eaks away from Pope. His larger
movement, his easier modulation, his richer tone, his rarer epithet and
epigram, his metaphor "glowing from the heart," mark the defection from
the poetry of cold conceit.

For lack of space we can only refer to the romantic quality of his
ballad 'Edwin and Angelina' (1765), the spontaneous humor of 'The Haunch
of Venison,' and the exquisite satire of 'Retaliation' (1774).

To appreciate the historical position of Goldsmith's comedies, one must
regard them as a reaction against the school that had held the stage
since the beginning of the century--a "genteel" and "sentimental"
school, fearing to expose vice or ridicule absurdity. But Goldsmith felt
that absurdity was the comic poet's game. Reverting therefore to
Farquhar and the Comedy of Manners, he revived that species, at the same
time infusing a strain of the "humors" of the tribe of Ben. Hence the
approbation that welcomed his first comedy, and the applause that
greeted the second. For 'The Good-natured Man' (1768) and 'She Stoops to
Conquer' (1773) did by example what Hugh Kelly's 'Piety in Pattens'
aimed to do by ridicule,--ousted the hybrid comedy (tradesman's tragedy,
Voltaire called it) of which 'The Conscious Lovers' had been the most
tolerable specimen, and 'The School for Lovers' the most decorous and
dull.

But "Goldy" had not only the gift of weighing the times, he had the gift
of the popular dramatist. His _dramatis personae_ are on the one hand
nearly all legitimate descendants of the national comedy, though none is
a copy from dramatic predecessors; on the other hand, they are in every
instance "imitations" of real life, more than once of some aspect of his
own life; but none is so close an imitation as to detract from the
pleasure which fiction should afford. The former quality makes his
characters look familiar; the latter, true. So he accomplishes the feat
most difficult for the dramatist: while idealizing the individual in
order to realize the type, he does not for a moment lose the sympathy of
his audience.

Even in his earlier comedy these two characteristics are manifest. In
the world of drama, young Honeywood is the legitimate descendant of
Massinger's Wellborn on the one side, and of Congreve's Valentine Legend
on the other, with a more distant collateral resemblance to Ben Jonson's
Younger Knowell. But in the field of experience this "Good-natured Man"
is that aspect of "Goldy" himself which, when he was po