PART II

OVERTURE—PASTORALE

MAN SPEAKER.

FAST by that shore where Thames’ translucent stream Reflects new glories on his breast, Where, splendid as the youthful poet’s dream, He forms a scene beyond Elysium blest— Where sculptur’d elegance and native grace 5 Unite to stamp the beauties of the place, While sweetly blending still are seen The wavy lawn, the sloping green— While novelty, with cautious cunning, Through ev’ry maze of fancy running, 10 From China borrows aid to deck the scene— There, sorrowing by the river’s glassy bed, Forlorn, a rural bard complain’d, All whom Augusta’s bounty fed, All whom her clemency sustain’d; 15 The good old sire, unconscious of decay, The modest matron, clad in homespun gray, The military boy, the orphan’d maid, The shatter’d veteran, now first dismay’d; These sadly join beside the murmuring deep, 20 And, as they view The towers of Kew, Call on their mistress—now no more—and weep.

CHORUS.—AFFETTUOSO.—LARGO.

Ye shady walks, ye waving greens, Ye nodding towers, ye fairy scenes— 25 Let all your echoes now deplore That she who form’d your beauties is no more.

MAN SPEAKER.

First of the train the patient rustic came, Whose callous hand had form’d the scene, Bending at once with sorrow and with age, 30 With many a tear and many a sigh between; ‘And where,’ he cried, ‘shall now my babes have bread, Or how shall age support its feeble fire? No lord will take me now, my vigour fled, Nor can my strength perform what they require; 35 Each grudging master keeps the labourer bare— A sleek and idle race is all their care. My noble mistress thought not so: Her bounty, like the morning dew, Unseen, though constant, used to flow; 40 And as my strength decay’d, her bounty grew.’

WOMAN SPEAKER.

In decent dress, and coarsely clean, The pious matron next was seen— Clasp’d in her hand a godly book was borne, By use and daily meditation worn; 45 That decent dress, this holy guide, Augusta’s care had well supplied. ‘And ah!’ she cries, all woe-begone, ‘What now remains for me? Oh! where shall weeping want repair, 50 To ask for charity? Too late in life for me to ask, And shame prevents the deed, And tardy, tardy are the times To succour, should I need. 55 But all my wants, before I spoke, Were to my Mistress known; She still reliev’d, nor sought my praise, Contented with her own. But ev’ry day her name I’ll bless, 60 My morning prayer, my evening song, I’ll praise her while my life shall last, A life that cannot last me long.’

SONG. BY A WOMAN.

Each day, each hour, her name I’ll bless— My morning and my evening song; 65 And when in death my vows shall cease, My children shall the note prolong.

MAN SPEAKER.

The hardy veteran after struck the sight, Scarr’d, mangled, maim’d in every part, Lopp’d of his limbs in many a gallant fight, 70 In nought entire—except his heart. Mute for a while, and sullenly distress’d, At last the impetuous sorrow fir’d his breast. ‘Wild is the whirlwind rolling O’er Afric’s sandy plain, 75 And wild the tempest howling Along the billow’d main: But every danger felt before— The raging deep, the whirlwind’s roar— Less dreadful struck me with dismay, 80 Than what I feel this fatal day. Oh, let me fly a land that spurns the brave, Oswego’s dreary shores shall be my grave; I’ll seek that less inhospitable coast, And lay my body where my limbs were lost.’ 85

SONG. BY A MAN.—BASSO. SPIRITOSO.

Old Edward’s sons, unknown to yield, Shall crowd from Crecy’s laurell’d field, To do thy memory right; For thine and Britain’s wrongs they feel, Again they snatch the gleamy steel, 90 And wish the avenging fight.

WOMAN SPEAKER.

In innocence and youth complaining, Next appear’d a lovely maid, Affliction o’er each feature reigning, Kindly came in beauty’s aid; 95 Every grace that grief dispenses, Every glance that warms the soul, In sweet succession charmed the senses, While pity harmonized the whole. ‘The garland of beauty’—’tis thus she would say— 100 ‘No more shall my crook or my temples adorn, I’ll not wear a garland—Augusta’s away, I’ll not wear a garland until she return; But alas! that return I never shall see, The echoes of Thames shall my sorrows proclaim, 105 There promised a lover to come—but, O me! ’Twas death,—’twas the death of my mistress that came. But ever, for ever, her image shall last, I’ll strip all the spring of its earliest bloom; On her grave shall the cowslip and primrose be cast, 110 And the new-blossomed thorn shall whiten her tomb.’

SONG. BY A WOMAN.—PASTORALE.

With garlands of beauty the queen of the May No more will her crook or her temples adorn; For who’d wear a garland when she is away, When she is remov’d, and shall never return. 115

On the grave of Augusta these garlands be plac’d, We’ll rifle the spring of its earliest bloom, And there shall the cowslip and primrose be cast, And the new-blossom’d thorn shall whiten her tomb.

CHORUS.—ALTRO MODO.

On the grave of Augusta this garland be plac’d, 120 We’ll rifle the spring of its earliest bloom, And there shall the cowslip and primrose be cast, And the tears of her country shall water her tomb.

SONG

FROM ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

LET school-masters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning; Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives ‘genus’ a better discerning. Let them brag of their heathenish gods, 5 Their Lethes, their Styxes, and Stygians: Their Quis, and their Quaes, and their Quods, They’re all but a parcel of Pigeons. Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

When Methodist preachers come down A-preaching that drinking is sinful, 10 I’ll wager the rascals a crown They always preach best with a skinful. But when you come down with your pence, For a slice of their scurvy religion, I’ll leave it to all men of sense, 15 But you, my good friend, are the pigeon. Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

Then come, put the jorum about, And let us be merry and clever; Our hearts and our liquors are stout; Here’s the Three Jolly Pigeons for ever. 20 Let some cry up woodcock or hare, Your bustards, your ducks, and your widgeons; But of all the birds in the air, Here’s a health to the Three Jolly Pigeons. Toroddle, toroddle, toroll.

EPILOGUE TO ‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

WELL, having stoop’d to conquer with success, And gain’d a husband without aid from dress, Still, as a Bar-maid, I could wish it too, As I have conquer’d him, to conquer you: And let me say, for all your resolution, 5 That pretty Bar-maids have done execution. Our life is all a play, compos’d to please, ‘We have our exits and our entrances.’ The First Act shows the simple country maid, Harmless and young, of ev’ry thing afraid; 10 Blushes when hir’d, and, with unmeaning action, ‘I hopes as how to give you satisfaction.’ Her Second Act displays a livelier scene— Th’ unblushing Bar-maid of a country inn, Who whisks about the house, at market caters, 15 Talks loud, coquets the guests, and scolds the waiters. Next the scene shifts to town, and there she soars, The chop-house toast of ogling connoisseurs. On ’Squires and Cits she there displays her arts, And on the gridiron broils her lovers’ hearts: 20 And as she smiles, her triumphs to complete, Even Common-Councilmen forget to eat. The Fourth Act shows her wedded to the ’Squire, And Madam now begins to hold it higher; Pretends to taste, at Operas cries _caro_, 25 And quits her _Nancy Dawson_, for _Che faro_, Doats upon dancing, and in all her pride, Swims round the room, the Heinel of Cheapside; Ogles and leers with artificial skill, ’Till having lost in age the power to kill, 30 She sits all night at cards, and ogles at spadille. Such, through our lives, the eventful history— The Fifth and Last Act still remains for me. The Bar-maid now for your protection prays. Turns Female Barrister, and pleads for Bayes. 35

[Illustration: ] PORTRAIT OF GOLDSMITH

AFTER REYNOLDS

(Vignette to ‘Retaliation’)

RETALIATION

A POEM

OF old, when Scarron his companions invited, Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united; If our landlord supplies us with beef, and with fish, Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish: Our Dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains; 5 Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains; Our Will shall be wild-fowl, of excellent flavour, And Dick with his pepper shall heighten their savour: Our Cumberland’s sweet-bread its place shall obtain, And Douglas is pudding, substantial and plain: 10 Our Garrick’s a salad; for in him we see Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree: To make out the dinner, full certain I am, That Ridge is anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb; That Hickey’s a capon, and by the same rule, 15 Magnanimous Goldsmith a gooseberry fool. At a dinner so various, at such a repast, Who’d not be a glutton, and stick to the last? Here, waiter! more wine, let me sit while I’m able, Till all my companions sink under the table; 20 Then, with chaos and blunders encircling my head, Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead.

Here lies the good Dean, re-united to earth, Who mix’d reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth: If he had any faults, he has left us in doubt, 25 At least, in six weeks, I could not find ’em out; Yet some have declar’d, and it can’t be denied ’em, That sly-boots was cursedly cunning to hide ’em.

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much; 30 Who, born for the Universe, narrow’d his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote; Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 35 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining; Though equal to all things, for all things unfit, Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit: For a patriot, too cool; for a drudge, disobedient; And too fond of the _right_ to pursue the _expedient._ 40 In short, ’twas his fate, unemploy’d, or in place, Sir, To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

Here lies honest William, whose heart was a mint, While the owner ne’er knew half the good that was in’t; The pupil of impulse, it forc’d him along, 45 His conduct still right, with his argument wrong; Still aiming at honour, yet fearing to roam, The coachman was tipsy, the chariot drove home; Would you ask for his merits? alas! he had none; What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own. 50

Here lies honest Richard, whose fate I must sigh at; Alas, that such frolic should now be so quiet! What spirits were his! what wit and what whim! Now breaking a jest, and now breaking a limb; Now wrangling and grumbling to keep up the ball, 55 Now teasing and vexing, yet laughing at all! In short, so provoking a devil was Dick, That we wish’d him full ten times a day at Old Nick; But, missing his mirth and agreeable vein, As often we wish’d to have Dick back again. 60

Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, The Terence of England, the mender of hearts; A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are. His gallants are all faultless, his women divine, 65 And comedy wonders at being so fine; Like a tragedy queen he has dizen’d her out, Or rather like tragedy giving a rout. His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud; 70 And coxcombs, alike in their failings alone, Adopting his portraits, are pleas’d with their own. Say, where has our poet this malady caught? Or, wherefore his characters thus without fault? Say, was it that vainly directing his view 75 To find out men’s virtues, and finding them few, Quite sick of pursuing each troublesome elf, He grew lazy at last, and drew from himself?

Here Douglas retires, from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks: 80 Come, all ye quack bards, and ye quacking divines, Come, and dance on the spot where your tyrant reclines: When Satire and Censure encircl’d his throne, I fear’d for your safety, I fear’d for my own; But now he is gone, and we want a detector, 85 Our Dodds shall be pious, our Kenricks shall lecture; Macpherson write bombast, and call it a style, Our Townshend make speeches, and I shall compile; New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over, No countryman living their tricks to discover; 90 Detection her taper shall quench to a spark, And Scotchman meet Scotchman, and cheat in the dark.

Here lies David Garrick, describe me, who can, An abridgment of all that was pleasant in man; As an actor, confess’d without rival to shine: 95 As a wit, if not first, in the very first line: Yet, with talents like these, and an excellent heart, The man had his failings, a dupe to his art. Like an ill-judging beauty, his colours he spread, And beplaster’d with rouge his own natural red. 100 On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; ’Twas only that when he was off he was acting. With no reason on earth to go out of his way, He turn’d and he varied full ten times a day. Though secure of our hearts, yet confoundedly sick 105 If they were not his own by finessing and trick, He cast off his friends, as a huntsman his pack, For he knew when he pleas’d he could whistle them back. Of praise a mere glutton, he swallow’d what came, And the puff of a dunce he mistook it for fame; 110 Till his relish grown callous, almost to disease, Who pepper’d the highest was surest to please. But let us be candid, and speak out our mind, If dunces applauded, he paid them in kind. Ye Kenricks, ye Kellys, and Woodfalls so grave, 115 What a commerce was yours, while you got and you gave! How did Grub-street re-echo the shouts you rais’d, While he was be-Roscius’d, and you were be-prais’d! But peace to his spirit, wherever it flies, To act as an angel, and mix with the skies: 120 Those poets, who owe their best fame to his skill, Shall still be his flatterers, go where he will. Old Shakespeare, receive him, with praise and with love, And Beaumonts and Bens be his Kellys above.

