PART II.

From the character of the man, we turn to the character of the author—from the life to the works of Goldsmith. What we said of the well-known events of his career would apply equally to his writings; it would be a tedious and superfluous office to pass in formal review performances so familiar, and which appear to be as justly appreciated as they are widely circulated. All that we propose doing, is to add a few miscellaneous observations, hints, and fragments of criticism, which may be interesting to those who like to examine also, as well as to admire. For these we could find no space in our previous Number: we throw them together here in the best order their miscellaneous nature permits.

In the _Citizen of the World_, Goldsmith tells us of a man who earned his livelihood by making wonders—curiosities of nature or of art—and exhibiting them to the world. “His first essay in this way was to exhibit himself as a wax-work figure, behind a glass door at a puppet-show. Thus, keeping the spectators at a proper distance, and having his head adorned with a copper crown, he looked extremely natural, and very like the life itself.” This would be no bad illustration of what his critics have often pointed out as Goldsmith’s own proceeding, in the manufacture of his literary wonders and curiosities. When he wanted a fictitious character for his novel, or his play, he sate himself down behind the glass door, with some copper crown, or other slight disguise upon his head, and all the world confessed that it “looked extremely natural, and very like the life itself!”

His Good-natured Man, in the comedy of that name; Young Marlow in _She Stoops to Conquer_, the Philosopher Vagabond, the Man in Black, and others that could be named, are all Goldsmith sitting behind the glass door. There is a strong personal resemblance in all his characters; they are portraits of himself, drawn with the features widened into broad humour, or elongated into saturnine wisdom. His Beau Tibbs seems to have been created by looking at, and magnifying, some of his own foibles; his Dr Primrose, by drawing forth those grave and kindly feelings, which, notwithstanding those foibles, lay, he knew, at the bottom of his heart.

The incidents of his life, too, supplied very often the plot or story; and memory took the place of invention. Yet, in this respect, considering the varied and adventurous nature of his life, we are rather surprised that he did not draw more copiously from himself, and from his past history. We should have thought that the curious scenes he must have witnessed in that wild journey of his—footing it through Europe, now as medical student, now as itinerant musician, at one time playing the tutor (he the tutor!) to some junior scapegrace; at another, furbishing up all the Latin and logic he was master of, to dispute at Padua for bed and supper—would have supplied him with many an incident for a novel. We are persuaded, that if he had lived in these days, when the value of an incident is better known, and it is more the fashion than it was formerly to put to literary profit the experience and events of private life, he would have made much greater use than he has done of such materials.

But it is not only thus that we trace the life of Goldsmith in his writings. We trace the influence of his career in the formation of his intellectual character. Travel had stood with him in the place of philosophy. It had enlarged his sphere of thought, had broken up national prejudices, and given him an insight into many a matter which otherwise would never have attracted his attention. But travel is far more effective in dispersing error or prejudice, than in lending assistance to the formation of settled opinions. It confirmed him in a desultory mode of thinking, uncertain and undecided. His horizon was extended, but his vision was not distinct. Yet as Goldsmith was never devoted to the discipline of philosophy, and would never, perhaps, have pursued any systematic study, he was, upon the whole, a great gainer by his varied vagrant life, and the cosmopolitan temper it had generated. A philosopher he never would have been: it was something to feel as a citizen of the world.

Goldsmith was of a quick apprehensive intellect, open to receive impressions, with ready faculty to give them forth again; but to continuous thought, to close and prolonged examination of any subject, he was by no means addicted. With him the philosophers were more talked of than read. Abstract thinking and severe reasoning were not his vocation. It thus happens that the solitary observation, simply asserted, is often excellent, and carries with it our cordial assent. He only discovers his weakness when he undertakes to convince us by his reasoning. On those occasions when he puts forth a thesis, and solemnly begins to demonstrate it, his thesis may be good, but it will stand none the firmer for his argument.

Let us give an instance of this from the _Vicar of Wakefield_. Nothing could be more just, or more happily expressed, than the opening observation we are about to quote. The reasoning which follows, and is intended to support it, is as weak and fantastical as, on so beaten a subject, it well could be.

“And it were highly to be wished,” says the Vicar, “that legislative power would thus direct the law rather to reformation than severity; that it would seem convinced that the work of eradicating crimes is not by making punishment familiar, but formidable. Then instead of our present prisons, which find or make men guilty, which enclose wretches for the commission of one crime, and return them, if returned alive, fitted for the perpetration of thousands—we should see, as in other parts of Europe, places of penitence and solitude, where the accused might be attended by such as could give them repentance, if guilty, or new motives to virtue, if innocent. And this, but not the increasing punishment, is the way to mend a state.”

Now, if the good Vicar had stopped here, he would have expressed a truth much needed at the time, in a simplicity and elegance of language which could not be improved. But the Vicar enters into abstract reasoning to prove his thesis, grows argumentative, and, at the same time, grows weak.

“Nor can I,” he continues, “avoid even questioning the validity of that right which social combinations have assumed of capitally punishing offences of a slight nature. In cases of murder their right is obvious, as it is the duty of us all, from the law of self-defence, to cut off that man who has shown a disregard for the life of another. Against such all nature rises in arms; but it is not so against him who steals my property. Natural law gives me no right to take away his life, as by that the horse he steals is as much his property as mine. If, then, I have any right, it must be from a compact made between us, that he who deprives the other of his horse shall die. _But this is a false compact; because no man has a right to barter his life any more than to take it away, as it is not his own. And, besides, the compact is inadequate, and could be set aside even in a court of modern equity, as there is a great penalty for a trifling inconvenience, since it is far better that two men should live than that one man should ride._ But a compact that is false between two men is equally so between a hundred and a hundred thousand; for as ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.”

Logic such as this, even if set forth in Latin, would hardly have earned him his supper and his bed in the University of Padua.

