The three important eras of his literary life were those of his appearance as a novelist, a poet, and a dramatic writer. The "Vicar of Wakefield” was finished in 1763; but was not printed till two years after, when his "Traveller," in 1765, had established his fame. The ballad of " Edwin and Angelina,” came out in the following year; and in 1768 the appearance of his "Good Natured Man" made a bold and happy change in the reigning fashion of comedy, by substituting merriment for insipid sentiment. His "Deserted Village" appeared in 1769; and his second comedy," She Stoops to Conquer," in 1773. At intervals, between those works, he wrote his "Roman and English Histories," besides biographies and introductions to books. These were all executed as tasks for the booksellers; but with a grace which no other man could give to task-work. His "History of the Earth and Animated Nature" was the last, and most amusing, of these prose undertakings. In the mean time he had consumed more than the gains of all his labours by imprudent management, and had injured his health by occasional excesses of application. His debts amounted to 4000l. "Was ever poet," said Dr. Johnson, " so trusted before?" To retrieve his finances, he contracted for new works to the booksellers, engaged to write comedies for both the theatres, and projected an "Universal Dictionary of the Sciences." But his labours were terminated by a death not wholly unimputable to the imprudence which had pervaded his life. In a fever, induced by strangury and distress of mind, he made use of Dr. James's powders, under circumstances which he was warned would render them dangerous. The symptoms of his disease grew immediately more alarming, and he expired at the end of a few days, in his forty-sixth year. Goldsmith's poetry enjoys a calm and steady popularity. It inspires us, indeed, with no admiration of daring design, or of fertile invention; but it presents, within its narrow limits, a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. His descriptions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some passages, be said to approach to the reserved and prosaic; but he unbends from this graver strain of reflection, to tenderness, and even to playfulness, with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own; and connects extensive views of the happiness and interests of society, with pictures of life, that touch the heart by their familiarity. His language is certainly simple, though it is not cast in a rugged or careless mould. He is no disciple of the gaunt and famished school of simplicity. Deliberately as he wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and idiomatic expression; but still it is select and refined expression. He uses the ornaments which must always distinguish true poetry from prose; and when he adopts colloquial plainness, it is with the utmost care and skill, to avoid a vulgar humility. There is more of this sustained simplicity, of this chaste œconomy and choice of words in Goldsmith, than in any modern poet, or perhaps than would be attainable or desirable as a standard for every writer of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such a style would be too difficult. There is a noble propriety even in the careless strength of great poems as in the roughness of castle walls; and, generally speaking, where there is a long course of story, or observation of life to be pursued, such exquisite touches as those of Goldsmith would be too costly materials for sustaining it. But let us not imagine that the serene graces of this poet were not admirably adapted to his subjects. His poetry is not that of impetuous, but of contemplative sensibility; of a spirit breathing its regrets and recollections, in a tone that has no dissonance with the calm of philosophical reflection. He takes rather elevated speculative views of the causes of good and evil in society; at the same time, the objects which are most endeared to his imagination are those of familiar and simple interest; and the domestic affections may be said to be the only genii of his romance. The tendency towards abstracted observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly with the compendious form of expression which he studied1; There is perhaps no couplet in English rhyme more perspicuously condensed than those two lines of the "Traveller," in which he describes the once flattering, vain, and happy character of the French. "They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem, whilst the homefelt joys, on which his fancy loved to repose, required at once the chastest and sweetest colours of language, to make them harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical poem. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives back the image of nature unruffled and minutely. He has no redundant thoughts, or false transports; but seems, on every occasion, to have weighed the impulse to which he surrendered himself. Whatever ardour or casual felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he gained a high degree of purity and self possession. His chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist, and throws a charm of Claude-like softness over his descriptions of homely objects that would seem only fit to be the subjects of Dutch painting. But his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble things without a vulgar association; and he inspires us with a fondness to trace the simplest recollections of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its ale-house, and listen to the "varnished clock that clicked behind the door." He betrays so little effort to make us visionary by the usual and palpable fictions of his art; he keeps apparently so close to realities, and draws certain conclusions, respecting the radical interests of man, so boldly and decidedly, that we pay him a compli ment, not always extended to the tuneful tribe, that of judging his sentiments by their strict and logical interpretation. In thus judging him by the test of his philosophical spirit, I am not prepared to say, that he is a purely impartial theorist. He advances general positions, respecting the happiness of society, founded on limited views of truth, and under the bias of local feelings. He contemplates only one side of the question. It must be always thus in poetry. Let the mind be ever so tranquilly disposed to reflection, yet if it retains poetical sensation, it will embrace only those speculative opinions that fall in with the tone of the imagination. Yet I am not disposed to consider his principles as absurd, or his representations of life as the mere reveries of fancy. In the "Deserted Village" he is an advocate for the agricultural, in preference to the commercial prosperity of a nation; and he pleads for the blessings of the simpler state, not with the vague predilection for the country which is common to poets, but with an earnestness that professes to challenge our soberest belief. Between Rousseau's celebrated letter on the influence of the sciences, and this popular poem, it will not be difficult to discover some resemblance of principles. They arrive at the same conclusions against luxury; the one from contemplating the ruins of a village, and the other from reviewing the downfal of empires. But the English poet is more moderate in his sentiments than the philosopher of Geneva; he neither stretches them to such obvious paradox, nor involves them in so many details of sophistry; nor does he blaspheme all philosophy and knowledge in pronouncing a malediction on luxury. Rousseau is the advocate of |