Essay: The Citizen of the World

Overview

"The Citizen of the World" presents a sequence of fictional letters written by a Chinese visitor who observes British life with a mixture of curiosity, irony, and moral seriousness. The narrator, often called Lai Tse or Lai Ching, reports back to friends in China about the oddities of English manners, politics, law, literature, and religion. Each epistle stands alone as a short essay that pairs lively anecdote with pointed social commentary.
Goldsmith uses the foreign perspective as a lens to examine and question British assumptions. The letters move fluidly from comic misreadings of customs to sustained ethical reflections, producing a pattern of gentle mockery that is also often sympathetic and reform-minded.

Narrative Frame and Voice

The epistolary frame allows a plausible outsider stance: the Chinese philosopher is at once naïve and philosophically attentive, attributing to his observations the authority of reason and distant moral standards. He treats England as an object of anthropological study, cataloguing behaviors that natives take for granted and translating them into terms meant to expose contradictions and vanities.
Voice is crucial: Lai Tse speaks with urbane wit, classical learning, and occasional moral astonishment. That blend of irony and sincerity lets Goldsmith avoid mere caricature; the narrator's criticisms are grounded in an insistence on decency, common sense, and a cosmopolitan humanism that transcends national pride.

Major Themes

Cosmopolitanism and the problem of national self-congratulation underlie many letters, as the narrator repeatedly contrasts parochial pride with the wider demands of justice and sympathy. The letters probe questions of identity and hospitality, suggesting that true refinement lies in humane conduct rather than in fashionable manners or elaborate etiquette.
Hypocrisy and social pretension are frequent targets, especially in discussions of class, patronage, and the theatre. The letters examine how language and fashion can conceal moral failings, and they argue for transparency, modesty, and sincerity as antidotes to social corruption. Religious toleration and the misuses of law receive sustained attention, with Lai Tse lamenting cruelty, fanaticism, and the ways institutions can betray their ostensible purposes.

Satirical Targets and Tone

Satire operates through gentle irony rather than mordant invective. Goldsmith's humor comes from the mismatch between the narrator's expectations and English realities: sentimental dramas staged as insight, politicians who speak lofty words but serve narrow interests, and legal systems that punish without mercy. Ridicule is often tempered by compassion; the narrator feels both amusement and sorrow.
That tonal balance allows moral weight to register without alienating readers. Ridicule aims to correct rather than simply to deride, and even harsh observations are framed to encourage reform and self-knowledge. The result is a satire that feels civic and humane rather than merely cynical.

Style and Technique

Epistolary brevity gives each essay a crisp focus, and Goldsmith's prose combines clarity with rhetorical polish. Aphoristic statements, classical allusions, and comic vignettes alternate to create a rhythm that is readable and memorable. The rhetorical device of translation, rendering English oddities into the narrator's terms, heightens irony and invites readers to reconsider everyday assumptions.
A restrained moral seriousness underpins the wit. Rather than piling epithets or resorting to hyperbole, the letters stage small scenes whose implications grow as the narrator reflects. That economy of means makes individual essays both entertaining and thoughtful.

Reception and Influence

The series enjoyed wide popularity and helped establish Goldsmith's reputation as a writer of taste and humanity. Contemporary readers admired the charm and lucidity of the letters, though some critics later faulted the portrayal of Chinese culture as a rhetorical convenience rather than a faithful ethnography. Despite that ambivalence, the essays contributed to an eighteenth-century discourse on cosmopolitanism and the use of the outsider's eye as a tool for national self-examination.
Enduringly, the work exemplifies how fiction and satire can combine to prompt moral reflection. The Chinese narrator's perspective remains a memorable device for interrogating the comforts and hypocrisies of a society, and the essays continue to read as modest, humane calls for sincerity, justice, and broader sympathies.