We are told that at Dublin University Goldsmith manifested great repugnance to the study of mathematics. The conduct towards him of the mathematical tutor did not tend to diminish this aversion. In one of his miscellaneous essays, he thus revenges himself on the science and on its professors:—

“A youth incapable of retaining one rule of grammar, or of acquiring the least knowledge of the classics, may nevertheless make great progress in mathematics; _nay, he may have a strong genius for the mathematics without being able to comprehend a demonstration of Euclid_; because his mind conceives in a peculiar manner, and is so intent upon contemplating the object in one particular point of view, that it cannot perceive it in any other. We have known an instance of a boy who, while his master complained that he had not capacity to comprehend the properties of a right-angled triangle, had actually, in private, by the power of his genius, _formed a mathematical system of his own_; discovered a series of curious theorems, and even applied his deductions to practical machines of surprising construction.”—_Essay on Taste._

But although Goldsmith could commit the most surprising blunders when he invades the region of abstract or severe reasoning, yet the credit must be given to him of _thinking for himself_. With undisciplined powers, and but slenderly equipped for the task, we still see him engaging in the solution of social and political problems. He does not merely repeat from books the ideas of others; nor is he a thoughtless spectator of the world. One subject especially our homeless wanderer, who had looked up at society from the last round of the ladder, is frequently observed to be canvassing. His opinions on it are far from settled; his conclusions are often diametrically opposed; his reasonings never very clear; but he is, at all events, seen from time to time pondering it with great interest. It is the subject of luxury—the gratifications and pleasures of the wealthy in a state of civilisation. The rule admits of exceptions; but, in general, he condemns luxury in his poetry, and defends it in his prose. In neither case is he very successful in his reasonings. When he assails, he appears to be under the influence of a mere sentiment; when he defends it, he seems to be dealing with a half-learned philosophy, and such as is generally understood to be rather a native of France than of England.

“Examine,” says the _Citizen of the World_, “the history of any country remarkable for opulence and wisdom, you will find that they would never have been wise had they not been first luxurious: you will find poets, philosophers, and even patriots, marching in luxury’s train. The reason is obvious. _We then only are curious in knowledge, when we find it connected with sensual happiness._ The senses ever point out the way, and reflection comments upon the discovery. Inform a native of the desert of Kobi of the exact measure of the parallax of the moon, he finds no satisfaction at all in the information; he wonders how any could take such pains, and lay out such treasures, in order to solve so useless a difficulty; but connect it with his happiness by showing that it improves navigation—that by such an investigation he may have a warmer coat, a better gun, or a finer knife, and he is instantly in raptures at so great an improvement. In short, we only desire to know when we desire to possess; and, whatever we may talk against it, luxury adds the spur to curiosity, and gives us a desire of becoming more wise.”—Letter XI.

Not true, Dr Goldsmith!—only a mere fragment of the truth; and your astronomical illustration singularly unfortunate. For the science of astronomy has been all along a labour of love—from the time when Chaldæan shepherds, quite heedless of navigation, watched the stars, and marked out the planet (the _wanderer_) amongst the fixed and stationary lights, to these our own days, when the profound _mathematician_, calculating, in the midst of revolutionary Paris, his disturbances on the remote boundaries of our planetary system, writes to the skilful _observer_, and bids him direct his great tube to a certain spot in the heavens, and he will find a new _wanderer_ there, as yet unseen and unsuspected. The observer points his telescope as he is told, and discovers it that very night, in that very spot.

Still less will his reasoning hold together, or prove “refutation-tight,” when, as in the _Deserted Village_, he finds that the wealth of our merchants has occasioned the desertion of the country, and the depopulation of the land. “In regretting,” he says, in the preface to that poem, “the depopulation of the land, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries.” Happily no one, in reading that poem, thinks of the political economy of the _Deserted Village_. Happily, also, there is often a greater truth in the poet’s general enunciations, than he himself is able to explain, or accurately to develop. The reader may adopt his language, and apply it to a more correct conception than was present to the author’s mind. The very paragraph which might be quoted for its manifest blunder in the rudiments of political science, opens with these admirable lines, which every one, in a sense of his own, will readily adopt:—

“Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay, ’Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and a happy land.”

What follows will not easily bear a wise interpretation. Goldsmith speaks of commerce as if ships came in laden with nothing but gold—with “loads of freighted ore”—and finds that this imported wealth converts the ploughed fields into parks and pleasure-grounds. The writer of a history of England might have called to mind the Forest Laws, and the wide tracts of country kept waste, and, in some cases, _laid waste_ by our rude ancestors, for their rude sports.

There is amongst the essays of Goldsmith a tale or allegory, which our readers may remember to have read in their youth, in some Speaker, or collection of Elegant Extracts. We are quite sure they have no acquaintance with it of a later date. This tale we will venture to revive. It belongs to so old-fashioned a species of literature, that it must needs be a novelty. We would quote it as an instance illustrative of the remarks we have made on the intellectual character of Goldsmith. It is wrong—argumentatively and logically wrong—yet no man would say that he was a mere repeater of other men’s words, who wrote _Asem, an Eastern Tale; or a Vindication of the Wisdom of Providence in the moral government of the World_. No one can read it without being prompted to think, which is good proof that the author thought when he wrote it—though he did not think very accurately.

In the time of Goldsmith, the fashion was not extinct of seeing moral visions, and dreaming sagacious dreams. Wisdom delighted to speak in allegory. There were still to be found in those days, here and there, retired hermits, with long beards, hiding in solitary caves, and living on the simplest herbs—cold water and a salad; and there were still lingering on the earth genii, or other stupendous and supernatural beings, who occasionally visited these favoured mortals, teaching them surpassing wisdom, and illustrating their lessons in the most marvellous manner. Asem was such a hermit. Yet, all hermit and Mussulman as he was, he bears a strong resemblance to the Goldsmith family. “From the tenderness of his disposition, he exhausted all his fortune in relieving the wants of the distressed.” Having reduced himself to want, he is shocked to find that one who comes to beg, is not so welcome as when he came to give. Accordingly, he turns with wrath from an ungrateful world.

“He began to view mankind in a very different light from that in which he had before beheld them; he perceived a thousand vices he had never before suspected to exist; wherever he turned, ingratitude, dissimulation, and treachery contributed to increase his detestation of them. Resolved, therefore, to continue no longer in a world which he hated, and which repaid his detestation with contempt, he retired to a region of sterility, in order to brood over his resentment in solitude, and converse with the only honest heart he knew—namely, his own.”

But the contemplation of this only honest heart was not sufficient consolation for that prospect of a wicked world which perpetually haunted him, and which filled him with doubts on the wisdom or the beneficence of Allah. He finally resolved on suicide. He was about to plunge into the lake, when—

“He perceived a most majestic being walking on the surface of the water, and approaching the bank on which he stood!

