the graceful negligence and cynical wit that characterize the letters of both. They avoided, however, what was the besetting sin of the Rambler's immediate successors. Johnson's style had a good effect as a corrective of loose and formless expression, but its influence was baneful upon writers of less calibre than himself, who neglected the important difference between sound and sense. The mannerism was so easy to acquire, and it possessed such sonorous dignity, that many besides Hawkesworth used it successfully to screen their poverty of matter, and to fob their readers off with platitudes arrayed in swelling Johnsonese. The one great writer whom Johnson could not eclipse was Oliver Goldsmith, who, amidst the general contamination, stood out as the exponent of a pure and almost faultless prose style. It is questionable whether Goldsmith's essays have generally received the attention they merit, for they are easily the best of their time. Boswell, who highly appreciated Johnson's "labour of language", and was irritated by the Idler's comparative simplicity, makes the solemn assurance that to him "and many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though indeed upon a smaller scale". There is fine, unintentional humour in his honest contempt for the small scale of Goldsmith's imitation, and in his manifest anxiety to allow no little fishes to disport themselves quite in the manner of the whale. And yet, strange as it appears, Boswell could have produced some evidence in support of his contention. The first number of the Bee, Goldsmith's first effort at periodical writing, exhibits the ludicrous

spectacle of its author masquerading in Johnsonian buckram. "In this situation, however, a periodicalwriter often finds himself upon his first attempt to address the public in form. All his power of pleasing is damped by solicitude, and his cheerfulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed with the terrors of the tribunal, his natural terror turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacity." A reader coming bolt on such a passage as this might well rub his eyes, and ask if it could possibly be the work of that cunning hand which pictured "the idyllic grace of the Vicar's home". It was, however, but a momentary yielding to a prevailing fashion, and very soon Goldsmith's exquisite literary taste provided him with a medium of expression more pure and limpid than any that had yet been evolved. His style, which charms by its inimitable grace and astonishes by its continuous excellence, was the product of careful workmanship and of a familiar acquaintance with the best work of his predecessors. He recognized what was admirable in Dryden, Cowley, and Tillotson; he saw that vigour was as lacking in Addison as it was excessive in Johnson; and he acutely observed that Steele was at his best in the Tatler, when he wrote simply and naturally without making any futile attempt to imitate Addison's emotional restraint. His early efforts met with so little encouragement that his fame "hardly travelled beyond the region of Bow-bell", but he found "great satisfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment" of such readers as he had. This, however, cannot have continued long, for when he came to collect his

fugitive essays, he found that some of them had been reprinted sixteen times and claimed by different authors as their own. The absence of any national prejudice is a trait of Goldsmith's character in striking contrast to Johnson's insularity of view. His sturdy faith in Fleet Street is inseparable from our conception of Johnson, and no one would have it otherwise; yet it often hurried him into dogmatic assertions out of keeping with his truer judgment. On the other hand, Goldsmith's vagabondage was a notable part of his education; it broadened his sympathies, quickened his sense of humour, and made him, as he loved to think, a citizen of the world. It was under this title that he collected the series of papers by which he had made the fame of the Public Ledger, and upon which his reputation as an essayist is most firmly based. The idea of satirizing the failings of one's countrymen in the character of a foreigner was no new one. began with the Turkish Spy, attributed to Marana, and it was put to brilliant use in the Persian Letters of Montesquieu, but neither of these was probably the actual source of Goldsmith's inspiration. Mr. Austin Dobson has shown beyond the possibility of doubt that the origin of the Chinese Letters is to be found in a pamphlet by Horace Walpole, consisting of "A Letter from Xo Ho, a Chinese Philosopher in London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking". In the character of the observant and witty oriental, Lien Chi Altangi, Goldsmith came nearer than any other essayist to the plan of the Spectator, and he fully equalled his model in the accuracy of his criticism of life and in the gentle

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humour of his reproof. He possessed in a wonderful degree the art of miniature painting, and the Chinese Letters are full of that same skill in brief but pointed characterization which makes Retaliation unique in English poetry. Of the fourth Letter, with its droll exposure of the inconsistency and brusqueness of the national character, Mr. Dobson remarks that "it is Goldsmith, and Goldsmith only, who could have imagined the admirable humour of the dialogue on liberty between a prisoner (through his grating), a porter pausing from his burden to denounce slavery and the French, and a soldier who, with a tremendous oath, advocates, above all, the importance of religion". In this same essay Goldsmith observed that "the English confer their kindness with an appearance of indifference, and give away benefits with an air as if they despised them", and it is this characteristic which he proceeded to illustrate more fully in his description of the Man in Black. It is one of the chief charms of Goldsmith's essays that he constantly draws on the fund of his own varied experience, and that in them, just as in the Deserted Village, the most amiable traits in his creations are borrowed from his loving recollections of his own Irish home. Writing of the Vicar of Wakefield, Mr. Gosse has said "that it is more like an extended episode in the Spectator manner than a story, and that Fielding would have discoursed in vain if the British novel, after its superb start, had gracefully trotted back again into its stable in this way". This is surely an exaggerated expression of a real truth; but for our present purpose it is more per

tinent to point out that the statement holds good in the inverse, and that Goldsmith's essay-characters are like single threads unravelled from the tangled skein of a complete novel. The Man in Black is Goldsmith's first portrait of this kind, and it is easy to see in it not only a careful delineation of his father, but also not a few traces of his own character. Both as men and as writers there are many strong points of resemblance between Goldsmith and Steele, and the hundred and eighty-first Tatler, with its confession that pity was the weakness of its author's heart, affords an interesting comparison with the twenty-sixth Chinese Letter, which describes Goldsmith as a mere machine of pity". If not one of his most highly finished sketches, the Man in Black is thoroughly characteristic of the author, and no better description has ever been given of one who with his right hand shakes the fist of righteous indignation at an object of charity, and furtively bestows alms with the left. More graphic and much more humorous are the three papers in which Goldsmith drew the inimitable picture of Beau Tibbs, the prince of all shabbygenteel gentlemen, who dwelt in what he facetiously styled the first floor down the chimney. Like Tony Lumpkin's pot-house friend, who danced his bear only to the genteelest of tunes, the beau could not bear anything low; he had a mythical acquaintance with Lord Mudler and Lady Grogram, and he designed his six-year-old daughter for my Lord Drumstick's eldest son. The beau is at his best when he visits Vauxhall along with his wife, Lien Chi, the Man in Black, and the pawnbroker's (M 249)

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