livia
preparing herself for the arduous task of converting a rakish lover by
studying the controversy between Robinson Crusoe and Friday, the great
ladies with their scandal about Sir Tomkyn's amours and Dr Burdock's
verses, and Mr Burchell with his "Fudge," have caused as much harmless
mirth as has ever been caused by matter packed into so small a number of
pages. The latter part of the tale is unworthy of the beginning. As we
approach the catastrophe, the absurdities lie thicker and thicker; and
the gleams of pleasantry become rarer and rarer.

The success which had attended Goldsmith as a novelist emboldened him to
try his fortune as a dramatist. He wrote the "Goodnatured Man," a piece
which had a worse fate than it deserved. Garrick refused to produce it
at Drury Lane. It was acted at Covent Garden in 1768, but was coldly
received. The author, however, cleared by his benefit nights, and by the
sale of the copyright, no less than 500 pounds, five times as much as he
had made by the "Traveller" and the "Vicar of Wakefield" together. The
plot of the "Goodnatured Man" is, like almost all Goldsmith's plots,
very ill constructed. But some passages are exquisitely ludicrous; much
more ludicrous, indeed, than suited the taste of the town at that time.
A canting, mawkish play, entitled "False Delicacy," had just had an
immense run. Sentimentality was all the mode. During some years, more
tears were shed at comedies than at tragedies; and a pleasantry which
moved the audience to anything more than a grave smile was reprobated
as low. It is not strange, therefore, that the very best scene in the
"Goodnatured Man," that in which Miss Richland finds her lover attended
by the bailiff and the bailiff's follower in full court dresses, should
have been mercilessly hissed, and should have been omitted after the
first night.

In 1770 appeared the "Deserted Village." In mere diction and
versification this celebrated poem is fully equal, perhaps superior,
to the "Traveller;" and it is generally preferred to the "Traveller" by
that large class of readers who think, with Bayes in the "Rehearsal,"
that the only use of a plan is to bring in fine things. More discerning
judges, however, while they admire the beauty of the details, are
shocked by one unpardonable fault which pervades the whole. The fault we
mean is not that theory about wealth and luxury which has so often been
censured by political economists. The theory is indeed false: bu