Masterpieces.—His best work consists of two poems, The Traveler and The Deserted Village; a story, The Vicar of Wakefield; and a play,She Stoops to Conquer.
The object of The Traveler (1765), a highly polished moral and didactic poem, was to show that happiness is independent of climate, and hence to justify the conclusion:—
"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centers in the mind."
The Deserted Village (1770) also has a didactic aim, for which we care little. Its finest parts, those which impress us most, were suggested to Goldsmith by his youthful experiences. We naturally remember the sympathetic portrait of the poet's father, "the village preacher":—
"A man he was to all the country dear
And passing rich with forty pounds a year.
* * * * *
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain."
The lines relating to the village schoolmaster are almost as well known as Scripture. Previous to this time, the eighteenth century had not produced a poem as natural, sincere, and sympathetic in its descriptions and portraits as The Deserted Village.
The Vicar of Wakefield is a delightful romantic novel, which Andrew Lang classes among books "to be read once a year." Goldsmith's own criticism of the story in the Advertisement announcing it has not yet been surpassed:—
"There are an hundred faults in this Thing, and an hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may he very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth: he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach and ready to obey; as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity."
[Illustration: DR. PRIMROSE AND HIS FAMILY. From a drawing by G.
Patrick Nelson.]
The Vicar of Wakefield has faults of improbability and of plot construction; in fact, the plot is so poorly constructed that the novel would have been almost a failure, had other qualities not insured success. The story lives because Dr. Primrose and his family show with such genuineness the abiding lovable traits of human nature,—kindliness, unselfishness, good humor, hope, charity,—the very spirit of the Sermon of the Mount. Goethe rejoiced that he felt the influence of this story at the critical moment of his mental development. Goldsmith has added to the world's stock of kindliness, and he has taught many to avoid what he calls "the fictitious demands of happiness."