OLIVEJB GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. TBQOK i.
tlult lle "brought back some secrets both of poverty and
JSt.22. happiness which were worth the finding, and, having paid
for his errors by infinite personal privation, turned all the
rest to the comfort and instruction of the world. There is a
providence that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we
will j and to charming issues did the providence of Gold-
smith's genius shape these rough-hewn times. "What it
received in mortification or grief, it gave back in cheerful
humour or whimsical warning. It was not alone that it
made him wise enough to know what infirmities he had, but
it gave him the rarer wisdom of turning them to entertain-
ment and to profit. Through the pains and obstructions of
his childhood, through the uneasy failures of his youth,
through the desperate struggles of his manhood, it lighted
him to those last uses of experience and suffering which
have grven him. an immortal name,
And let it "be observed, that this Ballymalioii idleness
coTild lay claim to a certain activity in one respect. It was
always cheerful; and this is no unimportant part of educa-
tion, if heart and head are to go together. It will be well,
indued, when habits of cheerfulness are as much a part of
formal instruction as habits of study; and when the foolish
argument will be heard no longer, that these things are in
nature's charge, and may be left exclusively to her. Nature
asks help and culture in all things; and will even yield to
their solicitation, what would otherwise lie utterly unknown.
It was an acute remark of Goldsmith's, in respect to literary
efforts, that the habit of writing will give a man justness of
thinking ; and that he may get from it a mastery of manner,
wliicli holiday -writers, though with ten times his genius, will
•find it difficult to equal.* It is the same in temper as in
* See post, Book II. Chap. iv.