Goldsmith’s prose is the sweetest and most harmonious in the language. His narrative and historical manner is easy and expressive—more so than Hume’s. And here, we may remark how odd it was to see a pair of provincials—an Irishman and a Scotchman, each with the brogue or the burr upon his tongue, and in his manner—vindicating the native purity of the Anglo-Saxon against the subversive genius of two of the foremost English writers—Johnson and Gibbon—and finally overcoming them on their own ground. Goldsmith, in short, as Johnson said very well, ornamented whatever he touched, and some of the dryest disquisitions become in his hands as interesting as a Persian tale. An honor of another kind belongs to Goldsmith.
Among the authors of England none did more than himself to support the dignity and independence of British authorship, the honor of which was so sadly smirched by the dedications of Dryden and Locke, as well as by others before and after them. Oliver instead of thinking of the high nobility, set a fine example to all writers—he dedicated “She Stoops to Conquer,” to Doctor Johnson; “The Deserted Village” to his other friend, Reynolds; and “The Traveler”—his first poem—to his brother, all exhibiting the affectionate manliness of his disposition. And with reference to his brother, we have a trait of Goldsmith’s character which is worth the Vicar of Wakefield. He was once invited to call on the Duke of Northumberland, when that nobleman was going to Ireland, as Lord Lieutenant. Sir John Hawkins, who was leaving the duke’s presence as Oliver was going in, tells the story with indignant reprobation of the poet’s fatal absurdity. His grace having complimented Goldsmith on his writings (he had just written Edwin and Angelina to amuse the duchess), said he was going to Ireland, and would be happy to promote the doctor’s interests in any way, etc. Whereupon the doctor told the duke that the publishers were treating him pretty well just then; but that he had a poor brother in Ireland, a curate on forty pounds a year, with a large family, and begged his grace to remember him, etc. “In this way,” groans Sir John Hawkins, “did Goldsmith dispose of his chance of patronage and fortune.”
As a poet, Goldsmith at once took the rank which posterity has almost unanimously confirmed. The finest critics in the language have honored the claims of the poet of Auburn. Lord Byron says, “where is the poetry of which one half is good? Is it Milton’s? Is it Dryden’s; or any one’s except Pope’s and Goldsmith’s, of which all is good?” There is no need at this time of day, to speak of the nature, pathos and elegance of Goldsmith’s muse. In stateliness he sometimes approaches Dryden; as in those noble verses which Johnson could not read without a tremor and tears of pride:—
“Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims, irregularly great:
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by.”
But there is one respect in which we think his poetry has not been appreciated as it ought.
The great change which has taken place in poetry from the classic rhythmus and Cæsural canons of Pope’s school, to the nature and fresher phraseology of our modern period has been commonly dated from the rise of Wordsworth and Coleridge—sometimes traced to the effect of Bishop Percy’s ballads. There is generally an incorrectness in any attempt to fix mutations of taste and fashions of style down to chronology. Instead of thinking the old poetic spirit of England was revived at the close of the eighteenth century, we believe it had not died at all; but had lived on, in exile, while a foreign influence bore sway—as the line of Edgar Atheling lived long ago; destined, however, in the fullness of time to be restored to its ancient supremacy. Bishop Percy’s ballads were a manifestation of that spirit, not a cause of it—though he might not have known it—a necessary reaction of the national mind. At the time of their appearance Goldsmith’s poetry was exhibiting the first tokens of the coming change. The theme of it was human nature, with its common feelings, hopes, and sufferings; and pouring the warmth, pathos and earnestness of his own heart into it, he rendered it attractive and popular. His verse had all the vernacular ease and grace of his prose, with a polish only inferior to Pope’s. In his original hands the heroic couplet was not “the clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme” beaten by the Cawthornes, Darwins, and Hayleys of the day. In his prose criticisms he wrote against the cumbrous use of epithets, and discarded it in his own verse. He amused himself occasionally among his friends, by reciting the lines of several popular authors, with a dissyllable omitted. He would read the opening of Gray’s Elegy in this way:
The curfew tolls the knell of day,