“‘Son of Adam!’ cried the Genius, ‘stop thy rash purpose: the Father of the Faithful has seen thy justice, thy integrity, thy miseries, and hath sent me to afford and administer relief. Give me thine hand, and follow without trembling wherever I shall lead. In me behold the Genius of Conviction, kept by the Great Prophet, to turn from their errors those who go astray, not from curiosity, but a rectitude of intention. Follow me, and be wise!’”

Such an invitation, and from so imposing a personage, was not to be declined. The Genius of Conviction conducts Asem along the surface, and to the centre of the lake: here the waters open, and close on them; they descend into another world, where human foot had never trod before.

“‘The rational inhabitants of this world,’ the Genius tells him, ‘are formed agreeably to your own ideas; they are absolutely without vice. If you find this world more agreeable than that you so lately left, you have free permission to spend the remainder of your days in it.’

“‘A world without vice! Rational beings without immorality!’ cried Asem in a rapture. ‘I thank thee, Allah!—thou hast at length heard my petitions: this—this, indeed, will produce happiness, ecstasy, and ease. Oh for an immortality to spend it among men who are incapable of ingratitude, injustice, fraud, violence, and a thousand other crimes that render society miserable!’

“‘Cease thine exclamations!’ replied the Genius. ‘Look around thee.’

“They soon gained the utmost verge of the forest, and entered the country inhabited by men without vice; and Asem anticipated in idea the rational delight he hoped to experience in such an innocent society. But they had scarcely left the confines of the wood, when they beheld one of the inhabitants flying with hasty steps, and terror in his countenance, from an army of squirrels that closely pursued him. ‘Heavens!’ cried Asem, ‘why does he fly? What can he fear from animals so contemptible?’ He had scarcely spoken, when he perceived two dogs pursuing another of the human species, who, with equal terror and haste, attempted to avoid them. ‘This,’ cried Asem to his guide, ‘is truly surprising; nor can I conceive the reason for so strange an action.’—‘Every species of animals,’ replied the Genius, ‘has of late grown very powerful in this country; for the inhabitants, at first, thinking it unjust to use either fraud or force in destroying them, they have insensibly increased, and now frequently ravage their harmless frontiers.’ ‘But they should have been destroyed!’ cried Asem: ‘you see the consequence of such neglect.’—‘Where is then that tenderness you so lately expressed for subordinate animals?’ replied the Genius, smiling; ‘you seem to have forgot that branch of justice.’ ‘I must acknowledge my mistake,’ returned Asem. ‘I am now convinced that we must be guilty of tyranny and injustice to the brute creation, if we would enjoy the world ourselves. But let us no longer observe the duty of man to these irrational creatures, but survey their connexions with one another.’

“As they walked farther up the country, the more he was surprised to see no vestiges of handsome houses, no cities, nor any mark of elegant design. His conductor, perceiving his surprise, observed, that the inhabitants of this new world were perfectly content with their ancient simplicity; each had a house, which, though homely, was sufficient to lodge his little family; they were too good to build houses, which would only increase their own pride and the envy of the spectator; what they built was for convenience, and not for show. ‘At least, then,’ said Asem, ‘they have neither architects, painters, nor statuaries in their society; but these are idle arts, and may be spared. However, before I spend much more time here, you should have my thanks for introducing me into the society of some of their wisest men: there is scarcely any pleasure to me equal to a refined conversation; there is nothing of which I am so much enamoured as wisdom.’—‘Wisdom!’ replied his instructor; ‘how ridiculous! We have no wisdom here, for we have no occasion for it: true wisdom is only a knowledge of our own duty, and the duty of others to us; but of what use is such wisdom here? Each intuitively performs what is right in itself, and expects the same from others. If by wisdom you should mean vain curiosity and empty speculation, as such pleasures have their origin in vanity, luxury, or avarice, we are too good to pursue them.’ ‘All this may be right,’ said Asem, ‘but I think I observe a solitary disposition prevail among the people; each family keeps separately within their own precincts, without society, or without intercourse.’—‘That, indeed, is true,’ replied the other; ‘here is no established society, nor should there be any: all societies are made either through fear or friendship; the people we are among are too good to fear each other; and there are no motives to private friendship, where all are equally meritorious.’ ‘Well, then,’ said the sceptic, ‘if I am to spend my time here—if I am to have neither the polite arts, nor wisdom, nor friendship in such a world, I should be glad, at least, of an easy companion, who may tell me his thoughts, and to whom I may communicate mine.’—‘And to what purpose should either do this?’ says the Genius. ‘Flattery or curiosity are vicious motives, and never allowed of here; and wisdom is out of the question.’

“‘Still, however,’ said Asem, ‘the inhabitants must be happy; each is contented with his own possessions, nor avariciously endeavours to heap up more than is necessary for his own subsistence; each has, therefore, leisure for pitying those that stand in need of his compassion.’ He had scarcely spoken when his ears were assaulted by the lamentations of a wretch who sat by the way-side, and, in the most deplorable distress, seemed gently to murmur at his own misery. Asem immediately ran to his relief, and found him in the last stage of a consumption. ‘Strange,’ cried the son of Adam, ‘that men who are free from vice should thus suffer so much misery without relief!’—‘Be not surprised,’ said the wretch who was dying; ‘would it not be the utmost injustice for beings who have only just sufficient to support themselves, and are content with a bare subsistence, to take it from their own mouths to put it into mine? They never are possessed of a single meal more than is necessary; and what is barely necessary cannot be dispensed with.’ ‘They should have been supplied with more than is necessary,’ cried Asem. ‘And yet I contradict my own opinion but a moment before: all is doubt, perplexity, and confusion.’”

After some other attempts to find happiness in this world without vice, Asem exclaims—“Take me, O my Genius! back to that very world I have despised!” And hereupon the triumphant Genius, “assuming an air of terrible complacency, called all his thunders around him, and vanished in a whirlwind.” Asem found himself at the very place, and (with such rapidity had these scenes passed in review) almost at the very instant of time, in which the Genius had at first accosted him. “His right foot was still advanced to take the fatal plunge, nor had it been yet withdrawn.”