Here Hickey reclines, a most blunt, pleasant creature, 125 And slander itself must allow him good nature: He cherish’d his friend, and he relish’d a bumper; Yet one fault he had, and that one was a thumper. Perhaps you may ask if the man was a miser! I answer, no, no, for he always was wiser: 130 Too courteous, perhaps, or obligingly flat? His very worst foe can’t accuse him of that: Perhaps he confided in men as they go, And so was too foolishly honest! Ah no! Then what was his failing? come, tell it, and burn ye! 135 He was, could he help it?—a special attorney.

Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a better or wiser behind: His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; 140 Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart: To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judg’d without skill he was still hard of hearing: When they talk’d of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, 145 He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.

POSTSCRIPT

After the Fourth Edition of this Poem was printed, the Publisher received an Epitaph on Mr. Whitefoord, from a friend of the late Doctor Goldsmith, inclosed in a letter, of which the following is an abstract:—

‘I have in my possession a sheet of paper, containing near forty lines in the Doctor’s own hand-writing: there are many scattered, broken verses, on Sir Jos. Reynolds, Counsellor Ridge, Mr. Beauclerk, and Mr. Whitefoord. The Epitaph on the last-mentioned gentleman is the only one that is finished, and therefore I have copied it, that you may add it to the next edition. It is a striking proof of Doctor Goldsmith’s good-nature. I saw this sheet of paper in the Doctor’s room, five or six days before he died; and, as I had got all the other Epitaphs, I asked him if I might take it. “_In truth you may, my Boy_,” (replied he,) “_for it will be of no use to me where I am going._”’

HERE Whitefoord reclines, and deny it who can, Though he _merrily_ liv’d, he is now a ‘grave’ man; Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun! Who relish’d a joke, and rejoic’d in a pun; 150 Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; A stranger to flatt’ry, a stranger to fear; Who scatter’d around wit and humour at will; Whose daily _bons mots_ half a column might fill; A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free; 155 A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he.

What pity, alas! that so lib’ral a mind Should so long be to news-paper essays confin’d; Who perhaps to the summit of science could soar, Yet content ‘if the table he set on a roar’; 160 Whose talents to fill any station were fit, Yet happy if Woodfall confess’d him a wit.

Ye news-paper witlings! ye pert scribbling folks Who copied his squibs, and re-echoed his jokes; Ye tame imitators, ye servile herd, come, 165 Still follow your master, and visit his tomb: To deck it, bring with you festoons of the vine, And copious libations bestow on his shrine: Then strew all around it (you can do no less) _Cross-readings, Ship-news_, and _Mistakes of the Press._ 170

Merry Whitefoord, farewell! for _thy_ sake I admit That a Scot may have humour, I had almost said wit: This debt to thy mem’ry I cannot refuse, ‘Thou best humour’d man with the worst humour’d muse.’

SONG

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SUNG IN

‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

AH me! when shall I marry me? Lovers are plenty; but fail to relieve me: He, fond youth, that could carry me, Offers to love, but means to deceive me.

But I will rally, and combat the ruiner: 5 Not a look, not a smile shall my passion discover: She that gives all to the false one pursuing her, Makes but a penitent, loses a lover.

TRANSLATION

CHASTE are their instincts, faithful is their fire, No foreign beauty tempts to false desire; The snow-white vesture, and the glittering crown, The simple plumage, or the glossy down Prompt not their loves:—the patriot bird pursues 5 His well acquainted tints, and kindred hues. Hence through their tribes no mix’d polluted flame, No monster-breed to mark the groves with shame; But the chaste blackbird, to its partner true, Thinks black alone is beauty’s favourite hue. 10 The nightingale, with mutual passion blest, Sings to its mate, and nightly charms the nest; While the dark owl to court its partner flies, And owns its offspring in their yellow eyes.

THE HAUNCH OF VENISON

A POETICAL EPISTLE TO LORD CLARE

THANKS, my Lord, for your venison, for finer or fatter Never rang’d in a forest, or smok’d in a platter; The haunch was a picture for painters to study, The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy. Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help regretting 5 To spoil such a delicate picture by eating; I had thoughts, in my chambers, to place it in view, To be shown to my friends as a piece of _virtù_; As in some Irish houses, where things are so so, One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show: 10 But for eating a rasher of what they take pride in, They’d as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in. But hold—let me pause—Don’t I hear you pronounce This tale of the bacon a damnable bounce? Well, suppose it a bounce—sure a poet may try, 15 By a bounce now and then, to get courage to fly.

But, my Lord, it’s no bounce: I protest in my turn, It’s a truth—and your Lordship may ask Mr. Byrne. To go on with my tale—as I gaz’d on the haunch, I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch; 20 So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undress’d, To paint it, or eat it, just as he lik’d best. Of the neck and the breast I had next to dispose; ’Twas a neck and a breast—that might rival M—r—’s: But in parting with these I was puzzled again, 25 With the how, and the who, and the where, and the when. There’s H—d, and C—y, and H—rth, and H—ff, I think they love venison—I know they love beef; There’s my countryman H—gg—ns—Oh! let him alone, For making a blunder, or picking a bone. 30 But hang it—to poets who seldom can eat, Your very good mutton’s a very good treat; Such dainties to them, their health it might hurt, It’s like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt. While thus I debated, in reverie centred, 35 An acquaintance, a friend as he call’d himself, enter’d; An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he, And he smil’d as he look’d at the venison and me. ‘What have we got here?—Why, this is good eating! Your own, I suppose—or is it in waiting?’ 40 ‘Why, whose should it be?’ cried I with a flounce, ‘I get these things often;’—but that was a bounce: ‘Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation, Are pleas’d to be kind—but I hate ostentation.’

‘If that be the case, then,’ cried he, very gay, 45 ‘I’m glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words—I insist on’t—precisely at three: We’ll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there; My acquaintance is slight, or I’d ask my Lord Clare. 50 And now that I think on’t, as I am a sinner! We wanted this venison to make out the dinner. What say you—a pasty? it shall, and it must, And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust. Here, porter!—this venison with me to Mile-end; 55 No stirring—I beg—my dear friend—my dear friend! Thus snatching his hat, he brush’d off like the wind, And the porter and eatables follow’d behind.

Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, ‘And nobody with me at sea but myself’; 60 Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty, Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good venison pasty, Were things that I never dislik’d in my life, Though clogg’d with a coxcomb, and Kitty his wife. So next day, in due splendour to make my approach, 65 I drove to his door in my own hackney coach.

When come to the place where we all were to dine, (A chair-lumber’d closet just twelve feet by nine:) My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb, With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not come; 70 ‘For I knew it,’ he cried, ‘both eternally fail, The one with his speeches, and t’other with Thrale; But no matter, I’ll warrant we’ll make up the party With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty. The one is a Scotchman, the other a Jew, 75 They[’re] both of them merry and authors like you; The one writes the _Snarler_, the other the _Scourge_; Some think he writes _Cinna_—he owns to _Panurge._’ While thus he describ’d them by trade, and by name, They enter’d and dinner was serv’d as they came. 80

At the top a fried liver and bacon were seen, At the bottom was tripe in a swinging tureen; At the sides there was spinach and pudding made hot; In the middle a place where the pasty—was not. Now, my Lord as for tripe, it’s my utter aversion, 85 And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian; So there I sat stuck, like a horse in a pound, While the bacon and liver went merrily round. But what vex’d me most was that d—’d Scottish rogue, With his long-winded speeches, his smiles and his brogue; 90 And, ‘Madam,’ quoth he, ‘may this bit be my poison, A prettier dinner I never set eyes on; Pray a slice of your liver, though may I be curs’d, But I’ve eat of your tripe till I’m ready to burst.’ ‘The tripe,’ quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek, 95 ‘I could dine on this tripe seven days in the week: I like these here dinners so pretty and small; But your friend there, the Doctor, eats nothing at all.’ ‘O—Oh!’ quoth my friend, ‘he’ll come on in a trice, He’s keeping a corner for something that’s nice: 100 There’s a pasty’—‘A pasty!’ repeated the Jew, ‘I don’t care if I keep a corner for’t too.’ ‘What the de’il, mon, a pasty!’ re-echoed the Scot, ‘Though splitting, I’ll still keep a corner for thot.’ ‘We’ll all keep a corner,’ the lady cried out; 105 ‘We’ll all keep a corner,’ was echoed about. While thus we resolv’d, and the pasty delay’d, With look that quite petrified, enter’d the maid; A visage so sad, and so pale with affright, Wak’d Priam in drawing his curtains by night. 110 But we quickly found out, for who could mistake her? That she came with some terrible news from the baker: And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven Had shut out the pasty on shutting his oven Sad Philomel thus—but let similes drop— 115 And now that I think on’t, the story may stop. To be plain, my good Lord, it’s but labour misplac’d To send such good verses to one of your taste; You’ve got an odd something—a kind of discerning— A relish—a taste—sicken’d over by learning; 120 At least, it’s your temper, as very well known, That you think very slightly of all that’s your own: So, perhaps, in your habits of thinking amiss, You may make a mistake, and think slightly of this.

EPITAPH ON THOMAS PARNELL

THIS tomb, inscrib’d to gentle Parnell’s name, May speak our gratitude, but not his fame. What heart but feels his sweetly-moral lay, That leads to truth through pleasure’s flowery way! Celestial themes confess’d his tuneful aid; 5 And Heaven, that lent him genius, was repaid. Needless to him the tribute we bestow— The transitory breath of fame below: More lasting rapture from his works shall rise, While Converts thank their poet in the skies. 10

THE CLOWN’S REPLY

JOHN TROTT was desired by two witty peers To tell them the reason why asses had ears? ‘An’t please you,’ quoth John, ‘I’m not given to letters, Nor dare I pretend to know more than my betters; Howe’er, from this time I shall ne’er see your graces, 5 As I hope to be saved! without thinking on asses.’

EPITAPH ON EDWARD PURDON

HERE lies poor Ned Purdon, from misery freed, Who long was a bookseller’s hack; He led such a damnable life in this world,— I don’t think he’ll wish to come back.

EPILOGUE FOR MR. LEE LEWES

HOLD! Prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense; I’d speak a word or two, to ease my conscience. My pride forbids it ever should be said, My heels eclips’d the honours of my head; That I found humour in a piebald vest, 5 Or ever thought that jumping was a jest. (_Takes off his mask._) Whence, and what art thou, visionary birth? Nature disowns, and reason scorns thy mirth, In thy black aspect every passion sleeps, The joy that dimples, and the woe that weeps. 10 How has thou fill’d the scene with all thy brood, Of fools pursuing, and of fools pursu’d! Whose ins and outs no ray of sense discloses, Whose only plot it is to break our noses; Whilst from below the trap-door Demons rise, 15 And from above the dangling deities; And shall I mix in this unhallow’d crew? May rosined lightning blast me, if I do! No—I will act, I’ll vindicate the stage: Shakespeare himself shall feel my tragic rage. 20 Off! off! vile trappings! a new passion reigns! The madd’ning monarch revels in my veins. Oh! for a Richard’s voice to catch the theme: ‘Give me another horse! bind up my wounds!—soft— ’twas but a dream.’ Aye, ’twas but a dream, for now there’s no retreating: 25 If I cease Harlequin, I cease from eating. ’Twas thus that Aesop’s stag, a creature blameless, Yet something vain, like one that shall be nameless, Once on the margin of a fountain stood, And cavill’d at his image in the flood. 30 ‘The deuce confound,’ he cries, ‘these drumstick shanks, They never have my gratitude nor thanks; They’re perfectly disgraceful! strike me dead! But for a head, yes, yes, I have a head. How piercing is that eye! how sleek that brow! 35 My horns! I’m told horns are the fashion now.’ Whilst thus he spoke, astonish’d, to his view, Near, and more near, the hounds and huntsmen drew. ‘Hoicks! hark forward!’ came thund’ring from behind, He bounds aloft, outstrips the fleeting wind: 40 He quits the woods, and tries the beaten ways; He starts, he pants, he takes the circling maze. At length his silly head, so priz’d before, Is taught his former folly to deplore; Whilst his strong limbs conspire to set him free, 45 And at one bound he saves himself,—like me. (_Taking a jump through the stage door._)

EPILOGUE

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN FOR

‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

_Enter_ MRS. BULKLEY, _who curtsies very low as beginning to speak. Then enter_ MISS CATLEY, _who stands full before her, and curtsies to the audience._

MRS. BULKLEY.

