the kindly side of life.
"You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel
sings to you," says Mr. Thackeray. "Who could harm the kind vagrant
harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon save the harp on
which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble,
young and old, the captains in the tents, or the soldiers round the
fire, or the women and children in the villages, at whose porches he
stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty." And it is to be
suspected--it is to be hoped, at least--that the cheerfulness which
shines like sunlight through Goldsmith's writings, did not altogether
desert himself even in the most trying hours of his wayward and
troubled career. He had, with all his sensitiveness, a fine
happy-go-lucky disposition; was ready for a frolic when he had a
guinea, and, when he had none, could turn a sentence on the humorous
side of starvation; and certainly never attributed to the injustice or
neglect of society misfortunes the origin of which lay nearer home.

Of course, a very dark picture might be drawn of Goldsmith's life; and
the sufferings that he undoubtedly endured have been made a whip with
which to lash the ingratitude of a world not too quick to recognise
the claims of genius. He has been put before us, without any brighter
lights to the picture, as the most unfortunate of poor devils; the
heart-broken usher; the hack ground down by sordid booksellers; the
starving occupant of successive garrets. This is the aspect of
Goldsmith's career which naturally attracts Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster
seems to have been haunted throughout his life by the idea that
Providence had some especial spite against literary persons; and that,
in a measure to compensate them for their sad lot, society should be
very kind to them, while the Government of the day might make them
Companions of the Bath or give them posts in the Civil Service. In the
otherwise copious, thorough, and valuable _Life and Times of Oliver
Goldsmith_, we find an almost humiliating insistance on the complaint
that Oliver Goldsmith did not receive greater recognition and larger
sums of money from his contemporaries. Goldsmith is here "the poor
neglected sizar"; his "marked ill-fortune" attends him constantly; he
shares "the evil destinies of men of letters"; he was one of those who
"struggled into fame without the aid of English institutions"; in
short, "he wrote, and paid the penalty." Nay, eve