among the sons of unpolished rusticity. The vulgar English, therefore, may be easily distinguished from all the rest of the world, by superior pride, impatience, and a peculiar hardiness of soul.

Perhaps no qualities in the world are more susceptible of a finer polish than these; artificial complaisance, and easy deference, being superinduced over these, generally forms a great character; something at once elegant and majestic, affable, yet sincere. Such, in general, are the better sort; but they who are left in primitive rudeness, are the least disposed for society with others, or comfort internally, of any people under the sun.

to

The poor, indeed, of every country, are but little prone treat each other with tenderness; their own miseries are too apt to engross all their pity; and perhaps, too, they give but little commiseration, as they find but little from others. But, in England, the poor treat each other upon every occasion with more than savage animosity, and as if they were in a state of open war by nature. In China, if two porters should meet in a narrow street, they would lay down their burthens, make a thousand excuses to each other for the accidental interruption, and beg pardon on their knees; if two men of the same occupation should meet here, they would first begin to scold, and at last to beat each other. One would think they had miseries enough resulting from penury and labour, not to increase them by ill-nature among themselves, and subjection to new penalties; but such considerations never weigh with them.1

But to recompense this strange absurdity, they are in the main generous, brave, and enterprising. They feel the slightest injuries with a degree of ungoverned impatience, but resist the greatest calamities with surprising fortitude. Those miseries under which any other people in the world would sink, they have often showed they were capable of enduring; if accidentally cast upon some desolate coast, their perseverance is beyond what any other nation is capable of sustaining; if imprisoned for crimes, their efforts to escape are greater than among others. The peculiar strength of their prisons, when compared to those else

1.1 Not in the Public Ledger version.-ED.

where, argues their hardiness; even the strongest prisons I have ever seen in other countries, would be very insufficient to confine the untameable spirit of an Englishman.1 In short, what man dares do in circumstances of danger, an Englishman will. His virtues seem to sleep in the calm, and are called out only to combat the kindred storm.2

But the greatest eulogy of this people is the generosity of their miscreants; the tenderness, in general, of their robbers and highwaymen. Perhaps no people can produce instances of the same kind, where the desperate mix pity with injustice; still show that they understand a distinction in crimes, and, even in acts of violence, have still some tincture of remaining virtue. In every other country, robbery and murder go almost always together; here, it seldom happens, except upon ill-judged resistance or pursuit. The banditti of other countries are unmerciful to a supreme degree; the highwayman and robber here are generous, at least, in their intercourse among each other. Taking, therefore, my opinion of the English from the virtues and vices practised among the vulgar, they at once present to a stranger all their faults, and keep their virtues up only for the enquiring eye of a philosopher.

3

Foreigners are generally shocked at their insolence upon first coming among them: they find themselves ridiculed and insulted in every street; they meet with none of those trifling civilities, so frequent elsewhere, which are instances of mutual good-will, without previous acquaintance; they travel through the country, either too ignorant or too obstinate to cultivate a closer acquaintance; meet every moment something to excite their disgust, and return home to characterize this as the region of spleen, insolence, and ill-nature. In short, England would be the last place in

1 Compare with Goldsmith's other picture of the Englishman in 'The Traveller,' published four years later. See Poems (vol. ii. p. 16).—ED. 2.2 Instead, the Public Ledger has "His virtues seem rather formed for admiration than love." This is a sentiment rather opposed to that expressed in the last two lines of the letter, though it is not so much opposed to the famous,

"Stern o'er each bosom," &c.,

in The Traveller.'-ED.

3.3 The Ledger has instead.-" to the time of trial."-ED.

the world I would travel to by way of amusement, but the first for instruction. I would choose to have others for my acquaintance, but Englishmen for my friends.

LETTER XCII.

To the Same.

THE MANNER IN WHICH SOME PHILOSOPHERS MAKE

ARTIFICIAL MISERY."

1

THE mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress. The wandering beggar, who has none to protect, to feed, or to shelter him, fancies complete happiness in labour and a full meal; take him from rags and want, feed, clothe, and employ him, his wishes now rise one step above his station; he could be happy were he possessed of raiment, food, and ease. Suppose his wishes gratified even in these, his prospects widen as he ascends; he finds himself in affluence and tranquillity, indeed, but indolence soon breeds anxiety, and he desires not only to be freed from pain, but to be possessed of pleasure: pleasure is granted him, and this but opens his soul to ambition; and ambition will be sure to taint his future happiness, either with jealousy, disappointment, or fatigue.

