produced a number of histories and other works of information. He was well paid for these comparatively worthless labors; and two of his plays were fairly successful, The GoodNatured Man (1768), and She Stoops to Conquer (1773). No success, however, could keep pace with his improvidence. He died in 1774 of a fever which was aggravated by anxiety over his debts.

Goldsmith and Johnson.-Goldsmith is almost as well known to us as Johnson, and largely through the same agency, the industry of Boswell. The two figures are in the strongest possible contrast-Johnson, large, strong of feature, with a certain dignity of bearing in spite of his oddities; Goldsmith, under-sized, ill-formed, frightfully disfigured by smallpox, and with a more than childlike simplicity. Again, Johnson's ponderous thought, sturdy virtue, and strong common-sense were at the farthest remove from Goldsmith's mental vivacity, moral laxness, and practical folly. When they joined in combat of words at the club, where Goldsmith was the only member who dared persistently to provoke the wrath of the dictator, Johnson sometimes bore down his opponent by sheer weight; but often Goldsmith sent his stone to its mark and made good his retreat, as when he doubted Johnson's ability to write a fable because he would inevitably make the little fishes talk like whales.

Goldsmith's Humanity.-Goldsmith's lack of practical ability brought him both scorn and pity in his own day, but in our eyes his incapacity is in rather refreshing contrast to the hard common-sense of that age. His difficulties came partly from generosity, partly from his blind trust in the world. For Goldsmith threw himself upon life with the naïve imprudence of a child. Whether traversing Europe as a penniless student, or selling his masterpieces, Goldsmith took no thought for the morrow. And with this confidence in his fellows went a great love for them, a love apparent in all the writings into which he put his real self. His papers in The Citizen of the World, though, like Addison's, often directed against the faults and absurdities of men, have a tenderness which goes beyond Addison's mildness, a note of kinship with humanity that is very different from the Spectator's

aloofness. Goldsmith's poems are written in the heroic couplet, but in spirit they are far removed from Pope's. The Traveller is a survey of the countries of Western Europe, those which Goldsmith had visited in his journeyings; but instead of the complacent optimism of the Essay on Man, we find pictured both the evil and the good in man's situation. The Deserted Village is also a "prospect of society," more powerful because more detailed. The village of Auburn is described with its happy, humble life, centering around the two characters of the village parson and the schoolmaster, both drawn with tenderness and no little humor. But the village is depopulated by order of its landlord, and Goldsmith follows the exiles, compelled to wander over seas to remote America, "where wild Altama murmurs to their woe." In this protest on behalf of the individual against the institution which crushes him Goldsmith was a prophet of the approaching revolution.

Goldsmith's Plays. Goldsmith's sympathy, however, did not lead him into extravagant appeals to emotion. His plays were an effort to substitute for the prevailing "comedy of tears" a healthy comedy of laughter. Goldsmith, indeed, took his own misfortunes with so much spirit and humor that he could not be much concerned about imaginary griefs, and his trust in the goodness of the world was so perfect that with him sorrow was always turned into joy. This optimism gives its color alike to his novel and to his plays. She Stoops to Conquer, the best known of the latter, is a charming idyl, in which the rough edges of the world are ground smooth, in which faults turn out to be virtues, and mistakes prove blessings. times the stage-land copies the actual world with fidelity, as in the riotous scene at the "Three Pigeons," with which the play opens. But the magic of comedy is over all, a magic much subdued, indeed, from the brilliant romance of Shakespeare's day, but still potent.*

At

Sheridan. Goldsmith's plays are a reflection of the idealism which was beginning to manifest itself in the realistic

*Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield will be discussed in the next chapter, together with other eighteenth-century fiction.

age. Opposed to him is Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751– 1816), whose dramas are written in a mood of satirical observation of the surface of life. Sheridan was born at Dublin, of English-Irish stock. After a romantic runaway marriage he settled in London; and when only twenty-three he produced The Rivals (1775). In 1777, after his assumption of the directorship of Drury Lane Theatre, he put on his best play, The School for Scandal, and in 1779 The Critic.

