lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if, by my assistance, foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle. When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immediately become popular, I have not promised to myself; a few wild blunders and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert, who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds. I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. [Reflections on Landing at Iona.] [From the Journey to the Western Isles."] We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, | whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona. [Parallel between Pope and Dryden.] [From the Lives of the Poets."] Pope professed to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some illustration, if he be compared with his master. Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he had. He wrote, and professed to write, merely for the people; and when he pleased others he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which was already good, nor often to mend what he must have known to be faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press, ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he had no further solicitude. Pope was not content to satisfy: he desired to excel, and therefore always endeavoured to do his best: he did not court the candour, but dared the judgment of his reader, and expecting no indulgence from others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven. For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might hasten their publication, were the two satires of Thirtyeight, of which Dodsley told me that they were brought to him by the author that they might be fairly copied. Almost every line,' he said, was then written twice over; I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent sometime afterwards to me for the press, with almost every line written twice over a second time.' His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the 'Iliad,' and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the Essay on Criticism' received many improvements after its first appearance. It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness, elegance, or vigour. Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden, but Dryden certainly wanted the diligence of Pope. ENGLISH LITERATURE. In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid, Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation, Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. our late contests with France and Spain, a very small part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest languished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putrefaction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, without notice and without remembrance. By incommodious encampments and unwholesome stations, where courage is useless and enterprise impracticable, fleets away. are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted part, with little effect. The wars of civilised nations make very slow changes in the system of empire. Thus is a people gradually exhausted, for the most The public perceives scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefited are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle, grew rich by the victory, he might show his gains without envy. But at the conclusion of a ten years' war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes and the expense of millions, but by contemplating tors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations? the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contrac OLIVER GOLDSMITH. lished in a collected shape in 1762, and his Essays' about the same time. As a light critic, a sportive The 'Citizen of the World,' by GOLDSMITH, was pubyet tender and insinuating moralist, and observer of men and manners, we have no hesitation in placing Goldsmith far above Johnson. His chaste humour, poetical fancy, and admirable style, render these essays (for the Citizen of the World consists of dehappy imagery, and pure English. The story of the Old Soldier, Beau Tibbs, the Reverie at the Boar's tached pieces) a mine of lively and profound thought, Head Tavern, and the Strolling Player, are in the finest vein of story-telling; while the Eastern Apologue, Asem, an Eastern Tale, and Alcander and Septimius, are tinged with the light of true poetry life, and the fashion of our estate,' we see the and imagination. Where the author speaks of actual workings of experience and a finely meditative lished till after his death, is imbued with the same mind. The History of Animated Nature,' not pub Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert, that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dry den's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight. This parallel will, I hope, when it is well consi-graces of composition. Goldsmith was no naturalist, dered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me, for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps, show him the reasonableness of my determination. [Picture of the Miseries of War.] [From the Thoughts on the Falkland Islands."] It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, must perish in the successful field, but they die upon the bed of honour, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with England's glory, smile in death! The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. the thousands and ten thousands that perished in Of strictly speaking, but his descriptions are often [Scenery of the Alps.] [From the History of the Earth and Animated Nature."] Every mountain he comes to he thinks will be the Nothing can be finer or more exact than Mr Pope's last: he finds, however, an unexpected hill rise before description of a traveller straining up the Alps. him; and that being scaled, he finds the highest summit almost at