HOLD, Ma’am, your pardon. What’s your business here?

MISS CATLEY.

The Epilogue.

MRS. BULKLEY.

The Epilogue?

MISS CATLEY.

Yes, the Epilogue, my dear.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Sure you mistake, Ma’am. The Epilogue, _I_ bring it.

MISS CATLEY.

Excuse me, Ma’am. The Author bid _me_ sing it.

_Recitative._

Ye beaux and belles, that form this splendid ring, 5 Suspend your conversation while I sing.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Why, sure the girl’s beside herself: an Epilogue of singing, A hopeful end indeed to such a blest beginning. Besides, a singer in a comic set!— Excuse me, Ma’am, I know the etiquette. 10

MISS CATLEY.

What if we leave it to the House?

MRS. BULKLEY.

The House!—Agreed.

MISS CATLEY.

Agreed.

MRS. BULKLEY.

And she, whose party’s largest, shall proceed. And first I hope, you’ll readily agree I’ve all the critics and the wits for me. They, I am sure, will answer my commands: 15 Ye candid-judging few, hold up your hands. What! no return? I find too late, I fear, That modern judges seldom enter here.

MISS CATLEY.

I’m for a different set.—Old men, whose trade is Still to gallant and dangle with the ladies;— 20

_Recitative._

Who mump their passion, and who, grimly smiling, Still thus address the fair with voice beguiling:—

_Air—Cotillon._

Turn, my fairest, turn, if ever Strephon caught thy ravish’d eye; Pity take on your swain so clever, 25 Who without your aid must die. Yes, I shall die, hu, hu, hu, hu! Yes, I must die, ho, ho, ho, ho! (_Da capo._)

MRS. BULKLEY.

Let all the old pay homage to your merit; Give me the young, the gay, the men of spirit. 30 Ye travell’d tribe, ye macaroni train, Of French friseurs, and nosegays, justly vain, Who take a trip to Paris once a year To dress, and look like awkward Frenchmen here, Lend me your hands.—Oh! fatal news to tell: 35 Their hands are only lent to the Heinel.

MISS CATLEY.

Ay, take your travellers, travellers indeed! Give me my bonny Scot, that travels from the Tweed. Where are the chiels? Ah! Ah, I well discern The smiling looks of each bewitching bairn. 40

_Air—A bonny young lad is my Jockey._

I’ll sing to amuse you by night and by day, And be unco merry when you are but gay; When you with your bagpipes are ready to play, My voice shall be ready to carol away With Sandy, and Sawney, and Jockey 45 With Sawney, and Jarvie, and Jockey.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Ye gamesters, who, so eager in pursuit, Make but of all your fortune one _va toute_; Ye jockey tribe, whose stock of words are few, ‘I hold the odds.—Done, done, with you, with you;’ 50 Ye barristers, so fluent with grimace, ‘My Lord,—your Lordship misconceives the case;’ Doctors, who cough and answer every misfortuner, ‘I wish I’d been called in a little sooner:’ Assist my cause with hands and voices hearty; 55 Come, end the contest here, and aid my party.

MISS CATLEY.

_Air—Ballinamony._

Ye brave Irish lads, hark away to the crack, Assist me, I pray, in this woful attack; For sure I don’t wrong you, you seldom are slack, When the ladies are calling, to blush and hang back; 60 For you’re always polite and attentive, Still to amuse us inventive, And death is your only preventive: Your hands and your voices for me.

MRS. BULKLEY.

Well, Madam, what if, after all this sparring, 65 We both agree, like friends, to end our jarring?

MISS CATLEY.

And that our friendship may remain unbroken, What if we leave the Epilogue unspoken?

MRS. BULKLEY.

Agreed.

MISS CATLEY.

Agreed.

MRS. BULKLEY.

And now with late repentance, Un-epilogued the Poet waits his sentence. 70 Condemn the stubborn fool who can’t submit To thrive by flattery, though he starves by wit. (_Exeunt._)

EPILOGUE

INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN SPOKEN FOR

‘SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER’

THERE is a place, so Ariosto sings, A treasury for lost and missing things; Lost human wits have places assign’d them, And they, who lose their senses, there may find them. But where’s this place, this storehouse of the age? 5 The Moon, says he:—but _I_ affirm the Stage: At least in many things, I think, I see His lunar, and our mimic world agree. Both shine at night, for, but at Foote’s alone, We scarce exhibit till the sun goes down. 10 Both prone to change, no settled limits fix, And sure the folks of both are lunatics. But in this parallel my best pretence is, That mortals visit both to find their senses. To this strange spot, Rakes, Macaronies, Cits 15 Come thronging to collect their scatter’d wits. The gay coquette, who ogles all the day, Comes here at night, and goes a prude away. Hither the affected city dame advancing, Who sighs for operas, and dotes on dancing, 20 Taught by our art her ridicule to pause on, Quits the _Ballet_, and calls for _Nancy Dawson._ The Gamester too, whose wit’s all high or low, Oft risks his fortune on one desperate throw, Comes here to saunter, having made his bets, 25 Finds his lost senses out, and pay his debts. The Mohawk too—with angry phrases stored, As ‘D— —, Sir,’ and ‘Sir, I wear a sword’; Here lesson’d for a while, and hence retreating, Goes out, affronts his man, and takes a beating. 30 Here come the sons of scandal and of news, But find no sense—for they had none to lose. Of all the tribe here wanting an adviser Our Author’s the least likely to grow wiser; Has he not seen how you your favour place, 35 On sentimental Queens and Lords in lace? Without a star, a coronet or garter, How can the piece expect or hope for quarter? No high-life scenes, no sentiment:—the creature Still stoops among the low to copy nature. 40 Yes, he’s far gone:—and yet some pity fix, The English laws forbid to punish lunatics.

THE CAPTIVITY AN ORATORIO

THE PERSONS.

FIRST ISRAELITISH PROPHET. SECOND ISRAELITISH PROPHET. ISRAELITISH WOMAN. FIRST CHALDEAN PRIEST. SECOND CHALDEAN PRIEST. CHALDEAN WOMAN. CHORUS OF YOUTHS AND VIRGINS.

SCENE—The Banks of the River Euphrates, near Babylon.

THE CAPTIVITY

ACT I—SCENE I.

_Israelites sitting on the Banks of the Euphrates._

FIRST PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

YE captive tribes, that hourly work and weep Where flows Euphrates murmuring to the deep, Suspend awhile the task, the tear suspend, And turn to God, your Father and your Friend. Insulted, chain’d, and all the world a foe, 5 Our God alone is all we boast below.

FIRST PROPHET.

AIR.

Our God is all we boast below, To him we turn our eyes; And every added weight of woe Shall make our homage rise. 10

SECOND PROPHET.

And though no temple richly drest, Nor sacrifice is here; We’ll make his temple in our breast, And offer up a tear. [_The first stanza repeated by the Chorus._

SECOND PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

That strain once more; it bids remembrance rise, 15 And brings my long-lost country to mine eyes. Ye fields of Sharon, dress’d in flow’ry pride, Ye plains where Jordan rolls its glassy tide, Ye hills of Lebanon, with cedars crown’d, Ye Gilead groves, that fling perfumes around, 20 These hills how sweet! Those plains how wond’rous fair, But sweeter still, when Heaven was with us there!

AIR.

O Memory, thou fond deceiver, Still importunate and vain; To former joys recurring ever, 25 And turning all the past to pain;

Hence intruder, most distressing, Seek the happy and the free: The wretch who wants each other blessing, Ever wants a friend in thee. 30

FIRST PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

Yet, why complain? What, though by bonds confin’d, Should bonds repress the vigour of the mind? Have we not cause for triumph when we see Ourselves alone from idol-worship free? Are not this very morn those feasts begun? 35 Where prostrate error hails the rising sun? Do not our tyrant lords this day ordain For superstitious rites and mirth profane? And should we mourn? Should coward virtue fly, When impious folly rears her front on high? 40 No; rather let us triumph still the more, And as our fortune sinks, our wishes soar.

AIR.

The triumphs that on vice attend Shall ever in confusion end; The good man suffers but to gain, 45 And every virtue springs from pain:

As aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crush’d, or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around. 50

SECOND PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

But hush, my sons, our tyrant lords are near; The sounds of barb’rous pleasure strike mine ear; Triumphant music floats along the vale; Near, nearer still, it gathers on the gale; The growing sound their swift approach declares;— 55 Desist, my sons, nor mix the strain with theirs.

_Enter_ CHALDEAN PRIESTS _attended._

FIRST PRIEST.

AIR.

Come on, my companions, the triumph display; Let rapture the minutes employ; The sun calls us out on this festival day, And our monarch partakes in the joy. 60

SECOND PRIEST.

Like the sun, our great monarch all rapture supplies, Both similar blessings bestow; The sun with his splendour illumines the skies, And our monarch enlivens below.

A CHALDEAN WOMAN.

AIR.

Haste, ye sprightly sons of pleasure; 65 Love presents the fairest treasure, Leave all other joys for me.

A CHALDEAN ATTENDANT.

Or rather, Love’s delights despising, Haste to raptures ever rising Wine shall bless the brave and free. 70

FIRST PRIEST.

Wine and beauty thus inviting, Each to different joys exciting, Whither shall my choice incline?

SECOND PRIEST.

I’ll waste no longer thought in choosing; But, neither this nor that refusing, 75 I’ll make them both together mine.

RECITATIVE.

But whence, when joy should brighten o’er the land, This sullen gloom in Judah’s captive band? Ye sons of Judah, why the lute unstrung? Or why those harps on yonder willows hung? 80 Come, take the lyre, and pour the strain along, The day demands it; sing us Sion’s song. Dismiss your griefs, and join our warbling choir, For who like you can wake the sleeping lyre?

SECOND PROPHET.

Bow’d down with chains, the scorn of all mankind, 85 To want, to toil, and every ill consign’d, Is this a time to bid us raise the strain, Or mix in rites that Heaven regards with pain? No, never! May this hand forget each art That speeds the power of music to the heart, 90 Ere I forget the land that gave me birth, Or join with sounds profane its sacred mirth!

FIRST PRIEST.

Insulting slaves! If gentler methods fail, The whips and angry tortures shall prevail. [_Exeunt Chaldeans_

FIRST PROPHET.

Why, let them come, one good remains to cheer; 95 We fear the Lord, and know no other fear.

CHORUS.

Can whips or tortures hurt the mind On God’s supporting breast reclin’d? Stand fast, and let our tyrants see That fortitude is victory. [_Exeunt._

ACT II.

_Scene as before._ CHORUS OF ISRAELITES.

O PEACE of mind, angelic guest! Thou soft companion of the breast! Dispense thy balmy store. Wing all our thoughts to reach the skies, Till earth, receding from our eyes, 5 Shall vanish as we soar.

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

No more! Too long has justice been delay’d, The king’s commands must fully be obey’d; Compliance with his will your peace secures, Praise but our gods, and every good is yours. 10 But if, rebellious to his high command, You spurn the favours offer’d from his hand, Think, timely think, what terrors are behind; Reflect, nor tempt to rage the royal mind.

SECOND PRIEST.

AIR.

Fierce is the whirlwind howling 15 O’er Afric’s sandy plain, And fierce the tempest rolling Along the furrow’d main: But storms that fly, To rend the sky, 20 Every ill presaging, Less dreadful show To worlds below Than angry monarch’s raging.

[Illustration: ] GOLDSMITH’S AUTOGRAPH

(Stanzas from ‘The Captivity’)

ISRAELITISH WOMAN.

RECITATIVE.

