OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK n.
1759. combine liveliness with learning, is thought something of a
.St. 31. heresy still.
"With any detailed account of this well-known Enquiry I
do not propose to detain the reader; but for illustration of
the course I have taken in this memoir, some striking pas-
sages should not be overlooked; others will throw light
forward on new scenes which await us; and the contents
of the treatise, as found in the current collections, are
wanting in much that gives interest to the duodecimo now
lying before me, the first of the Dodsley editions.
Manifest throughout the book is one over-ruling feeling,
under various forms; the conviction that, in bad critics and
sordid booksellers, learning has to contend with her most
pernicious enemies. When he has described at the outset
the wise reverence for letters which prevailed in the old
Greek time, when "learning was encouraged, protected,
" honoured, and in its turn adorned, strengthened, and har-
" monised the community," he turns to the sophists and
critics for the day of its decline. By them the ancient polite
learning was in his view " separated from common sense,
" and made the proper employment of speculative idlers. . .
" The wiser part of mankind would not be imposed upon by
" unintelligible jargon, nor, like the knight in Pantagruel,
" swallow a chimera for a breakfast, though even cooked by
" Aristotle." * Thus he distinguished three periods in the
history of ancient learning: its commencement, or the age
of poets; its maturity, or the age of philosophers; and its
decline, or the age of critics. Cornt/ptissima respublica,
plurimce leges. In like manner, when he turned to the con-
sideration of the decay of modern letters, the critics are
again brought up for judgment; though with a melancholy
* Chap. ii.