Who would dare to contend with the _Genius of Conviction_?—who venture to prescribe laws of reasoning to so majestic a being,—one who walks upon the waters, calls his thunders about him, and has a whole subterranean world wherewith to demonstrate his theory of morals? Nevertheless, if we were quite sure that the Genius were out of hearing, we should be disposed to question whether he had ever framed an accurate definition of virtue. If, in a virtuous world, men must be chased by squirrels, and devoured by dogs, live in penury, and let their neighbours starve, either we, or the Genius of Conviction, have been in error all this time as to what virtue really _is_.

As a critic, it is confessed on all hands that Goldsmith lamentably failed. As a politician, he had this honourable peculiarity, that his speculations had very little reference to the party feuds of the day. He had contracted, probably from his Continental travels, a bias in favour of monarchical power. He seems to have embraced the opinion which Burke combated in his _Thoughts on the Present Discontents_; namely, that the houses of parliament, or the aristocracy through their influence in these houses, were dangerously encroaching on the royal prerogative. At least this is the best explanation we can give of the expressions that he, from time to time, throws out upon this subject.

The only grudge we owe his politics is, that they occasioned the introduction of the weakest and most confused passage in his noble poem of _The Traveller_. When discoursing upon foreign countries—on Holland, France, or Italy—he naturally and wisely restricts himself to certain general characteristics of the people and of their governments—general views which admit of vigorous and poetic enunciation, and are not likely to raise cavil or controversy. But when he lands upon his native country, these home politics beset him, and he gets entangled in a train of thought but half made out, of too controversial a character, and which does not easily lend itself to the harmony of verse, and the simple force of poetic expression.

“Calm is my soul, nor apt to rise in arms, Except when fast approaching danger warms: But when contending chiefs blockade the throne, Contracting regal power to stretch their own; When I behold a factious band agree To call it freedom, when themselves are free; Each wanton judge new penal statutes draw, Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law; The wealth of climes where savage nations roam, Pillaged from slaves to purchase slaves at home; Fear, pity, justice, indignation start, Tear off reserve, and bare my swelling heart; _Till half a patriot, half a coward grown, I fly from petty tyrants to the throne_.”

Yet the whole passage must be forgiven for the sake of the two last lines. Of these the second is repeatedly quoted; but there is much significance and extreme felicity of expression in the preceding line—

“——half a patriot, half a coward grown.”

It is a pity they should be so often separated.

Having mentioned _The Traveller_, let us turn at once to this and to its exquisite companion—the two poems which give to Goldsmith his secure and eminent position in the literature of England. Our few detached criticisms on these old favourites shall not, at all events, be wearisome by their length. His comedies we design to leave untouched; they cannot be criticised without some review, however rapid, of the literature of the stage, and for this we have at present neither space nor inclination. A glance at _The Citizen of the World_ and _The Vicar of Wakefield_ will bring our subject to its conclusion.

Every one remembers the anecdote connected with the first line of _The Traveller_—

“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.”

Mr Irving shall relate it for us.

“The appearance of _The Traveller_ at once altered Goldsmith’s intellectual standing in the estimation of society; but its effect upon the club, if we may judge from the account given by Hawkins, was almost ludicrous. They were lost in astonishment that a ‘newspaper essayist,’ and a ‘bookseller’s drudge,’ should have written such a poem. On the evening of its announcement, Goldsmith had gone away early, after ‘rattling away as usual;’ and they knew not how to reconcile his heedless garrulity with the serene beauty, the easy grace, the sound good sense, and the occasional elevation of his poetry. They could scarcely believe that such magic numbers had flowed from a man to whom in general, says Johnson, ‘it was with difficulty they could give a hearing.’ ‘Well,’ exclaimed Chamier, ‘I do believe he wrote this poem himself; and, let me tell you, that is believing a great deal.’

“At the next meeting of the club, Chamier sounded the author a little about his poem. ‘Mr Goldsmith,’ said he, ‘what do you mean by the last word in the first line of your _Traveller_, “remote, unfriended, melancholy, _slow_?” Do you mean tardiness of locomotion?’—‘Yes,’ replied Goldsmith inconsiderately, being probably flurried at the moment. ‘No, sir,’ interposed his protecting friend Johnson, ‘you did not mean tardiness of locomotion; you meant that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.’—‘Ah!’ exclaimed Goldsmith, ‘_that_ was what I meant.’ Chamier immediately believed that Johnson himself had written the line, and a rumour became prevalent that he was the author of many of the finest passages.”

With due deference to the great critic, and to the author himself, he _did_ mean tardiness of movement; but the epithet, joined as it is with others, tells us also that this slowness of motion was the result of heaviness of heart, and indicative of a sad and pensive spirit. It means all that Dr Johnson said; but it means also, and first of all, the slow pace of the solitary poet. Goldsmith was more probably “flurried at the moment,” when he so readily adopted the interpretation of Dr Johnson, than when he gave his first natural answer. He found the passage explained for him so authoritatively, and so much to the satisfaction of those present, that he could not hesitate in accepting the explanation. But had he taken time and _courage_ to reflect a moment, he would have seen that there was no discrepancy between his own answer and what Dr Johnson had added. Take away the image of the slow moving poet, and you take away all _picture_ from the passage. The pensive sadness is depicted in what Captain Chamier calls, in seeming imitation of the great man he is conversing with, “tardiness of locomotion.”

“Remote—unfriended—melancholy—slow.”

Every word comes from the heart. Many a time, without a doubt, had our wandering poet, at a distance from his country, walked by the side of some foreign stream—alone—unfriended—with nothing for his portion upon earth but genius and poverty.

“We cannot, for our part, see the point of Captain Chamier’s question. He might, with just as much reason, have put the same query to Petrarch, who opens one of his sonnets in a very similar manner.

“Solo e pensoso, i più deserti campi Vo misurando, a passi tardi e lenti.”

He would have found here also “tardiness of locomotion,” and the languor of the pensive man, united in the same description.

“Where’er I roam, whatever realms to see, My heart untravell’d fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.”

The same image is made use of in the _Citizen of the World_. The reader may like to contrast the prose with the poetic version. “The farther I travel,” says Lien Chi Altangi to his correspondent, “I feel the pain of separation with stronger force; those ties that bind me to my native country and you, are still unbroken. _By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain._” We prefer the prose. Indeed the metaphor is not so much to our taste as that we should have thought it worth using a second time, and in the greater work. It suited Lien Chi Altangi very well, and with him it might have remained. It is too cumbrous—too material. What are we to do with this “lengthening chain” which he “drags” along the earth? and where, in imagination, are we to fasten it? To his ankle? It would make a felon of him. To his waist? Ridiculous! But, you will say, we are not to see the chain at all—only to hear it clank a little in the verse—only to have some dim idea of lengthening ligature. Very good; and thereupon we honestly respond—if, whilst reading the line you feel no irresistible tendency to look down upon the ground for this chain—if you do not see it at all, then to you the metaphor is quite unobjectionable.

