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which, in the former, he has traced the scenery and the natural peculiarities of various countries will be admired long after the reader has learned to neglect the false social theories embodied in his deductions; and in spite of the inconsistency, pointed out by Macaulay, between the pictures of the village in its pristine beauty and happiness, and the same village when ruined and depopulated by the forced emigration of its inhabitants, the reader lingers over the delicious details of human as well as inanimate nature which the poet has combined into the lovely pastoral picture of "sweet Auburn." The touches of tender personal feeling which he has interwoven with his description, as the fond hope with which he dwelt on the project of returning to pass his age among the scenes of innocence which had cradled his boyhood, the comparison of himself to a hare returning to die where it was kindled, the deserted garden, the village alehouse, the school, and the evening landscape, are all touched with the pensive grace of a Claude; while, when the occasion demands, Goldsmith rises with easy wing to the height of lofty and even sublime elevation, as in the image of the storm-girded yet sunshine-crowned peak to which he compares the good pastor.

The Vicar of Wakefield, in spite of the extreme absurdity and inconsistency of its plot, an inconsistency which grows more perceptible in the latter part of the story, will ever remain one of those rare gems which no lapse of time can tarnish. The gentle and quiet humor embodied in the simple Dr. Primrose, the delicate yet vigorous contrasts of character in the other personages, the atmosphere of purity, cheerfulness, and gayety which envelops all the scenes and incidents, will contribute, no less than the transparency and grace of the style, to make this story a classic for all time. Goldsmith's two comedies are written in two different manners, the Good-natured Man being a comedy of character, and She Stoops to Conquer a comedy of intrigue. In the first the excessive easiness and generosity of the hero are not a quality sufficiently reprehensible to make him a favorable subject for that satire which is the essential element of this kind of theatrical painting; and the merit of the piece chiefly consists in the truly laughable personage of Croaker, and in the excellent scene where the disguised bailiffs are passed off on Miss Richland as the friends of Honeywood, whose house and person they have seized. But in She Stoops to Conquer we have a first-rate specimen of the comedy of intrigue, where the interest mainly depends upon a tissue of lively and farcical incidents, and where the characters, though lightly sketched, form a gallery of eccentric pictures. The best proof of Goldsmith's success in this piece is the constancy with which it has always kept possession of the stage; and the peals of laughter which never fail to greet the lively bustle of its scenes and the pleasant absurdities of Young Marlow, Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle, and above all the admirable Tony Lumpkin, a conception worthy of Vanbrugh himself.

Some of Goldsmith's lighter fugitive poems are incomparable for their peculiar humor. The Haunch of Venison is a model of easy

narrative and accurate sketching of commonplace society; and in Retaliation we have a series of slight yet delicate portraits of some of the most distinguished literary friends of the poet, thrown off with a hand at once refined and vigorous. In how masterly a manner, and yet in how few strokes, has Goldsmith placed before us Garrick, Burke, and Reynolds! and how deeply do we regret that he should not have given us similar portraits of Johnson, Gibbon, and Boswell! Several of the songs and ballads scattered through his works are remarkable for their tenderness and harmony, though the Edwin and Angelina, which has been so often lauded, has always appeared to me mawkish, affected, and devoid of the true spirit of the mediæval ballad.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

OTHER NOVELISTS.

SARAH FIELDING (1714-1768) was sister of the celebrated novel-writer, and herself well known as an authoress. Her best known novels were David Simple and The Cry. She also translated Xenophon's Memorabilia.

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CHARLES JOHNSTONE (d. 1800) was the author of the once popular Adventures of a Guinea, 1760, and other now unknown works. The former is a severe satire on the sins and follies of the age. We lay it down "with a feeling of relief." It exhibits the "baser sides of literature and life."

CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORICAL, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

§ 1. DAVID HUME. His life and publications. Treatise on Human Nature and History of England. § 2. WILLIAM ROBERTSON. Histories of Scotland, Charles V., and America. § 3. EDWARD GIBBON. His life and works. §4. Criticism of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. § 5. SAMUEL JOHNSON. His early life and struggles. London. Life of Savage. § 6. English Dictionary. Vanity of Human Wishes. Tragedy of Irene. § 7. The Idler and Rambler. Rasselas. Johnson receives a pension from the government. § 8. His acquaintance with Boswell. Edition of Shakspeare. Journey to the Hebrides. Lives of the Poets. Johnson's death. § 9. EDMUND BURKE. His life and writings. Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. His impeachment of Warren Hastings. Letter to a Noble Lord. Reflections on the French Revolution. Letter on a Regicide Peace. § 10. Letters of Junius. § 11. ADAM SMITH. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. § 12. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. Commentaries on the Laws of England. § 13. BISHOP BUTLER and WILLIAM PALEY. § 14. GILBERT WHITE. Natural History of Selborne.

§ 1. In accordance with that peculiar law which seems to govern the appearance, at particular epochs, of several great names in one department of art or literature, like the sculptors of the Periclean age, the romantic dramatists in that of Elizabeth, and the novelists who appeared in England in the days of Richardson and Fielding, the eighteenth century was signalized by a remarkable wealth of historical genius, and gave birth to Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon.

