would altogether take out the sting of their offensive in terpretation. For others again, and this is a profounder service, he furnishes a most just and philosophic explanation, that brings them at once within the reader's toleration, nay, sometimes within a deep reaction of pity. As a case, for instance, of downright falsehood, we may cite the well-known story told by Boswell, that, when Goldsmith travelled in France with some beautiful young English women (meaning the Miss Hornecks), he was seriously uneasy at the attentions which they received from the gallantry of Frenchmen, as intruding upon his own claims. Now this story, in logical phrase, proves too much. For the man who could have expressed such feelings in such a situation must have been ripe for Bedlam. Coleridge mentions a man who entertained so exalted an opinion of himself, and of his own right to apotheosis, that he never uttered that great pronoun I," without solemnly taking off his hat. Even to the oblique case me," which no compositor ever honors with a capital M, and to the possessive pronoun my and mine, he held it a duty to kiss his hand. Yet this bedlamite would not have been a competitor with a lady for the attentions paid to her in right of her sex. In Goldsmith's case, the whole allegation was dissipated in the most decisive way. Some years after Goldsmith's death, one of the sisters personally concerned in the case was unaffectedly shocked at the printed story, when coming to her knowledge, as a gross calumny; her sorrow made it evident that the whole had been a malicious dis tortion of some light-hearted gayety uttered by Gold. smith.

There is little doubt that the story of the bloom

colored coat, and of the puppet-show, rose on a similar basis the calumnious perversion of a jest.

But in other cases, where there really may have been some fretful expression of self-esteem, Mr. Forster's explanation transfers the foible to a truer and a more pathetic station. Goldsmith's own precipitancy, his overmastering defect in proper reserve, in self-control, and in presence of mind, falling in with the habitual undervaluation of many amongst his associates, placed him at a great disadvantage in animated conversation. His very truthfulness, his simplicity, his frankness, his hurry of feeling, all told against him. They betrayed him into inconsiderate expressions that lent a color of plausibility to the malicious ridicule of those who disliked him the more, from being compelled, after all, to respect him. His own understanding oftentimes sided with his disparagers. He saw that he had been in the wrong; whilst secretly he felt that his meaning-if properly explained had been right. Defrauded in this way, and by his own coöperation, of distinctions that naturally belonged to him, he was driven unconsciously to attempt some restoration of the balance, by claiming for a moment distinctions to which he had no real pretensions. The whole was a trick of sorrow, and of sorrowing perplexity. He felt that no justice had been done to him, and that he himself had made an opening for the wrong. The result he saw, but the process he could not disentangle; and, in the confusion of his distress, natural irritation threw him upon blind efforts to recover his ground by unfounded claims, when claims so well-founded had been maliciously disallowed.

of

But a day of accounting comes at last, - a day rehearing for the cause, and of revision for the judg ment. The longer this review has been delayed, the more impressive it becomes in the changes which it works. Welcome is the spectacle when, after threefourths of a century have passed away, a writerqualified for such a task, by ample knowledge of things and persons, by great powers for a comprehensive estimate of the case, and for a splendid exposition of its results, with deep sensibility to the merits of the man chiefly concerned in the issue, enthusiastic, but without partisanship—comes forward to unsettle false verdicts, to recombine misarranged circumstances, and to explain anew misinterpreted facts. Such a man wields the authority of heraldic marshals. Like the Otho of the Roman theatre, he has power to raise or to degrade to give or to take away precedency. But, like this Otho, he has so much power because he exercises it on known principles, and without caprice. To the man of true genius, like Goldsmith, when seating himself in humility on the lowest bench, he says, "Go thou up to a higher place. Seat thyself above those proud men, that once trampled thee in the dust. Be thy memorial upon earth, not (as of some who scorned thee) the whistling of a name.' thou remembered amongst men by tears of tenderness, by happy laughter untainted with malice, and by the benedictions of those that, reverencing man's nature see gladly its frailties brought within the gracious smile of human charity, and its nobilities levelled to the prehension of simplicity and innocence."

Be

ap.

Over every grave, even though tenanted by guilt and

shame, the human heart, when circumstantially made acquainted with its silent records of suffering or temptation, yearns in love or in forgiveness to breathe a solemn Requiescat! How much more, then, over the grave of a benefactor to the human race! But it is a natural feeling, with respect to such a prayer, that, however fervent and sincere, it has no perfect faith in its own validity, so long as any unsettled feud from ancient calumny hangs over the buried person. The undressed wrong seems to haunt the sepulchre in the shape of a perpetual disturbance to its rest. First of all, when this wrong has been adjudicated and expiated, is the Requiescat uttered with a perfect faith in itself. By a natural confusion we then transfer our own feelings to the occupant of the grave. The tranquillization to our own wounded sense of justice seems like an atonement to his the peace for us transforms itself under a fiction of tenderness into a peace for him: the reconciliation between the world that did the wrong and the grave that seemed to suffer it, is accomplished; the reconciler, in such a case, whoever he may be, seems a double benefactor to him that endured the injury to us that resented it; and in the particular case now before the public, we shall all be ready to agree that this reconciling friend, who might have entitled his work Vindicia Oliveriana, has, by the piety of his service to a man of exquisite genius, so long and so foully misrepresented, earned a right to interweave forever his own cipher and cognizance in filial union with those of OLIVER GOLD

SMITH.

ALEXANDER POPE.

EVERY great classic in our native language should from time to time be reviewed anew; and especially if he belongs in any considerable extent to that section of the literature which connects itself with manners; and if his reputation originally, or his style of composition, is likely to have been much influenced by the transient fashions of his own age. The withdrawal, for instance, from a dramatic poet, or a satirist, of any false lustre which he has owed to his momentary connection with what we may call the personalities of a fleeting generation, or of any undue shelter to his errors which may have gathered round them from political bias, or from intellectual infirmities amongst his partisans, will sometimes seriously modify, after a century or so, the fairest original appreciation of a fine writer. A window, composed of Claude Lorraine glasses, spreads over the landscape outside a disturbing effect, which not the most practised eye can evade. The eidola theatri effect us all. No man escapes the contagion from his contemporary bystanders. And the reader may see, further