“And find no spot of all the world my own!”

The natural feeling of the homeless, unprovided wanderer, looking over a great stretch of country. How finely is it contrasted with the sentiment which follows! No spot his own! It is all his! He has taken sympathetic possession of the whole.

“Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crowned; Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round; Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale; Ye bending swains that dress the flowery vale— For me your tributary stores combine; _Creation’s heir, the world, the world is mine!_”

Having thus wrought himself into proper mood for his philosophic purpose, the poet commences his survey of the several regions of the earth, and nations of mankind. The train of thought is, at starting, somewhat perplexed, from the author being occupied with two separate reflections, which, until they are closely examined, appear contradictory. We have them in close juxtaposition in the following lines:—

“Yet oft a sigh prevails, and sorrows fall, To see the hoard of human bliss so small; And oft I wish amidst the scene to find _Some spot to real happiness consigned_, Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest, May gather bliss to see my fellows blest. But where to find that happiest below— Who can direct, when _all pretend to know_? The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own.” &c., &c.

So far, then, from the hoard of happiness being small, every country proclaims itself to be specially and pre-eminently blest. The philosophic poet has no reason for his sorrow: he wanted one happy spot, and he has found every spot is happy—supremely happy.

But the apparent incongruity vanishes on a closer examination. Each nation boasts its pre-eminence over other nations; but man nowhere boasts much of being man. Every people is proud and self-congratulatory whilst it compares itself with other people; but its pride and gratulation are only sustained by this comparison. Every congregation of men who merely contemplate themselves as with the earth beneath them, and the sky above, are heard to fill the air with lamentations and discontent. So that the philosopher, notwithstanding these several vaunts of every nation, civilised and savage, may still search, if he thinks fit, for the spot “to happiness consigned.”

Our poet seems to find an equal proportion of good and evil in every clime, people, and government. Sometimes he is guilty of a little overcharge in this or that particular, in order to keep the balance even. Only thus can we account for the very severe language with which he takes leave of Holland. He had found the people of that country so very comfortable that it was absolutely necessary to abuse them as—

“A land of tyrants and a den of slaves,”

or the due proportion of evil would not have been preserved.

It is observable, and characteristic of the age in which Goldsmith wrote, that, beautiful as are his descriptions of the several countries of Europe, there is very little in them which betrays that he himself had ever visited those countries. There are few of those picturesque circumstances which the eye of an observer detects, and which the memory, or the note-book, preserves. Unfortunately, it was the habit of the day to trust more to the knowledge acquired from books than to the eyesight: _learning_ had not lost that undue influence which it naturally acquired at the restoration of letters; poets chose rather to describe what had been described before, and adhere to traditional feelings and classical models, than to consult their own experience. The descriptions of scenery in _The Traveller_ are so general, and consist of broad outlines so well known to all educated men, that they might have been written in Green Arbour Court, by one who had lived there all his life. Switzerland itself does not provoke him to quit the beaten track of broad generalities. He even describes what he did _not_ see, because it harmonises with the ideas obtained from books. Thus,—

—“The bleak Swiss their stormy mansion tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread; No produce _here_ the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.”

Switzerland has been long celebrated for the mercenary troops she supplied to foreign courts; but there is no country where less is seen of the soldier and his sword; nor can “scanty bread” be said to be the lot of those who cultivate its soil.

While our eye is on this part of the poem, can we possibly resist quoting the following half-a-dozen lines? They are perfect:—

—“Those ills that round his mansion rise Enhance the bliss his scanty fund supplies. Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, And dear that hill which lifts him to the storms; And as a child, when scaring sounds molest, Clings close and closer to the mother’s breast— So the loud torrent, and the whirlwind’s roar, But bind him to his native mountains more.”

Perhaps the happiest of all these national portraits is that of France. He sympathised with the French; his pen is often employed in defending them from absurd attacks, and combating the prejudices of the John Bull of his day. The concluding lines are peculiarly happy: there is a refinement of analysis expressed in the most graceful diction.

—“Honour Here passes current; paid from hand to hand, It shifts in splendid traffic through the land; From courts to camps, to cottages it strays, And all are taught an avarice of praise; They please, are pleased; _they give to get esteem_, Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.”

His praise of England we must not appear so deficient in patriotism as to quarrel with. But just as one is curious to know where an artist stood who has taken some captivating sketch of an old familiar spot, which never appeared to us so very charming before—so one might feel a little curious to discover where it was, in town or country, that Goldsmith took his stand when he saw—

“The lords of human race pass by; Intent on high design—a thoughtful band.”

Was it on London Bridge or at Temple Bar that he read the marks of “high design” in the “thoughtful band” that we were rushing past him like a mill-stream? Or was he far off in the country, and did the squire and his tenantry sit for the picture?

We already find in _The Traveller_ that strange hallucination which seems to have haunted him, and which he more fully expressed in the subsequent poem of _The Deserted Village_—that England was being depopulated! What could have conducted him to a conclusion so utterly at variance with the fact, it is useless to inquire. It was his crotchet. He had probably seen decay in some places, and took no calculation of the more than proportionate increase of others. For Goldsmith did not limit himself to the mistaken notion, which many had expressed, that the towns were growing large at the expense of the country, but entertained—what to us must seem the strangest of paradoxes—entertained the conviction that the population of the whole country was wasting away.

Happily, as we have already remarked, no one thinks of the theory of depopulation, or over-population, or any other theory of political economy, whilst reading _The Deserted Village_. We have all learned to love “Sweet Auburn” long before any idea connected with so crabbed and distressful a subject entered our minds. Indeed the village, with all its accessories, is brought with such distinctness before us, that even the decay of Auburn itself, is not the most prominent impression which the poem produces. The deserted Auburn is made to live again so vividly in the imagination, that the desolation in which it lies only occurs occasionally to the mind, throwing a feeling of sadness and melancholy over the picture. For ourselves, we can well remember that when we first became acquainted with the village of Auburn, we always thought of it—notwithstanding the use of the past tense—as somewhere still existing. It existed, at all events, very palpably in the imagination.

