-45, and had taken possession of the field which became his own.
It was
a promising book, that met with immediate appreciation.
Even Kierkegaard forgot for a moment the editor of The Corsair in
his praise. The Jews, however, looked upon the descriptions of inti-
mate Jewish family life somewhat as a desecration of the Holy of
Holies; and if broad-minded enough to forgive this, thought it unwise
to accentuate the Jew's position as an element apart in social life.
It argues a certain narrowness in Goldschmidt that he has never
been able to refrain from striking this note, and Brandes blames him
for the bad taste of "continually serving his grandmother with sharp
sauce. "
Goldschmidt wrote another long novel, 'Homeless'; but it is prin-
cipally in his shorter works, such as 'Love Stories from Many Coun-
tries,' 'Maser,' and 'Avromche Nightingale,' that he has left a great
and good gift to Danish literature. The shorter his composition, the
more perfect was his treatment. He was above all a stylist.
He always had a tendency to mysticism, and in his last years
he was greatly taken up with his theory of Nemesis, on which he
wrote a book, containing much that is suggestive but also much that
is obviously the result of the wish to make everything conform to a
pet theory. His lasting importance will be as the first and foremost
influence on modern Danish prose.
## p. 6495 (#481) ###########################################
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6495
ASSAR AND MIRJAM
From 'Love Stories from Many Countries >
A
SSAR, son of Juda, a valiant and jealous youth, came walking
toward Modin, when from one of the hills he saw a great
sight on the plain. Here warriors rode a chariot race in
a great circle; many people stood about, calling loudly to the
drivers and the spirited horses. Yonder were horsemen in golden
armor, trying to catch rings on their spears; and drums were
beaten in honor of the winner. On the outskirts of the plain
was a little grove of olive-trees; it was not dense.
In the grove
stood a nude woman hewn in marble; her hair was of gold and
her eyes were black, and young girls danced around her with
garlands of flowers.
Then Assar said: "Woe unto us! These are Jewish maidens
dancing around the idol, and these are Greek men carrying arms
on our holy ground and playing at games as if they were in their
home! and no Jewish man makes the game dangerous for them!
He went down the hill and came to a thicket reaching down
to a little brook. On the other side of the brook stood a Greek
centurion, a young man, and he was talking to a girl, who stood
on this side of the brook on the edge of the thicket.
The warrior said: "Thou sayest that thy God forbids thee to
go over into the grove. What a dark and unfriendly God they
have given thee, beautiful child of Juda! He hates thy youth,
and the joy of life, and the roses which ought to crown thy
black hair. My gods are of a friendlier mind toward mortals.
Every morning Apollo drives his glorious span over the arch of
the heavens and lights warriors to their deeds; Selene's milder
torch glows at night for lovers, and to those who have worshiped
her in this life beautiful Aphrodite gives eternal life on her
blessed isle. It is her statue standing in the grove. When thou
givest thyself under her protection she gives thee in return a
hero for thy faithful lover, and later on, graceful daughter of
Juda, some god will set thee with thy radiant eyes among the
stars, to be a light to mortals and a witness of the beauty of
earthly love. "
-
The young girl might have answered; but at this moment
Assar was near her, and she knew him, and he saw that it was
Mirjam, Rabbi Mattathew's daughter,-the woman he loved, and
who was his promised bride. She turned and followed him; but
## p. 6496 (#482) ###########################################
6496
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
the warrior on the other side of the brook called out,
right hast thou to lead this maiden away? "
Assar replied, "I have no right. "
"Then why dost thou go with him, sweet daughter of Juda? »
cried the warrior.
« What
Mirjam did not answer, but Assar said, "Because she has not
yet given up serving her Master. "
"Who is her master? " asked the warrior. "I can buy thee
freedom, my beautiful child! "
Assar replied, "I wish thou may'st see him. ""
The warrior, who could not cross the brook at this place, or
anywhere near it, called as they went away, "Tell me thy mas-
ter's name! "
Assar turned and answered, "I will beg him come to thee. "
A hill hid them from the eyes of the warrior, and Mirjam
said, "Assar! "
Assar replied, "Mirjam! I have never loved thee as dearly
as I do to-day-I do not know if it is a
-I do not know if it is a curse or a blessing
which is in my veins. Thou hast listened to the words of the
heathen. "
"I listened to them because he spoke kindly; but I have not
betrayed the Lord nor thee. "
"Thou hast permitted his words to reach thy ear and thy
soul. "
"What could I do, Assar? He spoke kindly. "
Assar stood still, and said to himself, "Yes, he spoke kindly.
They do speak kindly. And they spoke kind words to the poor
girls who danced around the idol in the grove. Had they spoken
harsh and threatening words, they would not have danced. "
Again he stood still, and said to himself, "If they came using
force, the rabbi would kill her and then himself, or she would
throw herself from a rock of her own free will. But who can
set a guard to watch over kind words? "
The third time he stood still, and said, "O Israel, thou canst
not bear kind words! "
Mirjam thought that he suspected her; and she stood still
and said, "I am a rabbi's daughter! "
Assar replied, "O Mirjam, I am Assar, and I will be the son
of my own actions. »
* "Whoever sees God must die. "
## p. 6497 (#483) ###########################################
MEYR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6497
"For God's sake," exclaimed Mirjam, "do not seek that war-
rior, and do not enter into a quarrel with him! He will kill thee
or have thee put into prison. There is misery enough in Israel!
The strangers have entered our towns. Let us bend our heads
and await the will of God, but not challenge! Assar, I should
die if anything happened to thee! "
"And what would I do if anything happened to thee! My
head swims! Whither should I flee? Would thy father and thy
brothers flee to the wilds of the mountains? »
"They have spoken of that. But there is no place to flee to
and not much to flee from; for although the heathen have taken
gold and goods, yet they are kind this time. "
Assar replied, "Oh yes, they are kind; I had almost forgotten
it. Mirjam, if I go away wilt thou believe, and go on believing,
that I go on God's errand ? »
"Assar, a dark look from thee is dearer to me than the kindest
from any heathen, and a word of thine is more to me than
many witnesses. But do not leave me! Stay and protect me! "
"I go to protect thee! I go to the heights and to the depths
to call forth the God of Israel. Await his coming! "
Assar went to the King, Antiochus Epiphanes, bent low before
him, and said, "May the Master of the world guide thy steps! "
The King looked at him well pleased, and asked his name;
whereupon Assar answered that he was a man of the tribe of
Juda.
·
The King said, "Few of thy countrymen come to serve me! ”
Assar replied, "If thou wilt permit thy servant a bold word,
King, the fault is thine. "
And when the King, astonished, asked how this might be,
Assar answered, "Because thou art too kind, lord. "
The King turned to his adviser, and said laughingly, "When
we took the treasures of the temple in Jerusalem, they found it
hard enough. "
"O King," said Assar, "silver and gold and precious stones
can be regained, and the Israelites know this; but thou lettest
them keep that which cannot be regained when once it is lost. "
The King answered quickly, "What is that? " and Assar re-
plied: "The Israelites have a God, who is very powerful but
also very jealous. He has always helped them in the time of
need if they held near to him and did not worship strange gods;
for this his jealousy will not bear. When they do this he
XI-407
## p. 6498 (#484) ###########################################
6498
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
forsakes them. But thou, O King, hast taken their silver and
gold and jewels, but hast let them keep the God who gives it all
back to them. They know this; and so they smile at thee, and
await that thou shalt be thrown into the dust by him, and they
will arise his avengers, and persecute thy men. "
The King paled; he remembered his loss in Egypt, and he
feared that if the enemy pursued him he should find help in
Israel; and he said, "What cught we to do? "
Assar replied: "If thou wilt permit thy servant to utter his
humble advice, thou shouldst use severity and forbid their pray-
ing to the God they call Jehovah, and order them to pray to thy
gods. "
The King's adviser looked at Assar and asked, "Hast thou
offered up sacrifice to our gods? "
Assar replied, "I am ready. "
They led him to the altar, and on the way thither Assar
said: "Lord, all-powerful God! Thou who seest the heart and
not alone the deeds of the hand, be my witness! It is written:
'And it shall happen in that same hour that I shall wipe out the
name of idols out of the land, and they shall be remembered
no more, and the unclean spirit shall I cause to depart from the
country. ' Do thou according to thy word, O Lord! Amen! "
When the sacrifice was brought, Assar was dressed in festive
robes on the word of the King, and a place was given him
among the King's friends, and orders were sent out throughout
the country, according to what he had said.
And to Modin too came the King's messenger; and when the
rabbi heard of it, he went with his five sons to the large prayer-
house, and read maledictions over those who worshiped idols and
blessings over those who were faithful to Jehovah. And those
who were present noticed that the rabbi's eldest son, Judas Mac-
cabæus, carried a sword under his mantle.
-
And when they came out of the prayer-house they saw that a
heathen altar had been built, and there was a Jew making his
sacrifice; and when Rabbi Mattathew saw this, he hastened to the
spot and seized the knife of sacrifice and thrust it into the Jew's
breast. The centurion who stood by, and who was the same that
had previously talked to Mirjam the rabbi's daughter at the
brook, would kill the rabbi; but Judas Maccabæus drew his
sword quickly, and struck the centurion in the throat and killed
him. Then the King's men gathered; but the street was narrow,
## p. 6499 (#485) ###########################################
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6499
and Judas Maccabæus went last and shielded all, until the night
came and they had got their women together and could flee to
the mountains. And then began the fight of the men of Juda
against the Macedonians, the Greeks, and the Assyrians, and they
killed those of the King's men who pursued them into the mount-
ains.
