ved the buckeen" in
Ballymahon. Of the other characters of the play, Hardcastle, Mrs.
Hardcastle, and Kate have a like prerogative of immortality. They are
royally descended and personally unique.

The comedy has been absurdly called farcical. There is much less of the
farcical than in many a so-called "legitimate" comedy. None of the
circumstances are purely fortuitous; none unnecessary. Humor and caprice
tend steadily to complicate the action, and by natural interaction
prepare the way for the denouement. The misunderstandings are the more
piquant because of their manifest irony and their ephemeral character.
Indeed, if any fault is to be found with the play, it is that Goldsmith
did not let it resolve itself without the assistance of Sir Charles
Marlow.

One peculiarity not yet mentioned is illustrative of Goldsmith's method.
A system of mutual borrowing characterizes his works. The same thought,
in the same or nearly the same language, occurs in half a dozen. 'The
Enquiry' lends a phrase to 'The Citizen,' who passes it on to the
'Vicar,' who, thinking it too good to keep, hands it over to the
'Good-natured Man,' whence it is borrowed by 'She Stoops to Conquer,'
and turned to look like new,--like a large family of sisters with a
small wardrobe in common. This habit does not indicate poverty of
invention in Goldsmith, but associative imagination and artistic
conservatism.

Goldsmith was the only Irish story-writer and poet of his century. Four
Irishmen adorned the prose of the period: Goldsmith is as eminent in the
natural style as Swift in the satiric, or Steele in the polished, or
Burke in the grand. In comedy the Irish led; but Steele, Macklin,
Murphy, Kelly, do not compare with Farquhar, Sheridan, and Goldsmith.
The worst work of these is good, and their best is the best of the
century.

Turning to Goldsmith the man, what the "draggle-tail Muses" paid him we
find him spending on dress and rooms and jovial magnificence, on
relatives or countrymen or the unknown poor, with such freedom that he
is never relieved of the necessity of drudgery. Still, sensitive,
good-natured, improvident, Irish,--and a genius,--Goldsmith lived as
happy a life as his disposition would allow. He had the companionship of
congenial friends, the love of men like Johnson and Reynolds, the final
assurance that his art was appreciated by the public. To be sure, he was
never out of debt, but that was his own fault; he was never out of
cred