While the fourth edition of the "Traveller" was on the counters of the booksellers, the "Vicar of Wakefield" appeared, and rapidly obtained a popularity which has lasted down to our own time, and which is likely to last as long as our language.The fable is indeed one of the worst that ever was constructed.It wants, not merely that probability which ought to be found in a tale of common English life, but that consistency which ought to be found even in the wildest fiction about witches, giants, and fairies.But the earlier chapters have all the sweetness of pastoral poetry, together with all the vivacity of comedy.Moses and his spectacles, the vicar and his monogamy, the sharper and his cosmogony, the squire proving from Aristotle that relatives are related, Olivia preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by studying the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and Dr Burdock's verses, and Mr Burchell with his "Fudge," have caused as much harmless mirth as has ever been caused by matter packed into so small a number of pages.The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning.
As we approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker; and the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer.
The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to try his fortune as a dramatist.He wrote the "Goodnatured Man," a piece which had a worse fate than it deserved.Garrick refused to produce it at Drury Lane.It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly received.The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the sale of the copyright, no less than 500 pounds, five times as much as he had made by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" together.The plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots, very ill constructed.But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous;much more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time.A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy,"had just had an immense run.Sentimentality was all the mode.
During some years, more tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated as low.It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the "Goodnatured Man," that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the first night.
In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village." In mere diction and versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior, to the "Traveller;" and it is generally preferred to the "Traveller" by that large class of readers who think, with Bayes in the "Rehearsal," that the only use of a plan is to bring in fine things.More discerning judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are shocked by one unpardonable fault which pervades the whole.The fault we mean is not that theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been censured by political economists.The theory is indeed false: but the poem, considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse on that account.The finest poem in the Latin language, indeed the finest didactic poem in any language, was written in defence of the silliest and meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy.A poet may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill; but he cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from real life monstrous combinations of things which never were and never could be found together.What would be thought of a painter who should mix August and January in one landscape, who should introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part was exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-trees loaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves, and the sun-burned reapers wiping their foreheads, were very fine, and that the ice and the boys sliding were also very fine?
To such a picture the "Deserted Village" bears a great resemblance.It is made up of incongruous parts.The village in its happy days is a true English village.The village in its decay is an Irish village.The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries; and to two different stages in the progress of society.He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his "Auburn." He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America.The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster: but, by joining the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world.
In 1773 Goldsmith tried his chance at Covent Garden with a second play, "She Stoops to Conquer." The manager was not without great difficulty induced to bring this piece out.The sentimental comedy still reigned; and Goldsmith's comedies were not sentimental.The "Goodnatured Man" had been too funny to succeed; yet the mirth of the "Goodnatured Man" was sober when compared with the rich drollery of "She Stoops to Conquer," which is, in truth, an incomparable farce in five acts.On this occasion, however, genius triumphed.Pit, boxes, and galleries, were in a constant roar of laughter.If any bigoted admirer of Kelly and Cumberland ventured to hiss or groan, he was speedily silenced by a general cry of "turn him out," or "throw him over."Two generations have since confirmed the verdict which was pronounced on that night.
