distinction. Our youth should there be inspired with a love of philosophy; and the first maxim among philosophers is, -that Merit only makes distinction.

Whence has proceeded the vain magnificence of expensive architecture in our colleges? Is it that men study to more advantage in a palace than in a cell? One single performance of taste or genius confers more real honours on its parent university, than all the labours of the chisel. Sure pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men, who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction, for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at once studying freedom, and practising servitude.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CONCLUSION.

EVERY subject acquires an adventitious importance to him who considers it with application. He finds it more closely connected with human happiness than the rest of mankind are apt to allow; he sees consequences resulting from it which do not strike others with equal conviction and, still pursuing speculation beyond the bounds of reason, too frequently becomes ridiculously earnest in trifles or absurdity.

It will perhaps be incurring this imputation, to deduce a universal degeneracy of manners from so slight an origin as the depravation of taste; to assert that, as a nation grows dull, it sinks into debauchery. Yet such, probably, may be the consequence of literary decay; or, not to stretch the thought beyond what it will bear, vice and stupidity are always mutually productive of each other.

Life, at the greatest and best, has been compared to a froward child, that must be humoured and played with till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over. Our few years are laboured away in varying its pleasures: new amuse

ments are pursued with studious attention; the most childish vanities are dignified with titles of importance; and the proudest boast of the most aspiring philosopher is no more, than that he provides his little playfellows the greatest pastime with the greatest innocence.1

Thus the mind, ever wandering after amusement, when abridged of happiness on one part, endeavours to find it on another; when intellectual pleasures are disagreeable, those of sense will take the lead. The man who in this age is enamoured of the tranquil joys of study and retirement, may in the next, should learning be fashionable no longer, feel an ambition of being foremost at a horse-course; or, if such could be the absurdity of the times, of being himself a jockey. Reason and appetite are therefore masters of our revels in turn; and as we incline to the one, or pursue the other, we rival angels, or imitate the brutes. In the pursuit of intellectual pleasure lies every virtue; of sensual, every vice.

It is this difference of pursuit which marks the morals and characters of mankind; which lays the line between the enlightened philosopher and the half-taught citizen; between the civil citizen and illiterate peasant; between the law-obeying peasant and the wandering savage of Africa, an animal less mischievous, indeed, than the tiger, because endued with fewer powers of doing mischief. The man, the nation, must therefore be good, whose chiefest luxuries consist in the refinement of reason; and reason can never be universally cultivated, unless guided by Taste, which may be considered as the link between science and common sense, the medium through which learning should ever be seen by society.

Taste will therefore often be a proper standard, when others fail, to judge of a nation's improvement, or degeneracy, in morals. We have often no permanent characteristics by which to compare the virtues or the vices of our ancestors with our own. A generation may rise and pass away without leaving any traces of what it really was; and

1 Sir Wm. Temple is referred to and quoted in the first three lines of this paragraph, which are the concluding words of the 'Discourse of Poetry' (Temple's Works, 1720, i. 249). Goldsmith_used the same in his Good-Natured Man,' act i.; see vol. ii. p. 155.-ED.

all complaints of our deterioration may be only topics of declamation, or the cavillings of disappointment: but in Taste we have standing evidence; we can with precision compare the literary performances of our fathers with our own, and from their excellence or defects determine the moral, as well as the literary, merits of either.

If, then, there ever comes a time when Taste is so far depraved among us that critics shall load every work of genius with unnecessary comment, and quarter their empty performances with the substantial merit of an author, both for subsistence and applause; if there comes a time when censure shall speak in storms, but praise be whispered in the breeze, while real excellence often finds shipwreck in either; if there be a time when the Muse shall seldom be heard, except in plaintive elegy, as if she wept her own decline, while lazy compilations supply the place of original thinking; should there ever be such a time, may succeeding critics, both for the honour of our morals, as well as our learning, say, that such a period bears no resemblance to the present age!

BEING PORTIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION WHICH GOLDSMITH EXCLUDED FROM THE

SECOND.1

[I.]

CHAPTER IV.

A PARALLEL BETWEEN THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING.

2

FEW subjects have been more frequently and warmly debated, than the comparative superiority of the ancients and moderns. It is unaccountable how a dispute so trifling, could be contested with so much virulence. A dispute of this nature could have no other consequences, if decided, but to teach young writers to despise the one side or the other. A dispute, therefore, which, if determined, might tend rather to prejudice our taste than improve it, should have been argued with good-nature, as it could not with success. For mere critics to be guilty of such scholastic rage, is not uncommon, but for men of the first rank of fame to be delinquent also, is, I own, surprising.

For the remainder of the passages of the first edition which were excluded from the second, see the foot-notes to the text, ante. Mr. Forster has very justly said that the first edition of this Enquiry' is of most value as showing us the author. Mr. Forster terms the work " An Appeal for Authors by Profession," so partly using the title of Ralph's 'The Case of Authors by Profession,' a book published the year before, 1758, which was also viewed as an attack upon Garrick and his treatment of the poor authors of the time.-ED.

2 Page 41 in the first edition.-ED.

The reflecting reader need scarcely be informed, that this contested excellence can be decided in favour of neither. They have both copied from different originals, described the manners of different ages; have exhibited nature as they found her, and both are excellent in separate imitations. Homer describes his gods as his countrymen believed them. Virgil, in a more enlightened age, describes his with a greater degree of respect; and Milton still rises infinitely above either. The machinery of Homer is best adapted to an unenlightened idolater; that of the Roman poet to a more refined heathen; and that of Milton, to a reader illuminated by revelation. Had Homer wrote like Milton, his countrymen would have despised him; had Milton adopted the theology of the ancient bard, he had been truly ridiculous. Again, should I depreciate Plautus for not enlivening his pieces with the characters of a coquet, or a marquis, so humorous in modern comedy? or Molière, for not introducing a legal bawd, or a parasitical boaster, so highly finished in the Roman poet? My censure, in either case, would be as absurd as his who should dislike a geographer for not introducing more rivers or promontories into a country, than nature had given it; or the natural historian for not enlivening his description of a dead landscape with a torrent, a cataract, or a volcano.

The parallel between antiquity and ourselves can therefore be managed to advantage only by comparing the rise and progress of ancient and modern learning together, so that being apprised of the causes of corruption in one, we may be upon our guard against any similar depravatious in the other.

[II.] CHAPTER VII.

THE POLITE LEARNING OF ENGLAND AND FRANCE
INCAPABLE OF COMPARISON.1

WHATEVER preference the vulgar of every nation may think due to their own in particular, the learned, who look 1 Page 82 in the first edition. It would follow at ante, p. 491.-ED.