ption.

* * * * *

GOLDSMITH AND JOHNSON.

We should not censure artists and writers for their attachment to
their favourite excellence. Who but an artist can value the ceaseless
inquietudes of arduous perfection; can trace the remote possibilities
combined in a close union; the happy arrangement and the novel variation?
He not only is affected by the performance like the man of taste, but is
influenced by a peculiar sensation; for while he contemplates the apparent
beauties, he traces in his own mind those invisible processes by which the
final beauty was accomplished. Hence arises that species of comparative
criticism which one great author usually makes of his own manner with that
of another great writer, and which so often causes him to be stigmatised
with the most unreasonable vanity.

The character of GOLDSMITH, so underrated in his own day, exemplifies this
principle in the literary character. That pleasing writer, without any
perversion of intellect or inflation of vanity, might have contrasted his
powers with those of JOHNSON, and might, according to his own ideas, have
considered himself as not inferior to his more celebrated and learned
rival.

Goldsmith might have preferred the felicity of his own genius, which like
a native stream flowed from a natural source, to the elaborate powers of
Johnson, which in some respects may be compared to those artificial waters
which throw their sparkling currents in the air, to fall into marble
basins. He might have considered that he had embellished philosophy with
poetical elegance; and have preferred the paintings of his descriptions,
to the terse versification and the pointed sentences of Johnson. He might
have been more pleased with the faithful representations of English
manners in his "Vicar of Wakefield," than with the borrowed grandeur and
the exotic fancy of the Oriental Rasselas. He might have believed, what
many excellent critics have believed, that in this age comedy requires
more genius than tragedy; and with his audience he might have infinitely
more esteemed his own original humour, than Johnson's rhetorical
declamation. He might have thought, that with inferior literature he
displayed superior genius, and with less profundity more gaiety. He
might have considered that the facility and vivacity of his pleasing
compositions were preferable to that art, that habitual pomp, and that
ostentatious eloquence, which prevail in