The scene is English: it is, in the main, a description of an English village; but because the poet has also drawn materials from the recollections of his early home, some of his critics have been resolved to place Auburn in Ireland, and to identify what is clearly an ideal picture with the definite locality of Lissoy. On this ground they have even proceeded to convict him of an error for introducing the nightingale in one of his descriptions, there being no such bird in Ireland.

This line, in which the nightingale is introduced, we should venture to quarrel with on quite another ground. Here is the passage. No one will object to read it again, though he has read it fifty or twice fifty times.

“Sweet was the sound when oft, at evening’s close, Up yonder hill the village murmur rose; There as I passed with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came soften’d from below: The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school; The watch-dog’s voice, that bayed the whispering wind; And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; _These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made_.”

Have not our readers already felt how much better the description would have been if the last couplet had been omitted? This nightingale takes us by surprise. We thought we were listening to the sounds of the distant village, and find that we have been attending to the song of the nightingale, and that these had only filled up the pauses of her song. What had been the chief and prominent subject is suddenly reduced to this subordinate part. But, what is more to the purpose, the description becomes unfaithful, and ceases to reflect a real experience, when this nightingale is introduced. If that shy bird were heard singing while the milkmaid and the schoolboy were still audible, there would be no pleasing, but a very displeasing effect produced by the mingling of sounds of so very different a nature. They would by no means harmonise. We should listen with pleasure to the milkmaid and to the distant schoolboy, (he must be very distant,) and we should listen with pleasure to the nightingale, but with very little pleasure to all these at once.

Goldsmith was a genuine lover of nature; but nevertheless he had not quite escaped that taste of the day which often led to the sacrifice of the truthfulness of a picture to what was deemed the perfection of the verse. He too can sometimes desert the _sense_ for the _sound_. And this word _sound_ reminds us of rather an amusing instance where he introduces some geographical names for no earthly reason except the array of sonorous syllables they present. “Farewell,” he exclaims to poetry,—

“Farewell, and oh! where’er thy voice be tried, _On Torno’s cliffs, or Pambamarca’s side_.”

Had we been in Captain Chamier’s place at the club, and wished to puzzle our friend Goldsmith, we should have asked him why he sent the muse to Pambamarca? and where, indeed, Pambamarca lay? We suspect that Goldsmith must have answered, that he knew nothing about it, except that it was a great way off, and sounded very majestically.

There is one instance where the poet has introduced a reminiscence from Ireland, which we do not recollect to have seen noticed. In the inimitable description of the village schoolmaster, he says,—

“Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage, And e’en the story ran—_that he could gauge_.”

Now the rustics of an English village were not at all likely to select this accomplishment of gauging as one to bestow upon their prodigy of learning. We were tempted to explain this choice in the poet by the necessity of rhyme, which too often has manifestly determined him in the selection of his epithets, till it occurred to us that his mind had been travelling back to the _Irish_ village, where the illicit still may have brought even to the ragged urchins of the place some rumours of the science of the exciseman.

In the whole range of English heroic verse, there is nothing more beautiful or more complete than the description of the village pastor,—

——“The man to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a-year.”

Indeed, of the entire poem, it may be deliberately said, that it has more tenderness and pathos, gives more of picture to the eye, and of feeling to the heart, than any other in the language which is written in the same verse or metre. The polished couplets of Pope are nowhere else seen united with so much of the genuine essence of poetry. How perfect, in every way, are such lines as these,—

“But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he pray’d and felt for all; And, as a bird each fond endearment tries, To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way.”

One more remark, one other brief quotation, and we quit this most fascinating poem, which nestles deeper in the English heart than perhaps any other. What a bland, gentle, loving humour it is which occasionally steals over the picture of _The Deserted Village_, giving here and there charming touches, as of gay sunshine breaking out upon the several points of a shaded landscape, yet never disturbing the sweet serenity and sadness of the whole. Never did humour wear so gentle an aspect. We go from the pastor’s house, and the pastor himself, to the village inn, and there is no abruptness in the transition. What a quiet, observant, tolerant humour it is that sees those—“broken tea-cups, _wisely kept for show_.” What else could they serve for? And they may still do to be looked at.

“Vain transitory splendours! could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall? Observe it sinks, nor shall it more impart _An hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart_. Thither no more the peasant shall repair, To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale, No more the woodman’s ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, _Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear_.”

But why continue the quotation, when half our readers could complete it from their own memory?

We proposed to ourselves a glance at _The Citizen of the World_ and _The Vicar of Wakefield_. It can only be a glance.

Is this really the same—we are tempted to ask ourselves—is this really the same _Citizen of the World_ that, on our first introduction to the acquaintance of books, we read, amongst the _British Essayist_, with so grave attention, and so implicit a faith? Yes, it is the same; for here is the Man in Black, and here is the unmistakeable Beau Tibbs. Can we possibly forget the invitation to dinner—on the first floor down the chimney—something elegant, a turbot or an ortolan, which finally resolves itself into “a nice little piece of ox-cheek, piping hot, which Mrs Tibbs shall dress herself with that sauce the Duke dotes upon,”—and which dinner, if his hungry guest will but wait, shall be “ready in at least two hours.” Yes, here is Beau Tibbs as full of life as ever. But the Chinese philosopher—he is gone;—there is left of _him_, or of China, nothing but his name, and the suspicious name of his correspondent, “Fum, the son of Fo.” Instead thereof, we have Oliver Goldsmith writing his series of clever _Idlers_ and _Spectators_.

Pity this Chinaman ever made his appearance. All the humour and satire of the piece might have been preserved, if some simple Englishman, some Parson Adams or Dr Primrose, had been the writer of the letters; and we should have been spared the constant incongruity of a Chinese who is not only a palpable European, but a European of the literary class. So completely versed is this Chinese philosopher in the feuds and vexations of critics and authors, that we must suppose him commissioned by the Grub Street of Pekin, to inquire into the condition of distressed poets and discontented playwrights amongst the “outer barbarians.” We should have been spared also those episodes, or adventures, which _his_ Eastern correspondents detail to him, and which, indeed, are neither European nor Eastern, but very tedious stories.