David Hume (1711–1776) was born, of an ancient Scottish family, in 1711, and received his education in the University of Edinburgh. His desires and ambition were irresistibly set upon literary fame, and after reluctantly trying the profession of law and the pursuit of commerce, he lived abroad some years, devoting himself, by means of prudence and economy, to the cultivation of moral and metaphysical science, and to the preparation of his mind for future historical labors. His intellect was calm, philosophical, and sceptical, and he imbibed that strong disbelief in the possibility of miracles which, when expressed in his subtle logic and refined purity of style, has rendered him one of the most dangerous enemies of revealed religion. In 1737 he returned to England, and was so much discouraged with the coldness of the public towards his first moral and metaphysical productions that he at one time meditated changing his name and expatriating himself forever. In 1746 and the following year a gleam of success shone upon him, for he had hitherto lived in such narrow circumstances that his extreme prudence and economy scarcely enabled him to subsist respectably, and

he was even at one time reduced to the painful and uncongenial office of taking charge of the young Marquis of Annandale, who was insane. He now entered the public service, and was employed as Secretary to General St. Clair in various diplomatic missions. When again residing at Edinburgh, in 1752, he accepted the post of Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, for which he received no salary, but which placed at his disposal a large and excellent collection of books. With the aid thus furnished he began his great work, the History of England from the accession of the Stuart Dynasty to the Revolution of 1688, to which he afterwards added in successive volumes the earlier history from the invasion of Julius Cæsar to the reign of James I. Though the first volumes were received with the same neglect as had encountered his previous publications, the extraordinary merits of the plan and the incomparable clearness and beauty of the narration soon overcame the indifference of the public, and the history gradually and rapidly rose to the highest popularity, and took that place among the prose classics of the language which it has ever since retained. The admiration excited by the History, by a natural consequence, reacted also upon his previous works, which now began to enjoy a high degree of popularity, in spite of the heterodox tenets which they were accused of maintaining. Hume's reputation was now solidly established: he was again employed in the public service, and accompanied as secretary the embassy of General Conway to Paris, where he became one of the lions of the fashionable society of the French capital, a popularity which he owed more to his literary glory and to the sceptical theories - then so prevalent in France of which he was one of the apostles, than to any personal aptitude for the society of wits and fine ladies; for Hume was heavy and inelegant in appearance, and possessed few charms of conversation or readiness of repartee. He afterwards fulfilled for a short time the still higher functions of Under-Secretary of State, and retiring with a pension passed the evening of his life in philosophic and intellectual tranquillity, enjoying the respect and affection which his virtuous and amiable qualities attracted, and which not even his scepticism could repel. Hume died in 1776. He was distinguished by great benevolence of heart, and by a spirit of candor and indulgence to the opinions of others, which might have been advantageously imitated by many of those who controverted his opinions.

As a moral and metaphysical writer Hume certainly deserves a high place in the history of philosophy. The prominent feature of his Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1738, was the attempt to deduce the operations of the mind entirely from the two sources of impressions and ideas, which he looks upon as distinct, and his denying the existence of any fundamental difference between such actions as we call virtuous and vicious, other than as they are practically found to be conducive to or destructive of the advantage of the individual or the species. In other words Hume is the assertor of the theory of Utility, as the only one capable of satisfactorily explaining the mysterious question — What is the essential difference between good and

evil? Such a theory was received with intense dissatisfaction by the orthodox: but seldom has the controversialist to encounter a tougher antagonist than Hume, the clearness of whose exposition, and the subtlety of whose arguments, a subtlety the more formidable as it is always veiled under an air of philosophic candor, were but too often met with declamation and unfair attacks on a personal character which was above reproach. But the chief danger of Hume's philosophical doctrines lies in his famous argument on the impossibility of miracles, based upon the two propositions: first, that it is contrary to all human experience that miracles should be true, both reason and facts tending to show the invariable nature of the laws which govern all physical phenomena; and secondly, that the improbability of a miracle ever having taken place is far greater than the improbability of the testimony to such an event being false, the witnesses being likely either to have been duped themselves or to dupe others.

The History of England is a book of very high value. In a certain exquisite ease and vivacity of narration it certainly has never been surpassed; and in the analysis of characters and the appreciation of great events, Hume's singular clearness and philosophic elevation of view give him a right to one of the foremost places among modern historians. But its defects are no less considerable. Hume's indolence induced him to remain contented with taking his facts at second-hand from preceding writers, without troubling himself about accuracy. Thus legendary and half-mythological stories are related with the same air of belief as the more well-authenticated events of recent times; a fault pardonable enough in Herodotus and Livy, but less venial in a writer who ought to have applied his powerful critical faculty to the sifting of truth from tradition. Hume, essentially a classicist of the Voltaire and Diderot type, too much despised the barbarous monkish chroniclers to think of consulting them as authorities, or of separating the germ of fact which they envelop in a mass of superstitious and imaginative detail. Moreover, the history of England is essentially the history of the conflict of opinion on religious and political questions; and Hume was indifferent to religion, and a partisan of extreme monarchical opinions in politics. Thus he shows a strong leaning to the Stuart dynasty, and even to the Catholic church as opposed to Protestantism; for he belonged to the aristocratical section of the Scottish people, who were almost uniformly Jacobites, while the middle and lower classes were as ardent supporters of liberal principles. The sceptical and philanthropic reasoner was, by a singular paradox, inclined from personal sympathies to opinions precisely contrary to those which he might have been expected to maintain, and struggles by sophistry to excuse the crimes and follies of the arbitrary Stuarts, while he exhibits an indifference, strange in a man so benevolent by nature, to the sufferings and heroism of those who, in Parliament or on the field of battle, fought the great fight for political and religious freedom.

§ 2. Contemporary with Hume was his countryman WILLIAM ROB

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