free from malice; his work full of ease and naturalness, and pervaded by an indefinable and enduring grace and charm.

STUDY LIST

GOLDSMITH

1. The latest and fullest collection of Goldsmith's poetical works is by J. W. M. Gibbs, Bell's edition, 5 vols. (1884-1886). The Vicar of Wakefield, edited with introduction and notes by Mary A. Jordan (Longmans' English Classics); the above is also in an edition of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., with short introduction on Goldsmith's literary style.

The Deserted Village and The Traveller; Rolfe's edition (Harpers') with admirable introduction and notes.

She Stoops to Conquer; a cheap school edition is published by The Cassell Publishing Co.

2. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM.-Prior's Life of Goldsmith is full and reliable; but a later Life by J. Forster has largely taken its place, and is generally recognized as the standard biography. De Quincey has reviewed the first edition of Forster's Life (Masson's De Quincey, vol. iv.). This article is largely occupied with an interesting discussion of the position of the author and the state of society in Goldsmith's time. The Life by Washington Irving is rendered fascinating by the ease and charm of the author's style. Life by Sir Walter Scott in Lives of the Novelists. The best brief Life is that by Austin Dobson in Great Writers Series (this includes bibliography.) There is also a Life by William Black in English Men of Letters Series. The Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition, contains Macaulay's 'Essay on Goldsmith"; see, also," Goldsmith," in Thackeray's English Humorists; article in Literary Anecdotes, by Nichols, vol iii.; and Haunts and Homes of British Poets, by Howitt.

Goldsmith.

EDMUND BURKE.-1729-1797

Five years before Goldsmith settled in London after his wanderings on the Continent, another young Irishman, Edmund Burke, had come to Burke and the capital, to begin there an even more memorable career. It is interesting to study the lives of these two men together, for, while in many ways they were widely different, Burke's broad relation to the political movements of the time is similar to that which Goldsmith holds toward its literary history. Like Goldsmith, Burke represents a time of transition, belonging both to the old order and to the new. More than he realized, he helped forward the political changes which marked his time, yet one of his strongest feelings was his reverence for the past.

Edmund Burke was the son of a Dublin attorney, and was born in that city in 1729. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, at fourteen, two Burke's life. years before Goldsmith, who was, it will be remembered, about a year his senior. In 1750, after taking his bachelor's degree, Burke came up to London and began the study of the law. He afterward expressed great respect for the law as a science and means of mental discipline, but from his boyhood he had showed a fondness for literature, writing verses at college, and being pursued with what he called the furor poeticus. His interest in literary matters, when legal studies were supposed to be his first object, so displeased his father, who was hightempered and bent on seeing his son a barrister, that

he cut off, or greatly reduced, Burke's allowance. Thus in or about 1755, the year before Goldsmith began his battle with London, Burke was left to push his own way in a city which was none too kindly a nurse to struggling authors. We know little of the details, for Burke maintained a dignified reserve in regard to his early struggles, but we know the difficulties and the results. "I was not," he said afterward, swaddled, and rocked, and dandled into a legislator. Nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me."

Career as

author.

Burke's career as an author began in 1756 with the publication of a cleverly written essay, A Vindication of Natural Society, followed in the same year by A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. The first purports to be a posthumous publication of Pope's friend, Lord Bolingbroke, and is a skillful imitation of Bolingbroke's manner. The arguments its supposed author had advanced against revealed religion are here employed against the organization of society, with the intention of showing that as they are obviously unsound in the political sphere, they are equally so in the religious. Both of these works show promise, but neither is among Burke's greatest efforts.

Literature and politics.

Launched into authorship, Burke naturally began to take his place in the literary life about him. He met Johnson and his followers, and when the Literary Club was started, in 1764, was one of its founders.* Meanwhile his studies were turning from purely literary and artistic *V. p. 279, Supra.

matters to history and the existing problems of society and government. The changed direction of his thoughts is shown by the publication of a work on the settlement of America, and of an Annual Register of the most important public events of each year (1759-1788). Such work was an admirable preparation for a successful Parliamentary career. In 1765 Burke definitely entered politics by becoming secretary to Lord Rockingham, who had just succeeded Grenville as Prime Minister. The difficulty with the American Colonies was one of the gravest questions the new ministry had to face, and Burke, who had obtained a seat in the House of Commons (1765), won immediate distinction by a speech on the repeal of the Stamp Act. It was the beginning of a long and impressive public career, extending over nearly thirty years. It was a period to call out the full powers of an orator, the wisest judgment of a statesman. The people were restive under the arbitrary rule of George III., and the contest over the right of Wilkes to a seat in Parliament showed that Parliament itself was rather an instrument of tyranny than a safeguard of liberty. In these years India was won, America was lost; Warren Hastings was impeached for misgovernment of India in one of the most imposing and dramatic trials in English annals; the French Revolution was begun, and Europe witnessed the Reign of Terror. On nearly every one of these subjects Burke has given us a masterpiece. The troubled times of John Wilkes were the occasion of his Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770), a restrained and well-rea

soned discussion of the dangers which then threatened English liberty. It warns men that arbitrary power may disguise itself under the very "Thoughts on forms of free government, and that the Present a Parliament which has become the Discontents." servant of the king instead of the representative of the people, is, in fact, an instrument of servitude. The clear perception of the truth that liberty lies deeper than laws and institutions is characteristic of Burke's power to strip off the formal and conventional, and lay hold of the vital truth. The dispute with America called forth three of Burke's best speeches, in which he was one of the greatest supporters of the Colonists. In his Speech on Conciliation with America, perhaps the finest of the three, he brushes away the legal question of the right of England to tax the Colonies, and rests the argument on the broader ground of expediency and common sense. The legal right to do a certain thing does not prove that the thing should be done. "The question with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy."*

Speeches on
America.

An English statesman and critic goes so far as to say that these speeches of Burke on American affairs.

66

are almost the one monument of the struggle on which a lover of English greatness can look with pride." Burke's advocacy of liberty in the rising * Conciliation with America; Burke's works.

John Morley; article on Burke in Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition.