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 could 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 merit; told the landlady I would soon return; and having gone to a book-seller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating the landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.”

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield appeared after Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, had gained their fame as novelists, and was the purest and most wholesome of English stories yet written. The scenes of Fielding and Smollett are too frequently vicious, or are carried on in the haunts of vice.

Goldsmith took his reader into a rural English life, among characters who at once get a hold on our hearts, which they never lose. We learn to love them all, from artless Dr. Primrose to the pedantic, yet easily humbugged, Moses. We enjoy all the amusements of the family, when they are living in competency, their tea-drinkings, out-door dances, their social commerce with neighbors, as if we were taking part in them; and their revulsion from a comfortable estate to poverty, we feel as if it were our own. How delightfully Mr. Burchell, the lord in disguise, comes into the story. We guess, long before the artless Primroses do, that he is to be their benefactor. And when the bad young squire comes upon the scene, I tremble for Olivia's peace of mind, even when I read the novel for the twentieth time.

How wise good Dr. Primrose is in all his little discourses although we see that he is, in all minor matters, led by his wife and daughters, very tenderly by the nose. Yet he sometimes gets the better of them. One day, he says:

"My wife was busy making the venison pasty, Moses sat reading, while I taught the little ones. My daughters seemed equally busy

with the rest, and I observed them for a good while cooking something over the fire. I at first supposed they were assisting their mother, but little Dick informed me, in a whisper, they were making a wash for the face. Washes of all kinds I had a natural antipathy to, for I knew that instead of mending the complexion they spoiled it. I therefore approached my chair by slow degrees to the fire, and grasping the poker, as if the fire wanted mending, seemingly by accident overturned the whole composition, and it was then too late to begin another."

One of the most delicious bits of humor in the book, is the good old doctor's account of the way in which the family had their portraits painted.

66

My wife and daughters happening to return a visit to neighbor Flamborough's, found that the family had lately gotten their pictures drawn by a limner,* who traveled the country and took likenesses for fifteen shillings a head. As this family and ours had long been at rivalry in point of taste, our spirits took the alarm at this stolen march upon us, and notwithstanding all I could say (and I said much), it was resolved we should have our pictures done too. Having therefore engaged the limner (for what could I do), my next deliberation was to show the superiority of our taste in the attitudes. As for our neighbor's family, there were seven of them, and they were drawn with seven oranges, a thing quite out of taste, no variety in life, no composition in the world. We desired to have something in a brighter style, and, after many debates, at length came to the unanimous resolution of being painted in one large historical family piece. This would be cheaper, since one frame would serve for all, and it would be infinitely more genteel, for, all families of any taste were now drawn in this manner. As we did not immediately recollect any historical subject to hit us, we were contented with being drawn as separate historical figures. My wife desired to be drawn as Venus, and the painter was requested not to be too frugal of the diamonds in her stomacher and hair. Her two little ones were to be Cupids by her side; while I, in my gown and band, was to present her with my books on the Whistonian Controversy. Olivia would be drawn as an Amazon, sitting on a bank of flowers, dressed in a green Joseph richly laced with gold, and a whip in her hand; Sophia was to be a shepherdess, with as many sheep as the painter would put in for nothing, and Moses was to be dressed out with a white hat and feather.

* A Painter.

The painter set to work. and wrought with such assiduity that in less than four days the whole was completed. The piece was large, and it must be owned he did not spare his colors, for which my wife gave him great encomiums. We were all perfectly satisfied with his performance, but an unfortunate circumstance which had not occurred till the picture was finished, now struck us with dismay. It was so large we had no place in the house to fix it! The picture, therefore, instead of gratifying our vanity, as we hoped it would, leaned in the most mortifying manner against the kitchen wall, where the canvass was stretched and painted, much too large to be got through any of the doors, and the jest of all our neighbors."

Goldsmith's poem, The Deserted Village, breathes something of the same spirit as The Vicar of Wakefield. It shows the same sympathy with the simple life of rural England; and the character of the village preacher, who reminds us of Dr. Primrose, is said to be a genuine portrait of the poet's father:

"Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild,
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The village preacher's modest mansion rose.

A man he was to all the country dear,
And passing rich, with forty pounds a year;
Remote from towns, he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, or wished to change, his place;
Unskillful he to fawn, or seek for power,
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched, than to rise.
His house was known to all the vagrant train;
He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain.
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spend-thrift was no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed;
The broken soldier kindly bade to stay,
Sat by his fire and talked the night away;

Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.

Pleased with his guest, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe,

Careless their merits or their faults to scan
His pity gave ere charity began.

"Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride,
And even his failings leaned to virtue's side;
But, in his duty prompt at every call,

He watched and wept, he prayed and felt for all;
And as a bird each.fond endearment tries,
To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way
Beside the bed where parting life was laid;
And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns displayed,
The reverend champion stood. At his control
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul;
Comfort came down, the trembling wretch to raise,
And his last faltering accent whispered praise.
66 At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway.
The fools who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service past, around the pious man,
With ready zeal, each honest rustic ran.
Even children followed with endearing wile,
And plucked his gown to share the good man's smile.
His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed;
Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed.
To them his heart, his love, his grief were given,
But all his serious thoughts have rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its head the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

Probably the Vicar of Wakefield and The Deserted Village will outlive all else that Goldsmith ever wrote, but neither of these won him such success during his life as his comedies She Stoops to Conquer, and The Good-Natured Man. Best of these is She Stoops to Conquer, which deserved its success. It was a play whose situations were mirthful and innocent; whose characters were laughable without being coarse. The drama had made great im

provement in purity during the century which begun with Congreve and Farquhar, and the work of Goldsmith, 1751-1817. in She Stoops to Conquer and The Good-Natured Man, followed by Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Rivals, and The School for Scandal, did more to elevate the stage than many sermons had yet been able to do. And we may count it as one of the chief merits of a writer so versatile as Goldsmith, that his wit was pure and wholesome, his pathos true and not morbid, and that few men have written so little that in the interests of morality we could wish to blot.

TALK XLVIII.

ON THE FIRST WOMAN NOVELIST.

In the year 1778, the whole reading world was agitated by the appearance of an anonymous novel called Evelina. Everybody read it with delight, and it was pronounced a wonderful picture of the times. All London was occupied in guessing what new author had burst into fame, and everybody was praising him, and wondering about him, when it Born, 1752. was whispered from one to another that a young Died, 1840. lady, Miss Fanny Burney, had written this book, and Miss Burney at once became the heroine of the hour. Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Thrale, sent and invited her to tea, where the great Doctor sat beside her and paid her extravagant, not to say fulsome, compliments. Edmund Burke, the statesman, sat up all night to read her book. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter, declared he would give fifty pounds to know the author, and praises were showered upon her by readers great and little. We who read every year dozens of novels far cleverer than Evelina may find it difficult to understand this furor. But we must remember that no English woman had ever before written an English novel, and that Evelina was more natural in style than Richardson, and