CHAP, I.] REVIEWING FOE ME. AND MRS. GBEBTITHS.
and the Mahomet of Mr. Miller, on which lean fare it has 1757.
tad. perforce to diet itself for several seasons, turns to any- 2Et. 29.
thing of the reasonable promise of a Douglas, with disposition
to enjoy it if it can. But the more striking, Goldsmith felt,
was the indiscreetness that could obtrude a work like Douglas
as " perfection:" in proof of which critical folly he made
brief but keen mention of its leading defects; while to those
who would plead in arrest particular beauties of diction, he
directed a remark which, half a century later, was worked
out in detail by the Coleridge and Schlegel school of
reviewers. " In works of this nature, general observation
" often characterises more strongly than a particular criticism
"could do; for it were an easy task to point out those
" passages in any indifferent author where he has excelled
" himself, and yet these comparative beauties, if we may be
" allowed the expression, may have no real merit at all.
" Poems, like buildings, have their point of view; and too
"near a situation gives but a partial conception of the
"whole."* Good-naturedly, at the same time, he closes
with quotation of two of the best passages in the poem,
emphatically marking with excellent taste five lines of
allusion to the wars of Scotland" and England.
Gallant in strife, and noble in their ire,
The Battle is their pastime. They go forth
Gay in the morning, as to Summer sport :
"When evening comes, the glory of the morn,
The youthful warrior, is a clod of clay.
If Boswell, on Johnson's challenge to show any good lines
out of Douglas, had mustered sense and discrimination to
offer these, the Doctor could hardly have exploded his
emphatic pooh ! Goldsmith differed little from Johnson in
the matter, it is true : but his pooh was more polite.
* MontMy Review, xvi. 428, May 1757.