'At
least spare invective 'till my book with Mr. Dodsley shall be
publish'd,'--he had written not long before to the irate Griffiths--'and
then perhaps you may see the bright side of a mind when my professions
shall not appear the dictates of necessity but of choice.' 'The Enquiry'
came out on the 2nd of April. It had no author's name, but it was an
open secret that Goldsmith had written it; and to this day it remains to
the critic one of the most interesting of his works. Obviously, in a
duodecimo of some two hundred widely-printed pages, it was impossible to
keep the high-sounding promise of its title; and at best its author's
knowledge of the subject, notwithstanding his continental wanderings,
can have been but that of an external spectator. Still in an age when
critical utterance was more than ordinarily full-wigged and ponderous,
it dared to be sprightly and epigrammatic. Some of its passages,
besides, bear upon the writer's personal experiences, and serve to piece
the imperfections of his biography.
Pages:
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44