Then King Antiochus the temple-robber said to Assar, "This
is thy advice! " to which Assar replied: "No, King; this is the
advice of thy warriors, since they allow the rebels to escape and
do not treat them without mercy. For this know, O King, that
so long as thou art merciful to this people there is no hope. "
Then there were issued strict orders to torture and kill all
who refused to obey the King's command; and all those in Israel
in whom Jehovah was still living rose to fight with Mattathew
and his sons, and men and women, yea, children even, were
moved to suffer death for the Lord and his law.
But at this time it happened that King Antiochus the temple-
destroyer was visited by his shameful disease, and he sent mes-
sengers with rich gifts to all oracles and temples to seek help;
but they could find none.
Then he said to Assar, "Thou saidst once that the God of
Israel was a mighty God; could not he cure me of my disease? "
Assar replied: "I have indeed heard from my childhood that
the God of Israel is a mighty God; but O King, thou wilt not
give in to that hard people and make peace with their God? "
The King answered, "I must live! How can he be paci-
fied ? »
Assar said, "It is too heavy a sacrifice for so great a king
as thee.
Their wise men assert that God has given them the
country for a possession, and it would be necessary for thee not
only to allow them to worship their God, but also to call back
thy men and make a covenant with them so that they should
merely pay a tribute to thee. But this is more than I can
advise. "
The King answered, "Much does a man give for his life.
Dost thou believe that he is a great God ? »
"I have seen a great proof of it, lord. "
"What is that? "
"This: that even a greatness like thine was as nothing to his. "
"It is not a dishonor to be smaller than the Immortals.
Go
and prepare all, according to what we have spoken. "
## p. 6500 (#486) ###########################################
6500
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
Then Assar prepared all and had the King's men called back,
and promised the inhabitants peace and led the King on his way
to Jerusalem; and they passed by Modin.
And the King's sufferings being very great, he had himself
carried into the house of prayers, before the holy, and he prayed
to the God of Israel. And the men of Juda stood around him;
they stood high and he lay low, and they had saved their souls.
But when the King was carried out, one of the Maccabæan
warriors recognized Assar and cried out, "Thou hast offered up
sacrifices to idols, and from thee have come the evil counsels
which have cost precious blood! Thou shalt be wiped off the
earth! "
He drew his sword and aimed at him, but Mirjam, who had
come up, threw herself between them with the cry, "He called
forth Israel's God! " And the steel which was meant for him
pierced her.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 6500 (#487) ###########################################
## p. 6500 (#488) ###########################################
GOLDSMITH.
## p. 6500 (#489) ###########################################
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## p. 6501 (#491) ###########################################
6501
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
(1728-1774)
BY CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY
LIVER GOLDSMITH was born at Pallas, County Longford, Ire-
land, November 10th, 1728. That was the year in which
Pope issued his 'Dunciad,' Gay his 'Beggar's Opera,' and
Thomson his 'Spring. ' Goldsmith's father was a clergyman of the
Established Church. In 1730 the family removed to Lissoy, a better
living than that of Pallas. Oliver's school days in and around West-
meath were unsatisfactory; so also his course at Trinity, 1744 to 1749.
For the next two years he loafed at Ballymahon, living on his mother,
then a widow, and making vain attempts to take orders, to teach, to
enter a law course, to sail for America. He was a bad sixpence.
Finally his uncle Contarine, who saw good stuff in the awkward,
ugly, humorous, and reckless youth, got him off to Edinburgh, where
he studied medicine till 1754.
In 1754 he is studying, or pretending to study, at Leyden. In 1755
and 1756 he is singing, fluting, and otherwise "beating" his way
through Europe, whence he returns with a mythical M. B. degree.
From 1756 to 1759 he is in London, teaching, serving an apothecary,
practicing medicine, reading proof, writing as a hack, planning to prac-
tice surgery in Coromandel, failing to qualify as a hospital mate, and
in general only not starving. In 1759 Dr. Percy finds him in Green
Arbor Court amid a colony of washerwomen, writing an 'Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. ' Next follows
the appearance of that work, and his acquaintance with publishers
and men of letters. In 1761, with Percy, comes Johnson to visit him.
In 1764 Goldsmith is one of the members of the famous Literary Club,
where he counts among his friends, besides Percy and Johnson, Rey-
nolds, Boswell, Garrick, Burke, and others who shone with their own
or reflected light.
The rest of his life, spent principally in or near
London, is associated with his literary career. He died April 4th,
1774, and was buried near the Temple Church.
Goldsmith was an essayist and critic, a story-writer, a poet, a
comic dramatist, and a literary drudge: the last all the time, the
others "between whiles. " His drudgery produced such works as the
'Memoirs of Voltaire,' the Life of Nash,' two Histories of England,
Histories of Rome and Greece, Lives of Parnell and Bolingbroke.
## p. 6502 (#492) ###########################################
6502
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The History of Animated Nature' was undertaken as an industry,
but it reads, as Johnson said, "like a Persian tale,”—and of course,
the more Persian the less like nature. For the prose of Goldsmith
writing for a suit of clothes or for immortality is all of a piece,
inimitable. "Nothing," says he, in his 'Essay on Taste,' "has been
so often explained, and yet so little understood, as simplicity in writ-
ing.
It is no other than beautiful nature, without affectation
or extraneous ornament. "
This ingenuous elegance is the accent of Goldsmith's work in
verse and prose. It is nature improved, not from without but by
exquisite and esoteric art, the better to prove its innate virtue and
display its artless charm. Such a style is based upon a delicate
"sensibility to the graces of natural and moral beauty and decorum. "
Hence the ideographic power, the directness, the sympathy, the
lambent humor that characterize the Essays,' the 'Vicar,' the 'De-
serted Village,' and 'She Stoops to Conquer. ' This is the "plain
language of ancient faith and sincerity" that, pretending to no
novelty, renovated the prose of the eighteenth century, knocked the
stilts from under Addison and Steele, tipped half the Latinity out of
Johnson, and readjusted his ballast. Goldsmith goes without sprawl-
ing or tiptoeing; he sails without rolling. He borrows the careless-
ness but not the ostentation of the Spectator; the dignity but not the
ponderosity of 'Rasselas'; and produces the prose of natural ease,
the sweetest English of the century. It in turn prefaced the way
for Charles Lamb, Hunt, and Sydney Smith. "It were to be wished
that we no longer found pleasure with the inflated style," writes
Goldsmith in his 'Polite Learning. "We should dispense with loaded
epithet and dressing up trifles with dignity.
Let us, instead
of writing finely, try to write naturally; not hunt after lofty expres-
sions to deliver mean ideas, nor be forever gaping when we only
mean to deliver a whisper. "
•
Just this naturalness constitutes the charm of the essay on 'The
Bee' (1759), and of the essays collected in 1765. We do not read him
for information: whether he knows more or less of his subject,
whether he writes of Charles XII. , or Dress, the Opera, Poetry, or
Education, we read him for simplicity and humor. Still, his critical
estimates, while they may not always square with ours, evince not
only good sense and æsthetic principle, but a range of reading not
at all ordinary. When he condemns Hamlet's great soliloquy we may
smile, but in judicial respect for the father of our drama he yields to
none of his contemporaries. The selections that he includes in his
'Beauties of English Poetry' would argue a conventional taste; but in
his Essay on Poetry Distinguished from the Other Arts,' he not only
defines poetry in terms that might content the Wordsworthians, he
## p. 6503 (#493) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6503
also to a certain extent anticipates Wordsworth's estimate of poetic
figures.
While he makes no violent breach with the classical school, he
prophesies the critical doctrine of the nineteenth century. He calls
for the "energetic language of simple nature, which is now grown
into disrepute. " "If the production does not keep nature in view, it
will be destitute of truth and probability, without which the beauties
of imitation cannot subsist. " Still he by no means falls into the
quagmire of realism. For, continues he, "if on the other hand the
imitation is so close as to be mistaken for nature, the pleasure will
then cease, because the piunois, or imitation, no longer appears. "
Even when wrong, Goldsmith is generally half-way right; and this
is especially true of the critical judgments contained in his first pub-
lished book. The impudence of The Enquiry' (1759) is delicious.
What this young Irishman, fluting it through Europe some five years
before, had not learned about the 'Condition of Polite Learning' in
its principal countries, might fill a ponderous folio. What he did
learn, eked out with harmless misstatement, flashes of inspiration, and
a clever argument to prove that criticism has always been the foe of
letters, managed to fill a respectable duodecimo, and brought him to
the notice of publishers and scholars.
The essay has catholicity, independence, and wit, and it carries
itself with whimsical ease. Every sentence steps out sprightly. Of
the French Encyclopédies: "Wits and dunces contribute their share,
and Diderot as well as Desmaretz are candidates for oblivion. The
genius of the first supplies the gale of favor, and the latter adds the
useful ballast of stupidity. " Of the Germans: "They write through
volumes, while they do not think through a page.
Were an-
gels to write books, they never would write folios. " And again: “If
criticism could have improved the taste of a people, the Germans
would have been the most polite nation alive. " That settles the En-
cyclopedias and the Germans. So each nationality is sententiously
reviewed and dismissed with an epigram that even to-day sounds
not altogether unjust, rather amusing and urbane than acrimonious.
But it was not until Goldsmith began the series of letters in the
Public Ledger (1760), that was afterwards published as 'The Citizen
of the World,' that he took London. These letters purport to be
from a philosophic Chinaman in Europe to his friends at home.
