Halleck's New English Literature Part 42

His sentences follow one another in magnificent procession. One feels that they are the work of an artist. They are thickly sprinkled with fine-sounding words derived from the Latin. The 1611 version of the first four chapters of the _Gospel_ of John averages 96 per cent of Anglo-Saxon words, and Shakespeare 89 per cent, while Gibbon's average of 70 per cent is the lowest of any great writer. He has all the coldness of the cla.s.sical school, and he shows but little sympathy with the great human struggles that are described in his pages. He has been well styled "a skillful anatomical demonstrator of the dead framework of society." With all its excellences, his work has, therefore, those faults which are typical of the eighteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDMUND BURKE. _From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, National Portrait Gallery_.]

Political Prose.--Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a distinguished statesman and member of the House of Commons in an important era of English history,--a time when the question of the independence of the American colonies was paramount, and when the spirit of revolt against established forms was in the air. He is the greatest political writer of the eighteenth century.

Burke's best productions are _Speech on American Taxation_ (1774) and _Speech on Conciliation with America_ (1775). His _Reflections on the Revolution in France_ is also noteworthy. His prose is distinguished for the following qualities: (1) He is one of the greatest masters of metaphor and imagery in English prose. Only Carlyle surpa.s.ses him in the use of metaphorical language. (2) Burke's breadth of thought and wealth of expression enable him to present an idea from many different points of view, so that if his readers do not comprehend his exposition from one side, they may from another. He endeavors to attach what he says to something in the experience of his hearers or readers; and he remembers that the experience of all is not the same.

(3) It follows that his imagery and figures lay all kinds of knowledge under contribution. At one time he draws an ill.u.s.tration from manufacturing; at another, from history; at another, from the butcher shop. (4) His work displays intense earnestness, love of truth, strength of logical reasoning, vividness of imagination, and breadth of view, all of which are necessary qualities in prose that is to mold the opinions of men.

It is well to note that Burke's careful study of English literature contributed largely to his success as a writer. His use of Bible phraseology and his familiarity with poetry led a critic to say that any one "neglects the most valuable repository of rhetoric in the English language, who has not well studied the English Bible... The cadence of Burke's sentences always reminds us that prose writing is only to be perfected by a thorough study of the poetry of the language."

OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1728-1774

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH. _From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, National Portrait Gallery_.]

Life and Minor Works.--Oliver Goldsmith was born of English parents in the little village of Pallas in the center of Ireland. His father, a poor clergyman, soon moved a short distance to Lissoy, which furnished some of the suggestions for _The Deserted Village_.

Goldsmith went as a charity student to Dublin University, where, like Swift, he graduated at the bottom of his cla.s.s. Goldsmith tried in turn to become a clergyman, a teacher, a lawyer, and a doctor, but failed in all these fields. Then he wandered over the continent of Europe for a year and acc.u.mulated some experiences that he used in writing _The Traveler_. He returned to London in 1757, and, after an ineffectual attempt to live by practicing medicine, turned to literature. In this profession he at first managed to make only a precarious living, for the most part as a hackwriter, working for periodicals and filling contracts to compile popular histories of England, Greece, Rome, and _Animated Nature_. He had so much skill in knowing what to retain, emphasize, or subordinate, and so much genius in presenting in an attractive style what he wrote, that his work of this kind met with a readier sale than his masterpieces. Of the _History of Animated Nature_, Johnson said: "Goldsmith, sir, will give us a very fine book on the subject, but if he can tell a horse from a cow, that I believe may be the extent of his knowledge of natural history."

His first literary reputation was gained by a series of letters, supposed to be written by a Chinaman as a record of his impressions of England. These letters or essays, like so much of the work of Addison and Steele, appeared first in a periodical; but they were afterwards collected under the t.i.tle, _Citizen of the World_ (1761). The interesting creation of these essays is Beau Tibbs, a poverty-stricken man, who derives pleasure from boasting of his frequent a.s.sociation with the n.o.bility.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOLDSMITH GIVES DR. JOHNSON THE MS. OF THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. _From a drawing by B. Westmacott_.]

It was not until the last ten years of his life that Goldsmith became famous. He certainly earned enough then to be free from care, had he but known how to use his money. His improvidence in giving to beggars and in squandering his earnings on expensive rooms, garments, and dinners, however, kept him always in debt.