Ah, me! What angry terrors round us grow; 25 How shrinks my soul to meet the threaten’d blow! Ye prophets, skill’d in Heaven’s eternal truth, Forgive my sex’s fears, forgive my youth! If, shrinking thus, when frowning power appears, I wish for life, and yield me to my fears. 30 Let us one hour, one little hour obey; To-morrow’s tears may wash our stains away.

AIR.

To the last moment of his breath On hope the wretch relies; And e’en the pang preceding death 35 Bids expectation rise.

Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray. 40

SECOND PRIEST. RECITATIVE.

Why this delay? At length for joy prepare; I read your looks, and see compliance there. Come on, and bid the warbling rapture rise, Our monarch’s fame the noblest theme supplies. Begin, ye captive bands, and strike the lyre, 45 The time, the theme, the place, and all conspire.

CHALDEAN WOMAN.

AIR.

See the ruddy morning smiling, Hear the grove to bliss beguiling; Zephyrs through the woodland playing, Streams along the valley straying. 50

FIRST PRIEST.

While these a constant revel keep, Shall Reason only teach to weep? Hence, intruder! We’ll pursue Nature, a better guide than you.

SECOND PRIEST.

Every moment, as it flows, 55 Some peculiar pleasure owes; Then let us, providently wise, Seize the debtor as it flies.

Think not to-morrow can repay The pleasures that we lose to-day; 60 To-morrow’s most unbounded store Can but pay its proper score.

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

But hush! See, foremost of the captive choir, The master-prophet grasps his full-ton’d lyre. Mark where he sits, with executing art, 65 Feels for each tone, and speeds it to the heart; See how prophetic rapture fills his form, Awful as clouds that nurse the growing storm; And now his voice, accordant to the string, Prepares our monarch’s victories to sing. 70

FIRST PROPHET.

AIR.

From north, from south, from east, from west, Conspiring nations come; Tremble thou vice-polluted breast; Blasphemers, all be dumb.

The tempest gathers all around, 75 On Babylon it lies; Down with her! down—down to the ground; She sinks, she groans, she dies.

SECOND PROPHET.

Down with her, Lord, to lick the dust, Ere yonder setting sun; 80 Serve her as she hath served the just! ’Tis fixed—it shall be done.

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

No more! When slaves thus insolent presume, The king himself shall judge, and fix their doom. Unthinking wretches! have not you, and all, 85 Beheld our power in Zedekiah’s fall? To yonder gloomy dungeon turn your eyes; See where dethron’d your captive monarch lies, Depriv’d of sight and rankling in his chain; See where he mourns his friends and children slain. 90 Yet know, ye slaves, that still remain behind More ponderous chains, and dungeons more confin’d.

CHORUS OF ALL.

Arise, all potent ruler, rise, And vindicate thy people’s cause; Till every tongue in every land 95 Shall offer up unfeign’d applause. [_Exeunt._

ACT III.

_Scene as before._

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

YES, my companions, Heaven’s decrees are past, And our fix’d empire shall for ever last; In vain the madd’ning prophet threatens woe, In vain rebellion aims her secret blow; Still shall our fame and growing power be spread, 5 And still our vengeance crush the traitor’s head.

AIR.

Coeval with man Our empire began, And never shall fail Till ruin shakes all; 10 When ruin shakes all, Then shall Babylon fall.

FIRST PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

’Tis thus that pride triumphant rears the head, A little while, and all their power is fled; But ha! what means yon sadly plaintive train, 15 That this way slowly bend along the plain? And now, methinks, to yonder bank they bear A palled corse, and rest the body there. Alas! too well mine eyes indignant trace The last remains of Judah’s royal race: 20 Our monarch falls, and now our fears are o’er, Unhappy Zedekiah is no more!

AIR.

Ye wretches who, by fortune’s hate, In want and sorrow groan; Come ponder his severer fate, 25 And learn to bless your own.

You vain, whom youth and pleasure guide, Awhile the bliss suspend; Like yours, his life began in pride, Like his, your lives shall end. 30

SECOND PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

Behold his wretched corse with sorrow worn, His squalid limbs with pond’rous fetters torn; Those eyeless orbs that shock with ghastly glare, Those ill-becoming rags—that matted hair! And shall not Heaven for this its terrors show, 35 Grasp the red bolt, and lay the guilty low? How long, how long, Almighty God of all, Shall wrath vindictive threaten ere it fall!

ISRAELITISH WOMAN.

AIR.

As panting flies the hunted hind, Where brooks refreshing stray; 40 And rivers through the valley wind, That stop the hunter’s way:

Thus we, O Lord, alike distrest, For streams of mercy long; Those streams which cheer the sore opprest, 45 And overwhelm the strong.

FIRST PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

But, whence that shout? Good heavens! amazement all! See yonder tower just nodding to the fall: See where an army covers all the ground, Saps the strong wall, and pours destruction round; 50 The ruin smokes, destruction pours along; How low the great, how feeble are the strong! The foe prevails, the lofty walls recline— O God of hosts, the victory is thine!

CHORUS OF ISRAELITES.

Down with them, Lord, to lick the dust; 55 Thy vengeance be begun: Serve them as they have serv’d the just, And let thy will be done.

FIRST PRIEST.

RECITATIVE.

All, all is lost. The Syrian army fails, Cyrus, the conqueror of the world, prevails, 60 The ruin smokes, the torrent pours along; How low the proud, how feeble are the strong! Save us, O Lord! to thee, though late, we pray, And give repentance but an hour’s delay.

FIRST AND SECOND PRIEST.

AIR.

Thrice happy, who in happy hour 65 To Heaven their praise bestow, And own his all-consuming power Before they feel the blow!

FIRST PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

Now, now’s our time! ye wretches bold and blind, Brave but to God, and cowards to mankind, 70 Too late you seek that power unsought before, Your wealth, your pride, your kingdom, are no more.

AIR.

O Lucifer, thou son of morn, Alike of Heaven and man the foe; Heaven, men, and all, 75 Now press thy fall, And sink thee lowest of the low.

FIRST PROPHET.

O Babylon, how art thou fallen! Thy fall more dreadful from delay! Thy streets forlorn 80 To wilds shall turn, Where toads shall pant, and vultures prey.

SECOND PROPHET.

RECITATIVE.

Such be her fate. But listen! from afar The clarion’s note proclaims the finish’d war! Cyrus, our great restorer, is at hand, 85 And this way leads his formidable band. Give, give your songs of Sion to the wind, And hail the benefactor of mankind: He comes pursuant to divine decree, To chain the strong, and set the captive free. 90

CHORUS OF YOUTHS.

Rise to transports past expressing, Sweeter from remember’d woes; Cyrus comes, our wrongs redressing, Comes to give the world repose.

CHORUS OF VIRGINS.

Cyrus comes, the world redressing, 95 Love and pleasure in his train; Comes to heighten every blessing, Comes to soften every pain.

SEMI-CHORUS.

Hail to him with mercy reigning, Skilled in every peaceful art; 100 Who from bonds our limbs unchaining, Only binds the willing heart.

THE LAST CHORUS.

But chief to Thee, our God, defender, friend, Let praise be given to all eternity; O Thou, without beginning, without end, 105 Let us, and all, begin and end, in Thee!

VERSES IN REPLY TO AN INVITATION TO DINNER AT DR. BAKER’S.

‘This _is_ a poem! This _is_ a copy of verses!’

YOUR mandate I got, You may all go to pot; Had your senses been right, You’d have sent before night; As I hope to be saved, 5 I put off being shaved; For I could not make bold, While the matter was cold, To meddle in suds, Or to put on my duds; 10 So tell Horneck and Nesbitt, And Baker and his bit, And Kauffmann beside, And the Jessamy Bride, With the rest of the crew, 15 The Reynoldses two, Little Comedy’s face, And the Captain in lace, (By-the-bye you may tell him, I have something to sell him; 20 Of use I insist, When he comes to enlist. Your worships must know That a few days ago, An order went out, 25 For the foot guards so stout To wear tails in high taste, Twelve inches at least: Now I’ve got him a scale To measure each tail, 30 To lengthen a short tail, And a long one to curtail.)— Yet how can I when vext, Thus stray from my text? Tell each other to rue 35 Your Devonshire crew, For sending so late To one of my state. But ’tis Reynolds’s way From wisdom to stray, 40 And Angelica’s whim To be frolick like him, But, alas! Your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil’d in to-day’s _Advertiser_?

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

LETTER IN PROSE AND VERSE TO MRS. BUNBURY

MADAM, I read your letter with all that allowance which critical candour could require, but after all find so much to object to, and so much to raise my indignation, that I cannot help giving it a serious answer.

I am not so ignorant, Madam, as not to see there are many sarcasms contained in it, and solecisms also. (Solecism is a word that comes from the town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains, from a town also of that name;—but this is learning you have no taste for!)—I say, Madam, there are sarcasms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill-natured critic, I’ll take leave to quote your own words, and give you my remarks upon them as they occur. You begin as follows:—

‘I hope, my good Doctor, you soon will be here,

And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear,

To open our ball the first day of the year.’

Pray, Madam, where did you ever find the epithet ‘good,’ applied to the title of Doctor? Had you called me ‘learned Doctor,’ or ‘grave Doctor,’ or ‘noble Doctor,’ it might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my ‘spring-velvet coat,’ and advise me to wear it the first day in the year,—that is, in the middle of winter!—a spring-velvet in the middle of winter!!! That would be

a solecism indeed! and yet, to increase the inconsistence, in another part of your letter you call me a beau. Now, on one side or other, you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can never think of wearing a spring-velvet in winter: and if I am not a beau, why then, that explains itself. But let me go on to your two next strange lines:—

‘And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay,

dance with the girls that are makers of hay.’

The absurdity of making hay at Christmas, you yourself seem sensible of: you say your sister will laugh; and so indeed she well may! The Latins have an expression for a contemptuous sort of laughter, ‘Naso contemnere adunco’; that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at you in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But now I come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary propositions, which is, to take your and your sister’s advice in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my indignation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me at once with verse and resentment. I take advice! and from whom? You shall hear.

First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, The company set, and the word to be, Loo; All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, And ogling the stake which is fix’d in the centre. Round and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 5 At never once finding a visit from Pam. I lay down my stake, apparently cool, While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. I fret in my gizzard, yet, cautious and sly, I wish all my friends may be bolder than I: 10 Yet still they sit snug, not a creature will aim By losing their money to venture at fame. ’Tis in vain that at niggardly caution I scold, ’Tis in vain that I flatter the brave and the bold: All play their own way, and they think me an ass,— 15 ‘What does Mrs. Bunbury?’ ‘I, Sir? I pass.’ ‘Pray what does Miss Horneck? Take courage, come do,’— ‘Who, I? let me see, Sir, why I must pass too.’ Mr. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil, To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 20 Yet still I sit snug, and continue to sigh on, Till made by my losses as bold as a lion, I venture at all,—while my avarice regards The whole pool as my own—‘Come, give me five cards.’ ‘Well done!’ cry the ladies; ‘Ah, Doctor, that’s good! 25 The pool’s very rich—ah! the Doctor is loo’d!’ Thus foil’d in my courage, on all sides perplex’d, I ask for advice from the lady that’s next: ‘Pray, Ma’am, be so good as to give your advice; Don’t you think the best way is to venture for ’t twice?’ 30 ‘I advise,’ cries the lady, ‘to try it, I own.— Ah! the Doctor is loo’d! Come, Doctor, put down.’ Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager, And so bold, and so bold, I’m at last a bold beggar. Now, ladies, I ask, if law-matters you’re skill’d in, 35 Whether crimes such as yours should not come before Fielding? For giving advice that is not worth a straw, May well be call’d picking of pockets in law; And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye, Is, by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 40 What justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought! By the gods, I’ll enjoy it; though ’tis but in thought! Both are plac’d at the bar, with all proper decorum, With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before ’em; Both cover their faces with mobs and all that; 45 But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. When uncover’d, a buzz of enquiry runs round,— ‘Pray what are their crimes?’—‘They’ve been pilfering found.’ ‘But, pray, whom have they pilfer’d?’—‘A Doctor, I hear.’ ‘What, yon solemn-faced, odd-looking man that stands near!’ 50 ‘The same.’—‘What a pity! how does it surprise one! Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on!’ Then their friends all come round me with cringing and leering, To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. First Sir Charles advances with phrases well strung, 55 ‘Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.’ ‘The younger the worse,’ I return him again, ‘It shows that their habits are all dyed in grain.’ ‘But then they’re so handsome, one’s bosom it grieves.’ ‘What signifies _handsome_, when people are thieves?’ 60 ‘But where is your justice? their cases are hard.’ ‘What signifies _justice_? I want the _reward_.