Grave, gay, serene, ironical, they were at once an amusing image
and a genial censor of current manners and morals. They are no
less creative than critical; equally classic for the characters they
contain: the Gentleman in Black, Beau Tibbs and his wife, the
pawnbroker's widow, Tim Syllabub, and the procession of minor per-
sonages, romantic or ridiculous, but unique,- equally classic for these
·
•
## p. 6504 (#494) ###########################################
6504
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
characters and for the satire of the conception. These are Gold-
smith's best sketches. Though the prose is not always precise, it
seems to be clear, and is simple. The writer cares more for the
judicious than the sublime; for the quaint, the comic, and the agree-
able than the pathetic. He chuckles with sly laughter-genial, sym-
pathetic; he looses his arrow phosphorescent with wit, but not barbed,
dipped in something subacid, - straight for the heart. Not Irving
alone, but Thackeray, stands in line of descent from the Goldsmith
of the Citizen. '
'The Traveller,' polished ad unguem, appeared in 1764, and placed
Goldsmith in the first rank of poets then living; but of that later.
There is good reason for believing that his masterpiece in prose,
'The Vicar of Wakefield,' had been written as early as 1762, although
it was not published until 1766. It made Goldsmith's mark as a story-
teller. One can readily imagine how, after the grim humor of Smol-
lett, the broad and risqué realism of Fielding, the loitering of Sterne,
and the moralizing of Richardson, the public would seize with a
sense of relief upon this unpretentious chronicle of a country clergy-
man's life: his peaceful home, its ruin, its restoration. Not because
the narrative was quieter and simpler, shorter and more direct than
other narratives, but because to its humor, realism, grace, and depth
it added the charity of First Corinthians Thirteenth. England soon
discovered that the borders of the humanities had been extended;
that the Vicar and his "durable" wife, Moses, Olivia with the pre-
natal tendency to romance, Sophia, the graceless Jenkinson,-the
habit and temper of the whole,- were a new province. The prose
idyl, with all its beauty and charity, does not entitle Goldsmith to
rank with the great novelists; but of its kind, in spite of faults of
inaccuracy, improbability, and impossibility, it is first and best. Goethe
read and re-read it with moral and æsthetic benefit; and the spirit
of Goldsmith is not far to seek in 'Hermann and Dorothea. ' The
Vicar is perhaps the most popular of English classics in foreign
lands.
In poetry, if Goldsmith did not write much, it was for lack of
opportunity. What he did write is good, nearly all of it.
The phi-
losophy of The Traveller' (1764) and the political economy of The
Deserted Village' (1770) may be dubious, but the poetry is true.
There is in both a heartiness which discards the formalized emotion,
prefers the touch of nature and the homely adjective. The char-
acteristic is almost feminine in the description of Auburn: "Dear
lovely bowers"; it is inevitable, artless, in 'The Traveller': "His
first, best country ever is at home. " But on the other hand, the
curiosa felicitas marks every line, the nice selection of just the word
or phrase richest in association, redolent of tradition, harmonious,
## p. 6505 (#495) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6505
classically proper, but still natural, true, and apt. "My heart un-
travell'd fondly turns to thee" - not a word but is hearty; and for
all that, the line is stamped with the academic authority of centuries:
"Cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt. " Both poems
are characterized by the infrequency of epithet and figure, the infre-
quency that marks sincerity and that heightens pleasure,—and by a
cunning in the use of proper names, resonant, remote, suggestive:
"On Idra's cliffs or Arno's shelvy side," the cunning of a musical
poem. Both poems vibrate with personality, recall the experience
of the writer. It would be hard to choose between them; but The
Deserted Village' strikes the homelier chord, comes nearer, with its
natural pathos, its sidelong smile, and its perennial novelty, to the
heart of him who knows.
Goldsmith is less eloquent but more natural than Dryden, less
precise but more simple than Pope. In poetic sensibility he has the
advantage of both. Were the volume of his verse not so slight, were
his conceptions more sublime, and their embodiment more epic or
dramatic, he might rank with the greatest of his century. As it is,
in imaginative insight he has no superior in the eighteenth century;
in observation, pathos, representative power, no equal: Dryden, Pope,
Gray, Thomson, Young,-none but Collins approaches him. The
reflective or descriptive poem can of course not compete with the
drama, epic, or even lyric of corresponding merit in its respective
kind. But Goldsmith's poems are the best of their kind, better than
all but the best in other kinds. His conception of life is more gen-
erous and direct, hence truer and gentler, than that of the Augustan
age. Raising no revolt against classical principles, he rejects the
artifices of decadent classicism, returns to nature, and expresses it
simply. He is consequently in this respect the harbinger of Cowper,
Crabbe, Bloomfield, Clare, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. In technique
also he breaks away from Pope. His larger movement, his easier
modulation, his richer tone, his rarer epithet and epigram, his meta-
phor "glowing from the heart," mark the defection from the poetry
of cold conceit.
For lack of space we can only refer to the romantic quality of his
ballad 'Edwin and Angelina' (1765), the spontaneous humor of 'The
Haunch of Venison,' and the exquisite satire of 'Retaliation' (1774).
To appreciate the historical position of Goldsmith's comedies, one
must regard them as a reaction against the school that had held the
stage since the beginning of the century a "genteel" and "senti-
mental" school, fearing to expose vice or ridicule absurdity. But
Goldsmith felt that absurdity was the comic poet's game. Reverting
therefore to Farquhar and the Comedy of Manners, he revived that
species, at the same time infusing a strain of the "humors" of the
----
## p. 6506 (#496) ###########################################
6506
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
tribe of Ben. Hence the approbation that welcomed his first comedy,
and the applause that greeted the second. For The Good-natured
Man' (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773) did by example what
Hugh Kelly's 'Piety in Pattens' aimed to do by ridicule,- ousted
the hybrid comedy (tradesman's tragedy, Voltaire called it) of which
The Conscious Lovers' had been the most tolerable specimen, and
The School for Lovers' the most decorous and dull.
>>
But "Goldy had not only the gift of weighing the times, he had
the gift of the popular dramatist. His dramatis persona are on the
one hand nearly all legitimate descendants of the national comedy,
though none is a copy from dramatic predecessors; on the other
hand, they are in every instance "imitations" of real life, more than
once of some aspect of his own life; but none is so close an imitation
as to detract from the pleasure which fiction should afford. The for-
mer quality makes his characters look familiar; the latter, true. So
he accomplishes the feat most difficult for the dramatist: while ideal-
izing the individual in order to realize the type, he does not for a
moment lose the sympathy of his audience.
Even in his earlier comedy these two characteristics are manifest.
In the world of drama, young Honeywood is the legitimate descend-
ant of Massinger's Wellborn on the one side, and of Congreve's Val-
entine Legend on the other, with a more distant collateral resemblance
to Ben Jonson's Younger Knowell. But in the field of experience
this "Good-natured Man" is that aspect of "Goldy" himself which,
when he was poorest, made him not so poor but that Irishmen poorer
still could live on him; that aspect of the glorious "idiot in affairs »
which could make to the Earl of Northumberland, willing to be kind,
no other suggestion of his wants than that he had a brother in Ire-
land, "poor, a clergyman, and much in need of help. " Similarly might
those rare creations Croaker and Jack Lofty be traced to their pred-
ecessors in the field of drama, even though remote. That they had
their analogies in the life of Goldsmith, and have them in the lives
of others, it is unnecessary to prove. But graphic as these characters
are, they cannot make of 'The Good-natured Man' more than a pass-
able second to 'She Stoops to Conquer. ' For the premises of the
plot are absurd, if not impossible; the complication is not much more
natural than that of a Punch-and-Judy show, and the dénouement but
one shade less improbable than that of The Vicar of Wakefield. '
The value of the play is principally historical, not æsthetic.
Congreve's 'Love for Love,' Vanbrugh's 'Relapse,' Farquhar's
'Beaux' Stratagem,' Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and Sheri-
dan's 'School for Scandal,' are the best comedies written since Jon-
son, Fletcher, and Massinger held the stage. In plot and diction 'She
Stoops to Conquer' is equaled by Congreve; in character-drawing by
## p. 6507 (#497) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6507
Vanbrugh; in dramatic ease by Farquhar, in observation and wit by
Sheridan: but by none is it equaled in humor, and in naturalness of
dialogue it is facile princeps. Here again the characterization presents
the twofold charm of universality and reality. Young Marlow is the
traditional lover of the type of Young Bellair, Mirabell, and Aimwell,
suggesting each in turn but different from all; he is also, in his com-
bination of embarrassment and impudence, not altogether unlike the
lad Oliver who, years ago, on a journey back to school, had mistaken
Squire Featherstone's house in Ardagh for an inn.
A similar adjustment of dramatic type and historic individual con-
tributes to the durability of Tony Lumpkin. In his dramatis persona
he is a practical joker of the family of Diccon and Truewit, and first
cousin on the Blenkinsop side to that horse-flesh Sir Harry Beagle.
But Anthony is more than the practical joker or the squire booby:
he is a near relative of Captain O'Blunder and that whole country-
side of generous, touch-and-go Irishmen; while in reality, in pro-
pria persona, he is that aspect of Noll Goldsmith that "lived the
buckeen in Ballymahon. Of the other characters of the play, Hard-
castle, Mrs. Hardcastle, and Kate have a like prerogative of immor-
tality. They are royally descended and personally unique.
The comedy has been absurdly called farcical. There is much
less of the farcical than in many a so-called "legitimate" comedy.
None of the circumstances are purely fortuitous; none unnecessary.
Humor and caprice tend steadily to complicate the action, and by nat-
ural interaction prepare the way for the dénouement. The misunder-
standings are the more piquant because of their manifest irony and
their ephemeral character. Indeed, if any fault is to be found with
the play, it is that Goldsmith did not let it resolve itself without the
assistance of Sir Charles Marlow.
One peculiarity not yet mentioned is illustrative of Goldsmith's
method. A system of mutual borrowing characterizes his works. The
same thought, in the same or nearly the same language, occurs in
half a dozen. 'The Enquiry' lends a phrase to 'The Citizen,' who
passes it on to the Vicar,' who, thinking it too good to keep, hands
it over to the Good-natured Man,' whence it is borrowed by She
Stoops to Conquer,' and turned to look like new,- like a large family
of sisters with a small wardrobe in common. This habit does not
indicate poverty of invention in Goldsmith, but associative imagina-
tion and artistic conservatism.