In vain does the Chinaman assume the prejudices of his country: he may amuse us; but he cannot even get a momentary credit for the outlandish taste he affects. He cannot disparage the beauty of Englishwomen, without insinuating his praise of them. There is as much flattery as abuse, when he says:—

“I shall never forget the beauties of my native city of Nanfew. How very broad their faces! how very short their noses! how very little their eyes! how very thin their lips! how very black their teeth. Here a lady with such perfections would be frightful: Dutch and Chinese beauties, indeed, have some resemblance, but Englishwomen are entirely different; red cheeks, big eyes, and teeth of a most odious whiteness, are not only seen here, but wished for; and then they have such masculine feet, as actually serve some for walking.”

That which constitutes the greatest charm of the work is the subdued and chastened satire one occasionally meets with. Not a rude and boisterous, a cutting or malicious satire, but such as requires to be read with some attention before the full force of its sly inuendos, and of slight circumstances mentioned as if in passing, is fully perceived. Take the following instance, and note how the effect is heightened by a number of little details, thrown in as if by accident.

“A few days ago, passing by one of their prisons, I could not avoid stopping in order to listen to a dialogue which I thought might afford me some entertainment. The conversation was carried on between a debtor through the grate of his prison, a porter who had stopped to rest his burden, and a soldier at the window. The subject was upon a threatened invasion from France, and each seemed extremely anxious to rescue his country from the impending danger. ‘For my part,’ cries the prisoner, ‘the greatest of my apprehension is for our freedom: if the French should conquer, what would become of English liberty? My dear friends, liberty is the Englishman’s prerogative; we must preserve that at the expense of our lives: of that the French shall never deprive us; it is not to be expected that men who are slaves themselves, would preserve our freedom should they happen to conquer.’ ‘Ay, slaves,’ cries the porter; ‘they are all slaves, fit only to carry burdens, every one of them. Before I would stoop to slavery, may this be my poison, (and he held the goblet in his hand,) may this be my poison—but I would sooner list for a soldier.’

“The soldier, taking the goblet from his friend, with much awe fervently cried out, ‘It is not so much our liberties as our religion that would suffer by such a change: ay, our religion, my lads. May the devil sink me into flames (such was the solemnity of his adjuration) if the French should come over, but our religion would be utterly undone.’ So saying, instead of a libation, he applied the goblet to his lips, and confirmed his sentiments with a ceremony of the most persevering devotion.”

There are some works so simple in their structure, and so highly popular, that on both grounds they defy criticism. Their faults lie so open and undisguised, that the critic who would pertinaciously insist upon them, would get neither credit nor thanks for his pains. In this category is _The Vicar of Wakefield_. To expose its improbabilities of plot or character would be an easy and most ungracious task. We love the good Vicar, and he shall be allowed to tell his tale to the end of time just as he pleases. To be sure, this odd notion he entertains, that a clergyman ought by all means to marry once, and by no means more than once, is very like a monomania. He is so staunch a _monogamist_, as he calls it, as to be resolved on convincing his old friend and fellow-clergyman, Mr Wilmot, who has been married three times. But this, and all the wonderful things which the Thornhills, nephew and uncle, contrive to do, who cares to cavil at? The genuine feelings of human nature are portrayed in the novel,—kind, homely, unpretending feelings which all can sympathise with—and when the attention is once fixed by this species of truth, a thousand improbabilities may pass without challenge. It is always thus. The writer of fiction, whether it be fable or romance, and whether he deal with man or monster, or spirit of the air, has always found that if he can present a faithful reflexion of the human heart, he may give almost any conceivable license to the imagination.

What most struck us on a late perusal of _The Vicar of Wakefield_, was the very low level, in point of refinement, on which all the female characters are placed. The love and the courtship are of the rudest sort, without the least trace of sentiment or the poetry of the passion. Mrs Primrose, notwithstanding the excellence of her gooseberry wine, and the liberality with which she dispenses it, is, we are sorry to say, decidedly a vulgar personage. That her learning and accomplishments were those which we should now assign to the housekeeper, rather than to the wife of a wealthy vicar, (for such is Dr Primrose when we are first introduced to him,) is no part of our objection; this the difference of times and systems of education may sufficiently explain. Mrs Primrose is vulgar _at the heart_. She lacks those feelings of refinement which sometimes grow up spontaneously even in the peasant’s hut.

Recall to mind the manner in which she receives back her unfortunate daughter Olivia. Let it be remembered that she had been practising her petty blundering artifices, her most visible palpable manœuvres, to catch the rich young squire. It was her plot, her scheme for elevating the family; in which scheme her daughter was of course to co-operate. Yet this is her speech upon the occasion. It is true human nature, but it is human nature of a very vulgar description. “Ah, Madam,” cried her mother, “this is but a poor place you are come to after so much finery. My daughter Sophy and I can afford but little entertainment to persons who have kept company only with people of distinction. Yes, Miss Livy, your poor father and I have suffered very much of late; but I hope Heaven will forgive you.”

This Olivia herself is not made interesting to us by any one trait in her character. Her beauty, and the cruel treatment she meets with from her coarse and brazen seducer, is all she has to depend upon for any claim to our sympathy. Affliction has its worst effect upon her, the effect it has on the selfish and unrefined. “Every tender epithet bestowed on her sister brought a pang to her heart, and a tear to her eye; and as one vice, when cured, ever plants others where it has been, so her former guilt, though driven out by repentance, left jealousy and envy behind.” It is just as well we do not get more intimate with the female part of the family, for it is evident that in proportion as we knew them better, we should like them less.

Had the life of Goldsmith brought him acquainted with no higher specimens of the sex? Had his fair cousin Jane, the daughter of good Uncle Contarine, with whom he used to practise music, and talk poetry, left with him no more refined impression of female society than we see reflected in _The Vicar of Wakefield_? Or, must we understand his portraits as fair specimens of the women of his time? Or, shall we seek a third explanation in the want of refinement in the literature of that period? We suspect the last has much to do with it.

