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OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES.

1758. Goldsmith's literary career. Not till he was past thirty, he
^T¥o, was wont to say, did he become really attached to literature :
not till then was the discipline of his endurance complete,
his wandering impulses settled firmly to the right object of
their aptitude, or Ms real destiny revealed to him. He
might have still to perish in uneonquered difficulties, and
with the word that was in Mm unspoken; but it would be at
Ms post, and in a manly effort to speak the word. Whatever
the personal weaknesses that yet remain,—nor are they few
or trifling,—Ms confidence and self-reliance in literary
pursuits date from tMs memorable time. They rise above
the cares and cankers of Ms life, above the lowness of his
worldly esteem, far above the squalor of Ms homes. They
take the undying forms wliich accident or wrong cannot alter
or deface; they are the tenants of a world where distress and
failure are unknown; and perpetual cheerfulness sings
around them. " The night can never endure so long, but
" at length the morning corneth;" and with these sudden
and sharp disappointments of his second London Christmas,
there came into Green Arbour Court the first struggling
beams of morning. Till all its brightness follows, let him
moan and sorrow as he may;—the more familiar to himself
he makes those images of want and danger, the better he will
meet them in the lists where they still await Mm; the more
he cultivates those solitary friendsMps with the dead, the
more elevating and strengthening the influence that will
reward him from their graves. The living, busy, prosperous
world about him, might indeed have saved him much, by
stretching forth its helping hand: but it had not taught him
little in its lesson of unrequited expectation, and there was
nothing now to distract him with delusive hope from medi-
tation of the wisest form of revenge.



	OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. 1758. Goldsmith's literary career. Not till he was past thirty, he ^T¥o, was wont to say, did he become really attached to literature : not till then was the discipline of his endurance complete, his wandering impulses settled firmly to the right object of their aptitude, or Ms real destiny revealed to him. He might have still to perish in uneonquered difficulties, and with the word that was in Mm unspoken; but it would be at Ms post, and in a manly effort to speak the word. Whatever the personal weaknesses that yet remain,—nor are they few or trifling,—Ms confidence and self-reliance in literary pursuits date from tMs memorable time. They rise above the cares and cankers of Ms life, above the lowness of his worldly esteem, far above the squalor of Ms homes. They take the undying forms wliich accident or wrong cannot alter or deface; they are the tenants of a world where distress and failure are unknown; and perpetual cheerfulness sings around them. " The night can never endure so long, but " at length the morning corneth;" and with these sudden and sharp disappointments of his second London Christmas, there came into Green Arbour Court the first struggling beams of morning. Till all its brightness follows, let him moan and sorrow as he may;—the more familiar to himself he makes those images of want and danger, the better he will meet them in the lists where they still await Mm; the more he cultivates those solitary friendsMps with the dead, the more elevating and strengthening the influence that will reward him from their graves. The living, busy, prosperous world about him, might indeed have saved him much, by stretching forth its helping hand: but it had not taught him little in its lesson of unrequited expectation, and there was nothing now to distract him with delusive hope from medi- tation of the wisest form of revenge.