" [Footnote:
Goldsmith, Essay xiii.] But a glance at the context will show that
what Goldsmith had in mind was not "nature to advantage dressed", not
nature with any adornments added by man; but nature stripped of all
that to man has degrading associations; nature, to adopt the words
used by Wordsworth on a kindred subject, "purified from all lasting
or rational causes of dislike or disgust". It may well be that Goldsmith
gave undue weight to this reservation. It may well be that he did not
throw himself on nature with the unwavering constancy of Wordsworth.
But, none the less, we have here--and we have it worked out in detail
[Footnote: As to oratory, poetry, the drama, and acting, Ib., Essays
iv., xii., xiii.; _The Bee_, no. ii.]--the germ of the principle which,
in bolder hands, gave England the Lyrical Ballads and the Essays of
Lamb.
In an essay not commonly reprinted, Goldsmith, laying his finger on
the one weak spot in the genius of Gray, gives the poet the memorable
advice--to "study the people". And throughout his own critical work,
as in his novel, his comedies, and his poems, there is an abiding sense
that, without this, there is no salvation for poetry.
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