THE AUTHOJR TO THE READER.

applied for orders; he practised as a physician, and never made
what would have paid for a degree; what he was not asked or
expected to do, was to write/ but he wrote and paid the penalty.
His existence was a continued privation. The days were few, in
which he had resources for the night, or dared to look forward to
the morrow. There was not any miserable want, in the long and
sordid catalogue, which in its turn and in all its bitterness he did
not feel. He had shared the experience of those to whom, he
makes affecting reference in his Animated Nature, " people who
" die really of hunger, in common language of a broken heart •"
and when he succeeded at the last, success was but a feeble sun-
shine on a rapidly approaching decay, which was to lead him, by
its flickering and uncertain light, to an early grave.

Self-benefit seems out of the question here, and the way to
happiness is indeed distant from this. But if we look a little
closer, we shall see that he has passed through it all- with a child-
like purity of heart unsullied. Much of the misery vanishes
when that is known; and when it is remembered, too, that in
spite of it the Vicar of Wakefield was written, nay, that without
it, in all human probability, a book so delightful and wise could
not have been written. Fifty-six years after its author's death,
the greatest of Germans recounted to a friend how much he had
been indebted to the celebrated Irishman. "It is not to be
(C described," wrote Goethe to Zelter, in 1830, "the effect that
" Goldsmith's Vicar had upon me, just at the critical moment of
" mental development. That lofty and benevolent irony, that
" fair and indulgent view of all infirmities and faults, that meek-
" ness under all calamities, that equanimity under all changes
" and chances, and the whole train of kindred virtues, whatever
" names they bear, proved my best education; and in the end,"iarism . . .402