OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK n.
1759. natured Goldsmith, as lie scraped together Ms answer to
ifilsi. that humble petition, pointed with a smile to a description of
the fate of poets which he had just published there. " There
"is a strong similitude," he had said, reviewing a new
edition of the Fairy Queen, " between the lives of almost
" all our English poets. The Ordinary of Newgate, we
" are told, has but one story, which serves for the life of
"every hero that happens to come within the circle of
"his pastoral care; however unworthy the resemblance
"appears, it may be asserted, that the history of one
" poet might serve with as little variation for that of any
" other.—Born of creditable parents, who gave him a pious
" education; however, in spite of all their endeavours, in
" spite of all the exhortations of the minister of the parish
" on Sundays, he tinned his mind from, following good things,
t! and fell to------- writing verses!—Spenser, in short, lived
" poor, was reviled by the critics of his time, and died at
" last in the utmost distress." *
He was again working for Hamilton. Smollett himself had
not seen his new reviewer, but, the success of the Ovid papers
having proclaimed the value of such assistance,! he appears
to have sent the publisher with renewed offers to Green
Arbour Court. Goldsmith had resumed with this notice of
Spenser; a discriminating proof of his appreciation of all
true mastery in the divine art. Popular and practical
himself, he wonders not the less at the "great magician:"
suddenly taken " from the ways of the present world," and
far from Drury Lane alehouses or Auburn villages,—in the
* Critical Review, vii. 105, February 1759.
t Dr. AiMn (who had the means of knowmg) adopts and confirms a statement
of Glover's to the effect that "it was the merit which Goldsmith discovered in
".criticising a despicable translation of Ovid's Fastil>y a pedantic schoolmaster,
" and his Enquiry into Polite Literature, which first introduced him to the acqnaint-
" ance of Dr. Smollett."