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OLIVER GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOKH.
1759. This is not the language of one who would have had
Jit. 31. literature again subsist, as of old, on servile adulation and vulgar charity. Goldsmith, indeed, seems rather to have thought with an earnest man of genius in our own day, that grants of money and subscriptions are by no means the chief things wanted for proper organisation of the literary class. " To give our men of letters," says Mr. Carlyle, " stipends, "endowments, and all furtherance of cash, will do little- "toward the business. On the whole, one is weary of " hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather, " that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor . . Money, " in truth, can do much, but «dt cannot do all. We must "know the province of it, and confine it there; and even " spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther."* One of the lively illustrations of the Enquiry is not very unlike this. " The benefited divine," says Goldsmith, " whose wants are " only imaginary, expostulates as bitterly as the poorest " author that ever snuffed his candle with finger and thumb. " Should interest or good fortune advance the divine to a "bishopric, or the poor son of Parnassus into that place " which the other has resigned; both are authors no longer, " the one goes to prayers once a day, kneels upon cushions " of velvet, and thanks gracious Heaven for having made the " circumstances of all mankind so extremely happy; the " other battens on all the delicacies of life, enjoys his wife " and his easy chair, and sometimes, for the sake of conversa- " tion, deplores the luxury of these degenerate days. All " encouragements to merit are therefore misapplied, which " make the author too rich to continue his profession." f
But he would not therefore starve him, or to the mercies
of blind chance altogether surrender him. He recals a time
* On Heroes, Lecture x. ^ Chap. x.
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