410. Oliver Goldsmith. Poet and Man of Letters.
[Born in Ireland, 1728. Died in London, 1774. Aged 45.]
Poor dear Oliver! What shall we say of him, with his kindly benevolence, his manly independence, his honest feeling, his childish vanity, his naughty extravagance, his irregularities, his blunders, his idleness, his industry, his zeal for the improvement and advancement of the whole world, and his improvident neglect of himself. Goldsmith had fits of genius:—moments of an inspiration, or a possession, that appeared to produce in him powers, not ordinarily there. In the conduct of life he seemed born to be the world’s victim: he lay under the world. His gifted pen in his hand, he rose above it. The tender sensibility that indites his verse agrees too well to his story. The playful humour, and the sharp, never rough, never malignant, satire, take by surprise. He then had the laughers on his side—too often, unfortunately, against him. His poems of “The Traveller” and “The Deserted Village” are a species by themselves, or each a species. The vein of reflexion, of personal feeling, and of poetical viewing, with native simplicity of expression and musical sweetness, is common to the two. The dirge of the deserted hamlet sowed the seed of “The Pleasures of Memory;” and the wandering poet, feeding his verse from his travels, was repeated in “Childe Harold.” Goldsmith’s “Retaliation,” written upon his friends of the St. James’s Coffee House, in requital of the epitaphs they had provided for himself, is the most brilliant and masterly summing up of characters in pointed words and streaming verse that the language possesses. The “Vicar of Wakefield” is the smiled-at, honoured, and loved inmate of every English home.
[By W. Behnes.]
410*. Robert Burns. Poet.
[Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, 1759. Died at Dumfries, 1796. Aged 37.]
The ploughman-poet of Scotland; in whom the labour of the limbs appeared to invigorate the intelligence, and the bleak air of poverty to cherish the blossoms of genius. Shakspeare rose from the bosom of the people to delineate kings and queens. Burns, born some steps lower, dwelt, even in his verse, to the last, amongst his own order. That is his dignity and his glory. The life of the Scottish peasant as it remains represented by his pencil, and in his person, seizes the imagination and the sympathies of the educated world. He has drawn the heart of the high towards the low. He has raised the low to their just esteem in the opinion of the high. But besides this moral aspect, he has gained, as a poet, immeasurably, by rooting his foot to the fields which he furrowed. The conflict, so maintained in our thoughts between his social position and his endowments and aspirations, sheds a continual illumination of wonder upon his writings. But more! His happiest subjects and strains draw life and meaning from the soil of which they are the self-sown flowers. Not merely that solitary agricultural Idyl, with its homely-pathetic and homely-picturesque—“The Cotter’s Saturday Night,”—but the fanciful tenderness of his lament over the Daisy and the Mouse;—but the wild and reckless daring of imagination in that cordial rencounter with the dread foe Death—that blending of the humorous, the supernaturally grotesque and the terrific in Tam O’Shanter—of the rustic, the gracious, the solemn, even the sublime—in the Vision of Coila—these most characteristic feats of poetical skill and genius—which stand apart, defying competition and claiming rank for the name of Burns, amongst the illustrious on Parnassus—all are made possible by originating from and by reflecting his native condition. His songs are tender, passionate, musical; chaunting his own or imaginary rustic loves. The torrent of his spirit, that, pouring along the channels of thought and song, became an elate and exalting enthusiasm, hurried him on the paths of common life into excesses, dilapidating the humble home and the proud householder. He first published his poems—now in every peasant’s cottage throughout Scotland—in his 27th year, and his fame was instantaneous. Later in life, the favour and patronage of the Scottish nobility and gentry were able to confer upon him a place in the Excise, of no less than £70 a-year: in the discharge of which distinguished public function, and in the enjoyment of which splendid public remuneration—then his only certain support—the one-laurelled modern singer of the time-honoured Scottish tongue sank, from his darkening noon, into the grave.
[This Bust is by David Dunbar.]
411. Samuel Rogers. Poet.
[Born at Newington Green, near London, 1762. Still living.]