provoke the wholesome laughter of mankind by dealing with
common and familiar ways, and manners, and men; about that choiceness
of diction, that lightness and grace of touch, that lend a charm even
to Goldsmith's ordinary hack-work.

Still less necessary, perhaps, is it to review the facts and
circumstances of Goldsmith's life; and to make of them an example, a
warning, or an accusation. That has too often been done. His name has
been used to glorify a sham Bohemianism--a Bohemianism that finds it
easy to live in taverns, but does not find it easy, so far as one
sees, to write poems like the _Deserted Village_. His experiences as
an author have been brought forward to swell the cry about neglected
genius--that is, by writers who assume their genius in order to prove
the neglect. The misery that occasionally befell him during his
wayward career has been made the basis of an accusation against
society, the English constitution, Christianity--Heaven knows what. It
is time to have done with all this nonsense. Goldsmith resorted to the
hack-work of literature when everything else had failed him; and he
was fairly paid for it. When he did better work, when he "struck for
honest fame," the nation gave him all the honour that he could have
desired. With an assured reputation, and with ample means of
subsistence, he obtained entrance into the most distinguished society
then in England--he was made the friend of England's greatest in the
arts and literature--and could have confined himself to that society
exclusively if he had chosen. His temperament, no doubt, exposed him
to suffering; and the exquisite sensitiveness of a man of genius may
demand our sympathy; but in far greater measure is our sympathy
demanded for the thousands upon thousands of people who, from illness
or nervous excitability, suffer from quite as keen a sensitiveness
without the consolation of the fame that genius brings.

In plain truth, Goldsmith himself would have been the last to put
forward pleas humiliating alike to himself and to his calling. Instead
of beseeching the State to look after authors; instead of imploring
society to grant them "recognition;" instead of saying of himself "he
wrote, and paid the penalty;" he would frankly have admitted that he
chose to live his life his own way, and therefore paid the penalty.
This is not written with any desire of upbraiding Goldsmith. He did
choose to live his own life his own way, and we now have the spl