There’s the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds; there’s the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, offers forty pounds; there’s the parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the-Pound to St. Giles’s watchhouse, offers forty pounds,—I shall have all that if I convict them!’—

‘But consider their case,—it may yet be your own! And see how they kneel! Is your heart made of stone?’ This moves:—so at last I agree to relent, 65 For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent.

I challenge you all to answer this: I tell you, you cannot. It cuts deep;—but now for the rest of the letter: and next— but I want room—so I believe I shall battle the rest out at Barton some day next week.

I don’t value you all!

O. G.

VIDA’S GAME OF CHESS

TRANSLATED

ARMIES of box that sportively engage And mimic real battles in their rage, Pleased I recount; how, smit with glory’s charms, Two mighty Monarchs met in adverse arms, Sable and white; assist me to explore, 5 Ye Serian Nymphs, what ne’er was sung before. No path appears: yet resolute I stray Where youth undaunted bids me force my way. O’er rocks and cliffs while I the task pursue, Guide me, ye Nymphs, with your unerring clue. 10 For you the rise of this diversion know, You first were pleased in Italy to show This studious sport; from Scacchis was its name, The pleasing record of your Sister’s fame. When Jove through Ethiopia’s parch’d extent 15 To grace the nuptials of old Ocean went, Each god was there; and mirth and joy around To shores remote diffused their happy sound. Then when their hunger and their thirst no more Claim’d their attention, and the feast was o’er; 20 Ocean with pastime to divert the thought, Commands a painted table to be brought. Sixty-four spaces fill the chequer’d square; Eight in each rank eight equal limits share. Alike their form, but different are their dyes, 25 They fade alternate, and alternate rise, White after black; such various stains as those The shelving backs of tortoises disclose. Then to the gods that mute and wondering sate, You see (says he) the field prepared for fate. 30 Here will the little armies please your sight, With adverse colours hurrying to the fight: On which so oft, with silent sweet surprise, The Nymphs and Nereids used to feast their eyes, And all the neighbours of the hoary deep, 35 When calm the sea, and winds were lull’d asleep But see, the mimic heroes tread the board; He said, and straightway from an urn he pour’d The sculptured box, that neatly seem’d to ape The graceful figure of a human shape:— 40 Equal the strength and number of each foe, Sixteen appear’d like jet, sixteen like snow. As their shape varies various is the name, Different their posts, nor is their strength the same. There might you see two Kings with equal pride 45 Gird on their arms, their Consorts by their side; Here the Foot-warriors glowing after fame, There prancing Knights and dexterous Archers came And Elephants, that on their backs sustain Vast towers of war, and fill and shake the plain. 50 And now both hosts, preparing for the storm Of adverse battle, their encampments form. In the fourth space, and on the farthest line, Directly opposite the Monarchs shine; The swarthy on white ground, on sable stands 55 The silver King; and then they send commands. Nearest to these the Queens exert their might; One the left side, and t’other guards the right: Where each, by her respective armour known. Chooses the colour that is like her own. 60 Then the young Archers, two that snowy-white Bend the tough yew, and two as black as night; (Greece call’d them Mars’s favourites heretofore, From their delight in war, and thirst of gore). These on each side the Monarch and his Queen 65 Surround obedient; next to these are seen The crested Knights in golden armour gay; Their steeds by turns curvet, or snort or neigh. In either army on each distant wing Two mighty Elephants their castles bring, 70 Bulwarks immense! and then at last combine Eight of the Foot to form the second line, The vanguard to the King and Queen; from far Prepared to open all the fate of war. So moved the boxen hosts, each double-lined, 75 Their different colours floating in the wind: As if an army of the Gauls should go, With their white standards, o’er the Alpine snow To meet in rigid fight on scorching sands The sun-burnt Moors and Memnon’s swarthy bands. 80 Then Father Ocean thus; you see them here, Celestial powers, what troops, what camps appear. Learn now the sev’ral orders of the fray, For e’en these arms their stated laws obey. To lead the fight, the Kings from all their bands 85 Choose whom they please to bear their great commands. Should a black hero first to battle go, | Instant a white one guards against the blow; | But only one at once can charge or shun the foe. | Their gen’ral purpose on one scheme is bent, 90 So to besiege the King within the tent, That there remains no place by subtle flight From danger free; and that decides the fight. Meanwhile, howe’er, the sooner to destroy Th’ imperial Prince, remorseless they employ 95 Their swords in blood; and whosoever dare Oppose their vengeance, in the ruin share. Fate thins their camp; the parti-coloured field Widens apace, as they o’ercome or yield, But the proud victor takes the captive’s post; 100 There fronts the fury of th’ avenging host One single shock: and (should he ward the blow), May then retire at pleasure from the foe. The Foot alone (so their harsh laws ordain) When they proceed can ne’er return again. 105 But neither all rush on alike to prove The terror of their arms: The Foot must move Directly on, and but a single square; Yet may these heroes, when they first prepare To mix in combat on the bloody mead, 110 Double their sally, and two steps proceed; But when they wound, their swords they subtly guide With aim oblique, and slanting pierce his side. But the great Indian beasts, whose backs sustain Vast turrets arm’d, when on the redd’ning plain 115 They join in all the terror of the fight, Forward or backward, to the left or right, Run furious, and impatient of confine Scour through the field, and threat the farthest line. Yet must they ne’er obliquely aim their blows; | 120 That only manner is allow’d to those | Whom Mars has favour’d most, who bend the stubborn bows. | These glancing sidewards in a straight career, Yet each confin’d to their respective sphere, Or white or black, can send th’ unerring dart 125 Wing’d with swift death to pierce through ev’ry part. The fiery steed, regardless of the reins, Comes prancing on; but sullenly disdains The path direct, and boldly wheeling round, | Leaps o’er a double space at ev’ry bound: 130 | And shifts from white or black to diff’rent colour’d ground. | But the fierce Queen, whom dangers ne’er dismay, The strength and terror of the bloody day, In a straight line spreads her destruction wide, To left or right, before, behind, aside. 135 Yet may she never with a circling course Sweep to the battle like the fretful Horse; But unconfin’d may at her pleasure stray, If neither friend nor foe block up the way; For to o’erleap a warrior, ’tis decreed 140 Those only dare who curb the snorting steed. With greater caution and majestic state The warlike Monarchs in the scene of fate Direct their motions, since for these appear Zealous each hope, and anxious ev’ry fear. 145 While the King’s safe, with resolution stern They clasp their arms; but should a sudden turn Make him a captive, instantly they yield, Resolved to share his fortune in the field. He moves on slow; with reverence profound 150 His faithful troops encompass him around, And oft, to break some instant fatal scheme, Rush to their fates, their sov’reign to redeem; While he, unanxious where to wound the foe, Need only shift and guard against a blow. 155 But none, however, can presume t’ appear Within his reach, but must his vengeance fear; For he on ev’ry side his terror throws; But when he changes from his first repose, Moves but one step, most awfully sedate, 160 Or idly roving, or intent on fate. These are the sev’ral and establish’d laws: Now see how each maintains his bloody cause. Here paused the god, but (since whene’er they wage War here on earth the gods themselves engage 165 In mutual battle as they hate or love, And the most stubborn war is oft above), Almighty Jove commands the circling train Of gods from fav’ring either to abstain, And let the fight be silently survey’d; 170 And added solemn threats if disobey’d. Then call’d he Phoebus from among the Powers And subtle Hermes, whom in softer hours Fair Maia bore: youth wanton’d in their face; Both in life’s bloom, both shone with equal grace. 175 Hermes as yet had never wing’d his feet; As yet Apollo in his radiant seat Had never driv’n his chariot through the air, Known by his bow alone and golden hair. These Jove commission’d to attempt the fray, 180 And rule the sportive military day; Bid them agree which party each maintains, And promised a reward that’s worth their pains. The greater took their seats; on either hand Respectful the less gods in order stand, 185 But careful not to interrupt their play, By hinting when t’ advance or run away. Then they examine, who shall first proceed To try their courage, and their army lead. Chance gave it for the White, that he should go 190 First with a brave defiance to the foe. Awhile he ponder’d which of all his train Should bear his first commission o’er the plain; And then determined to begin the scene With him that stood before to guard the Queen. 195 He took a double step: with instant care Does the black Monarch in his turn prepare The adverse champion, and with stern command Bid him repel the charge with equal hand. There front to front, the midst of all the field, 200 With furious threats their shining arms they wield; Yet vain the conflict, neither can prevail While in one path each other they assail. On ev’ry side to their assistance fly Their fellow soldiers, and with strong supply 205 Crowd to the battle, but no bloody stain Tinctures their armour; sportive in the plain Mars plays awhile, and in excursion slight Harmless they sally forth, or wait the fight. But now the swarthy Foot, that first appear’d 210 To front the foe, his pond’rous jav’lin rear’d Leftward aslant, and a pale warrior slays, Spurns him aside, and boldly takes his place. Unhappy youth, his danger not to spy! Instant he fell, and triumph’d but to die. 215 At this the sable King with prudent care Removed his station from the middle square, And slow retiring to the farthest ground, There safely lurk’d, with troops entrench’d around. Then from each quarter to the war advance 220 The furious Knights, and poise the trembling lance: By turns they rush, by turns the victors yield, Heaps of dead Foot choke up the crimson’d field: They fall unable to retreat; around The clang of arms and iron hoofs resound. 225 But while young Phoebus pleased himself to view His furious Knight destroy the vulgar crew, Sly Hermes long’d t’ attempt with secret aim Some noble act of more exalted fame. For this, he inoffensive pass’d along 230 Through ranks of Foot, and midst the trembling throng Sent his left Horse, that free without confine Rov’d o’er the plain, upon some great design Against the King himself. At length he stood, And having fix’d his station as he would, 235 Threaten’d at once with instant fate the King And th’ Indian beast that guarded the right wing. Apollo sigh’d, and hast’ning to relieve The straiten’d Monarch, griev’d that he must leave His martial Elephant expos’d to fate, 240 And view’d with pitying eyes his dang’rous state. First in his thoughts however was his care To save his King, whom to the neighbouring square On the right hand, he snatch’d with trembling flight; At this with fury springs the sable Knight, 245 Drew his keen sword, and rising to the blow, Sent the great Indian brute to shades below. O fatal loss! for none except the Queen Spreads such a terror through the bloody scene. Yet shall you ne’er unpunish’d boast your prize, 250 | The Delian god with stern resentment cries; | And wedg’d him round with Foot, and pour’d in fresh supplies. | Thus close besieg’d trembling he cast his eye Around the plain, but saw no shelter nigh, No way for flight; for here the Queen oppos’d, 255 The Foot in phalanx there the passage clos’d: At length he fell; yet not unpleas’d with fate, Since victim to a Queen’s vindictive hate. With grief and fury burns the whiten’d host, One of their Tow’rs thus immaturely lost. 260 As when a bull has in contention stern Lost his right horn, with double vengeance burn His thoughts for war, with blood he’s cover’d o’er, And the woods echo to his dismal roar, So look’d the flaxen host, when angry fate 265 O’erturn’d the Indian bulwark of their state. Fired at this great success, with double rage Apollo hurries on his troops t’ engage, For blood and havoc wild; and, while he leads His troops thus careless, loses both his steeds: 270 For if some adverse warriors were o’erthrown, He little thought what dangers threat his own. But slyer Hermes with observant eyes March’d slowly cautious, and at distance spies What moves must next succeed, what dangers next arise. 275 Often would he, the stately Queen to snare, The slender Foot to front her arms prepare, And to conceal his scheme he sighs and feigns Such a wrong step would frustrate all his pains. Just then an Archer, from the right-hand view, 280 At the pale Queen his arrow boldly drew, Unseen by Phoebus, who, with studious thought, From the left side a vulgar hero brought. But tender Venus, with a pitying eye, Viewing the sad destruction that was nigh, 285 Wink’d upon Phoebus (for the Goddess sat By chance directly opposite); at that Roused in an instant, young Apollo threw His eyes around the field his troops to view: Perceiv’d the danger, and with sudden fright | 290 Withdrew the Foot that he had sent to fight, | And sav’d his trembling Queen by seasonable flight. | But Maia’s son with shouts fill’d all the coast: The Queen, he cried, the important Queen is lost. Phoebus, howe’er, resolving to maintain 295 What he had done, bespoke the heavenly train. What mighty harm, in sportive mimic flight, Is it to set a little blunder right, When no preliminary rule debarr’d? If you henceforward, Mercury, would guard 300 Against such practice, let us make the law: And whosoe’er shall first to battle draw, Or white, or black, remorseless let him go At all events, and dare the angry foe. He said, and this opinion pleased around: 305 Jove turn’d aside, and on his daughter frown’d, Unmark’d by Hermes, who, with strange surprise, Fretted and foam’d, and roll’d his ferret eyes, And but with great reluctance could refrain From dashing at a blow all off the plain. 310 Then he resolved to interweave deceits,— To carry on the war by tricks and cheats. Instant he call’d an Archer from the throng, And bid him like the courser wheel along: Bounding he springs, and threats the pallid Queen. 315 The fraud, however, was by Phoebus seen; He smiled, and, turning to the Gods, he said: Though, Hermes, you are perfect in your trade, And you can trick and cheat to great surprise, | These little sleights no more shall blind my eyes; | 320 Correct them if you please, the more you thus disguise. | The circle laugh’d aloud; and Maia’s son (As if it had but by mistake been done) Recall’d his Archer, and with motion due, Bid him advance, the combat to renew. 325 But Phoebus watch’d him with a jealous eye, Fearing some trick was ever lurking nigh, For he would oft, with sudden sly design, Send forth at once two combatants to join His warring troops, against the law of arms, 330 Unless the wary foe was ever in alarms. Now the white Archer with his utmost force Bent the tough bow against the sable Horse, And drove him from the Queen, where he had stood Hoping to glut his vengeance with her blood. 