One evening he gave away his blankets to a woman who told him a pitiful tale. The cold was so bitter during the night that he had to open the ticking of his bed and crawl inside. Although this happened when he was a young man, it was typical of his usual response to appeals for help. When his landlady had him arrested for failing to pay his rent, he sent for Johnson to come and extricate him. Johnson asked him if he had nothing that would discharge the debt, and Goldsmith handed him the ma.n.u.script of _The Vicar of Wakefield_.

Johnson reported his action to Boswell, as follows:--

"I looked into it and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return; and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CANONBURY TOWER, LONDON, WHERE GOLDSMITH WROTE SOME OF HIS FAMOUS WORK.]

During his last years, Goldsmith sometimes received as much as 800 in twelve months; but the more he earned, the deeper he plunged into debt. When he died, in 1774, at the age of forty-five, he owed 2000.

He was loved because--

"...e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side."

His grave by the Temple Church on Fleet Street, London, is each year visited by thousands who feel genuine affection for him in spite of his shortcomings.

Masterpieces.--His best work consists of two poems, _The Traveler_ and _The Deserted Village_; a story, _The Vicar of Wakefield_; and a play,_She Stoops to Conquer_.

The object of _The Traveler_ (1765), a highly polished moral and didactic poem, was to show that happiness is independent of climate, and hence to justify the conclusion:--

"Vain, very vain, my weary search to find That bliss which only centers in the mind."

_The Deserted Village_ (1770) also has a didactic aim, for which we care little. Its finest parts, those which impress us most, were suggested to Goldsmith by his youthful experiences. We naturally remember the sympathetic portrait of the poet's father, "the village preacher":--

"A man he was to all the country dear And pa.s.sing rich with forty pounds a year.

His house was known to all the vagrant train; He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain."

The lines relating to the village schoolmaster are almost as well known as Scripture. Previous to this time, the eighteenth century had not produced a poem as natural, sincere, and sympathetic in its descriptions and portraits as _The Deserted Village_.

_The Vicar of Wakefield_ is a delightful romantic novel, which Andrew Lang cla.s.ses among books "to be read once a year." Goldsmith's own criticism of the story in the _Advertis.e.m.e.nt_ announcing it has not yet been surpa.s.sed:--

"There are an hundred faults in this Thing, and an hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may he very dull without a single absurdity. The hero of this piece unites in himself the three greatest characters upon earth: he is a priest, an husbandman, and the father of a family. He is drawn as ready to teach and ready to obey; as simple in affluence, and majestic in adversity."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. PRIMROSE AND HIS FAMILY. _From a drawing by G.

Patrick Nelson._]

_The Vicar of Wakefield_ has faults of improbability and of plot construction; in fact, the plot is so poorly constructed that the novel would have been almost a failure, had other qualities not insured success. The story lives because Dr. Primrose and his family show with such genuineness the abiding lovable traits of human nature,--kindliness, unselfishness, good humor, hope, charity,--the very spirit of the _Sermon of the Mount_. Goethe rejoiced that he felt the influence of this story at the critical moment of his mental development. Goldsmith has added to the world's stock of kindliness, and he has taught many to avoid what he calls "the fict.i.tious demands of happiness."

Goldsmith wrote two plays, both hearty comedies. The less successful, _The Good-Natured Man_ (acted 1768), brought him in 500. His next play, _She Stoops to Conquer_, a comedy of manners, is a landmark in the history of the drama. The taste of the age demanded regular, vapid, sentimental plays. Here was a comedy that disregarded the conventions and presented in quick succession a series of hearty humorous scenes. Even the manager of the theater predicted the failure of the play; but from the time of its first appearance in 1773, this comedy of manners has had an unbroken record of triumphs. A century later it ran one hundred nights in London. Authorities say that it has never been performed without success, not even by amateurs. Like all of Goldsmith's best productions, it was based on actual experience. In his young days a wag directed him to a private house for an inn.

Goldsmith went there and with much flourish gave his orders for entertainment. The subt.i.tle of the comedy is _The Mistakes of a Night_; and the play shows the situations which developed when its hero, Tony Lumpkin, sent two lovers to a pretended inn, which was really the home of the young ladies to be wooed.

