1758, appeared his first book, a translation of the Memoirs of Jean Marteilhe of Bergerac, a Protestant who had been "condemned to the Galleys of France for his religion." But he was soon back again at Peckham, waiting vaguely for a medical appointment to a factory at Coromandel, which he did not obtain. Finally he was rejected at Surgeons' Hall in December, 1758, as "not qualified for a [ship's] hospital mate." At this period he was living miserably in a little court off Ludgate Hill, and writing a high-sounding Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe. The Enquiry was published in April, 1759, with some success. From October to November in the same year, he issued The Bee, a miscellaneous collection of papers in prose and This brought him to the notice of Smollett; of John Newbery, the bookseller; and (in all probability) of Johnson. Smollett enlisted him for the British Magazine; and for Newbery's Public Ledger he began, in January, 1760, the series of Chinese Letters afterwards collected (1762) as the Citizen of the World. In May, 1761, he was visited by Johnson at the new lodgings into which he had moved at 6 Wine Office Court, Fleet Street.

verse.

Henceforth his record is one of hack-work interspersed with masterpieces. He edited the Lady's Magazine, for which he wrote Memoirs of Voltaire; he also wrote a History of Mecklenburgh, 1762; a Life of Nash, 1762; and a History of England (in letters), 1764. In December, 1764, appeared his famous poem, The Traveller, and in the following year, his Essays. To these, in

1766, succeeded his solitary novel, the Vicar of Wakefield. Two years subsequently, after a fresh course of compilations, he produced at Covent Garden Theatre (29 January, 1768) his comedy of the Good Natur'd Man, of which the success was sufficient to justify him in moving to rooms at 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple. Escaping again from historical drudgery, he issued a second poem, The Deserted Village (26 May, 1770); and, in rather less than three years more, he crowned his achievements with the comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, produced at Covent Garden, 15 March, 1773. This next year he died at Brick Court, 4 April, 1774, and was buried five days later in the burial ground of the Temple Church. In 1776 a monument, with a medallion by Joseph Nollekens, was erected to his memory by the Literary Club, in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. The epitaph, by Johnson, contains the famous "Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit." After Goldsmith's death were published his poems of Retaliation (1774), the Haunch of Venison (1776), and some other minor pieces. In 1801, Bishop Percy brought out a four volume edition of his Miscellaneous Works, with a Memoir which constitutes the first source of his biography. An elaborate Life followed in 1837 by Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Prior. But this was practically superseded in 1848 by the more authoritative record of John Forster. A delightful summary of Forster's book was prepared in 1849 by Washington Irving, and there are other and more recent memoirs.

Introduction

WHEN, at the beginning of 1756, Oliver Goldsmith returned from those desultory wanderings on the Continent with which he had been completing an undesigned apprenticeship to authorcraft, it is manifest that, even at the age of seven and twenty, he was still ignorant of his true vocation, since it was only after he had unsuccessfully essayed several other callings that he finally drifted into literature. But it is worthy of note

that he seems to have been early attracted to the stage. There is a popular rumour, that, very soon after his arrival in England, he figured as a stroller; and it has been suspected, from hints he dropped in later life, that at some time he had actually enacted that multifarious part of Scrub" in Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem which fascinated even the brilliant Fanny Abington. The Adventures of a Strolling Player in the British Magazine suggest personal experiences, and again with Farquhar, as the rôle taken by Goldsmith's shabby hero is that of Sir Harry Wildair in the Constant Couple. Then the account of George Primrose in the Vicar has also its theatrical episodes; and George Primrose has always been more or less identified with Goldsmith himself. Lastly, there is a fairly authenticated story that, when he was employed as corrector of the press to Richardson, he had gone so far as to compose a tragedy. He called one morning upon an Edinburgh

friend, at that time in London, and from pockets bulging with papers, like those of the Poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe, produced a manuscript which he forthwith proceeded to read, hastily blotting everything to which his listener objected. At last he let out that he had already consulted the author of Clarissa, whereupon his friend, naturally distrustful of his personal judgment in so critical a case, positively declined to express any further opinion, good or bad. And with that the tragedy disappears from Goldsmith's history. Whether he burned it, as his predecessor Steele burned the play he wrote at Oxford, has not been recorded. In all likelihood it was modelled upon Voltaire, whom he greatly admired; and probably reached no higher level than that of Murphy's Orphan of China, or the Zobeide of his later friend, Mr. Joseph Cradock of Gumley, to which he was to supply a pleasant Prologue. Zobeide and the Orphan owed their origin to Voltaire, and both were failures. Goldsmith was abler than either of the writers named; but it may safely be postulated that his genius was better suited to Comedy than Tragedy. In any case, although his subsequent writings show him to have been an exceptionally capable and commonsense critic of plays and players, a period of ten years was allowed to elapse before we hear of his next dramatic effort, The Good Natur'd Man.

Both

The comedy of the Good Natur'd Man was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in January, 1768. It is scarcely necessary, as a preliminary to Goldsmith's plays, to recount the history of the English stage in the Eighteenth Century. That it was not a very illustrious

epoch in our theatrical annals, is generally admitted. The great Comic Dramatists of the Restoration had passed away, and with them had gone their atmosphere and environment. Those who succeeded to them were inferior artists, working under different conditions, for a different public. The genius of Steele, whose sense of humour was as keen as his perception of character, was not fundamentally dramatic, and he was hampered, moreover, by his genuine and praiseworthy desire to "moralise his song" in accordance with the precepts of the Nonjuror, Jeremy Collier, — a desire which, if it prospered in one way, was fated to failure in another. Fielding, who followed, with greater genius and a richer endowment of invention, ruined himself by his reckless return to the old " wit-traps" of Wycherley and Congreve, as well as by his prodigal dispersal, over a dozen hasty and hand-to-mouth performances, of powers which, discreetly combined and controlled, might have crystallised into masterpieces; and his most durable efforts are his mock-heroic burlesques, and his imitations of Regnard and Molière. After these two, either in time or merit, and it is sufficient here to speak of Comedy alone, come the Cibbers, the Murphys, the Footes, the Colmans, the Macklins, the Garricks, all of whom produced acting plays which achieved a fugitive popularity. But Murphy's Upholsterer, 1758; Foote's Minor, 1760; Colman's Jealous Wife, 1761; Macklin's Man of the World, 176481,1 and the rest, however applauded in their own day, have not found more than timid and tentative

1 First acted as The True-born Scotchman.