as great a distance as before. Upon quitting the plain, he might have left a green and fertile soil, and a climate warm and pleasing. As he ascends, the ground assumes a more russet colour, the grass becomes more mossy, and the weather more moderate. When he is still higher, the weather bedreary passage he is often entertained with a little valley of surprising verdure, caused by the reflected comes more cold, and the earth more barren. In this surrounding heights. But it much more frequently heat of the sun collected into a narrow spot on the 223 happens that he sees only frightful precipices beneath, and lakes of amazing depth, from whence rivers are formed, and fountains derive their original. On those places next the highest summits vegetation is scarcely carried on here and there a few plants of the most hardy kind appear. The air is intolerably coldeither continually refrigerated with frosts, or disturbed with tempests. All the ground here wears an eternal covering of ice and snow, that seem continually accumulating. Upon emerging from this war of the elements, he ascends into a purer and serener region, where vegetation is entirely ceased-course, entirely subject to its superior influence. Were where the precipices, composed entirely of rocks, rise perpendicularly above him; while he views beneath him all the combat of the elements, clouds at his feet, and thunders darting upwards from their bosoms below. A thousand meteors, which are never seen on the plain, present themselves. Circular rainbows, mock suns, the shadow of the mountain projected upon the body of the air, and the traveller's own image reflected as in a looking-glass upon the opposite cloud. [A Sketch of the Universe.] [From the same.] that, suspending the constant exertion of his power, he endued matter with a quality by which the universal economy of nature might be continued, without his immediate assistance. This quality is called attraction, a sort of approximating influence, which all bodies, whether terrestrial or celestial, are found to possess; and which, in all, increases as the quantity of matter in each increases. The sun, by far the greatest body in our system, is, of consequence, possessed of much the greatest share of this attracting power; and all the planets, of which our earth is one, are, of this power, therefore, left uncontrolled by any other, the sun must quickly have attracted all the bodies of our celestial system to itself; but it is equally counteracted by another power of equal efficacy; namely, a progressive force which each planet received when it was impelled forward by the divine architect upon its first formation. The heavenly bodies of our system being thus acted upon by two opposing powers; namely, by that of attraction, which draws them towards the sun, and that of impulsion, which drives them straight forward into the great void of space, they pursue a track between these contrary directions; and each, like a stone whirled about in a sling, obeying two opposite forces, circulates round its great centre of heat and motion. The world may be considered as one vast mansion, where man has been admitted to enjoy, to admire, and to be grateful. The first desires of savage nature In this manner, therefore, is the harmony of our are merely to gratify the importunities of sensual ap- planetary system preserved. The sun, in the midst, petite, and to neglect the contemplation of things, gives heat and fight and circular motion to the barely satisfied with their enjoyment; the beauties of planets which surround it: Mercury, Venus, the nature, and all the wonders of creation, have but little Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, perform their concharms for a being taken up in obviating the wants stant circuits at different distances, each taking up a of the day, and anxious for precarious subsistence. time to complete its revolutions, proportioned to the Our philosophers, therefore, who have testified such greatness of the circle which it is to describe. The surprise at the want of curiosity in the ignorant, seem lesser planets, also, which are attendants upon some not to consider that they are usually employed in of the greater, are subject to the same laws; they cirmaking provisions of a more important nature-inculate with the same exactness, and are in the same providing rather for the necessities than the amuse- manner influenced by their respective centres of ments of life. It is not till our more pressing wants motion. are sufficiently supplied, that we can attend to the calls of curiosity; so that in every age scientific refinement has been the latest effort of human industry. But human curiosity, though at first slowly excited, being at last possessed of leisure for indulging its propensity, becomes one of the greatest amusements of life, and gives higher satisfactions than what even the senses can afford. A man of this disposition turns all nature into a magnificent theatre, replete with objects of wonder and surprise, and fitted up chiefly for his happiness and entertainment; he industriously examines all things, from the minutest insect to the most finished animal, and when his limited organs can no longer make the disquisition, he sends out his imagination upon new inquiries. Besides those bodies which make a part of our peculiar system, and which may be said to reside within its great circumference, there are others that frequently come among us from the most distant tracts of space, and that seem like dangerous intruders upon the beautiful simplicity of nature. These are comets, whose appearance was once so terrible to mankind, and the theory of which is so little understood at present; all we know is, that their number is much greater than that of the planets, and that, like these, they roll in orbits, in some measure obedient to solar influence. Astronomers have endeavoured to calculate the returning periods