ory to deal, otherwise
than incidentally, with the literature of England in the eighteenth
century. The whole Georgian era, from its dawn to its dusk, is rich in
splendid names in {172} letters as in art. The great inheritance from
the Augustan age of Anne, the anguish of Grub Street, the evolution of
the novel, the eloquence of the pulpit and the bar, the triumphs of
science, the controversies of scholars, the fortunes of the drama, the
speculations of philosophy, the vacillations of the pamphleteer, the
judgments of the critics, the achievements of historians--these are
themes whose intimate consideration is outside the range of this work's
purpose. All that is possible is here and there to linger a little in
the company of some dear and famous figure--a Swift, a Johnson, a
Goldsmith, a Sheridan--who stands above his fellows in the world's
renown or in our individual affection, who played while he lived his
conspicuous part on the great stage of public life, or who helped
conspicuously to influence public thought. The selection is, within
these limitations, inevitably arbitrary, and is given frankly as such.
Certain names assert themselves masterfully, and of these Goldsmith's
is one of the most masterful. He added images to daily life and common
thought as Bunyan did or Shakespeare. There is no more need to explain
Dr. Primrose than there is to explain Mr. Facing-both-ways, and if Beau
Tibbs is only less familiar as Osric, Tony Lumpkin is to the full as
familiar as Falstaff. Goldsmith himself is the lovable type of a class
that was often unlovely in the eighteenth century, the needy man of
letters. If he has his lodging in the Grub Street of Dreams, his
presence there brings sunlight into the squalid place, and an infinite
humor, an infinite charity compensate royally for a little finite folly
and finite vanity. In the great art he served and the great age he
adorned Goldsmith stands, not alone, but apart, with the very human
demigods.

{173}

CHAPTER LIV.

YANKEE DOODLE.

[Sidenote: 1775--The Philadelphia Congress]

An English ministry and an English king were convinced that everything
necessary to do for the suppression of the mutinous spirit in a
turbulent but unwarlike people had been done. The existence of Boston
as a trading port had been abolished; Carthage had been blotted out;
there was an English army within the walls of Boston; there was an
English fleet in the Charles River. Who co