dreamt of retracing his steps to what he supposed was home; and of finding a Paradise where he had left slovenly farm-land: In all my wanderings round this world of care, And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, The metamorphosis was the work of sympathetic imagination; essentially as much an inspiration as an Ode by Collins or Gray. Whether it be a magical chorus of the Passions, a prophet-harper's wrathful panorama of history, or a Sweet, smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, transplanted from Arcadia into Roscommon, or Longford, the whole is still the plaything of the same enchantress. But the order of procedure has varied, and the results likewise. Collins and Gray built their fairy palaces on the clouds. Goldsmith's always have the air of being founded on solid earth. His painting, gay or serious, is portraiture. He was the friend, son, or brother, of the preacher, to all the country dear. He had sat in the alehouse. Doubtless well he had known the schoolmaster; for every truant knew. He was acquainted no less with the man so good, whom the dog, to gain some private ends, in a fit of madness imprudently bit. He had been among charitable Mrs. Mary Blaize's admirers. He had wept over the heart-break in Olivia's song. Probably he felt himself, before he had finished the pretty ballad, Angelina's Edwin. That his vehicle of expression changed made little difference so far in the writer's spirit. As the charm of The Deserted Village is in the conviction that the writer saw it all as he rhymed, so it is with the Vicar in the perfect prose-poem. Always there is an inherent persuasion of good faith. The author expects his readers to believe nothing of which he has not first convinced himself. It was the secret of his almost suicidal successes as Prince of Grub Street. As I myself experienced when a child, it lent a nobility as of original research to a mere piece of bookmaking, which was my introduction to Roman History. It lighted the lamp which would hold him in the purest fiction of humorousness fluttering over the sepulchre of a dead joke. More even than his splendid genius-if the two can be separated-it endeared the charming, blundering egotist to a Johnson, a Burke, a Reynolds, and keeps him the friend of all who at any time have read one of his evergreen books. The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Aldine Edition of the British Poets). William Pickering, 1835. 1 The Traveller. 3 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 2 The Deserted Village. 4 Ibid. • Ibid. WHE CHARLES CHURCHILL 1731-1764 AN eminent instance of the not uncommon phenomenon in life, and especially in literature, of popularity quickly won, and as quickly lost. The world, from its own point of view, I do not suppose was wrong in either case. Churchill packed into the three years and a half of his poetical career enough to storm the interest of a single generation, and no more. In a play-going age the Rosciad was like a spark in a heap of shavings. His subsequent treatment of social and political scandals kept at fever-heat public curiosity about the self-unfrocked priest, the confidant and mouthpiece of Wilkes. He hated whatever and whoever happened to be the especial bugbear of the hour. Fiery revilings of Bute and Scottish office-mongers, Ministerial and Legislative usurpations, and the shamelessness of vice in high places were sure to be read. The fearlessness of his onslaughts, against a mitred Warburton, or a thinly disguised 'Lothario', the unbridled recklessness always of his rage, worked like a spell. Whether it were generous indignation at the vulgar grossness of eighteenth-century sensuality, spite at fate for having deferred for thirty poverty-stricken years his personal wallowing in its joys, or resentment of the reproaches of his conscience for present indulgence-perhaps exaggerated by scandal-or a medley of all three, mattered nothing. The doubts and the controversies about the private character of the executioner simply added a zest to coffee-house gossip as it diverted itself with the contortions of his victims. Not that a tempest of vindictiveness against circumstances, despotism, imposture, effrontery, lust, fortune, and self, would have been sufficient to explain the fascination of public opinion, had there been nothing besides. Real greatness there was not. Such could not have sold itself for a mess of pottage, for the coarse tribute of a mob's wonder and applause. But, at the back of all, a particle of genius, not too pure to admit of base companionship, must have been present. In his earliest publication he manifested, along with not a little brutality, some insight, and much epigrammatic smartness. He sums up admirably the respective merits of the two chief rival actors. There is Quin, too invariably himself for true impersonation; 'happy in art', and In all the labour'd artifice of speech; but apt to Neglect the heart to compliment the head; forgetful that: spite of all the criticizing elves, Those who would make us feel, must feel themselves. To chide the libertine, and court the queen. With just desert his reputation rose; Nor less he pleas'd, when, on some surly plan, He was at once the actor, and the man.1 Between him and one in whom the characters were always united, real competition was impossible. Such was Garrick; and to him Shakespeare as judge awards, of right, the succession to Roscius: 'If manly sense, if Nature link'd with Art; If feelings which few hearts, like his, can know, And which no face so well as his can shew; He was less judicial in his political satires, and far more violent; though occasionally there also he was right in his censures. Imagining himself a Sovereign, the Ruler of Gotham, in a spirit which has a show of nobility, notwithstanding the acrid innuendo at Bute and the Princess his Patroness, he prescribes and accepts the obligations of his Royalty: To prevent The course of justice from her fair intent, In vain my nearest, dearest friend shall plead, In vain my mother kneel-my soul may bleed, 'Tis mine to give it force, to give it aim— I know it duty, and I feel it Fame.3 Much more habitually he was satisfied to dispense with any pretence of argument, to wield no instruments of fancy but the bludgeon and the sledge-hammer. Passionateness is a primary attribute of poetry. A poet ought to have it at command. It was a quality of Churchill's; only it had him at command, not he it. He was perpetually in a passion, boiling over with it. The temper suited his readers who were eager for a summons to boil over in unison. His |