Here we must bring to a conclusion our necessarily detached and desultory criticisms on the works of Goldsmith. As a _prose_ writer, it would be in vain for any too partial biographer or critic to elevate him to the rank of those who guide or confirm opinion, and teach us to reason and to judge. But how many a familiar truth has he clothed in clear and graceful diction! How often, too, the isolated observation, thrown out as if by happy chance, stimulates the mind to reflection! What a master he is of _form_—of the pleasing art which moulds the style! But his two principal _poems_ are the works which raise him to the rank of _the immortals_. We can easily understand that many ardent admirers of our contemporaneous poetry—replete as it is with the philosophic speculations of the age, its subtle and ambitious thinking—may be disposed to look down with an air of condescension, and a sort of gentle disdain, upon the poetry of Goldsmith. But time passes on, and brings new modes of philosophising; the subtleties of one age do not always charm the next; and it may happen that much which is now held in highest repute, as the most _poetical_ of poetry, shall have grown dim and obsolete, whilst mothers shall be still teaching to their children, and old men still repeating to themselves, the descriptions of _The Traveller_ and of _The Deserted Village_.

TO BURNS’S “HIGHLAND MARY.”

I.

O loved by him whom Scotland loves, Long loved, and honoured duly By all who love the bard who sang So sweetly and so truly! In cultured dales his song prevails, Thrills o’er the eagle’s aëry,— Ah! who that strain has caught, nor sighed For Burns’s “Highland Mary?”

II.

I wandered on from hill to hill, I feared nor wind nor weather; For Burns beside me trode the moor, Beside me pressed the heather. I read his verse—his life—alas! O’er that dark shades extended:— With thee at last, and him in thee, My thoughts their wanderings ended.

III.

His golden hours of youth were thine— Those hours whose flight is fleetest; Of all his songs to thee he gave The freshest and the sweetest. Ere ripe the fruit, one branch he brake, All rich with bloom and blossom; And shook its dews, its incense shook, Above thy brow and bosom.

IV.

And when his Spring, alas, how soon! Had been by care subverted, His Summer, like a god repulsed, Had from his gates departed; Beneath the evening star, once more, Star of his morn and even! To thee his suppliant hands he spread, And hailed his love “in heaven.”

V.

And if his spirit in “a waste Of shame” too oft was squandered, And if too oft his feet ill-starred In ways erroneous wandered; Yet still his spirit’s spirit bathed In purity eternal; And all fair things through thee retained For him their aspect vernal.

VI.

Nor less that tenderness remained Thy favouring love implanted; Compunctious pity, yearnings vague For love to earth not granted; Reserve with freedom, female grace Well matched with manly vigour, In songs where fancy twined her wreaths Round judgment’s stalwart rigour.

VII.

A mute but strong appeal was made To him by feeblest creatures; In his large heart had each a part That part had found in Nature’s. The wildered sheep, sagacious dog, Old horse reduced and crazy, The field-mouse by the plough upturned, And violated daisy.

VIII.

In him there burned that passionate glow, All Nature’s soul and savour, Which gives its hue to every flower, To every fruit its flavour. Nor less the kindred power he felt, That love of all things human, Whereof the fiery centre is The love man bears to woman.

IX.

He sang the dignity of man, Sang woman’s grace and goodness; Passed by the world’s half-truths, her lies Pierced through with lance-like shrewdness. Upon life’s broad highways he stood, And aped nor Greek nor Roman; But snatched from heaven Promethean fire To glorify things common.

X.

He sang of youth, he sang of age, Their joys, their griefs, their labours; Felt with, not for, the people; hailed All Scotland’s sons his neighbours: And therefore all repeat his verse— Hot youth, or graybeard steady, The boat-man on Loch Etive’s wave, The shepherd on Ben Ledi.

XI.

He sang from love of song; his name Dunedin’s cliff resounded:— He left her, faithful to a fame On truth and nature founded. He sought true fame, not loud acclaim; Himself and Time he trusted: For laurels crackling in the flame His fine ear never lusted.

XII.

He loved, and reason had to love. The illustrious land that bore him: Where’er he went, like heaven’s broad tent A star-bright Past hung o’er him. Each isle had fenced a saint recluse, Each tower a hero dying; Down every mountain-gorge had rolled The flood of foemen flying.

XIII.

From age to age that land had paid No alien throne submission, For feudal faith had been her Law, And freedom her Tradition. Where frowned the rocks had Freedom smiled, Sung, mid the shrill wind’s whistle— So England prized her garden Rose, But Scotland loved her Thistle.

XIV.

The land thus pure from foreign foot, Her growing powers thus centred Around her heart, with other lands The race historic entered. Her struggling dawn, convulsed or bright, Worked on through storms and troubles, Whilst a heroic line of kings Strove with heroic nobles.

XV.

Fair field alone the brave demand, And Scotland ne’er had lost it: And honest prove the hate and love To objects meet adjusted. Intelligible course was hers By safety tried or danger: The native was for native known— The stranger known for stranger.

XVI.

Honour in her a sphere had found, Nobility a station, The patriots’ thought the task it sought, And virtue—toleration. Her will and way had ne’er been crossed In fatal contradiction; Nor loyalty to treason soured, Nor faith abused with fiction.

XVII.

Can song be mute where hearts are sound? Weak doubts—away we fling them! The land that breeds great men, great deeds, Should ne’er lack bards to sing them. That vigour, sense, and mutual truth Which baffled each invader, Shall fill her marts, and feed her arts, While peaceful olives shade her.

XVIII.

Honour to Scotland and to Burns! In him she stands collected. A thousand streams one river make— Thus Genius, heaven-directed, Conjoins all separate veins of power In one great soul-creation; And blends a million men to make The Poet of the nation.

XIX.

Honour to Burns! and her who first Let loose the abounding river Of music from the Poet’s heart, Borne through all lands for ever! How much to her mankind has owed Of song’s selectest treasures! Unsweetened by her kiss, his lips Had sung far other measures.

XX.

Be green for aye, green bank and brae Around Montgomery’s Castle! Blow there, ye earliest flowers! and there, Ye sweetest song-birds, nestle! For there was ta’en that last farewell In hope, indulged how blindly; And there was given that long last gaze “That dwelt” on him “sae kindly.”

XXI.

No word of thine recorded stands; Few words that hour were spoken: Two Bibles there were interchanged, And some slight love-gift broken. And there thy cold faint hands he pressed, Thy head by dewdrops misted; And kisses, ill-resisted first, At last were unresisted.

XXII.

Ah cease!—she died. He too is dead. Of all her girlish graces Perhaps one nameless lock remains: The rest stern Time effaces— Dust lost in dust. Not so: a bloom Is hers that ne’er can wither; And in that lay which lives for aye The twain live on together.

MY PENINSULAR MEDAL. BY AN OLD PENINSULAR.