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the press, a reviewer, and a writer for a newspaper. He had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged by the contemplation of such a model. To me and many others it appeared that he studiously copied the manner of Johnson, though indeed upon a smaller scale. No man had the art of displaying with more advantage, as a writer, whatever literary acquisitions he made. Nihil quod tetigit non ornavit. His mind resembled a fertile but thin soil. There was a quick but not a strong vegetation of whatever chanced to be thrown upon it. No deep root could be struck. The oak of the forest did not grow there, but the elegant shrubbery and the fragrant parterre appeared in gay succession. It has been generally circulated and believed that he was a mere fool in conversation; but, in truth, this has been greatly exaggerated. He has, no doubt, a more than common share of that hurry of ideas which we often find in his countrymen, and which sometimes produces a laughable confusion in expressing them. He was very much what the French call un etourdi, and, from vanity and an eager desire of being conspicuous wherever he was, he frequently talked carelessly, without knowledge of the subject, and even without thought. His person was short, his countenance coarse and vulgar, his deportment that of a scholar awkwardly affecting the easy gentleman.... He affected Johnson's style and manner of conversation, and when he had uttered, as he often would, a labored sentence, so tumid as to be scarcely intelligible, would ask if that was not truly Johnsonian; yet he loved not Johnson, but rather envied him for his parts, and once entreated a friend to desist from praising him, "for in doing so," said he, "you harrow up my very soul." He had some wit, but no humor, and never told a story but he spoiled it.

THE WORKS OF GOLDSMITH.

There are few writers for whom the reader feels such personal kindness as for Oliver Goldsmith. The fascinat

ing ease and simplicity of his style; the benevolence that beams through every page; the whimsical yet amiable views of human life and human nature; the mellow, unforced humor blended so happily with good feeling and good-sense throughout his writings win their way irresistibly to the affections and carry the author with them. While writers of greater pretensions and more sounding names are suffered to lie upon our shelves, the works of Goldsmith are cherished and laid in our bosoms. We do not quote them with ostentation, but they mingle with our minds; they sweeten our tempers and harmonize our thoughts; they put us in good-humor with ourselves and with the world, and in doing so they make us happier and better men. - WASHINGTON IRVING.

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The design of this periodical, like Johnson's "Idler" and Rambler, was taken from Addison's Spectator, the extraordinary success of that paper inducing many to attempt imitations of it. Its contents, consisting of essays, tales, discussions of the topics of the day, was the work of Goldsmith alone. But the abstract nature of the magazine, discarding, as it did, all gossip and scandal, and that kind of news which alone can be really termed popularrelating to the immediate interests and wants of mankind-prevented its being a success, and only a few numbers were ever issued. There are, however, two passages in this series of publications which are of great interest: one for its autobiographical nature, the other for its exquisite style of description

I. A Passage of Autobiographical Interest (No. I.).

"There is not, perhaps, a more whimsically dismal figure in nature than a man of real modesty who assumes an air of impudencewho, while his heart beats with anxiety, studies ease and affects good-humor. In this situation, however, a periodical writer 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 before which he is going to appear, his natural humor turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd; they part dissatisfied; and the author, never more to be indulged with a favorable hearing, is left to condemn the indelicacy of his own address or their want of discernment. For my part, as I was never distinguished for address, and have often even blundered in making my bow, such bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my ambition. I was at a loss whether to give the public specious promises, or give none; whether to be merry or sad on this solemn occasion. If I should decline all merit, it was too probable the hasty reader might have taken me at my word. If, on the other hand, like laborers in the magazine trade, I had, with modest impudence, humbly presumed to promise an epitome of all the good things that ever were said or written, this might have disgusted those readers I most desire to please. Had I been merry, I might have been censured as vastly low; and had I been sorrowful, I might have been left to mourn in solitude and silence; in short, whichever way I turned, nothing presented but prospects of terror, despair, chandlers' shops, and wastepaper."

II. The City Night Piece (No. IV.).

"The clock has just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket, the watchman forgets the hour in slumber, the laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl, the robber walks his midnight round, and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person.

"Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where Vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me-where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed with her own importunities.

"What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten; an hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity.

"There will come a time when this temporary solitude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room.

"What cities, as great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded; and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, helearns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession. Here,' he cries, 'stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of the State were conferred on amusing, and not on useful, members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction.'"

STUDY OF "THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD."

Dr. Johnson gives the following account of the circumstances attending the publication of this novel: "I received, one morning, a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill." However, the bookseller did not issue the tale until two years afterwards-in 1766. It proved to be a popular work, and three editions were published within six months; but its total disregard by literary critics has been especially noted by Mr. Forster, who, after a careful examination of the periodicals of the time, says that "apart from bald recitals of the plot, not a word was said in the way of criticism about the book, either in praise or blame."

CRITICISMS.

With that sweet story of "The Vicar of Wakefield" he has found entry into every castle and every hamlet in Europe. Not one of us, however busy and hard, but once or twice in our lives has passed an evening with him and undergone the charm of his delightful music. Goethe.

The admirable ease and grace of the narrative, as well as the pleasing truth with which the principal characters are designed, make "The Vicar of Wakefield" one of the most delicious morsels of fictitious composition on which the human mind was ever employed. We read "The Vicar of Wakefield" in youth and in age; we return to it again and again, and bless the memory of an author who contrives so well to reconcile us to human nature. --SIR WALTER Scott.

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Look ye now, for one moment, at the deep and delicate

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