n Christianity itself
is impeached on account of the persecution suffered by poor Goldsmith.
"There had been a Christian religion extant for seventeen-hundred and
fifty-seven years," writes Mr. Forster, "the world having been
acquainted, for even so long, with its spiritual necessities and
responsibilities; yet here, in the middle of the eighteenth century,
was the eminence ordinarily conceded to a spiritual teacher, to one of
those men who come upon the earth to lift their fellow-men above its
miry ways. He is up in a garret, writing for bread he cannot get, and
dunned for a milkscore he cannot pay." That Christianity might have
been worse employed than in paying the milkman's score is true enough,
for then the milkman would have come by his own; but that
Christianity, or the state, or society should be scolded because an
author suffers the natural consequences of his allowing his
expenditure to exceed his income, seems a little hard. And this is a
sort of writing that is peculiarly inappropriate in the case of
Goldsmith, who, if ever any man was author of his own misfortunes, may
fairly have the charge brought against him. "Men of genius," says Mr.
Forster, "can more easily starve, than the world, with safety to
itself, can continue to neglect and starve them." Perhaps so; but the
English nation, which has always had a regard and even love for
Oliver Goldsmith, that is quite peculiar in the history of literature,
and which has been glad to overlook his faults and follies, and eager
to sympathise with him in the many miseries of his career, will be
slow to believe that it is responsible for any starvation that
Goldsmith may have endured.

However, the key-note has been firmly struck, and it still vibrates.
Goldsmith was the unluckiest of mortals, the hapless victim of
circumstances. "Yielding to that united pressure of labour, penury,
and sorrow, with a frame exhausted by unremitting and ill-rewarded
drudgery, Goldsmith was indebted to the forbearance of creditors for a
peaceful burial." But what, now, if some foreigner strange to the
traditions of English literature--some Japanese student, for example,
or the New Zealander come before his time--were to go over the
ascertained facts of Goldsmith's life, and were suddenly to announce
to us, with the happy audacity of ignorance, that he, Goldsmith, was a
quite exceptionally fortunate person? "Why," he might say, "I find
that in a country where the vast majority of peopl