But of all the arts of distress found out by man for his own torment, perhaps that of philosophic misery is most truly ridiculous, a passion nowhere carried to so extravagant an excess as in the country where I now reside. It is not enough to engage all the compassion of a philosopher here, that his own globe is harassed with wars, pestilence, or barbarity, he shall grieve for the inhabitants of the moon, if the situation of her imaginary mountains happen to alter; and dread the extinction of the sun, if the spots on his surface happen to increase. One 'should imagine, that philosophy was introduced to make men happy; but here it serves to make hundreds miserable.

1 Dated Dec. 3, 1760, in the Public Ledger.-ED.

My landlady, some days ago, brought me the diary of a philosopher of this desponding sort, who had lodged in the apartment before me. It contains the history of a life which seems to be one continued tissue of sorrow, apprehension, and distress. A single week will serve as a specimen of the whole :

:

MONDAY.-In what a transient decaying situation are we placed; and what various reasons does philosophy furnish to make mankind unhappy! A single grain of mustard shall continue to produce its similitude through numberless successions; yet what has been granted to this little seed, has been denied to our planetary system; the mustard seed is still unaltered, but the system is growing old, and must quickly fall to decay. How terrible will it be, when the motions of all the planets have at last become so irregular as to need repairing; when the moon shall fall into frightful paroxysms of alteration; when the earth, deviating from its ancient track, and with every other planet forgetting its circular revolutions, shall become so eccentric, that, unconfined by the laws of system, it shall fly off into boundless space, to knock against some distant world, or fall in upon the sun, either extinguishing his light, or burned up by his flames in a moment! Perhaps, while I write, this dreadful change is begun. Shield me from universal ruin! Yet idiot man laughs, sings, and rejoices, in the very face of the sun, and seems no way touched with his situation.

“TUESDAY.—Went to bed in great distress, awaked and was comforted, by considering that this change was to happen at some indefinite time; and therefore, like death, the thoughts of it might easily be borne. But there is a revolution, a fixed determined revolution, which must certainly come to pass; yet which, by good fortune, I shall never feel, except in my posterity. The obliquity of the equator with the ecliptic, is now twenty minutes less than when it was observed two thousand years ago by Piteas.' If this be the case, in six thousand the obliquity will be still less by a whole degree. This being supposed, it is evident that our earth, as Louville has clearly proved, has a motion, by which the climates must necessarily change place, and 1 Pytheas was a celebrated mathematician and astronomer of Massilia. He is supposed to have lived contemporary with Aristotle.-ED.

in the space of about one million of years, England shall actually travel to the Antarctic pole. I shudder at the change! How shall our unhappy grandchildren endure the hideous climate! A million of years will soon be accomplished; they are but a moment when compared to eternity; then shall our charming country, as I may say, in a moment of time, resemble the hideous wilderness of Nova Zembla! 1

2

"WEDNESDAY.-To-night, by my calculation, the long predicted comet is to make its first appearance. Heavens! what terrors are impending over our little dim speck of earth! Dreadful visitation! Are we to be scorched in its fires, or only smothered in the vapour of its tail? That is the question! Thoughtless mortals, go build houses, plant orchards, purchase estates, for to-morrow you die. ~ But what if the comet should not come? That would be equally fatal. Comets are servants which periodically return to supply the sun with fuel. If our sun, therefore, should be disappointed of the expected supply, and all his fuel be in the meantime burnt out, he must expire like an exhausted taper. What a miserable situation must our earth be in without his enlivening rays! Have we not seen several neighbouring suns entirely disappear? Has not a fixed star, near the tail of the Ram, lately been quite extinguished? 3

;

“THURSDAY.—The comet has not yet appeared; I am sorry for it: first, sorry because my calculation is false secondly, sorry lest the sun should want fuel; thirdly, sorry lest the wits should laugh at our erroneous predictions; and, fourthly, sorry because, if it appears to-night, it must necessarily come within the sphere of the earth's attraction; and Heaven help the unhappy country on which it happens to fall!

1 The Ledger has in addition, “My portion of the earth here is but small, however, I could wish to leave it to my posterity without being subject to such dreadful vicissitudes."-ED.

2 The whole of this paper, but especially all that relates to the comet, is closely imitated from Swift's account of the fears and disquietudes to which the inhabitants of Laputa are subject. See 'Gulliver's Travels,' part iii., chap. ii.-B. [Goldsmith also used some of the ideas of this letter in drawing the character of Croaker in his Good-Natured Man' (1768), see scene 1 (vol. ii. pp. 153-156).-Ed.]

The Ledger has in addition, "in the same manner? side the prospect is fearful, I'll try to forget it in sleep."-ED.

On either