Still less necessary, perhaps, is it to review the facts and circumstances of Goldsmith's life; and to make of them an example, a warning, or an accusation. That has too often been done. His name has been used to glorify a sham Bohemianism—a Bohemianism that finds it easy to live in taverns, but does not find it easy, so far as one sees, to write poems like the Deserted Village. His experiences as an author have been brought forward to swell the cry about neglected genius—that is, by writers who assume their genius in order to prove the neglect. The misery that occasionally befell him during his wayward career has been made the basis of an accusation against society, the English constitution, Christianity—Heaven knows what. It is time to have done with all this nonsense. Goldsmith resorted to the hack-work of literature when everything else had failed him; and he was fairly paid for it. When he did better work, when he "struck for honest fame," the nation gave him all the honour that he could have desired. With an assured reputation, and with ample means of subsistence, he obtained entrance into the most distinguished society then in England—he was made the friend of England's greatest in the arts and literature—and could have confined himself to that society exclusively if he had chosen. His temperament, no doubt, exposed him to suffering; and the exquisite sensitiveness of a man of genius may demand our sympathy; but in far greater measure is our sympathy demanded for the thousands upon thousands of people who, from illness or nervous excitability, suffer from quite as keen a sensitiveness without the consolation of the fame that genius brings.
In plain truth, Goldsmith himself would have been the last to put forward pleas humiliating alike to himself and to his calling. Instead of beseeching the State to look after authors; instead of imploring society to grant them "recognition;" instead of saying of himself "he wrote, and paid the penalty;" he would frankly have admitted that he chose to live his life his own way, and therefore paid the penalty. This is not written with any desire of upbraiding Goldsmith. He did choose to live his own life his own way, and we now have the splendid and beautiful results of his work; and the world—looking at these with a constant admiration, and with a great and lenient love for their author—is not anxious to know what he did with his guineas, or whether the milkman was ever paid. "He had raised money and squandered it, by every artifice of acquisition and folly of expense. But let not his frailties be remembered: he was a very great man." This is Johnson's wise summing up; and with it we may here take leave of gentle Goldsmith.
THE END.
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.
These Short Books are addressed to the general public with a view both to stirring and satisfying an interest in literature and its great topics in the minds of those who have to run as they read. An immense class is growing up, and must every year increase, whose education will have made them alive to the importance of the masters of our literature, and capable of intelligent curiosity as to their performances. The Series is intended to give the means of nourishing this curiosity, to an extent that shall be copious enough to be profitable for knowledge and life, and yet be brief enough to serve those whose leisure is scanty.
The following are arranged for:—
| SPENSER | The Dean of St. Paul's. | |
| HUME | Professor Huxley. | [Ready. |
| BUNYAN | James Anthony Froude. | |
| JOHNSON | Leslie Stephen. | [Ready. |
| GOLDSMITH | William Black. | [Ready. |
| MILTON | Mark Pattison. | |
| WORDSWORTH | Goldwin Smith. | |
| SWIFT | John Morley. | |
| BURNS | Principal Shairp. | [Ready. |
| SCOTT | Richard H. Hutton. | [Ready. |
| SHELLEY | J. A. Symonds. | [Ready. |
| GIBBON | J. C. Morison. | [Ready. |
| BYRON | Professor Nichol. | |
| DEFOE | W. Minto. | [In the Press. |
| GRAY | John Morley. | |
| HAWTHORNE | Henry James, Jnr. | |
| CHAUCER | A. W. Ward. |
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