And by this and other tyrannies, and being also
Scourged by famine from the smiling land,
for he was "unfortunate in his business" at about the same time, Sir Timothy accomplishes his aim, and
Indignant spurns the cottage from the green.
Ruined by this oppression, poor Mr [xx]Meanwell is turned out of doors,
and flew to another parish for succour.
Where, then, ah! where shall poverty reside
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?
Sir Timothy, however, suffers for his injustice and wickedness, for "great part of the land lay untilled for some years, which was deemed a just reward for such diabolical proceedings."
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
Miss Charlotte Yonge, to whom I shall refer again, lays upon this: "If the conjecture be true which attributes this tale to Oliver Goldsmith, we have seen the same spirit which prompted his poem of 'The Deserted Village,' namely, indignation and dismay at the discouragement of small holdings in the early part [xxi]of the eighteenth century."[C] Indeed, it may well be that we have in this preface even a more true picture of Lissoy than that given in the poem, which, as Mr William Black says in his monograph on Goldsmith, "is there seen through the softening and beautifying mist of years."
Much more might be said of the characteristics of this little book, which contains so much that reminds us not only of the style but the matter of many of Goldsmith's writings. Miss Yonge says: "There is a certain dry humour in some passages and a tenderness in others that incline us much to the belief that it could come from no one else but the writer of 'The Vicar of Wakefield' [xxii]and 'The Deserted Village.' Indeed, we could almost imagine that Dr Primrose himself had described the panic at the supposed ghost in the church in the same tone as the ride to church, the family portrait, or the gross of green spectacles.'[D] We find in "Goody Two Shoes" every one of those distinctive qualities of Goldsmith's writings which Mr William Black so well summarizes in the book already referred to--"his genuine and tender pathos, that never at any time verges on the affected or theatrical;" his "quaint, delicate, delightful humour;" his "broader humour, that is not afraid to provoke the wholesome laughter of mankind by dealing with common and familiar ways [xxiii]and manners and men;" his "choiceness of diction;" his "lightness and grace of touch, that lend a charm even to" his "ordinary hack work."