of many of them; but experience has not, as yet, confirmed the veracity of their investigations. Indeed, who can tell, when those wanderers have made their excursions into other worlds and distant systems, what obstacles may be found to oppose their progress, to accelerate their motions, or retard their return? But what we have hitherto attempted to sketch is but a small part of that great fabric in which the Deity has thought proper to manifest his wisdom and omnipotence. There are multitudes of other bodies dispersed over the face of the heavens, that lie too remote for examination; these have no motion such as the planets are found to possess, and are therefore called fixed stars; and from their extreme brilliancy and their immense distance, philosophers have been Nothing, therefore, can be more august and striking than the idea which his reason, aided by his imagination, furnishes of the universe around him. Astronomers tell us that this earth which we inhabit forms but a very minute part in that great assemblage of bodies of which the world is composed. It is a million of times less than the sun, by which it is enlightened. The planets, also, which, like it, are subordinate to the sun's influence, exceed the earth one thousand times in magnitude. These, which were at first supposed to wander in the heavens without any fixed path, and that took their name from their apparent deviations, have long been found to perform their circuits with great exactness and strict regula-induced to suppose them to be suns resembling that rity. They have been discovered as forming with our earth a system of bodies circulating round the sun, all obedient to one law, and impelled by one common influence. which enlivens our system. As the imagination, also, once excited, is seldom content to stop, it has furnished each with an attendant system of planets belonging to itself, and has even induced some to deplore the fate of those systems whose imagined suns, which sometimes happens, have become no longer visible. ENGLISH LITERATURE. But conjectures of this kind, which no reasoning can A use, hitherto not much insisted upon, that may [Scenery of the Sea-coasts.] [From the same.] Those who have been much upon our coasts know that there are two different kinds of shores-that which slants down to the water with a gentle declivity, and that which rises with a precipitate boldness, and seems set as a bulwark to repel the force of the invading deeps. It is to such shores as these that the whole tribe of the gull kind resort, as the rocks offer them a retreat for their young, and the sea a sufficient supply. It is in the cavities of these rocks, of which the shore is composed, that the vast variety of seafowl retire to breed in safety. The waves beneath, that continually beat at the base, often wear the shore into an impending boldness, so that it seems to jut out over the water, while the raging of the sea makes the place inaccessible from below. situations to which sea-fowl chiefly resort, and bring These are the up their young in undisturbed security. Those who have never observed our boldest coasts, have no idea of their tremendous sublimity. The boasted works of art, the highest towers, and the noblest domes, are but ant-hills when put in comparison; the single cavity of a rock often exhibits a coping higher than the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral. The face of the shore offers to the view a wall of massive stone ten times higher than our tallest steeples. What should we think of a precipice three quarters of a mile in height? and yet the rocks of St Kilda are still higher! What must be our awe to approach the edge of that impending height, and to look down on the unfathomable vacuity below; to ponder on the terrors of falling to the bottom, where the waves that swell like mountains are scarcely seen to curl on the surface, and the roar of an ocean a thousand leagues broad appears softer than the murmur of a brook? It is in these formidable mansions that myriads of seafowl are for ever seen sporting, flying in security down the depth, half a mile beneath the feet of the OLIVER GOLDSMITH. spectator. The crow and the chough avoid those frightful precipices; they choose smaller heights, where they are less exposed to the tempest; it is the cormorant, the gannet, the tarrock, and the terne, that venture to these dreadful retreats, and claim an undisturbed possession. To the spectator from above, those birds, though some of them are above the size their loudest screaming is scarcely perceptible. of an eagle, seem scarce as large as a swallow, and above the surface, yet it often happens that the water But the generality of our shores are not so formidforsakes the shore at the departure of the tide, and able. Though they may rise two hundred fathom leaves a noble and delightful walk for curiosity on which the sand over the spectator's head, and that seem but just kept the beach. Not to mention the variety of shells with from falling, produce in him no unpleasing gloom. If to this be added the fluttering, the screaming, and strewed, the lofty rocks that hang the pursuits of myriads of water-birds, all either intent on the duties of incubation, or roused at the presence of a stranger, nothing can compose a scene of more peculiar solemnity. To walk along the shore when the tide is departed, or to sit in the hollow of a rock when it is come in, attentive to the various sounds that gather on every side, above and below, may raise the mind to its highest and noblest exertions. The solemn roar of the waves swelling into and subsiding from the vast caverns beneath, the piercing note of the gull, the frequent chatter of the guillemot, the loud note of the auk, the scream of the heron, and the hoarse deep periodical croaking of the cormorant, all unite to furnish out the grandeur of the scene, and turn the mind to Him who is the essence of all sublimity. [On the Increased Love of Life with Age.] [From Goldsmith's Essays.] our desire of living. Those dangers which, in the part of life which lies before me by that which I have grows upon us with our years? whence comes it, that 225 57 an imaginary value in proportion as its real value is no more. Our attachment to every object around us increases in general from the length of our acquaintance with it. 