The School for Scandal sets forth the eighteenth-century world of fashion, which, in its frivolous artificiality, lent itself readily to the purposes of the comedian. In this corrupt society Lady Teazle has, for form's sake, provided herself with an admirer, Joseph Surface. Meanwhile Joseph, a cold hearted hypocrite, has plans of his own, one of which is to marry Sir Peter Teazle's niece Maria, and another to supplant his own brother Charles, a good-natured spendthrift, in their uncle's affection. The uncle, Sir Oliver, returns from India, introduces himself, as a money-lender, to Charles, whom he finds ready to sell even his family portraits, except that of Sir Oliver himself. This modest bit of loyalty serves to reinstate the prodigal in his uncle's good opinion; while Joseph, discovered on all sides, fades out of the play in disgrace. At first sight, The School for Scandal, with its opening scenes in which gossip runs wild, seems to revive the world of the Restoration drama, but there is a difference. Light, trifling, frivolous as is Sheridan's society, it is not fundamentally immoral. His people play with fire, but they are not burned. So much had the moral and social force of the century accomplished, in the years since Jeremy Collier's attack on the stage.

VI. EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

Burke's Early Life.-Burke was born in Ireland, in 1729. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and thence, after taking his degree in 1748, went up to London to study law, but soon turned aside into literature. His first important work was an Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1756). In 1765 he became sec

retary to the Whig prime-minister, the Marquis of Rockingham, and Member of Parliament. Although he never held high office, he was for years the brain of the Whig Party in its effort to deal with the new problems arising from the growth of England as a colonial power both in America and in India. The view of his contemporaries, that he was a man wasting the greatest powers on passing affairs of the day, is expressed in Goldsmith's epigram:

"Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind,

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.”

Yet so profound was Burke's thought, and so noble its presentation, that his writings are of value to-day, irrespective of the occasions which called them forth.

Burke's Views on America and India. It is Burke's peculiar distinction that he saw the dangers gathering over England from all quarters, and strove to avert them. He pointed out the one way of escape in the American situation. His first speech in Parliament was in favor of the repeal of the stamp tax. His speech on American taxation was delivered in 1774; his great speech on Conciliation with America in 1775. When England emerged from the war against the coalition of European powers, with the loss indeed of America, but with victory in other quarters, Burke instantly began to press his inquiry into the circumstances of that triumph. The chief success of England had been in India, and the man who had won it was Warren Hastings. Against him Burke levelled his attack. Instead of thanking God that things had turned out so well, he asked why they had turned out well, on what principles the Indian Empire had been conquered and administered, and whether those principles were founded upon justice and humanity. In 1785 he delivered his arraignment of English methods in India, in his speech on The Nabob of Arcot's Debts; and the following year he moved the impeachment of Warren Hastings for his cruel and mercenary treatment of his Indian subjects. Two years later he opened the case before the House of Lords, and he continued to manage it until the acquittal of Hastings in 1795.

Burke's Views on France. In the last year of his life Burke led the opposition to the French Revolution. This attitude involved a separation from his party, but Burke took the step without flinching. His Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790, and the reviews of French affairs which followed, did much to check the rising sympathy with the movement, in England and on the continent. In this opposition Burke took a larger point of view than that of mere prejudice. He believed that England had a world mission in stemming the tide of the revolution and in marshalling the forces of order in Europe. Right or wrong, the struggle of England against France between 1794 and 1815 is a splendid act in the drama of nations. It is scarcely too much to say that the leading rôle which England played in those years was cast for her by Burke. He wrote the lines which the cannon declaimed at Trafalgar and Waterloo.

For

Burke has been criticised for his attack on the French Revolution, as being behind his age. Nevertheless his attitude was the result of his principles, and rested on the same philosophy that guided his action in other matters. Burke was in character essentially practical. His speeches on the American crisis testify to his power of seeing a situation as it really was, and tossing aside all abstract considerations. "I think it may be necessary," he told Parliament, "to consider distinctly the true nature of the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us. Because after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature, and to those circumstances; and not according to our own imaginations; nor according to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories of government." This is the best expression of what may be called Burke's genius for facts, a quality which he shared with other great men of his century, notably with Swift. It was this sense of fact which impelled his opposition to the abstract political theories of the French Revolution.

Burke's Connection with Romanticism.-The great difference between Swift and Burke is to be found in the imagi