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fuppofe would meet credit. Managers, who had more expe- 

 rience of the ill efFedls of violating dramatic probability, re- 

 je(fled his plays, and it is a fure criterion of merit in a very 

 high degree that, latterly incredible as his incidents are, his plays 

 and his novels are fuch favourites with the public. Goldfmith 

 was envious : but he was envious through vanity, not through 

 malignity. Indications of a benevolent heart appear every 

 where in his writings : he rarely indeed praifes any other author, 

 but he fhews no malice againfl thofe he might have confidered 

 as his rivals. Whatever he may have borrowed he feldom 

 quotes. Sometimes indeed he quotes himfelf, a circumflance 

 not fo much to be afcribed to a poverty of intellecSlual fupply, 

 as to a vanity which thought nothing better could be faid on 

 the fubjed: than what he had before given. Of this vanity he 

 has left many other proofs ; he difapproves judging in literary 

 m.atters by popular opinion : in his own cafe he will not fubmit 

 to it, and will force on the public in his printed play the 

 fcene which could not be tolerated in the reprefentation. Gold- 

 fmith did not ftudy the powers of his mind, for the purpofe of 

 employing them with fleadinefs on fuch tafks as he could have 

 executed with credit, becaufe he had fo high an opinion of thofe 

 powers that he confidered himfelf equally qualified for every 

 tafk which might prefent itfelf. And it was natural for him 

 who projected a journey to Aleppo to learn the Oriental arts, 

 when he did not know any thing of the European ones, to write a 

 poem with a profefled intent of deprecating evils, of whofe 

 exiftence he in his preface exprefTes himfelf with much doubt. 

 That nuUtan fcrlbendi genus non (digit, was the joint efl"ecl of 



his 



