OLIVER GOLDSMITH S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1760. have admired, and Steele delighted in them. Finery and
,1L32. poverty, surliness and good-nature, were never brought
together with more playful wit, or a more tender sweetness.
Fielding's majestic major, who will hear of nothing less
than the honour and dignity of a man, and is caught in an
old woman's bedgown warming his sick sister's posset, is
not a nobler specimen of manhood than the one; Steele's
friend at the trumpet club, that very insignificant fellow but
exceeding gracious, who has but a bare subsistence yet is
always promising to introduce you into the world, who answers
to matters of no consequence with great circumspection,
maintains an insolent benevolence to all whom he has to do
with, and will desire one of ten times his substance to let
him see him. sometimes, hinting that he does not forget him,
is not more delicious in his vanity than the other. The
country ramble of the Man in Black, wherein, to accompani-
ment of the most angry invective, he performs acts of the
most exquisite charity; where with harsh loud voice he
denounces the poor, while with wistful compassionate face
he relieves them; where, by way of detecting imposture, he
domineeringly buys a shilling's worth of matches, receives
the astonished beggar's whole bundle and blessing, and,
intimating that he has taken in the seller and shall make
money of his bargain, bestows them next moment on a
tramper with an objurgation; is surely never to be read
unmoved. For Beau Tibbs, who has not laughed at and
loved him, from the first sorry glimpse of his faded finery ? ¥
Who has not felt, in the airs of wealth and grandeur with
* " His hat was pinched up with peculiar smartness; his looks were pale,
"thin, and sharp; round his neck he wore a broad black ribbon, and in his
" bosom a buckle studded with glass ; his coat was trimmed with tarnished twist;
" he wore by his side a sword with a black hilt; and his stockings of silk, though
" newly washed, were grown yellow by long service." Letter liv.