335 Then the right Elephant with martial pride Roved here and there, and spread his terrors wide: Glittering in arms from far a courser came, Threaten’d at once the King and Royal Dame; Thought himself safe when he the post had seized, 340 And with the future spoils his fancy pleased. Fired at the danger a young Archer came, Rush’d on the foe, and levell’d sure his aim; (And though a Pawn his sword in vengeance draws, Gladly he’d lose his life in glory’s cause). 345 The whistling arrow to his bowels flew, And the sharp steel his blood profusely drew; He drops the reins, he totters to the ground, And his life issued murm’ring through the wound. Pierced by the Foot, this Archer bit the plain; | 350 The Foot himself was by another slain; | And with inflamed revenge, the battle burns again. | Towers, Archers, Knights, meet on the crimson ground, And the field echoes to the martial sound. Their thoughts are heated, and their courage fired, 355 Thick they rush on with double zeal inspired; Generals and Foot, with different colour’d mien, | Confusedly warring in the camps are seen,— | Valour and fortune meet in one promiscuous scene. | Now these victorious, lord it o’er the field; 360 Now the foe rallies, the triumphant yield: Just as the tide of battle ebbs or flows. As when the conflict more tempestuous grows Between the winds, with strong and boisterous sweep They plough th’ Ionian or Atlantic deep! 365 By turns prevail the mutual blustering roar, And the big waves alternate lash the shore. But in the midst of all the battle raged The snowy Queen, with troops at once engaged; She fell’d an Archer as she sought the plain,— 370 As she retired an Elephant was slain: To right and left her fatal spears she sent, Burst through the ranks, and triumph’d as she went; Through arms and blood she seeks a glorious fate, Pierces the farthest lines, and nobly great 375 Leads on her army with a gallant show, Breaks the battalions, and cuts through the foe. At length the sable King his fears betray’d, And begg’d his military consort’s aid: With cheerful speed she flew to his relief, 380 And met in equal arms the female chief. Who first, great Queen, and who at last did bleed? How many Whites lay gasping on the mead? Half dead, and floating in a bloody tide, Foot, Knights, and Archer lie on every side. 385 Who can recount the slaughter of the day? How many leaders threw their lives away? The chequer’d plain is fill’d with dying box, Havoc ensues, and with tumultuous shocks The different colour’d ranks in blood engage, 390 And Foot and Horse promiscuously rage. With nobler courage and superior might The dreadful Amazons sustain the fight, Resolved alike to mix in glorious strife, Till to imperious fate they yield their life. 395 Meanwhile each Monarch, in a neighbouring cell, Confined the warriors that in battle fell, There watch’d the captives with a jealous eye, Lest, slipping out again, to arms they fly. But Thracian Mars, in stedfast friendship join’d 400 To Hermes, as near Phoebus he reclined, Observed each chance, how all their motions bend, Resolved if possible to serve his friend. He a Foot-soldier and a Knight purloin’d Out from the prison that the dead confined; 405 And slyly push’d ’em forward on the plain; | Th’ enliven’d combatants their arms regain, | Mix in the bloody scene, and boldly war again. | So the foul hag, in screaming wild alarms O’er a dead carcase muttering her charms, 410 (And with her frequent and tremendous yell Forcing great Hecate from out of hell) Shoots in the corpse a new fictitious soul; | With instant glare the supple eyeballs roll, | Again it moves and speaks, and life informs the whole. | 415 Vulcan alone discern’d the subtle cheat; And wisely scorning such a base deceit, Call’d out to Phoebus. Grief and rage assail Phoebus by turns; detected Mars turns pale. Then awful Jove with sullen eye reproved 420 Mars, and the captives order’d to be moved To their dark caves; bid each fictitious spear Be straight recall’d, and all be as they were. And now both Monarchs with redoubled rage Led on their Queens, the mutual war to wage. 425 O’er all the field their thirsty spears they send, Then front to front their Monarchs they defend. But lo! the female White rush’d in unseen, And slew with fatal haste the swarthy Queen; Yet soon, alas! resign’d her royal spoils, 430 Snatch’d by a shaft from her successful toils. Struck at the sight, both hosts in wild surprise Pour’d forth their tears, and fill’d the air with cries; They wept and sigh’d, as pass’d the fun’ral train, As if both armies had at once been slain. 435 And now each troop surrounds its mourning chief, To guard his person, or assuage his grief. One is their common fear; one stormy blast Has equally made havoc as it pass’d. Not all, however, of their youth are slain; 440 Some champions yet the vig’rous war maintain. Three Foot, an Archer, and a stately Tower, For Phoebus still exert their utmost power. Just the same number Mercury can boast, Except the Tower, who lately in his post 445 Unarm’d inglorious fell, in peace profound, Pierced by an Archer with a distant wound; But his right Horse retain’d its mettled pride,— The rest were swept away by war’s strong tide. But fretful Hermes, with despairing moan, 450 Griev’d that so many champions were o’erthrown, Yet reassumes the fight; and summons round The little straggling army that he found,— All that had ’scaped from fierce Apollo’s rage,— Resolved with greater caution to engage 455 In future strife, by subtle wiles (if fate Should give him leave) to save his sinking state. The sable troops advance with prudence slow, Bent on all hazards to distress the foe. More cheerful Phoebus, with unequal pace, 460 Rallies his arms to lessen his disgrace. But what strange havoc everywhere has been! | A straggling champion here and there is seen; | And many are the tents, yet few are left within. | Th’ afflicted Kings bewail their consorts dead, 465 And loathe the thoughts of a deserted bed; And though each monarch studies to improve The tender mem’ry of his former love, Their state requires a second nuptial tie. Hence the pale ruler with a love-sick eye 470 Surveys th’ attendants of his former wife, And offers one of them a royal life. These, when their martial mistress had been slain, Weak and despairing tried their arms in vain; Willing, howe’er, amidst the Black to go, 475 They thirst for speedy vengeance on the foe. Then he resolves to see who merits best, By strength and courage, the imperial vest; Points out the foe, bids each with bold design Pierce through the ranks, and reach the deepest line: 480 For none must hope with monarchs to repose But who can first, through thick surrounding foes, Through arms and wiles, with hazardous essay, Safe to the farthest quarters force their way. Fired at the thought, with sudden, joyful pace 485 They hurry on; but first of all the race Runs the third right-hand warrior for the prize,— The glitt’ring crown already charms her eyes. Her dear associates cheerfully give o’er | The nuptial chase; and swift she flies before, | 490 And Glory lent her wings, and the reward in store. | Nor would the sable King her hopes prevent, For he himself was on a Queen intent, Alternate, therefore, through the field they go. Hermes led on, but by a step too slow, 495 His fourth left Pawn: and now th’ advent’rous White Had march’d through all, and gain’d the wish’d for site. Then the pleased King gives orders to prepare The crown, the sceptre, and the royal chair, And owns her for his Queen: around exult 500 The snowy troops, and o’er the Black insult. Hermes burst into tears,—with fretful roar Fill’d the wide air, and his gay vesture tore. The swarthy Foot had only to advance One single step; but oh! malignant chance! 505 A towered Elephant, with fatal aim, Stood ready to destroy her when she came: He keeps a watchful eye upon the whole, Threatens her entrance, and protects the goal. Meanwhile the royal new-created bride, 510 Pleased with her pomp, spread death and terror wide; Like lightning through the sable troops she flies, Clashes her arms, and seems to threat the skies. The sable troops are sunk in wild affright, And wish th’ earth op’ning snatch’d ’em from her sight. 515 In burst the Queen, with vast impetuous swing: | The trembling foes come swarming round the King, | Where in the midst he stood, and form a valiant ring. | So the poor cows, straggling o’er pasture land, When they perceive the prowling wolf at hand, 520 Crowd close together in a circle full, And beg the succour of the lordly bull; They clash their horns, they low with dreadful sound, And the remotest groves re-echo round. But the bold Queen, victorious, from behind 525 Pierces the foe; yet chiefly she design’d Against the King himself some fatal aim, And full of war to his pavilion came. Now here she rush’d, now there; and had she been But duly prudent, she had slipp’d between, 530 With course oblique, into the fourth white square, And the long toil of war had ended there, The King had fallen, and all his sable state; And vanquish’d Hermes cursed his partial fate. For thence with ease the championess might go, 535 Murder the King, and none could ward the blow. With silence, Hermes, and with panting heart, Perceived the danger, but with subtle art, (Lest he should see the place) spurs on the foe, Confounds his thoughts, and blames his being slow. 540 For shame! move on; would you for ever stay? What sloth is this, what strange perverse delay?— How could you e’er my little pausing blame?— What! you would wait till night shall end the game? Phoebus, thus nettled, with imprudence slew 545 A vulgar Pawn, but lost his nobler view. Young Hermes leap’d, with sudden joy elate; And then, to save the monarch from his fate, Led on his martial Knight, who stepp’d between, Pleased that his charge was to oppose the Queen— 550 Then, pondering how the Indian beast to slay, That stopp’d the Foot from making farther way,— From being made a Queen; with slanting aim An archer struck him; down the monster came, And dying shook the earth: while Phoebus tries 555 Without success the monarch to surprise. The Foot, then uncontroll’d with instant pride, Seized the last spot, and moved a royal bride. And now with equal strength both war again, And bring their second wives upon the plain; 560 Then, though with equal views each hop’d and fear’d, Yet, as if every doubt had disappear’d, As if he had the palm, young Hermes flies Into excess of joy; with deep disguise, Extols his own Black troops, with frequent spite 565 And with invective taunts disdains the White. Whom Phoebus thus reproved with quick return— As yet we cannot the decision learn Of this dispute, and do you triumph now? Then your big words and vauntings I’ll allow, 570 When you the battle shall completely gain; At present I shall make your boasting vain. He said, and forward led the daring Queen; Instant the fury of the bloody scene Rises tumultuous, swift the warriors fly 575 From either side to conquer or to die. They front the storm of war: around ’em Fear, Terror, and Death, perpetually appear. All meet in arms, and man to man oppose, Each from their camp attempts to drive their foes; 580 Each tries by turns to force the hostile lines; Chance and impatience blast their best designs. The sable Queen spread terror as she went Through the mid ranks: with more reserved intent The adverse dame declined the open fray, 585 And to the King in private stole away: Then took the royal guard, and bursting in, With fatal menace close besieged the King. Alarm’d at this, the swarthy Queen, in haste, From all her havoc and destructive waste 590 Broke off, and her contempt of death to show, | Leap’d in between the Monarch and the foe, | To save the King and state from this impending blow. | But Phoebus met a worse misfortune here: For Hermes now led forward, void of fear, 595 His furious Horse into the open plain, That onward chafed, and pranced, and pawed amain. Nor ceased from his attempts until he stood On the long-wished-for spot, from whence he could Slay King or Queen. O’erwhelm’d with sudden fears, 600 Apollo saw, and could not keep from tears. Now all seem’d ready to be overthrown; His strength was wither’d, ev’ry hope was flown. Hermes, exulting at this great surprise, Shouted for joy, and fill’d the air with cries; 605 Instant he sent the Queen to shades below, And of her spoils made a triumphant show. But in return, and in his mid career, Fell his brave Knight, beneath the Monarch’s spear. Phoebus, however, did not yet despair, 610 But still fought on with courage and with care. He had but two poor common men to show, And Mars’s favourite with his iv’ry bow. The thoughts of ruin made ’em dare their best To save their King, so fatally distress’d. 615 But the sad hour required not such an aid; And Hermes breathed revenge where’er he stray’d. Fierce comes the sable Queen with fatal threat, Surrounds the Monarch in his royal seat; Rushed here and there, nor rested till she slew 620 The last remainder of the whiten’d crew. Sole stood the King, the midst of all the plain, Weak and defenceless, his companions slain. As when the ruddy morn ascending high Has chased the twinkling stars from all the sky, 625 Your star, fair Venus, still retains its light, And, loveliest, goes the latest out of sight. No safety’s left, no gleams of hope remain; Yet did he not as vanquish’d quit the plain, But tried to shut himself between the foe,— | 630 Unhurt through swords and spears he hoped to go, | Until no room was left to shun the fatal blow. | For if none threaten’d his immediate fate, And his next move must ruin all his state, All their past toil and labour is in vain, | 635 Vain all the bloody carnage of the plain,— | Neither would triumph then, the laurel neither gain. | Therefore through each void space and desert tent, By different moves his various course he bent: The Black King watch’d him with observant eye, 640 Follow’d him close, but left him room to fly. Then when he saw him take the farthest line, He sent the Queen his motions to confine, And guard the second rank, that he could go No farther now than to that distant row. 645 The sable monarch then with cheerful mien Approach’d, but always with one space between. But as the King stood o’er against him there, Helpless, forlorn, and sunk in his despair, The martial Queen her lucky moment knew, | 650 Seized on the farthest seat with fatal view, | Nor left th’ unhappy King a place to flee unto. | At length in vengeance her keen sword she draws, | Slew him, and ended thus the bloody cause: | And all the gods around approved it with applause. | 655 The victor could not from his insults keep, But laugh’d and sneer’d to see Apollo weep. Jove call’d him near, and gave him in his hand The powerful, happy, and mysterious wand By which the Shades are call’d to purer day, 660 When penal fire has purged their sins away; By which the guilty are condemn’d to dwell In the dark mansions of the deepest hell; By which he gives us sleep, or sleep denies, And closes at the last the dying eyes. 665 Soon after this, the heavenly victor brought The game on earth, and first th’ Italians taught. For (as they say) fair Scacchis he espied Feeding her cygnets in the silver tide, (Sacchis, the loveliest Seriad of the place) 670 And as she stray’d, took her to his embrace. Then, to reward her for her virtue lost, Gave her the men and chequer’d board, emboss’d With gold and silver curiously inlay’d; And taught her how the game was to be play’d. 675 Ev’n now ’tis honour’d with her happy name; And Rome and all the world admire the game. All which the Seriads told me heretofore, When my boy-notes amused the Serian shore.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