It is interesting to note that his contemporary, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), produced, shortly after the great success of _She Stoops to Conquer_, the only other eighteenth-century comedies that retain their popularity, _The Rivals_ (1775) and _The School for Scandal_ (1777), which contributed still further to the overthrow of the sentimental comedy of the age.

General Characteristics.--Goldsmith is a romanticist at heart; but he felt the strong cla.s.sical influences of Johnson and of the earlier school. In his poetry, Goldsmith used cla.s.sical couplets and sometimes cla.s.sical subject matter, but the didactic parts of his poems are the poorest. His greatest successes, such as the pictures of the village preacher and the schoolmaster in _The Deserted Village_ and of Dr.

Primrose and his family in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, show the warm human sympathy of the romantic school.

The qualities for which he is most noted are (1) a sane and saving altruistic philosophy of life, pervaded with rare humor, and (2) a style of remarkable ease, grace, and clearness, expressed in copious and apt language.

_She Stoops to Conquer_ marks a change in the drama of the time, because, in Dobson's phrase, it bade "good-bye to sham Sentiment."

"...this play it appears Dealt largely in laughter and nothing in tears."

SAMUEL JOHNSON, 1709-1784

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL JOHNSON. _From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds_.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL JOHNSON'S BIRTHPLACE. _From an old print_.]

Early Struggles.--Michael Johnson, an intelligent bookseller in Lichfield, Staffordshire, was in 1709 blessed with a son who was to occupy a unique position in literature, a position gained not so much by his writings as by his spoken words and great personality.

Samuel was prepared for Oxford at various schools and in the paternal bookstore, where he read widely and voraciously, but without much system. He said that at the age of eighteen, the year before he entered Oxford, he knew almost as much as at fifty-three. Poverty kept him from remaining at Oxford long enough to take a degree. He left the university, and, for more than a quarter of a century, struggled doggedly against poverty. When he was twenty-five, he married a widow of forty-eight. With the money which she brought him, he opened a private school, but failed. He never had more than eight pupils, one of whom was the actor, David Garrick.

In 1737 Johnson went to London and sought employment as a hack writer.

Sometimes he had no money with which to hire a lodging, and was compelled to walk the streets all night to keep warm. Johnson reached London in the very darkest days for struggling authors, who were often subjected to the greatest hardships. They were the objects of general contempt, to which Pope's _Dunciad_ had largely contributed.

During this period Johnson did much hack work for the _Gentleman's Magazine_. He was also the author of two satirical poems, _London_ (1738) and _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749), which won much praise.

Later Years.--By the time he had been for ten years in London, his abilities were sufficiently well known to the leading booksellers for them to hire him to compile a _Dictionary of the English Language_ for 1575. He was seven years at this work, finishing it in 1755. Between 1750 and 1760 he wrote the matter for two periodicals, _The Rambler_ (1750-1752) and _The Idler_ (1758-1760), which contain papers on manners and morals. He intended to model these papers on the lines of _The Tatler_ and _The Spectator_, but his essays are for the most part ponderously dull and uninteresting.

In 1762, for the first time, he was really an independent man, for then George III. gave him a life pension of 300 a year. Even as late as 1759, in order to pay his mother's funeral expenses, Johnson had been obliged to dash off the romance of _Ra.s.selas_ in a week; but from the time he received his pension, he had leisure "to cross his legs and have his talk out" in some of the most distinguished gatherings of the eighteenth century. During the rest of his life he produced little besides _Lives of the English Poets_, which is his most important contribution to literature. In 1784 he died, and was buried in Westminster Abbey among the poets whose lives he had written.

A Man of Character.--Any one who will read Macaulay's _Life of Johnson_[2] may become acquainted with some of Johnson's most striking peculiarities; but these do not const.i.tute his claims to greatness. He had qualities that made him great in spite of his peculiarities. He knocked down a publisher who insulted him, and he would never take insolence from a superior; but there is no case on record of his having been unkind to an inferior. Goldsmith said: "Johnson has nothing of a bear but the skin." When some one manifested surprise that Johnson should have a.s.sisted a worthless character, Goldsmith promptly replied: "He has now become miserable, and that insures the protection of Johnson."

Johnson, coming home late at night, would frequently slip a coin into the hand of a sleeping street Arab, who, on awakening, was rejoiced to find provision thus made for his breakfast. He spent the greater part of his pension on the helpless, several of whom he received into his own house.