Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,

And height of bliss but height of Charity."

The objections which Pope met rested on lower grounds than those which disturbed men's minds in Milton's days, and Pope does not rise like Milton to "the height of the great argument." Milton showed the victory of God's love over moral evil; Pope showed the victory of human love over physical evil; but both in their way strove to—

"Assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men."

The later years of Pope's life were much disturbed by the attacks of the critics and small poets whom he had offended, and to these he replied by bitter, and sometimes unjust, satires. This war of words and angry feelings seems to us now a miserable abuse of literary skill and art; but in those days, when every man wore a sword, and thought it his duty to fight and slash his friend if he offended him, it appears to have been considered also a point of so-called honour for every writer to return reviling for reviling.

The "long disease" of Pope's life made it at last impossible for him to continue to write any longer. He died on the 30th of May, 1744.

CHAPTER XIX.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728—1774).

We have seen how the energy of the life pent up in the minds and hearts of men was beginning to rise against the outside bondage which kept it down. The intellectual life of the mind could no longer be suppressed under political or social laws, nor the feelings of the heart be frozen by the coldness of selfish, worldly customs and aims. When anything has been forced out of its own true direction, we know how it will spring too far on the opposite side directly the restraint is broken through; and so it was now with the new life of thought and feeling. Having burst through the false bondage, the true rule of faith and duty were for a while cast off also; and the fresh, strong vigour showed itself at first rather in the distortion of reaction than in the completeness of growth.

In England thought had always been more or less free, but in France it had been long crushed under the most despotic Government, joined with the tyranny of a corrupt Church which misrepresented the religion of Christ. It was here, therefore, that the reaction was the most powerful. The writer who gave clearest and strongest expression to the new life of thought bursting through the dead forms was Voltaire. In France, too, the reaction against the selfishness and luxury of the age was also felt the most strongly, because it was here that self-indulgence and regardlessness of human suffering prevailed the most; and the

B B

writer who gave the most powerful expression to the rising life of the feelings was Rousseau. Both writers expressed the necessary exaggerations of reaction; and while Voltaire claimed freedom for the intellect, independent of faith, Rousseau claimed free action for every impulse of feeling, independent of duty.

In Germany, meantime, there was a revolt going on against the French influence in literature. Bödmer first, and later Lessing, showed that there could be no vigorous growth of literature among any people which did not spring from the literature of its own life; and they asserted that Shakespeare in the drama, and Milton in poetry, were more true followers of the classics than the French, because, while the French imitated classic forms, these English writers had worked according to classic principles; for the Greeks made the inner truth the essential part of literature, and the forms grew around it, according to the genius of their nation and language. The casting-off in Germany of the French influence was the beginning of a true, vigorous, national literature, of which Goethe and Schiller were two of the greatest writers.

We must now see the influence of these writers on our English literature. Although Voltaire had no special follower of any great distinction in English literature, his influence in casting off false restraints upon thought led to a more courageous search for truth, and gave freedom and energy to the expression of it even if it were contrary to the prejudices and self-interest of the world. Rousseau's influence was more directly seen in some of the English writers of the time, who followed him in looking upon everything from the side of feeling. Of these writers, one of the principal was Laurence Sterne. He wrote a novel called "Tristram Shandy,” and an account of his travels in France, which he called "The Sentimental Journey." Sterne reflected Rousseau's exaggerated expression of feeling, and,

like him, lost sight of duty as the true guide of life. But the new life of feeling did not become in England a mere expression of false sentiment. A hearty, honest sympathy with the sorrows and sufferings of human life broke up the dull, selfish indifference which had so much separated man from man and class from class; and the true English sense of duty led to efforts being made to find out the causes of misery, and to make these known, with the view of getting them remedied. The writer who best represents this rise of kindly sympathy and genuine love of his fellow-men is Oliver Goldsmith. We may also take him as a type of the time in illustrating the rising reaction against the French influence, and the return to simple truthfulness, to Nature, and to unartificial life.

Oliver Goldsmith was the son of an Irish clergyman, whose income when Oliver, his fifth child, was born, was little more than "forty pounds a year." At the time of Oliver's birth, in 1728, his father held the small living of Pallas, or Pallasmore, a very out-of-the-way Irish village; but two years afterwards he succeeded to the living of Kilkenny West, with an increased income of nearly two hundred a year. In this Irish home little Oliver grew up in the midst of six or seven brothers and sisters. Here he began that fight with poverty, which was a life-long struggle; here he gained that perfect simplicity of character, which in all his after intercourse with the world he never lost; and here he learned that kindly sympathy and love for others, and that self-forgetful generosity, which nothing could ever chill. Of his father he afterwards wrote:-"He loved all the world, and he fancied all the world loved him. We were told that universal benevolence was what first cemented society; we were taught to consider all the wants of mankind as our own, to regard the human face divine with affection and esteem; he rendered us incapable of withstanding the slightest impulse made by distress; in a word, we were

perfectly instructed in the art of giving away thousands before we were taught the more necessary qualifications of getting a farthing." When Oliver was six years old he was sent to the village school. The master was an old Irish soldier, who had been in the Duke of Marlborough's army. He was most likely made schoolmaster because he was fit for nothing else, and the chief knowledge he seems to have given to his scholars was contained in the stories he told them of his adventures in the big world beyond the little Irish village of Pallasmore; and in the little Oliver the wish was thus roused to run about, and see this wonderful world for himself. One sad thing happened to him at this school, however, and that was that he took a bad kind of small-pox. He had always been a plain child, but this terrible disease left him so disfigured that cruel-hearted people often made fun of the poor little boy; and thus there arose within him a fear that his appearance was displeasing to others, which made him feel all his life through a certain shyness, though there was never a bitter thought in his simple, kindly nature. After leaving this school he went to two others, and at seventeen he entered Trinity College, Dublin, as a sizar. In return for his board and college tuition he had to do some of the servants' work in the college. Many a man had risen in this way, in spite of poverty, to the full recognition and employment of his powers in high offices in the Church and in the State; but Goldsmith was not a student: he loved Nature and life more than books; he was overflowing with fun and good-humour, and got into scrapes, which terribly displeased his tutor.

After he had been at Dublin two years, his father died; and there was very little left for the family, and of that Oliver Goldsmith got none. His uncle sent him money sometimes, and he earned a little himself by writing ballads and selling them to a printer. At times he had to pawn his books for a few shillings; but through all he was merry and