Goldsmith was the only Irish story-writer and poet of his century.
Four Irishmen adorned the prose of the period: Goldsmith is as emi-
nent in the natural style as Swift in the satiric, or Steele in the pol-
ished, or Burke in the grand. In comedy the Irish led; but Steele,
Macklin, Murphy, Kelly, do not compare with Farquhar, Sheridan, and
## p. 6508 (#498) ###########################################
6508
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Goldsmith. The worst work of these is good, and their best is the
best of the century.
Turning to Goldsmith the man, what the "draggle-tail Muses"
paid him we find him spending on dress and rooms and jovial mag-
nificence, on relatives or countrymen or the unknown poor, with such
freedom that he is never relieved of the necessity of drudgery. Still,
sensitive, good-natured, improvident, Irish, and a genius, — Gold-
smith lived as happy a life as his disposition would allow. He had
the companionship of congenial friends, the love of men like Johnson
and Reynolds, the final assurance that his art was appreciated by the
public. To be sure, he was never out of debt, but that was his own
fault; he was never out of credit either. "Was there ever poet so
trusted? " exclaimed Johnson, after this poet had got beyond reach
of his creditors. His difficulties however affected him as they affect
most Irishmen,-only by cataclysms. He was serene or wretched, but
generally the former: he packed noctes cænæque deûm by the dozen
into his life. "There is no man," said Reynolds, "whose company is
more liked. " But maybe that was because his naïveté, his brogue,
his absent-mindedness, and his blunders (real or apparent) made him
a ready butt for ridicule, not at the hands of Reynolds or Johnson,
but of Beauclerk and the rest. For though his humor was sly, and
his wit inimitable, Goldsmith's conversation was queer. It seemed to
go by contraries. If permitted, he would ramble along in his hesi-
tating, inconsequential fashion, on any subject under heaven — “too
eager," thought Johnson, "to get on without knowing how he should
get off. "
But if ignored, he would sit silent and apart,-sulking,
thought Boswell. In fact, both the Dictator and laird of Auchinleck
were of a mind that he tried too much to shine in conversation, for
which he had no temper. But «< Goldy's" bons-mots — such as the
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis" to Johnson, as they
passed under the heads on Temple Bar,-make it evident that Gar-
rick, with his
-
"Here lies Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,»
and most of the members of the Literary Club, did not understand
their Irishman. A timidity born of rough experience may have oc-
casionally oppressed, a sensitiveness to ridicule or indifference may
have confused him, a desire for approbation may frequently have led
him to speak when silence had been golden; but that his conversa-
tion was "foolish" is the judgment of Philistines who make conver-
sation an industry, not an amusement or an art.
Boswell himself recounts more witty sayings than incomprehen-
sible. And the "incomprehensible" are so only to Boswells and
## p. 6509 (#499) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6509
Hawkinses, who can hardly be expected to appreciate a humor, the
vein of which is a mockery of their own solemn stupidity. Probably
Goldsmith did say unconsidered things; he liked to think aloud in
company, to "rattle on" for diversion. Keenly alive to the riches of
language, he was the more likely to feel the embarrassment of im-
promptu selection; and while he was too much of a genius to keep
count of every pearl, he was too considerate of his fellows to cast
pearls only. But most of his fellows (Reynolds excepted) appreciated
neither his drollery nor his unselfishness, had not been educated up
to the type of Irishman that with an artistic love of fun, is ever
ready to promote the gayety of nations by sacrificing itself in the
interest of laughter. For none but an artist can, without cracking a
smile, offer up his wit on the altar of his humor.
Prior describes Goldsmith as something under the middle size,
sturdy, active, apparently capable of endurance; pale, forehead and
upper lip rather projecting, face round, pitted with small-pox, and
marked with strong lines of thinking. But Reynolds's painting ideal-
izes and therefore best expresses the man, his twofold nature: on the
one hand, self-depreciatory, generous, and improvident; on the other,
aspiring, hungry for approval, laborious. Just such a man as would
gild poverty with a smile, decline patronage and force his last six-
pence on a street-singer, pile Pelion on Ossa for his publishers and
turn out cameos for art.
Charter Mille Gayley
THE VICAR'S FAMILY BECOME AMBITIOUS
From The Vicar of Wakefield'
NOW began to find that all my long and painful lectures upon
temperance, simplicity, and contentment were entirely disre-
garded. The distinctions lately paid us by our betters awak-
ened that pride which I had laid asleep, but not removed. Our
windows again, as formerly, were filled with washes for the neck
and face. The sun was dreaded as an enemy to the skin with-
out doors, and the fire as a spoiler of the complexion within.
My wife observed that rising too early would hurt her daughters'
eyes, that working after dinner would redden their noses, and
## p. 6510 (#500) ###########################################
6510
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
she convinced me that the hands never looked so white as when
they did nothing. Instead therefore of finishing George's shirts,
we now had them new-modeling their old gauzes, or flourishing
upon catgut. The poor Miss Flamboroughs, their former gay
companions, were cast off as mean acquaintance, and the whole
conversation ran upon high life and high-lived company, with
pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.
But we could have borne all this, had not a fortune-telling
gypsy come to raise us into perfect sublimity. The tawny sibyl
no sooner appeared than my girls came running to me for a
shilling apiece, to cross her hand with silver. To say the truth,
I was tired of being always wise, and could not help gratifying
their request, because I loved to see them happy. I gave each
of them a shilling, though for the honor of the family it must be
observed that they never went without money themselves, as my
wife always generously let them have a guinea each to keep in
their pockets, but with strict injunctions never to change it.
After they had been closeted up with the fortune-teller for some
time, I knew by their looks, upon their returning, that they had
been promised something great. "Well, my girls, how have you
sped? Tell me, Livy, has the fortune-teller given thee a penny-
worth? " "I protest, papa," says the girl, "I believe she deals
with somebody that is not right, for she positively declared that
I am to be married to a squire in less than a twelvemonth!
"Well now, Sophy, my child," said I, "and what sort of a hus-
band are you to have? " "Sir," replied she, "I am to have a
lord soon after my sister has married the squire. " "How," cried
I, "is that all you are to have for your two shillings? Only
a lord and a squire for two shillings! You fools, I could have
promised you a prince and a nabob for half the money! "
>>
This curiosity of theirs, however, was attended with very seri-
ous effects: we now began to think ourselves designed by the
stars to something exalted, and already anticipated our future.
grandeur.
IT HAS been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it
once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view
are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first
case we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, nature
cooks it for us. It is impossible to repeat the train of agreeable
reveries we called up for our entertainment. We looked upon our
## p. 6511 (#501) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6511
fortunes as once more rising; and as the whole parish asserted
that the Squire was in love with my daughter, she was actually
so with him, for they persuaded her into the passion. In this
agreeable interval my wife had the most lucky dreams in the
world, which she took care to tell us every morning with great
solemnity and exactness. It was one night a coffin and cross-
bones, the sign of an approaching wedding; at another time she
imagined her daughter's pockets filled with farthings, a certain
sign of their being shortly stuffed with gold. The girls them-
selves had their omens. They felt strange kisses on their lips;
they saw rings in the candle; purses bounced from the fire, and
true-love knots lurked in the bottom of every teacup.
Towards the end of the week we received a card from the
town ladies, in which, with their compliments, they hoped to
see all our family at church the Sunday following. All Saturday
morning I could perceive, in consequence of this, my wife and
daughters in close conference together, and now and then glan-
cing at me with looks that betrayed a latent plot. To be sincere,
I had strong suspicions that some absurd proposal was preparing
for appearing with splendor the next day. In the evening they
began their operations in a very regular manner, and my wife
undertook to conduct the siege. After tea, when I seemed in
spirits, she began thus: "I fancy, Charles my dear, we shall
have a great deal of good company at our church to-morrow. "
"Perhaps we may, my dear," returned I; "though you need be
under no uneasiness about that; you shall have a sermon whether
there be or not. " << That is what I expect," returned she; “but
I think, my dear, we ought to appear there as decently as pos-
sible, for who knows what may happen? » "Your precautions,"
replied I, are highly commendable. A decent behavior and
appearance in church is what charms me. We should be devout
and humble, cheerful and serene.
spite of his cosmopolitan spirit, he has always loved two nationalities
above all others and equally well,- the Jewish and the Danish. He
has looked upon himself as a sort of noble-born bastard; and with
the bat of the fable he has said alternately
to the mice, I am a mouse,' and to the
birds, 'I have wings. ' He has endeavored
to give his answer to the questions of the
Jew's place in modern culture. »
Goldschmidt was born on the 26th of
October, 1819. His early childhood was
spent partly in the country, in the full free-
dom of country life, and partly in the city,
where he was sent to school in preparation
for the professional career his father had
planned for him, in preference to a business
life like his own. Goldschmidt took part
in the religious instruction of the school, at
the same time observing the customs of the
Jewish ritual at home without a full understanding of its meaning,-
somewhat as he was taught to read Hebrew without being able to
translate a word of it into Danish. In the senior class his religious
instructor let him join in the Bible reading, but refused to admit him
to the catechism class; as a consequence he failed to answer a few
questions on his examination papers, and fell just short of a maxi-
mum. This made him feel that he was ostracized by his Jewish
birth, and put an end to his desire for further academic studies.
