If we come to consider Goldsmith’s influence upon the literary character of his age, we will probably agree that it was second to that of no other author. Indeed, it must be considered superior to that of him who was supposed to sway most authoritatively the world of letters. Doctor Johnson’s style, to be sure, was very impressive, and created a host of imitators—the most remarkable of whom was Gibbon, who surpassed his model in a certain measured splendor of rhetoric—which is, nevertheless, very wearisome at times. But Goldsmith’s many modes of a very simple and lucid style produced then, and since, a more permanent effect. He wrote the best poem, the best comedy, the best novel, and the best history—at least, the best written history of the day. Johnson preferred his historic manner to that of Hume or Robertson. Though Goldsmith’s literature had not the marked effect of Doctor Johnson’s grand Latin idiom; yet being more varied, it reached the wider popularity, such as time has confirmed and increased. Goldsmith kept to the ancient ways of the vernacular, trod by Addison, Swift, Hume, etc.; and contributed not a little to neutralize the Johnsonian mode—which, after all, was recognized to be a corrupt rhetoric, and a weakening of the genius of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Goldsmith’s, “racy of the soil,” was secured against fluctuations of taste, and the charm of it is as fresh to-day as it was eighty years ago. His comedies abolished the mawkish sentimentality which—derived partly from the Richardson school—dulled the spirit of the stage, and asserted, very happily, the old comic claim of setting audiences in a roar. The change was heartily welcomed; the Londoners crowded to the comedy to be merry, and a respected household tradition, now especially recalled for the sake of the dear old narrator of it, has more than once informed us how George the Third, his fresh-colored English face, full of merriment, and the plain, little cock-nosed Charlotte by his side, in the royal box, both joined in the hilarity of the audience during one of the first performances of “She Stoops to Conquer,” at Covent Garden Theatre; but, at the story of “Old Grouse in the Gun-room,” where everybody laughed on the stage, his majesty fairly chimed in with Mr. Hardcastle, and laughed as loud as any one in the house. Thus, in the words of Mr. Colman— “Thus, cheered, at length, by Pleasantry’s bright ray, Nature and mirth resumed their legal sway, And Goldsmith’s genius basked in open day.”