No More Learning

Pandolfo A jeweler's boy.
Ridolfo - Bad. Very bad. That tempts the boys to rob their
masters.
Pandolfo -Oh, don't moralize to me. Let the greenhorns stay
I keep open for any one who wants to play.
at home.
And has Signor Eugenio been playing this past
Pandolfo He's playing yet. He hasn't dined, he hasn't slept,
and he's lost all his money.


## p. 6490 (#476) ###########################################

6490
CARLO GOLDONI
Ridolfo [aside]- Poor young man! [Aloud. ] And how much
has he lost?
Pandolfo A hundred sequins in cash: and now he is playing
on credit.
Ridolfo - With whom is he playing?
Pandolfo With the count.
Ridolfo And whom else?
Pandolfo - With him alone.
Ridolfo It seems to me an honest man shouldn't stand by
and see people assassinated.
Pandolfo — Oho, my friend, if you're going to be so thin-
skinned you'll make little money.
Ridolfo I don't care for that.
-
――
-
-
Till now I have been in serv-
ice, and did my duty honestly. I saved a few pennies, and with
the help of my old master, who was Signor Eugenio's father,
you know, I have opened this shop. With it I mean to live
honorably and not disgrace my profession.
•
-
Pandolfo [answering]-At your service.
Ridolfo - For mercy's sake, get poor Signor Eugenio away
from the table.
Pandolfo For all me, he may lose his shirt: I don't care.
[Starts out. ]
Ridolfo And the coffee-shall I charge it?
Pandolfo - Not at all: we'll deal a card for it.
Ridolfo I'm no greenhorn, my friend.
Pandolfo - Oh well, what does it matter? You know my vis-
itors make trade for you. I am surprised that you trouble your-
self about these little matters. [Exit. ]
A gentleman, Don Marzio, enters
Ridolfo [aside] - Here is the man who never stops talking,
and always must have it his own way.
Marzio Coffee.
Ridolfo At once, sir.
Marzio- What's the news, Ridolfo ?
――
―――
-
[People from the gambling-shop call "Cards! »]
―
Ridolfo I couldn't say, sir.
Marzio -Has no one appeared here at your café yet ?
Ridolfo - 'Tis quite early still.
――――――


## p. 6491 (#477) ###########################################

CARLO GOLDONI
6491
Marzio-Early?
Early? It has struck nine already.
Ridolfo - Oh no, honored sir, 'tis not seven yet.
Marzio-Get away with your nonsense.
Ridolfo I assure you, it hasn't struck seven yet.
Marzio-Get out, stupid.
-
Ridolfo - You abuse me without reason, sir.
Marzio I counted the strokes just now, and I tell you it is
nine. Besides, look at my watch: it never goes wrong. [Shows it. ]
Ridolfo - Very well, then; if your watch is never wrong,—it
says a quarter to seven.
Marzio
What? That can't be. [Takes out his eye-glass and
looks.
―
-
Ridolfo - What do you say?
Marzio My watch is wrong. It is nine o'olock. I heard it.
Ridolfo - Where did you buy that watch?
Marzio I ordered it from London.
Ridolfo
They cheated you.
Marzio-Cheated me? How so? It is the very first quality.
Ridolfo - If it were a good one, it wouldn't be two hours
wrong.
――――――――
Marzio
It is always exactly right.
Ridolfo But the watch says a quarter to seven, and you say
it is nine.
Marzio- My watch is right.
Ridolfo - Then it really is a little before seven, as I said.
Marzio-You're an insolent fellow. My watch is right: you
talk foolishly, and I've half a mind to box your ears.
is brought. ]
[His coffee
Ridolfo [aside]—Oh, what a beast!
Marzio - Have you seen Signor Eugenio ?
Ridolfo-No, honored sir.
Marzio-At home, of course,
uxorious fellow! Always a wife!
coffee. ]
petting his wife.
What an
Always a wife! [Drinks his
He's been gambling all
Ridolfo - Anything but his wife.
night at Pandolfo's.
Marzio-Just as I tell you. Always gambling.
Ridolfo [aside] - "Always gambling," "Always
"Always his wife,"
"Always" the Devil; I hope he'll catch him!
Marzio He came to me the other day in all secrecy, to
beg me to lend him ten sequins on a pair of earrings of his
wife's.


## p. 6492 (#478) ###########################################

6492
CARLO GOLDONI
Ridolfo - Well, you know, every man is liable to have these
little difficulties; but they don't care to have them known, and
that is doubtless why he came to you, certain that you would
tell no one.
Marzio Oh, I say nothing. I help all, and take no credit
for it. See! Here are his wife's earrings. I lent him ten
sequins on them. Do you think I am secured?
Ridolfo
I'm no judge, but I think so.
Marzio Halloa, Trappolo. [Trappolo enters. ] Here; go to
the jeweler's yonder, show him these earrings of Signor Euge-
nio's wife, and ask him for me if they are security for ten sequins
that I lent him.
Trappolo-And it doesn't harm Signor Eugenio to make his
affairs public?
Marzio I am a person with whom a secret is safe. [Exit
Trappolo. ] Say, Ridolfo, what do you know of that dancer over
there?
-
Ridolfo I really know nothing about her.
Marzio-I've been told the Count Leandro is her protector.
Ridolfo To be frank, I don't care much for other people's
affairs.
―
Marzio-But 'tis well to know things, to govern one's self
accordingly. She has been under his protection for some time.
now, and the dancer's earnings have paid the price of the pro-
tection. Instead of spending anything, he devours all the poor
wretch has. Indeed, he forces her to do what she should not.
Oh, what a villain!
Ridolfo But I am here all day, and I can swear that no one
goes to her house except Leandro.
Marzio - It has a back door. Fool! Fool! Always the back
door. Fool!
Ridolfo I attend to my shop: if she has a back door, what
is it to me? I put my nose into no one's affairs.
Beast! Do you speak like that to a gentleman of
Marzio
my station?
―
-
[This character of Don Marzio the slanderer is the most effective one
in the comedy. He finally brings upon himself the bitterest ill-will of all
the other characters, and feels himself driven out of Venice, "a land in which
all men live at ease, all enjoy liberty, peace, and amusement, if only they
know how to be prudent, discreet, honorable. "]
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature,' by William C.
Lawton


## p. 6493 (#479) ###########################################

6493
MEİR AARON GOLDSCHMIDT
(1819-1887)
THE first line of his memoirs Goldschmidt states that he
was of "the tribe of Levi," a fact of which he was never
unconscious, and which has given him his peculiar position
in modern Danish literature as the exponent of the family and social
life of the orthodox Jew. 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. 6500 (#490) ###########################################


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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.


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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


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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
·
•


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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,


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