At the age of eighteen he began his journalistic career as editor
of a provincial paper, the care of which cost him a lawsuit and sub-
jected him to a year's censorship. Soon after, he sold the paper for
two hundred dollars, and with this money he started the Copenhagen
weekly The Corsair, which in no time gained a large reading public,
GOLDSCHMIDT
## p. 6494 (#480) ###########################################
6494
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
and whose Friday appearance was awaited with weekly increasing
interest. The editorials were given up to æsthetic and poetic dis-
cussions, and the small matter treated the questions of the day
with a pointed wit that soon made The Corsair as widely feared
as it was eagerly read. He had reached only the third number when
it was put under censorship, and lawsuits followed in quick suc-
cession. Goldschmidt did not officially assume the responsibility of
editor, although it was an open secret that he was author of most of
the articles; publicly the blows were warded off by pretended owners
whose names were often changed. One of the few men whom The
Corsair left unattacked was Sören Kierkegaard, for whose literary and
scholarly talents Goldschmidt had great respect. That The Corsair
was under the ban of the law, so to speak, and had brought him
even a four-days' imprisonment, was a small matter to Goldschmidt;
but when Kierkegaard passed a scathing moral judgment on the paper,
Goldschmidt sold out for four thousand dollars and started with this
sum on his travels, "to get rid of wit and learn something better. "
In 1847 he was again back in Copenhagen, and began life anew as
editor of North and South, a weekly containing excellent æsthetic
and critical studies, but mainly important on account of its social
and political influence. Already, in the time of The Corsair, Gold-
schmidt had begun his work as novelist with A Jew,' written in
1843-45, and had taken possession of the field which became his own.
It was
a promising book, that met with immediate appreciation.
Even Kierkegaard forgot for a moment the editor of The Corsair in
his praise. The Jews, however, looked upon the descriptions of inti-
mate Jewish family life somewhat as a desecration of the Holy of
Holies; and if broad-minded enough to forgive this, thought it unwise
to accentuate the Jew's position as an element apart in social life.
It argues a certain narrowness in Goldschmidt that he has never
been able to refrain from striking this note, and Brandes blames him
for the bad taste of "continually serving his grandmother with sharp
sauce. "
Goldschmidt wrote another long novel, 'Homeless'; but it is prin-
cipally in his shorter works, such as 'Love Stories from Many Coun-
tries,' 'Maser,' and 'Avromche Nightingale,' that he has left a great
and good gift to Danish literature. The shorter his composition, the
more perfect was his treatment. He was above all a stylist.
He always had a tendency to mysticism, and in his last years
he was greatly taken up with his theory of Nemesis, on which he
wrote a book, containing much that is suggestive but also much that
is obviously the result of the wish to make everything conform to a
pet theory. His lasting importance will be as the first and foremost
influence on modern Danish prose.
## p. 6495 (#481) ###########################################
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6495
ASSAR AND MIRJAM
From 'Love Stories from Many Countries >
A
SSAR, son of Juda, a valiant and jealous youth, came walking
toward Modin, when from one of the hills he saw a great
sight on the plain. Here warriors rode a chariot race in
a great circle; many people stood about, calling loudly to the
drivers and the spirited horses. Yonder were horsemen in golden
armor, trying to catch rings on their spears; and drums were
beaten in honor of the winner. On the outskirts of the plain
was a little grove of olive-trees; it was not dense.
In the grove
stood a nude woman hewn in marble; her hair was of gold and
her eyes were black, and young girls danced around her with
garlands of flowers.
Then Assar said: "Woe unto us! These are Jewish maidens
dancing around the idol, and these are Greek men carrying arms
on our holy ground and playing at games as if they were in their
home! and no Jewish man makes the game dangerous for them!
He went down the hill and came to a thicket reaching down
to a little brook. On the other side of the brook stood a Greek
centurion, a young man, and he was talking to a girl, who stood
on this side of the brook on the edge of the thicket.
The warrior said: "Thou sayest that thy God forbids thee to
go over into the grove. What a dark and unfriendly God they
have given thee, beautiful child of Juda! He hates thy youth,
and the joy of life, and the roses which ought to crown thy
black hair. My gods are of a friendlier mind toward mortals.
Every morning Apollo drives his glorious span over the arch of
the heavens and lights warriors to their deeds; Selene's milder
torch glows at night for lovers, and to those who have worshiped
her in this life beautiful Aphrodite gives eternal life on her
blessed isle. It is her statue standing in the grove. When thou
givest thyself under her protection she gives thee in return a
hero for thy faithful lover, and later on, graceful daughter of
Juda, some god will set thee with thy radiant eyes among the
stars, to be a light to mortals and a witness of the beauty of
earthly love. "
-
The young girl might have answered; but at this moment
Assar was near her, and she knew him, and he saw that it was
Mirjam, Rabbi Mattathew's daughter,-the woman he loved, and
who was his promised bride. She turned and followed him; but
## p. 6496 (#482) ###########################################
6496
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
the warrior on the other side of the brook called out,
right hast thou to lead this maiden away? "
Assar replied, "I have no right. "
"Then why dost thou go with him, sweet daughter of Juda? »
cried the warrior.
« What
Mirjam did not answer, but Assar said, "Because she has not
yet given up serving her Master. "
"Who is her master? " asked the warrior. "I can buy thee
freedom, my beautiful child! "
Assar replied, "I wish thou may'st see him. ""
The warrior, who could not cross the brook at this place, or
anywhere near it, called as they went away, "Tell me thy mas-
ter's name! "
Assar turned and answered, "I will beg him come to thee. "
A hill hid them from the eyes of the warrior, and Mirjam
said, "Assar! "
Assar replied, "Mirjam! I have never loved thee as dearly
as I do to-day-I do not know if it is a
-I do not know if it is a curse or a blessing
which is in my veins. Thou hast listened to the words of the
heathen. "
"I listened to them because he spoke kindly; but I have not
betrayed the Lord nor thee. "
"Thou hast permitted his words to reach thy ear and thy
soul. "
"What could I do, Assar? He spoke kindly. "
Assar stood still, and said to himself, "Yes, he spoke kindly.
They do speak kindly. And they spoke kind words to the poor
girls who danced around the idol in the grove. Had they spoken
harsh and threatening words, they would not have danced. "
Again he stood still, and said to himself, "If they came using
force, the rabbi would kill her and then himself, or she would
throw herself from a rock of her own free will. But who can
set a guard to watch over kind words? "
The third time he stood still, and said, "O Israel, thou canst
not bear kind words! "
Mirjam thought that he suspected her; and she stood still
and said, "I am a rabbi's daughter! "
Assar replied, "O Mirjam, I am Assar, and I will be the son
of my own actions. »
* "Whoever sees God must die. "
## p. 6497 (#483) ###########################################
MEYR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6497
"For God's sake," exclaimed Mirjam, "do not seek that war-
rior, and do not enter into a quarrel with him! He will kill thee
or have thee put into prison. There is misery enough in Israel!
The strangers have entered our towns. Let us bend our heads
and await the will of God, but not challenge! Assar, I should
die if anything happened to thee! "
"And what would I do if anything happened to thee! My
head swims! Whither should I flee? Would thy father and thy
brothers flee to the wilds of the mountains? »
"They have spoken of that. But there is no place to flee to
and not much to flee from; for although the heathen have taken
gold and goods, yet they are kind this time. "
Assar replied, "Oh yes, they are kind; I had almost forgotten
it. Mirjam, if I go away wilt thou believe, and go on believing,
that I go on God's errand ? »
"Assar, a dark look from thee is dearer to me than the kindest
from any heathen, and a word of thine is more to me than
many witnesses. But do not leave me! Stay and protect me! "
"I go to protect thee! I go to the heights and to the depths
to call forth the God of Israel. Await his coming! "
Assar went to the King, Antiochus Epiphanes, bent low before
him, and said, "May the Master of the world guide thy steps! "
The King looked at him well pleased, and asked his name;
whereupon Assar answered that he was a man of the tribe of
Juda.
·
The King said, "Few of thy countrymen come to serve me! ”
Assar replied, "If thou wilt permit thy servant a bold word,
King, the fault is thine. "
And when the King, astonished, asked how this might be,
Assar answered, "Because thou art too kind, lord. "
The King turned to his adviser, and said laughingly, "When
we took the treasures of the temple in Jerusalem, they found it
hard enough. "
"O King," said Assar, "silver and gold and precious stones
can be regained, and the Israelites know this; but thou lettest
them keep that which cannot be regained when once it is lost. "
The King answered quickly, "What is that? " and Assar re-
plied: "The Israelites have a God, who is very powerful but
also very jealous. He has always helped them in the time of
need if they held near to him and did not worship strange gods;
for this his jealousy will not bear. When they do this he
XI-407
## p. 6498 (#484) ###########################################
6498
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
forsakes them. But thou, O King, hast taken their silver and
gold and jewels, but hast let them keep the God who gives it all
back to them. They know this; and so they smile at thee, and
await that thou shalt be thrown into the dust by him, and they
will arise his avengers, and persecute thy men. "
The King paled; he remembered his loss in Egypt, and he
feared that if the enemy pursued him he should find help in
Israel; and he said, "What cught we to do? "
Assar replied: "If thou wilt permit thy servant to utter his
humble advice, thou shouldst use severity and forbid their pray-
ing to the God they call Jehovah, and order them to pray to thy
gods. "
The King's adviser looked at Assar and asked, "Hast thou
offered up sacrifice to our gods? "
Assar replied, "I am ready. "
They led him to the altar, and on the way thither Assar
said: "Lord, all-powerful God! Thou who seest the heart and
not alone the deeds of the hand, be my witness! It is written:
'And it shall happen in that same hour that I shall wipe out the
name of idols out of the land, and they shall be remembered
no more, and the unclean spirit shall I cause to depart from the
country. ' Do thou according to thy word, O Lord! Amen! "
When the sacrifice was brought, Assar was dressed in festive
robes on the word of the King, and a place was given him
among the King's friends, and orders were sent out throughout
the country, according to what he had said.