'I would not choose,' says a French philosopher, to see an old post pulled up with which I had been long acquainted.' A mind long habituated to a certain set of objects insensibly becomes fond of seeing them; visits them from habit, and parts from them with reluctance. From hence proceeds the avarice of the old in every kind of possession; they love the world and all that it produces; they love life and all its advantages, not because it gives them pleasure, but because they have known it long. Chinvang the Chaste, ascending the throne of China, commanded that all who were unjustly detained in prison during the preceding reigns should be set free. Among the number who came to thank their deliverer on this occasion there appeared a majestic old man, who, falling at the emperor's feet, addressed him as follows: Great father of China, behold a wretch, now eighty-five years old, who was shut up in a dungeon at the age of twenty-two. I was imprisoned, though a stranger to crime, or without being even confronted by my accusers. I have now lived in solitude and darkness for more than fifty years, and am grown familiar with distress. As yet, dazzled with the splendour of that sun to which you have restored me, I have been wandering the streets to find out some friend that would assist, or relieve, or remember me; but my friends, my family, and relations are all dead, and I am forgotten. Permit me, then, O Chinvang, to wear out the wretched remains of life in my former prison; the walls of my dungeon are to me more pleasing than the most splendid palace: I have not long to live, and shall be unhappy except I spend the rest of my days where my youth was passed-in that prison from whence you were pleased to release me.' The old man's passion for confinement is similar to that we all have for life. We are habituated to the prison, we look round with discontent, are displeased with the abode, and yet the length of our captivity only increases our fondness for the cell. The trees we have planted, the houses we have built, or the posterity we have begotten, all serve to bind us closer to earth, and imbitter our parting. Life sues the young like a new acquaintance; the companion, as yet unexhausted, is at once instructive and amusing; its company pleases, yet for all this it is but little regarded. To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend; its jests have been anticipated in former conversation; it has no new story to make us smile, no new improvement with which to surprise, yet still we love it; destitute of every enjoyment, still we love it; husband the wasting treasure with increasing frugality, and feel all the poignancy of anguish in the fatal separation. Sir Philip Mordaunt was young, beautiful, sincere, brave, an Englishman. He had a complete fortune of his own, and the love of the king his master, which was equivalent to riches. Life opened all her treasures before him, and promised a long succession of future happiness. He came, tasted of the entertainment, but was disgusted even at the beginning. He professed an aversion to living, was tired of walking round the same circle; had tried every enjoyment, and found them all grow weaker at every repetition. If life be in youth so displeasing,' cried he to himself, what will it appear when age comes on? if it be at present indifferent, sure it will then be execrable.' This thought imbittered every reflection; till at last, with all the serenity of perverted reason, he ended the debate with a pistol! Had this self-deluded man been apprised that existence grows more desirable to us the longer we exist, he would have then faced old age without shrinking; he would have boldly dared to live, and served that society by his future assiduity which he basely injured by his desertion. [A City Night-Piece.] [From the 'Citizen of the World."] The clock has just struck two; the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket; the watchman forgets the hour in slumber; the laborious and the happy are at rest; and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl; the robber walks his midnight round; and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me-where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed with her own importunities. What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock or the distant watch-dog; all the bustle of human pride is forgotten. An hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity. There will come a time when this temporary solitude will be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room. What cities, great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded, and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession. Here, he cries, stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds; there their senate house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile. Temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction. How few appear in those streets, which but some few hours ago were crowded! And those who appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery. But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent? These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease. The world has disclaimed them: society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve? Poor houseless creatures! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes of the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny; and every law which gives others security becomes an enemy to them. |