Sir Walter Scott writes: "The wreath of Goldsmith is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice; and he accomplished his task in a manner that raises him to the highest rank among British authors. We close his volumes with a sigh that such an author should have written so little from the stores of his own genius, and that he should have been so prematurely removed from the sphere of literature which he adorned." Johnson writes: "The Life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith--a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing. What such an author has told, who would wish to tell again?" The same generous soul exclaimed: "Is there a man, sir, now, who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance as Goldsmith?" All can see how true this is when they compare Goldsmith's style with that of his contemporaries--that hostile essay, for example, published from Richardson's firm, in which, time after time, sneers must cease and praise prevail, despite the intention to decry. If reluctant laudation is most sincere, then Boswell himself said of Goldsmith that there was nothing that he touched that he did not adorn. Goldsmith adorned, but not with mere polish or veneer. He threw a curious felicity on things, and made them fair. The very beauty of his touch allures us to take his work too lightly. If his essays had been in his own time translated into pompous terms, he could have passed for a sage. As convention makes religion something of which little children grow afraid, so older minds think beauty must be frivolous, and that moral worth must live in rapt association with outward ugliness. A most graceful literary style may be as true and earnest and inspiring as a very pretty woman. It teaches as it smiles. On everything Goldsmith ever cast a fairer and more hallowed light. The very inmost essence of his genius was purity in its compassionate perfection. It must, indeed, have been difficult under the conditions of distress amidst which almost throughout his whole life he wrote, for him to preserve an ease of style, and with the ease a dignity. Yet through all, not even once he faltered. He never failed. Following Fielding's happy epigram--if it ought not to be rather called most unhappy--in these days the lot of a literary man who was a hackney writer was hardly better, nay, scarce as good, as the lot of a hackney coachman. Yet even in those writings which must have been rushed off most rapidly, and amidst the fires of scorching distress, Goldsmith maintained his grace of style, and did not forget the reverence due to writing and the honour of literature. Without any trace or taint of self-consciousness or self-conceit, he held the pen a sacred trust. As a critic Goldsmith had a high ideal, and more than this. And, what is finer, an entirely new conception. No poet could read his criticism of