A similar adjustment of dramatic type and historic individual contributes to the durability of Tony Lumpkin. In his dramatis persona he is a practical joker of the family of Diccon and Truewit, and first cousin on the Blenkinsop side to that horse-flesh Sir Harry Beagle. But Anthony is more than the practical joker or the squire booby: he is a near relative of Captain O'Blunder and that whole countryside of generous, touch-and-go Irishmen; while in reality, in propria persona, he is that aspect of Noll Goldsmith that "lived the buckeen" in Ballymahon. Of the other characters of the play, Hardcastle, Mrs. Hardcastle, and Kate have a like prerogative of immortality. They are royally descended and personally unique. The comedy has been absurdly called farcical. There is much less of the farcical than in many a so-called "legitimate" comedy. None of the circumstances are purely fortuitous; none unnecessary. Humor and caprice tend steadily to complicate the action, and by natural interaction prepare the way for the denouement. The misunderstandings are the more piquant because of their manifest irony and their ephemeral character. Indeed, if any fault is to be found with the play, it is that Goldsmith did not let it resolve itself without the assistance of Sir Charles Marlow. One peculiarity not yet mentioned is illustrative of Goldsmith's method. A system of mutual borrowing characterizes his works. The same thought, in the same or nearly the same language, occurs in half a dozen. 'The Enquiry' lends a phrase to 'The Citizen,' who passes it on to the 'Vicar,' who, thinking it too good to keep, hands it over to the 'Good-natured Man,' whence it is borrowed by 'She Stoops to Conquer,' and turned to look like new,—like a large family of sisters with a small wardrobe in common. This habit does not indicate poverty of invention in Goldsmith, but associative imagination and artistic conservatism. Goldsmith was the only Irish story-writer and poet of his century. Four Irishmen adorned the prose of the period: Goldsmith is as eminent in the natural style as Swift in the satiric, or Steele in the polished, or Burke in the grand. In comedy the Irish led; but Steele, Macklin, Murphy, Kelly, do not compare with Farquhar, Sheridan, and [Pg 6508] Goldsmith. The worst work of these is good, and their best is the best of the century.