And to Modin too came the King's messenger; and when the
rabbi heard of it, he went with his five sons to the large prayer-
house, and read maledictions over those who worshiped idols and
blessings over those who were faithful to Jehovah. And those
who were present noticed that the rabbi's eldest son, Judas Mac-
cabæus, carried a sword under his mantle.
-
And when they came out of the prayer-house they saw that a
heathen altar had been built, and there was a Jew making his
sacrifice; and when Rabbi Mattathew saw this, he hastened to the
spot and seized the knife of sacrifice and thrust it into the Jew's
breast. The centurion who stood by, and who was the same that
had previously talked to Mirjam the rabbi's daughter at the
brook, would kill the rabbi; but Judas Maccabæus drew his
sword quickly, and struck the centurion in the throat and killed
him. Then the King's men gathered; but the street was narrow,
## p. 6499 (#485) ###########################################
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
6499
and Judas Maccabæus went last and shielded all, until the night
came and they had got their women together and could flee to
the mountains. And then began the fight of the men of Juda
against the Macedonians, the Greeks, and the Assyrians, and they
killed those of the King's men who pursued them into the mount-
ains.
Then King Antiochus the temple-robber said to Assar, "This
is thy advice! " to which Assar replied: "No, King; this is the
advice of thy warriors, since they allow the rebels to escape and
do not treat them without mercy. For this know, O King, that
so long as thou art merciful to this people there is no hope. "
Then there were issued strict orders to torture and kill all
who refused to obey the King's command; and all those in Israel
in whom Jehovah was still living rose to fight with Mattathew
and his sons, and men and women, yea, children even, were
moved to suffer death for the Lord and his law.
But at this time it happened that King Antiochus the temple-
destroyer was visited by his shameful disease, and he sent mes-
sengers with rich gifts to all oracles and temples to seek help;
but they could find none.
Then he said to Assar, "Thou saidst once that the God of
Israel was a mighty God; could not he cure me of my disease? "
Assar replied: "I have indeed heard from my childhood that
the God of Israel is a mighty God; but O King, thou wilt not
give in to that hard people and make peace with their God? "
The King answered, "I must live! How can he be paci-
fied ? »
Assar said, "It is too heavy a sacrifice for so great a king
as thee.
Their wise men assert that God has given them the
country for a possession, and it would be necessary for thee not
only to allow them to worship their God, but also to call back
thy men and make a covenant with them so that they should
merely pay a tribute to thee. But this is more than I can
advise. "
The King answered, "Much does a man give for his life.
Dost thou believe that he is a great God ? »
"I have seen a great proof of it, lord. "
"What is that? "
"This: that even a greatness like thine was as nothing to his. "
"It is not a dishonor to be smaller than the Immortals.
Go
and prepare all, according to what we have spoken. "
## p. 6500 (#486) ###########################################
6500
MEÏR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
Then Assar prepared all and had the King's men called back,
and promised the inhabitants peace and led the King on his way
to Jerusalem; and they passed by Modin.
And the King's sufferings being very great, he had himself
carried into the house of prayers, before the holy, and he prayed
to the God of Israel. And the men of Juda stood around him;
they stood high and he lay low, and they had saved their souls.
But when the King was carried out, one of the Maccabæan
warriors recognized Assar and cried out, "Thou hast offered up
sacrifices to idols, and from thee have come the evil counsels
which have cost precious blood! Thou shalt be wiped off the
earth! "
He drew his sword and aimed at him, but Mirjam, who had
come up, threw herself between them with the cry, "He called
forth Israel's God! " And the steel which was meant for him
pierced her.
Translated for A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by Olga Flinch.
## p. 6500 (#487) ###########################################
## p. 6500 (#488) ###########################################
GOLDSMITH.
## p. 6500 (#489) ###########################################
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## p. 6501 (#491) ###########################################
6501
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
(1728-1774)
BY CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY
LIVER GOLDSMITH was born at Pallas, County Longford, Ire-
land, November 10th, 1728. That was the year in which
Pope issued his 'Dunciad,' Gay his 'Beggar's Opera,' and
Thomson his 'Spring. ' Goldsmith's father was a clergyman of the
Established Church. In 1730 the family removed to Lissoy, a better
living than that of Pallas. Oliver's school days in and around West-
meath were unsatisfactory; so also his course at Trinity, 1744 to 1749.
For the next two years he loafed at Ballymahon, living on his mother,
then a widow, and making vain attempts to take orders, to teach, to
enter a law course, to sail for America. He was a bad sixpence.
Finally his uncle Contarine, who saw good stuff in the awkward,
ugly, humorous, and reckless youth, got him off to Edinburgh, where
he studied medicine till 1754.
In 1754 he is studying, or pretending to study, at Leyden. In 1755
and 1756 he is singing, fluting, and otherwise "beating" his way
through Europe, whence he returns with a mythical M. B. degree.
From 1756 to 1759 he is in London, teaching, serving an apothecary,
practicing medicine, reading proof, writing as a hack, planning to prac-
tice surgery in Coromandel, failing to qualify as a hospital mate, and
in general only not starving. In 1759 Dr. Percy finds him in Green
Arbor Court amid a colony of washerwomen, writing an 'Enquiry
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. ' Next follows
the appearance of that work, and his acquaintance with publishers
and men of letters. In 1761, with Percy, comes Johnson to visit him.
In 1764 Goldsmith is one of the members of the famous Literary Club,
where he counts among his friends, besides Percy and Johnson, Rey-
nolds, Boswell, Garrick, Burke, and others who shone with their own
or reflected light.
The rest of his life, spent principally in or near
London, is associated with his literary career. He died April 4th,
1774, and was buried near the Temple Church.
Goldsmith was an essayist and critic, a story-writer, a poet, a
comic dramatist, and a literary drudge: the last all the time, the
others "between whiles. " His drudgery produced such works as the
'Memoirs of Voltaire,' the Life of Nash,' two Histories of England,
Histories of Rome and Greece, Lives of Parnell and Bolingbroke.
## p. 6502 (#492) ###########################################
6502
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The History of Animated Nature' was undertaken as an industry,
but it reads, as Johnson said, "like a Persian tale,”—and of course,
the more Persian the less like nature. For the prose of Goldsmith
writing for a suit of clothes or for immortality is all of a piece,
inimitable. "Nothing," says he, in his 'Essay on Taste,' "has been
so often explained, and yet so little understood, as simplicity in writ-
ing.
It is no other than beautiful nature, without affectation
or extraneous ornament. "
This ingenuous elegance is the accent of Goldsmith's work in
verse and prose. It is nature improved, not from without but by
exquisite and esoteric art, the better to prove its innate virtue and
display its artless charm. Such a style is based upon a delicate
"sensibility to the graces of natural and moral beauty and decorum. "
Hence the ideographic power, the directness, the sympathy, the
lambent humor that characterize the Essays,' the 'Vicar,' the 'De-
serted Village,' and 'She Stoops to Conquer. ' This is the "plain
language of ancient faith and sincerity" that, pretending to no
novelty, renovated the prose of the eighteenth century, knocked the
stilts from under Addison and Steele, tipped half the Latinity out of
Johnson, and readjusted his ballast. Goldsmith goes without sprawl-
ing or tiptoeing; he sails without rolling. He borrows the careless-
ness but not the ostentation of the Spectator; the dignity but not the
ponderosity of 'Rasselas'; and produces the prose of natural ease,
the sweetest English of the century. It in turn prefaced the way
for Charles Lamb, Hunt, and Sydney Smith. "It were to be wished
that we no longer found pleasure with the inflated style," writes
Goldsmith in his 'Polite Learning. "We should dispense with loaded
epithet and dressing up trifles with dignity.
Let us, instead
of writing finely, try to write naturally; not hunt after lofty expres-
sions to deliver mean ideas, nor be forever gaping when we only
mean to deliver a whisper. "
•
Just this naturalness constitutes the charm of the essay on 'The
Bee' (1759), and of the essays collected in 1765. We do not read him
for information: whether he knows more or less of his subject,
whether he writes of Charles XII. , or Dress, the Opera, Poetry, or
Education, we read him for simplicity and humor. Still, his critical
estimates, while they may not always square with ours, evince not
only good sense and æsthetic principle, but a range of reading not
at all ordinary. When he condemns Hamlet's great soliloquy we may
smile, but in judicial respect for the father of our drama he yields to
none of his contemporaries. The selections that he includes in his
'Beauties of English Poetry' would argue a conventional taste; but in
his Essay on Poetry Distinguished from the Other Arts,' he not only
defines poetry in terms that might content the Wordsworthians, he
## p. 6503 (#493) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6503
also to a certain extent anticipates Wordsworth's estimate of poetic
figures.
While he makes no violent breach with the classical school, he
prophesies the critical doctrine of the nineteenth century. He calls
for the "energetic language of simple nature, which is now grown
into disrepute. " "If the production does not keep nature in view, it
will be destitute of truth and probability, without which the beauties
of imitation cannot subsist. " Still he by no means falls into the
quagmire of realism. For, continues he, "if on the other hand the
imitation is so close as to be mistaken for nature, the pleasure will
then cease, because the piunois, or imitation, no longer appears. "
Even when wrong, Goldsmith is generally half-way right; and this
is especially true of the critical judgments contained in his first pub-
lished book. The impudence of The Enquiry' (1759) is delicious.
What this young Irishman, fluting it through Europe some five years
before, had not learned about the 'Condition of Polite Learning' in
its principal countries, might fill a ponderous folio. What he did
learn, eked out with harmless misstatement, flashes of inspiration, and
a clever argument to prove that criticism has always been the foe of
letters, managed to fill a respectable duodecimo, and brought him to
the notice of publishers and scholars.