He was born . . . at Pallas. This is the usual account. But it was maintained by the family of the poet’s mother, and has been contended (by Dr. Michael F. Cox in a Lecture on ‘The Country and Kindred of Oliver Goldsmith,’ published in vol. 1, pt. 2, of the _Journal_ of the ‘National Literary Society of Ireland.’ 1900) that his real birth-place was the residence of Mrs. Goldsmith’s parents, Smith-Hill House, Elphin, Roscommon, to which she was in the habit of paying frequent visits. Meanwhile, in 1897, a window was placed to Goldsmith’s memory in Forgney Church, Longford,—the church of which, at the time of his birth, his father was curate.

his academic career was not a success. ‘Oliver Goldsmith is recorded on two occasions as being remarkably diligent at Morning Lecture; again, as cautioned for bad answering at Morning and Greek Lectures; and finally, as put down into the next class for neglect of his studies’ (Dr. Stubbs’s _History of the University of Dublin_, 1889, p. 201 n.)

a scratched signature upon a window-pane. This, which is now at Trinity College, Dublin, is here reproduced in facsimile. When the garrets of No. 35, Parliament Square, were pulled down in 1837, it was cut out of the window by the last occupant of the rooms, who broke it in the process. (Dr. J. F. Waller in Cassell’s _Works_ of Goldsmith, [1864–5], pp. xiii-xiv n.)

a poor physician. Where he obtained his diploma is not known. It was certainly not at Padua (_Athenaeum_, July 21, 1894). At Leyden and Louvain Prior made inquiries but, in each case, without success. The annals of the University of Louvain were, however, destroyed in the revolutionary wars. (Prior, _Life_, 1837, i, pp. 171, 178).

declared it to be by Goldsmith. Goldsmith’s authorship of this version has now been placed beyond a doubt by the publication in facsimile of his signed receipt to Edward Dilly for third share of ‘my translation,’ such third share amounting to 6 pounds 13s. 4d. The receipt, which belongs to Mr. J. W. Ford of Enfield Old Park, is dated ‘January 11th, 1758.’ (_Memoirs of a Protestant_, etc., Dent’s edition, 1895, i, pp. xii-xviii.)

12, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey. This was a tiny square occupying a site now absorbed by the Holborn Viaduct and Railway Station. No. 12, where Goldsmith lived, was later occupied by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. as a printing office. An engraving of the Court forms the frontispiece to the _European Magazine_ for January, 1803.

or some of his imitators. The proximate cause of the _Citizen of the World_, as the present writer has suggested elsewhere, _ may_ have been Horace Walpole’s _Letter from XoHo_ [Soho?], _a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, at Peking_. This was noticed as ‘in Montesquieu’s manner’ in the May issue of the _Monthly Review_ for 1757, to which Goldsmith was a contributor (_Eighteenth Century Vignettes_, first series, second edition, 1897, pp. 108–9).

demonstrable from internal evidence. e.g.—The references to the musical glasses (ch. ix), which were the rage in 1761–2; and to the _Auditor_ (ch. xix) established by Arthur Murphy in June of the latter year. The sale of the ‘Vicar’ is discussed at length in chapter vii of the editor’s _Life of Oliver Goldsmith_ (‘Great Writers’ series), 1888, pp. 110–21.

started with a loss. This, which to some critics has seemed unintelliglble, rests upon the following: ‘The first three editions, . . . resulted in a loss, and the fourth, which was not issued until eight [four?] years after the first, started with a balance against it of £2 16s. 6d., and it was not until that fourth edition had been sold that the balance came out on the right side’ (_A Bookseller of the Last Century_ [John Newbery] by Charles Welsh, 1885, p. 61). The writer based his statement upon Collins’s ‘Publishing book, account of books printed and shares therein, No. 3, 1770 to 1785.’

James’s Powder. This was a famous patent panacea, invented by Johnson’s Lichfield townsman, Dr. Robert James of the _Medicinal Dictionary_. It was sold by John Newbery, and had an extraordinary vogue. The King dosed Princess Elizabeth with it; Fielding, Gray, and Cowper all swore by it, and Horace Walpole, who wished to try it upon Mme. du Deffand _in extremis_, said he should use it if the house were on fire. William Hawes, the Strand apothecary who attended Goldsmith, wrote an interesting _Account of the late Dr. Goldsmith’s Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr. James’s Powders,_ etc., 1774, which he dedicated to Reynolds and Burke. To Hawes once belonged the poet’s worn old wooden writing-desk, now in the South Kensington Museum, where are also his favourite chair and cane. Another desk-chair, which had descended from his friend, Edmund Bott, was recently for sale at Sotheby’s (July, 1906).

[Illustration: Green Arbour Court, Little Old Bailey.] GREEN ARBOUR COURT,

LITTLE OLD BAILEY

(as it appeared in 1803)

EDITIONS OF THE POEMS.

No collected edition of Goldsmith’s poetical works appeared until after his death. But, in 1775, W. Griffin, who had published the _Essays_ of ten years earlier, issued a volume entitled _The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems_. The ‘poems’ however were confined to ‘The Traveller,’ ‘The Deserted Village,’ ‘Edwin and Angelina,’ ‘The Double Transformation,’ ‘A New Simile,’ and ‘Retaliation,’—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of _Retaliation_, with which he included ‘The Hermit’ (‘Edwin and Angelina’), ‘The Gift,’ ‘Madam Blaize,’ and the epilogues to _The Sister_ and _She stoops to Conquer_;* while to an edition of _The Haunch of Venison_, also put forth in 1776, he added the ‘Epitaph on Parnell’ and two songs from the oratorio of _The Captivity_. The next collection appeared in a volume of _Poems and Plays_ published at Dublin in 1777, where it was preceded by a ‘Life,’ written by W. Glover, one of Goldsmith’s ‘Irish clients.’ Then, in 1780, came vol. i of T. Evans’s _ Poetical and Dramatic Works, etc., now first collected_, also having a ‘Memoir,’ and certainly fuller than anything which had gone before. Next followed the long-deferred _Miscellaneous Works,_ etc., of 1801, in four volumes, vol. ii of which comprised the plays and poems. Prefixed to this edition is the important biographical sketch, compiled under the direction of Bishop Percy, and usually described as the _Percy Memoir_, by which title it is referred to in the ensuing notes. The next memorable edition was that edited for the Aldine Series in 1831, by the Rev. John Mitford. Prior and Wright’s edition in vol. iv of the _Miscellaneous Works_, etc., of 1837, comes after this; then Bolton Corney’s excellent _Poetical Works_ of 1845; and vol. i of Peter Cunningham’s _Works_, etc. of 1854. There are other issues of the poems, the latest of which is to be found in vol. ii (1885) of the complete _Works_, in five volumes, edited for Messrs. George Bell and Sons by J. W. M. Gibbs.

* Some copies of this are dated 1777, and contain _The Haunch of Venison_ and a few minor pieces.

Most of the foregoing editions have been consulted for the following notes; but chiefly those of Mitford, Prior, Bolton Corney, and Cunningham. Many of the illustrations and explanations now supplied will not, however, be found in any of the sources indicated. When an elucidatory or parallel passage is cited, an attempt has been made, as far as possible, to give the credit of it to the first discoverer. Thus, some of the illustrations in Cunningham’s notes are here transferred to Prior, some of Prior’s to Mitford, and so forth. As regards the notes themselves, care has been taken to make them full enough to obviate the necessity, except in rare instances, of further investigation. It is the editor’s experience that references to external authorities are, as a general rule, sign-posts to routes which are seldom travelled.*

* In this connexion may be recalled the dictum of Hume quoted by Dr. Birkbeck Hill:—‘Every book should be as complete as possible within itself, and should never refer for anything material to other books’ (_History of England_, 1802, ii. 101).

THE TRAVELLER.

