Houdard, who attempted to translate Homer into French, though a man of no mean abilities, was incapable of feeling the beauties of his author; and to the same want of a congenial mind we may attribute the unjust strictures of Dr. Johnson upon the pindaric odes of Gray. Perhaps also, as Dr. Aikin, in his excellent essay on the poetry of Goldsmith, remarks," at a certain period of life, when the judgment exercises a severer scrutiny over the sallies of the imagination, the relish for artificial beauties will always abate, if not entirely desert us *. But at

* This passage requires some explanation. If, by artificial beauties, Dr.Aikin mean beauties of the imagination, he is right; but if we are thereby to understand beauties produced by art, which is the

every age, and with every degree of culture, correct and well chosen representations of nature must please. We admire them when young; we recur to them when old; and they charm us till nothing longer can charm." Goldsmith's poems will therefore last as long as the language in which he wrote; and there can be no doubt that if the lovers of English poetry were confined to a small selection of authors, his name would find a distinguished place among the number.

To return from this digression, our author, who had assumed the title of Doctor, made in the year 1767 his first, and probably his only effort to

proper sense of the word artificial, the reverse will come nearer the truth.

wards obtaining a permanent establishment. On the death of Mr. Mace, Gresham professor of Civil law, he became a candidate to succeed him; but without success.

In 1768 his comedy of The goodnatured man was acted at CoventGarden theatre. This play affords a strong proof of our author's comic talents, from which a better taste in the age might have elicited humour that would have lived.-But Kelly had raised it to a pitch of False Delicacy, from which it could not descend to welcome the just delineations of varied life; and Goldsmith's play was, like the Rivals, nearly driven from the stage on its first representation.

His comedy of She stoops to con

quer, or The mistakes of a night, was acted five years after. The scenes abound with humour, and the characters are all as natural as were ever drawn; yet they do nothing probable, or even possible, from the beginning of the play to the end. No wonder that Mr. Colman, who was then a manager of Covent-Garden theatre, should have entertained doubts of its success. The piece was however received with considerable applause; and Goldsmith's pride was so hurt by the severity of a remark, which Mr. Colman had made upon it during the rehearsal, that it entirely destroyed his friendship for that gentleman.

The success of this play produced

a very illiberal and personal attack upon our author in one of the public prints; which he resented by applying his cane about the publisher's shoulders. The latter of course thought it necessary to stand in his own defence; and it is not easy to say how the combat would have ended, had not Dr. Kenrick, who was sitting in a private room of the publisher's house, stepped forward, and parted them. This affair being represented in most of the newspapers much to the disadvantage of Goldsmith, he, on the 31st of March 1773, published an address to the public, in the Daily Advertiser; which, as it contains many just observations on the abuse of that palladium of our constitution, the liberty