The essay has catholicity, independence, and wit, and it carries
itself with whimsical ease. Every sentence steps out sprightly. Of
the French Encyclopédies: "Wits and dunces contribute their share,
and Diderot as well as Desmaretz are candidates for oblivion. The
genius of the first supplies the gale of favor, and the latter adds the
useful ballast of stupidity. " Of the Germans: "They write through
volumes, while they do not think through a page.
Were an-
gels to write books, they never would write folios. " And again: “If
criticism could have improved the taste of a people, the Germans
would have been the most polite nation alive. " That settles the En-
cyclopedias and the Germans. So each nationality is sententiously
reviewed and dismissed with an epigram that even to-day sounds
not altogether unjust, rather amusing and urbane than acrimonious.
But it was not until Goldsmith began the series of letters in the
Public Ledger (1760), that was afterwards published as 'The Citizen
of the World,' that he took London. These letters purport to be
from a philosophic Chinaman in Europe to his friends at home.
Grave, gay, serene, ironical, they were at once an amusing image
and a genial censor of current manners and morals. They are no
less creative than critical; equally classic for the characters they
contain: the Gentleman in Black, Beau Tibbs and his wife, the
pawnbroker's widow, Tim Syllabub, and the procession of minor per-
sonages, romantic or ridiculous, but unique,- equally classic for these
·
•
## p. 6504 (#494) ###########################################
6504
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
characters and for the satire of the conception. These are Gold-
smith's best sketches. Though the prose is not always precise, it
seems to be clear, and is simple. The writer cares more for the
judicious than the sublime; for the quaint, the comic, and the agree-
able than the pathetic. He chuckles with sly laughter-genial, sym-
pathetic; he looses his arrow phosphorescent with wit, but not barbed,
dipped in something subacid, - straight for the heart. Not Irving
alone, but Thackeray, stands in line of descent from the Goldsmith
of the Citizen. '
'The Traveller,' polished ad unguem, appeared in 1764, and placed
Goldsmith in the first rank of poets then living; but of that later.
There is good reason for believing that his masterpiece in prose,
'The Vicar of Wakefield,' had been written as early as 1762, although
it was not published until 1766. It made Goldsmith's mark as a story-
teller. One can readily imagine how, after the grim humor of Smol-
lett, the broad and risqué realism of Fielding, the loitering of Sterne,
and the moralizing of Richardson, the public would seize with a
sense of relief upon this unpretentious chronicle of a country clergy-
man's life: his peaceful home, its ruin, its restoration. Not because
the narrative was quieter and simpler, shorter and more direct than
other narratives, but because to its humor, realism, grace, and depth
it added the charity of First Corinthians Thirteenth. England soon
discovered that the borders of the humanities had been extended;
that the Vicar and his "durable" wife, Moses, Olivia with the pre-
natal tendency to romance, Sophia, the graceless Jenkinson,-the
habit and temper of the whole,- were a new province. The prose
idyl, with all its beauty and charity, does not entitle Goldsmith to
rank with the great novelists; but of its kind, in spite of faults of
inaccuracy, improbability, and impossibility, it is first and best. Goethe
read and re-read it with moral and æsthetic benefit; and the spirit
of Goldsmith is not far to seek in 'Hermann and Dorothea. ' The
Vicar is perhaps the most popular of English classics in foreign
lands.
In poetry, if Goldsmith did not write much, it was for lack of
opportunity. What he did write is good, nearly all of it.
The phi-
losophy of The Traveller' (1764) and the political economy of The
Deserted Village' (1770) may be dubious, but the poetry is true.
There is in both a heartiness which discards the formalized emotion,
prefers the touch of nature and the homely adjective. The char-
acteristic is almost feminine in the description of Auburn: "Dear
lovely bowers"; it is inevitable, artless, in 'The Traveller': "His
first, best country ever is at home. " But on the other hand, the
curiosa felicitas marks every line, the nice selection of just the word
or phrase richest in association, redolent of tradition, harmonious,
## p. 6505 (#495) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6505
classically proper, but still natural, true, and apt. "My heart un-
travell'd fondly turns to thee" - not a word but is hearty; and for
all that, the line is stamped with the academic authority of centuries:
"Cœlum, non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt. " Both poems
are characterized by the infrequency of epithet and figure, the infre-
quency that marks sincerity and that heightens pleasure,—and by a
cunning in the use of proper names, resonant, remote, suggestive:
"On Idra's cliffs or Arno's shelvy side," the cunning of a musical
poem. Both poems vibrate with personality, recall the experience
of the writer. It would be hard to choose between them; but The
Deserted Village' strikes the homelier chord, comes nearer, with its
natural pathos, its sidelong smile, and its perennial novelty, to the
heart of him who knows.
Goldsmith is less eloquent but more natural than Dryden, less
precise but more simple than Pope. In poetic sensibility he has the
advantage of both. Were the volume of his verse not so slight, were
his conceptions more sublime, and their embodiment more epic or
dramatic, he might rank with the greatest of his century. As it is,
in imaginative insight he has no superior in the eighteenth century;
in observation, pathos, representative power, no equal: Dryden, Pope,
Gray, Thomson, Young,-none but Collins approaches him. The
reflective or descriptive poem can of course not compete with the
drama, epic, or even lyric of corresponding merit in its respective
kind. But Goldsmith's poems are the best of their kind, better than
all but the best in other kinds. His conception of life is more gen-
erous and direct, hence truer and gentler, than that of the Augustan
age. Raising no revolt against classical principles, he rejects the
artifices of decadent classicism, returns to nature, and expresses it
simply. He is consequently in this respect the harbinger of Cowper,
Crabbe, Bloomfield, Clare, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. In technique
also he breaks away from Pope. His larger movement, his easier
modulation, his richer tone, his rarer epithet and epigram, his meta-
phor "glowing from the heart," mark the defection from the poetry
of cold conceit.
For lack of space we can only refer to the romantic quality of his
ballad 'Edwin and Angelina' (1765), the spontaneous humor of 'The
Haunch of Venison,' and the exquisite satire of 'Retaliation' (1774).
To appreciate the historical position of Goldsmith's comedies, one
must regard them as a reaction against the school that had held the
stage since the beginning of the century a "genteel" and "senti-
mental" school, fearing to expose vice or ridicule absurdity. But
Goldsmith felt that absurdity was the comic poet's game. Reverting
therefore to Farquhar and the Comedy of Manners, he revived that
species, at the same time infusing a strain of the "humors" of the
----
## p. 6506 (#496) ###########################################
6506
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
tribe of Ben. Hence the approbation that welcomed his first comedy,
and the applause that greeted the second. For The Good-natured
Man' (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1773) did by example what
Hugh Kelly's 'Piety in Pattens' aimed to do by ridicule,- ousted
the hybrid comedy (tradesman's tragedy, Voltaire called it) of which
The Conscious Lovers' had been the most tolerable specimen, and
The School for Lovers' the most decorous and dull.
>>
But "Goldy had not only the gift of weighing the times, he had
the gift of the popular dramatist. His dramatis persona are on the
one hand nearly all legitimate descendants of the national comedy,
though none is a copy from dramatic predecessors; on the other
hand, they are in every instance "imitations" of real life, more than
once of some aspect of his own life; but none is so close an imitation
as to detract from the pleasure which fiction should afford. The for-
mer quality makes his characters look familiar; the latter, true. So
he accomplishes the feat most difficult for the dramatist: while ideal-
izing the individual in order to realize the type, he does not for a
moment lose the sympathy of his audience.
Even in his earlier comedy these two characteristics are manifest.
In the world of drama, young Honeywood is the legitimate descend-
ant of Massinger's Wellborn on the one side, and of Congreve's Val-
entine Legend on the other, with a more distant collateral resemblance
to Ben Jonson's Younger Knowell. But in the field of experience
this "Good-natured Man" is that aspect of "Goldy" himself which,
when he was poorest, made him not so poor but that Irishmen poorer
still could live on him; that aspect of the glorious "idiot in affairs »
which could make to the Earl of Northumberland, willing to be kind,
no other suggestion of his wants than that he had a brother in Ire-
land, "poor, a clergyman, and much in need of help. " Similarly might
those rare creations Croaker and Jack Lofty be traced to their pred-
ecessors in the field of drama, even though remote. That they had
their analogies in the life of Goldsmith, and have them in the lives
of others, it is unnecessary to prove. But graphic as these characters
are, they cannot make of 'The Good-natured Man' more than a pass-
able second to 'She Stoops to Conquer. ' For the premises of the
plot are absurd, if not impossible; the complication is not much more
natural than that of a Punch-and-Judy show, and the dénouement but
one shade less improbable than that of The Vicar of Wakefield. '
The value of the play is principally historical, not æsthetic.
Congreve's 'Love for Love,' Vanbrugh's 'Relapse,' Farquhar's
'Beaux' Stratagem,' Goldsmith's 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and Sheri-
dan's 'School for Scandal,' are the best comedies written since Jon-
son, Fletcher, and Massinger held the stage. In plot and diction 'She
Stoops to Conquer' is equaled by Congreve; in character-drawing by
## p. 6507 (#497) ###########################################
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6507
Vanbrugh; in dramatic ease by Farquhar, in observation and wit by
Sheridan: but by none is it equaled in humor, and in naturalness of
dialogue it is facile princeps. Here again the characterization presents
the twofold charm of universality and reality. Young Marlow is the
traditional lover of the type of Young Bellair, Mirabell, and Aimwell,
suggesting each in turn but different from all; he is also, in his com-
bination of embarrassment and impudence, not altogether unlike the
lad Oliver who, years ago, on a journey back to school, had mistaken
Squire Featherstone's house in Ardagh for an inn.
A similar adjustment of dramatic type and historic individual con-
tributes to the durability of Tony Lumpkin. In his dramatis persona
he is a practical joker of the family of Diccon and Truewit, and first
cousin on the Blenkinsop side to that horse-flesh Sir Harry Beagle.
