OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK n.
1759. " the same shelf with Milton and Shakspeare, and we are
JETii. " for allowing him an inferior situation; he would have
" the same reader that commends Addison's delicacy to
" talk with raptures of the purity of Hawkins; and he who
" praises the Eape of the Lock to speak with equal feelings
" of that richest of all poems, Mr. Hawkins's Thimble.
" But we, alas! cannot speak of Mr. H. with the same
" unrestrained share of panegyric that he does of himself.
" Perhaps our motive to malevolence might have been, that
" Mr. Hawkins stood between us and a good living : we can
" solemnly assure him. we are quite contented with our
" present situation in the church, are quite happy in a wife
" and forty pounds a year, nor have the least ambition for
" pluralities." * .
I close this rapid account of his labours in the Critical
Review, with a curious satire of the fashionable family
novel of that day: the work with which the stately mother,,
and the boarding-school miss, were instructed to fortify
themselves against the immoralities of Smollett and of
Fielding. As with Jonathan Wild in the matter of Cacus,
Goldsmith " knew a better way:" and in his witty exposure
of Jemima and Louisa, he seems preparing to make it
known. The tale professed to be written by a lady, in a
series of letters; and thus he described it.
•would willingly be judged. And then he concludes. '' If you please I will send the
*' performance in a few weeks to yourself, relying cheerfully on your candour and
" impartiality. Having only to say farther, that in case it be honoured with your
" acceptance, the copy shall be at your service upon your own terms of purchase.
" These I shall leave with the most implicit confidence to your honor, as I choose
*' for many reasons, to be concerned in this business rather as an Author, than
" Proprietor ; and as (to say the truth honestly) I have herein principally ia view
" the cultivation of a correspondence, and give me leave to say and hope a friend-
" ship, with a gentleman to whom the Immortal Shakspeare is confessedly under
*' infinite obligations."
* Critical Review,, ix. 217, March 1760.