The Works of Oliver Goldsmith (Volume 11) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XIX CLOSE OF A TWELVE TEARS' STRUGGLE 1767 Such a possible fate as that of poor Smollett, common in all times in England and at this time nearly universal, was something to reflect upon in those Garden Court chambers, which Mr. Scott, swelling with his brace of livings, can only deign to call a " a garret." A poor enough abode they were, scarcely perhaps deserving a less contemptuous name; and here Goldsmith found himself, after twelve years of hard struggle, doubtless unable at all times to repress, what is so often the unavailing bitterness of the successful as well as unsuccessful man, the consideration of what he had done compared with what he might have done.1 The chances still remain, nevertheless, that he might not have done it; and the greater probability is that most people do what they are qualified to do in the condition of existence imposed upon them. It is very doubtful to me, upon the whole, if Goldsmith, placed as he was throughout life, could have done better than he did. Beginning with not even the choice which Fielding admits was his, of hackney-writer or hackney-coachman, he has fought his way at last to consideration and esteem. But he bears upon him the scars of his twelve years' conflict, of the mean sorrows through which he has passed, and of the cheap indulgences he has sought relief and help from. There is nothing plastic in hisnature now. He is forty. His manners and habits are completely formed; and in them any further success can make little favorable change, whatever it may effect for his mind or his genius. The distrusts which were taught him in his darkest humiliations cling around him still; and, by the fitful changes and sudden necessities which have encouraged the weakness of his natural disposition, his really generous and most aff...