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truly it would be out of question, to suppose persons so young, and so very pretty, capable of writing proper English: so they transgress in this particular almost in every sentence: you was, and they is, being frequent expressions between them. In the first letter, Miss Jemima Courtly, or Mima, for shortness' sake, lets her old and intimate friend know that her mother died when she was eight years old; that she had one brother and one sister; with several other secrets of this kind, all delivered in the confidence of friendship. In the progress of this correspondence we find that she has been taken home for carrying on an intrigue with Horatio, a gentleman of the neighbourhood, and by means of her sister's insinuations, for she happens to be her enemy, confined to her chamber; the father at the same time making an express prohibition against her writing love-letters for the future. This command Miss Mima breaks, and of consequence is turned out of doors: so up she gets behind a servant without a pillion, and is set down at Mrs. Weller's house, the mother of her friend Miss Fanny. Here, then, we shall leave, or rather forget her: only observing that she is happily married, as we are told in a few words towards the conclusion. We are next served up with the history of Miss Louisa Blyden; a story no way connected with the former. Louisa is going to be married to Mr. Evanion: the nuptials, however, are interrupted by the death of Louisa's father, and at last broke off by means of a sharper, who pretends to be Miss's uncle, and takes her concerns under his direction. What need we tell as how the young lovier runs mad; Miss is spirited away into France; at last returns; the sharper and his accomplices hang or drown themselves; her lover dies; and she, oh tragical! keeps her chamber! However, to console us for this calamity, there are two or three other very good matches struck up; a great deal of money, a great deal of beauty, a world of love, and days and nights as happy as heart could desire: the old butt-end of a modern romance."

Meanwhile the Dodsleys had issued their advertisements, and the London Chronicle of the third of April 1759 announced the appearance, the day before, of An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. It was a very respectable, well-printed duodecimo; was without author's name on the title-page, though Goldsmith was anxious to have the authorship widely known; and had two learned mottoes. The Greek signifying that the writer esteemed philosophers, but was no friend to sophists; and the Latin, that those only should destroy buildings who could themselves build.

The first idea of the work has been seen; as it grew consolingly, like the plant in the Picciola, from between the hard and stony environments of a desperate fortune. Some modifications it received, as the prospects of the writer were subjected to change; and in its scope became too large for the limited materials brought to it. But it was in advance of any similar composition of the day. No one was prepared, in a treatise so grave, for a style so enchantingly graceful. To combine liveliness with learning, is thought something of a heresy still.

With any detailed account of this well-known Enquiry, I do not propose to detain the reader; but for illustration of the course I have taken in this memoir, some striking passages should not be overlooked; others will throw light forward on new scenes which await us; and the contents of the treatise, as found in the current collections, are wanting in much that gives interest to the

duodecimo

now lying before me, the first of the

Dodsley editions.

Manifest throughout the book is one over-ruling feeling, under various forms; the conviction that, in bad critics and sordid booksellers, learning has to contend with her most pernicious enemies. When he has described at the outset the wise reverence for letters which prevailed in the old Greek time: Learning encouraged, protected, 'honoured, and in its turn adorning, strengthening, and

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harmonizing the community:' he turns to the sophists and critics for the day of its decline. By them the ancient polite learning was in his view separated from common sense, and made the employment of speculative 'idlers. The wisest part of mankind would not be imposed upon by unintelligible jargon, nor, like the knight in Pantagruel, swallow a chimera for breakfast, though even cooked by Aristotle.' Thus he distinguished three periods in the history of ancient learning; its commencement, or the age of poets; its maturity, or the age of philosophers; and its decline, or the age of critics. Corruptissima Respublica, plurimæ leges. In like manner, when he turned to the consideration of the decay of modern letters, the critics are again brought up for judgment ; though with a melancholy consciousness that he must himself stand at the same bar. This decay which criti'cism produces may be deplored, but can scarcely be ' remedied; as the man who writes against the critics is

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obliged to add himself to the number.' Nevertheless,

it was with manly self-assertion of attainments which raised him above the herd, that he afterward scornfully disclaimed that viler brotherhood. 'I fire with indignation 'when I see persons wholly destitute of education and 'genius indent to the press, and turned book-makers; adding to the sin of criticism the sin of ignorance; 'whose trade is a bad one, and who are bad workmen in 'the trade.' So much was not to be said of his workmanship, by even the deity of The Dunciad; the contriver of books to be made, the master employer in the miserable craft, Griffiths himself.

And thus comes upon the scene that other arch-foe, to whom, in modern days, the literary craftsman is but minister and servant. The critic or sophist might have been contriver of all harms, while the field of mischief was his own, and limited to a lecture-room of Athens or Alexandria; but he bowed to a more potent spirit of evil when the man of Paternoster Row or the Poultry came up in later days, took literature into charitable charge, and assumed exclusive direction of laws of taste and men of learning. Drawing on a hard experience, Goldsmith depicted the precarious daily fate of the bookseller's workman: 'coming down at stated inter'vals to rummage the bookseller's counter for materials 'to work upon:' a fate which other neglects now made inevitable. 'The author,' said Goldsmith, 'unpatron'ised by the great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller.

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' prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one 'to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as 'much, as possible. Accordingly, tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours. In these circumstances the author bids adieu to 'fame; writes for bread; and for that only, imagination is 'seldom called in. He sits down to address the venal muse with the most phlegmatic apathy; and, as we are 'told of the Russian, courts his mistress by falling asleep

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in her lap. His reputation never spreads in a wider 'circle than that of "the trade," who generally value him, 'not for the fineness of his compositions, but the quantity 'he works off in a given time. A long habit of writing 'for bread thus turns the ambition of every author at last into avarice. He finds that he has written many years, 'that the public are scarcely acquainted even with his name; he despairs of applause, and turns to profit which 'invites him. He finds that money procures all those advantages, that respect, and that ease, which he vainly expected from fame. And thus the man, who, under 'the protection of the great, might have done honour 'to humanity; when only patronised by the bookseller, 'becomes a thing little superior to the fellow who works

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at the press.' In connection with this unpromising picture, he placed the two Literary Reviews and Ma'gazines without number:' adding that, were these Monthly Reviews and Magazines frothy, pert, or absurd, they might find some pardon; but to be dull and

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