But Anthony is more than the practical joker or the squire booby:
he is a near relative of Captain O'Blunder and that whole country-
side of generous, touch-and-go Irishmen; while in reality, in pro-
pria persona, he is that aspect of Noll Goldsmith that "lived the
buckeen in Ballymahon. Of the other characters of the play, Hard-
castle, Mrs. Hardcastle, and Kate have a like prerogative of immor-
tality. They are royally descended and personally unique.
The comedy has been absurdly called farcical. There is much
less of the farcical than in many a so-called "legitimate" comedy.
None of the circumstances are purely fortuitous; none unnecessary.
Humor and caprice tend steadily to complicate the action, and by nat-
ural interaction prepare the way for the dénouement. The misunder-
standings are the more piquant because of their manifest irony and
their ephemeral character. Indeed, if any fault is to be found with
the play, it is that Goldsmith did not let it resolve itself without the
assistance of Sir Charles Marlow.
One peculiarity not yet mentioned is illustrative of Goldsmith's
method. A system of mutual borrowing characterizes his works. The
same thought, in the same or nearly the same language, occurs in
half a dozen. 'The Enquiry' lends a phrase to 'The Citizen,' who
passes it on to the Vicar,' who, thinking it too good to keep, hands
it over to the Good-natured Man,' whence it is borrowed by She
Stoops to Conquer,' and turned to look like new,- like a large family
of sisters with a small wardrobe in common. This habit does not
indicate poverty of invention in Goldsmith, but associative imagina-
tion and artistic conservatism.
Goldsmith was the only Irish story-writer and poet of his century.
Four Irishmen adorned the prose of the period: Goldsmith is as emi-
nent in the natural style as Swift in the satiric, or Steele in the pol-
ished, or Burke in the grand. In comedy the Irish led; but Steele,
Macklin, Murphy, Kelly, do not compare with Farquhar, Sheridan, and
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OLIVER GOLDSMITH
Goldsmith. The worst work of these is good, and their best is the
best of the century.
Turning to Goldsmith the man, what the "draggle-tail Muses"
paid him we find him spending on dress and rooms and jovial mag-
nificence, on relatives or countrymen or the unknown poor, with such
freedom that he is never relieved of the necessity of drudgery. Still,
sensitive, good-natured, improvident, Irish, and a genius, — Gold-
smith lived as happy a life as his disposition would allow. He had
the companionship of congenial friends, the love of men like Johnson
and Reynolds, the final assurance that his art was appreciated by the
public. To be sure, he was never out of debt, but that was his own
fault; he was never out of credit either. "Was there ever poet so
trusted? " exclaimed Johnson, after this poet had got beyond reach
of his creditors. His difficulties however affected him as they affect
most Irishmen,-only by cataclysms. He was serene or wretched, but
generally the former: he packed noctes cænæque deûm by the dozen
into his life. "There is no man," said Reynolds, "whose company is
more liked. " But maybe that was because his naïveté, his brogue,
his absent-mindedness, and his blunders (real or apparent) made him
a ready butt for ridicule, not at the hands of Reynolds or Johnson,
but of Beauclerk and the rest. For though his humor was sly, and
his wit inimitable, Goldsmith's conversation was queer. It seemed to
go by contraries. If permitted, he would ramble along in his hesi-
tating, inconsequential fashion, on any subject under heaven — “too
eager," thought Johnson, "to get on without knowing how he should
get off. "
But if ignored, he would sit silent and apart,-sulking,
thought Boswell. In fact, both the Dictator and laird of Auchinleck
were of a mind that he tried too much to shine in conversation, for
which he had no temper. But «< Goldy's" bons-mots — such as the
"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis" to Johnson, as they
passed under the heads on Temple Bar,-make it evident that Gar-
rick, with his
-
"Here lies Poet Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll,»
and most of the members of the Literary Club, did not understand
their Irishman. A timidity born of rough experience may have oc-
casionally oppressed, a sensitiveness to ridicule or indifference may
have confused him, a desire for approbation may frequently have led
him to speak when silence had been golden; but that his conversa-
tion was "foolish" is the judgment of Philistines who make conver-
sation an industry, not an amusement or an art.
Boswell himself recounts more witty sayings than incomprehen-
sible. And the "incomprehensible" are so only to Boswells and
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OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6509
Hawkinses, who can hardly be expected to appreciate a humor, the
vein of which is a mockery of their own solemn stupidity. Probably
Goldsmith did say unconsidered things; he liked to think aloud in
company, to "rattle on" for diversion. Keenly alive to the riches of
language, he was the more likely to feel the embarrassment of im-
promptu selection; and while he was too much of a genius to keep
count of every pearl, he was too considerate of his fellows to cast
pearls only. But most of his fellows (Reynolds excepted) appreciated
neither his drollery nor his unselfishness, had not been educated up
to the type of Irishman that with an artistic love of fun, is ever
ready to promote the gayety of nations by sacrificing itself in the
interest of laughter. For none but an artist can, without cracking a
smile, offer up his wit on the altar of his humor.
Prior describes Goldsmith as something under the middle size,
sturdy, active, apparently capable of endurance; pale, forehead and
upper lip rather projecting, face round, pitted with small-pox, and
marked with strong lines of thinking. But Reynolds's painting ideal-
izes and therefore best expresses the man, his twofold nature: on the
one hand, self-depreciatory, generous, and improvident; on the other,
aspiring, hungry for approval, laborious. Just such a man as would
gild poverty with a smile, decline patronage and force his last six-
pence on a street-singer, pile Pelion on Ossa for his publishers and
turn out cameos for art.
Charter Mille Gayley
THE VICAR'S FAMILY BECOME AMBITIOUS
From The Vicar of Wakefield'
NOW began to find that all my long and painful lectures upon
temperance, simplicity, and contentment were entirely disre-
garded. The distinctions lately paid us by our betters awak-
ened that pride which I had laid asleep, but not removed. Our
windows again, as formerly, were filled with washes for the neck
and face. The sun was dreaded as an enemy to the skin with-
out doors, and the fire as a spoiler of the complexion within.
My wife observed that rising too early would hurt her daughters'
eyes, that working after dinner would redden their noses, and
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6510
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
she convinced me that the hands never looked so white as when
they did nothing. Instead therefore of finishing George's shirts,
we now had them new-modeling their old gauzes, or flourishing
upon catgut. The poor Miss Flamboroughs, their former gay
companions, were cast off as mean acquaintance, and the whole
conversation ran upon high life and high-lived company, with
pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses.
But we could have borne all this, had not a fortune-telling
gypsy come to raise us into perfect sublimity. The tawny sibyl
no sooner appeared than my girls came running to me for a
shilling apiece, to cross her hand with silver. To say the truth,
I was tired of being always wise, and could not help gratifying
their request, because I loved to see them happy. I gave each
of them a shilling, though for the honor of the family it must be
observed that they never went without money themselves, as my
wife always generously let them have a guinea each to keep in
their pockets, but with strict injunctions never to change it.
After they had been closeted up with the fortune-teller for some
time, I knew by their looks, upon their returning, that they had
been promised something great. "Well, my girls, how have you
sped? Tell me, Livy, has the fortune-teller given thee a penny-
worth? " "I protest, papa," says the girl, "I believe she deals
with somebody that is not right, for she positively declared that
I am to be married to a squire in less than a twelvemonth!
"Well now, Sophy, my child," said I, "and what sort of a hus-
band are you to have? " "Sir," replied she, "I am to have a
lord soon after my sister has married the squire. " "How," cried
I, "is that all you are to have for your two shillings? Only
a lord and a squire for two shillings! You fools, I could have
promised you a prince and a nabob for half the money! "
>>
This curiosity of theirs, however, was attended with very seri-
ous effects: we now began to think ourselves designed by the
stars to something exalted, and already anticipated our future.
grandeur.
IT HAS been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it
once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view
are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition. In the first
case we cook the dish to our own appetite; in the latter, nature
cooks it for us. It is impossible to repeat the train of agreeable
reveries we called up for our entertainment. We looked upon our
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OLIVER GOLDSMITH
6511
fortunes as once more rising; and as the whole parish asserted
that the Squire was in love with my daughter, she was actually
so with him, for they persuaded her into the passion. In this
agreeable interval my wife had the most lucky dreams in the
world, which she took care to tell us every morning with great
solemnity and exactness. It was one night a coffin and cross-
bones, the sign of an approaching wedding; at another time she
imagined her daughter's pockets filled with farthings, a certain
sign of their being shortly stuffed with gold. The girls them-
selves had their omens. They felt strange kisses on their lips;
they saw rings in the candle; purses bounced from the fire, and
true-love knots lurked in the bottom of every teacup.
Towards the end of the week we received a card from the
town ladies, in which, with their compliments, they hoped to
see all our family at church the Sunday following. All Saturday
morning I could perceive, in consequence of this, my wife and
daughters in close conference together, and now and then glan-
cing at me with looks that betrayed a latent plot. To be sincere,
I had strong suspicions that some absurd proposal was preparing
for appearing with splendor the next day. In the evening they
began their operations in a very regular manner, and my wife
undertook to conduct the siege. After tea, when I seemed in
spirits, she began thus: "I fancy, Charles my dear, we shall
have a great deal of good company at our church to-morrow. "
"Perhaps we may, my dear," returned I; "though you need be
under no uneasiness about that; you shall have a sermon whether
there be or not. " << That is what I expect," returned she; “but
I think, my dear, we ought to appear there as decently as pos-
sible, for who knows what may happen? » "Your precautions,"
replied I, are highly commendable. A decent behavior and
appearance in church is what charms me. We should be devout
and humble, cheerful and serene.
