Oliver Goldsmith was the most pure and suasive spirit of his age. To this day his gentle touch and soothing spell, by that magnetic power that flows through purity of sympathy, still sway the heart. His charming radiance and pure, divine delight move and master those who admire and honour this all-loving soul and most graceful writer. In reading his works, there is for all, and there must ever be, that sense of compassion and that absolving perception which must have moved the finer feelings of those who lived in his own time, and actually knew the man himself. Not less does his purifying power, with its elevating inspiration, survive. It is a silent and unseen, but still a lofty, a lasting, and an impressive influence. Lovers of Goldsmith feel friendship and affection for the moving and immortal spirit of the man. His works need no learned commentary. The common heart is their sufficing commentary. CHAPTER IX THE POET AND THE ESSAYIST Successful in every sphere, it is as an essayist that, amongst the immortals, Goldsmith sways signal and supreme distinction. As a poet, not less than as a playwright, he triumphed in his own, and inspired and influenced the coming age. As a biographer, he readily gained contemporary celebrity, both through the sympathetic understanding of his heart and the delightful facility of his literary style. In his own time, he occupied, through the high and undoubted merits of his works, an eminent position amongst the historians. The appealing force of his power in this field has lasted practically until the present day. That his histories have been superseded is due far more to changes in attitude and criticism and the revolutionary results of modern research than to intrinsic failures in the works themselves. They still stand monuments in pure English and models in patriotic perception, the due balance between the general and the particular, and also in vividness, compression, and an unfailing clearness, both in sound views, and also in their unfailing explicit expression. Whilst it has appeared the unhappy destiny of this author to have been at times too lightly regarded, high praise has almost always been accorded to his labours.