return to England, he went before a board of examiners to obtain the position of surgeon’s mate in the army or navy.  He was at this time so poor that he was obliged to borrow a suit of clothes to make a proper appearance before the examiners.  He failed in his examination, and then, in despair, he pawned the borrowed clothes, to the great anger of the publisher who had lent them.  This failure in his medical examination, unfortunate as it then seemed, secured him to literature.  From that time his pen was constantly busy for the reviews and magazines.  His first work was An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, which, at least, prepared the way for his future efforts.  This appeared in 1759, and is characterized by general knowledge and polish of style.

HIS POEMS.—­In 1764 he published The Traveller, a moralizing poem upon the condition of the people under the European governments.  It was at once and entirely successful; philosophical, elegant, and harmonious, it is pitched in a key suited to the capacity of the world at large; and as, in the general comparison of nations, he found abundant reason for lauding England, it was esteemed patriotic, and was on that account popular.  Many of its lines have been constantly quoted since.

In 1770 appeared his Deserted Village, which was even more popular than The Traveller; nor has this popularity flagged from that time down to the present day.  It is full of exquisite pictures of rural life and manners.  It is what it claims to be,—­not an attempt at high art or epic, but a gallery of cabinet pictures of rare finish and detail, painted by the poet’s heart and appealing to the sensibility of every reader.  The world knows it by heart,—­the portraiture of the village schoolmaster and his school; the beautiful picture of the country parson: 

    A man he was to all the country dear,
    And passing rich with forty pounds a year.

This latter is a worthy companion-piece to Chaucer’s “poor persoune,” and is, besides, a filial tribute to Goldsmith’s father.  So real are the characters and scenes, that the poem has been a popular subject for the artist.  If in The Traveller he has been philosophical and didactic, in the Deserted Village he is only descriptive and tender.  In no work is there a finer spirit of true charity, the love of man for God’s sake,—­like God himself, “no respecter of persons.”

While in form and versification he is like Pope and the Artificial School, he has the sensibility to nature of Thomson, and the simplicity of feeling and thought of Wordsworth; and thus he stands between the two great poetic periods, partaking of the better nature of both.