It was on those continental wanderings which occupied Goldsmith between February, 1755 and February, 1756 that he conceived his first idea of this, the earliest of his poems to which he prefixed his name; and he probably had in mind Addison’s _Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax_, a work in which he found ‘a strain of political thinking that was, at that time [1701]. new in our poetry.’ (_Beauties of English Poesy_, 1767, i. III). From the dedicatory letter to his brother—which says expressly, ‘as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you’—it is plain that some portion of it must have been actually composed abroad. It was not, however, actually published until the 19th of December, 1764, and the title-page bore the date of 1765.* The publisher was John Newbery, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the price of the book, a quarto of 30 pages, was 1s. 6d. A second, third and fourth edition quickly followed, and a ninth, from which it is here reprinted, was issued in 1774, the year of the author’s death. Between the first and the sixth edition of 1770 there were numerous alterations, the more important of which are indicated in the ensuing notes.

* This is the generally recognized first edition. But the late Mr. Frederick Locker Lampson, the poet and collector, possessed a quarto copy, dated 1764, which had no author’s name, and in which the dedication ran as follows:—‘This poem is inscribed to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, M.A. By his most affectionate Brother Oliver Goldsmith.’ It was, in all probability, unique, though it is alleged that there are octavo copies which present similar characteristics. It has now gone to America with the Rowfant Library.

In 1902 an interesting discovery was made by Mr. Bertram Dobell, to whom the public are indebted for so many important literary ‘finds.’ In a parcel of pamphlets he came upon a number of loose printed leaves entitled _A Prospect of Society_. They obviously belonged to _The Traveller_; but seemed to be its ‘formless unarranged material,’ and contained many variations from the text of the first edition. Mr. Dobell’s impression was that ‘the author’s manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into confusion, and was then printed without any attempt at re-arrangement.’ This was near the mark; but the complete solution of the riddle was furnished by Mr. Quiller Couch in an article in the _Daily News_ for March 31, 1902, since recast in his charming volume _From a Cornish Window_, 1906, pp. 86–92. He showed conclusively that _The Prospect_ was ‘merely an early draft of _The Traveller_ printed backwards in fairly regular sections.’ What had manifestly happened was this. Goldsmith, turning over each page as written, had laid it on the top of the preceding page of MS. and forgotten to rearrange them when done. Thus the series of pages were reversed; and, so reversed, were set up in type by a matter-of-fact compositor. Mr. Dobell at once accepted this happy explanation; which—as Mr. Quiller Couch points out—has the advantage of being a ‘blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.’ One or two of the variations of Mr. Dobell’s ‘find’—variations, it should be added, antecedent to the first edition—are noted in their places.

The didactic purpose of _The Traveller_ is defined in the concluding paragraph of the _Dedication_; and, like many of the thoughts which it contains, had been anticipated in a passage of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 185:—‘Every mind seems capable of entertaining a certain quantity of happiness, which no institutions can encrease, no circumstances alter, and entirely independent on fortune.’ But the best short description of the poem is Macaulay’s:—‘In the _Traveller_ the execution, though deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of our own minds.’ (_Encyclop. Britannica_, Goldsmith, February, 1856.)

The only definite record of payment for _ The Traveller_ is ‘Copy of the Traveller, a Poem, 21_l_,’ in Newbery’s MSS.; but as the same sum occurs in Memoranda of much later date than 1764, it is possible that the success of the book may have prompted some supplementary fee.

A Prospect, i.e. ‘a view.’ ‘I went to Putney, and other places on the Thames, to take ‘prospects’ in crayon, to carry into France, where I thought to have them engraved’ (Evelyn, _Diary_, 20th June, 1649). And Reynolds uses the word of Claude in his Fourth Discourse:—‘His pictures are a composition of the various draughts which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects’ (_Works_, by Malone, 1798, i. 105). The word is common on old prints, e.g. _An Exact Prospect of the Magnificent Stone Bridge at Westminster_, etc., 1751.

Dedication. The Rev. Henry Goldsmith, says the Percy _ Memoir_, 1801, p. 3, ‘had distinguished himself both at school and at college, but he unfortunately married at the early age of nineteen; which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented his rising to preferment in the church.’

with an income of forty pounds a year. Cf. _The Deserted Village_, ll. 141–2:—

A man he was, to all the country dear,

And passing rich with _forty pounds a year_.

Cf. also Parson Adams in ch. iii of _Joseph Andrews_, who has twenty-three; and Mr. Rivers, in the _Spiritual Quixote_, 1772:—‘I do not choose to go into orders to be a curate all my life-time, and work for about fifteen-pence a day, or twenty-five pounds a year’ (bk. vi, ch. xvii). Dr. Primrose’s stipend is thirty-five in the first instance, fifteen in the second (_Vicar of Wakefield_, chapters ii and iii). But Professor Hales (_Longer English Poems_, 1885, p. 351) supplies an exact parallel in the case of Churchill, who, he says, when a curate at Rainham, ‘prayed and starved on _ forty pounds a year_.’ The latter words are Churchill’s own, and sound like a quotation; but he was dead long before _The Deserted Village_ appeared in 1770. There is an interesting paper in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for November, 1763, on the miseries and hardships of the ‘inferior clergy.’

But of all kinds of ambition, etc. In the first edition of 1765, p. ii, this passage was as follows:—‘But of all kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which pursues poetical fame, is the wildest. What from the encreased refinement of the times, from the diversity of judgments produced by opposing systems of criticism, and from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced by party, the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a very narrow circle. Though the poet were as sure of his aim as the imperial archer of antiquity, who boasted that he never missed the heart; yet would many of his shafts now fly at random, for the heart is too often in the wrong place.’ In the second edition it was curtailed; in the sixth it took its final form.

they engross all that favour once shown to her. First version—‘They engross all favour to themselves.’

the elder’s birthright. Cunningham here aptly compares Dryden’s epistle _To Sir Godfrey Kneller_, II. 89–92:—

Our arts are sisters, though not twins in birth;

For hymns were sung in Eden’s happy earth:

But oh, the painter muse, though last in place,

Has seized the blessing first, like Jacob’s race.

_Party_=faction. Cf. lines 31–2 on Edmund Burke in _ Retaliation_:—

Who, born for the Universe, narrow’d his mind,

And to _party_ gave up what was meant for mankind.

Such readers generally admire, etc. ‘I suppose this paragraph to be directed against Paul Whitehead, or Churchill,’ writes Mitford. It was clearly aimed at Churchill, since Prior (_Life_, 1837, ii. 54) quotes a portion of a contemporary article in the _St. James’s Chronicle_ for February 7–9, 1765, attributed to Bonnell Thornton, which leaves little room for doubt upon the question. ‘The latter part of this paragraph,’ says the writer, referring to the passage now annotated, ‘we cannot help considering as a reflection on the memory of the late Mr. Churchill, whose talents as a poet were so greatly and so deservedly admired, that during his short reign, his merit in great measure eclipsed that of others; and we think it no mean acknowledgment of the excellencies of this poem [_The Traveller_] to say that, like the stars, they appear the more brilliant now that the sun of our poetry is gone down.’ Churchill died on the 4th of November, 1764, some weeks before the publication of _The Traveller_. His powers, it may be, were misdirected and misapplied; but his rough vigour and his manly verse deserved a better fate at Goldsmith’s hands.

tawdry was added in the sixth edition of 1770.

blank verse. Cf. _The Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, p. 150—‘From a desire in the critic of grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English, has proceeded of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I think we may reckon _blank verse_. Nothing but the greatest sublimity of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used on the most trivial occasions’—by which last remark Goldsmith probably, as Cunningham thinks, intended to refer to the efforts of Akenside, Dyer, and Armstrong. His views upon blank verse were shared by Johnson and Gray. At the date of the present dedication, the latest offender in this way had been Goldsmith’s old colleague on _The Monthly Review_, Dr. James Grainger, author of _The Sugar Cane_, which was published in June, 1764. (Cf. also _The Bee_ for 24th November, 1759, ‘An account of the Augustan Age of England.’)

and that this principle, etc. In the first edition this read—‘and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess.’

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. Mitford (Aldine edition, 1831, p. 7) compares the following lines from Ovid:—

Solus, inops, exspes, leto poenaeque relictus.

_Metamorphoses_, xiv. 217.

Exsul, inops erres, alienaque limina lustres, etc.

_Ibis_. 113.

slow. A well-known passage from Boswell must here be reproduced:—‘Chamier once asked him [Goldsmith], what he meant by _slow_, the last word in the first line of _The Traveller_,

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something without consideration, answered “yes.” I [Johnson] was sitting by, and said, “No, Sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.” Chamier believed then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.’ [Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, iii. 252–3.) It is quite possible, however, that Goldsmith meant no more than he said.

the rude Carinthian boor. ‘Carinthia,’ says Cunningham, ‘was visited by Goldsmith in 1755, and still (1853) retains its character for inhospitality.’

Campania. ‘Intended,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘to denote _La campagna di Roma_. The portion of it which extends from Rome to Terracina is scarcely habitable.’

a lengthening chain. Prior compares Letter iii of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 5:—‘The farther I travel 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.’ But, as Mitford points out, Cibber has a similar thought in his _Comical Lovers_, 1707, Act v:—‘When I am with Florimel, it [my heart] is still your prisoner, _it only draws a longer chain after it_.’ And earlier still in Dryden’s ‘All for Love’, 1678, Act ii, Sc. 1:—

My life on’t, he still drags a chain along,

That needs must clog his flight.

with simple plenty crown’d. In the first edition this read ‘where mirth and peace abound.’

the luxury of doing good. Prior compares Garth’s _Claremont_, 1715, where he speaks of the Druids:—

Hard was their Lodging, homely was their Food,

For all their _Luxury was doing Good_.

my prime of life. He was seven-and-twenty when he landed at Dover in February, 1756.

That, like the circle bounding, etc. Cf. _Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 160–1 (ch. x):—‘Death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon, still flies before him.’ [Prior.]

And find no spot of all the world my own. Prior compares his namesake’s lines _In the Beginning of_ [Jacques] _Robbe’s Geography_, 1700:—

My destin’d Miles I shall have gone,

By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE,

And _found no Foot of Earth my own._

above the storm’s career. Cf. 1. 190 of _The Deserted Village._

should thankless pride repine? First edition, ‘’twere thankless to repine.’

Say, should the philosophic mind, etc. First edition:—

’Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,

To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply’d

hoard. ‘Sum’ in the first edition.

Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own. In the first version this was—

Boldly asserts that country for his own.

And yet, perhaps, etc. In the first edition, for this and the following five lines appeared these eight:—

And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan,

Or estimate their bliss on Reason’s plan,

Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend,

We still shall find uncertainty suspend;

Find that each good, by Art or Nature given,

To these or those, but makes the balance even:

Find that the bliss of all is much the same,

And patriotic boasting reason’s shame!

On Idra’s cliffs. Bolton Corney conjectures that Goldsmith meant ‘Idria, a town in Carniola, noted for its mines.’ ‘Goldsmith in his “History of Animated Nature” makes mention of the mines, and spells the name in the same way as here.’ (Mr. J. H. Lobban’s _Select Poems of Goldsmith_, 1900, p. 87). Lines 84–5, it may be added, are not in the first edition.

And though the rocky-crested summits frown. In the first edition:—

And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.

lines 91–2. are not in the first editions.

peculiar, i.e. ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate.’

winnow, i.e. ‘waft,’ ‘disperse.’ John Evelyn refers to these ‘sea-born gales’ in the ‘Dedication’ of his _Fumifugium_, 1661:— ‘Those who take notice of the scent of the orange-flowers from the rivage of Genoa, and St. Pietro dell’ Arena; the blossomes of the rosemary from the Coasts of Spain, many leagues off at sea; or the manifest, and odoriferous wafts which flow from Fontenay and Vaugirard, even to Paris in the season of roses, with the contrary effect of those less pleasing smells from other accidents, will easily consent to what I suggest [i.e. the planting of sweet-smelling trees].’ (_Miscellaneous Writings_, 1825, p. 208.)

Till, more unsteady, etc. In the first edition:—

But, more unsteady than the southern gale,

Soon Commerce turn’d on other shores her sail.

There is a certain resemblance between this passage and one of the later paradoxes of Smollett’s Lismahago;—‘He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the tide’s rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same nation’ (_Humphry Clinker_, 1771, ii. 192. Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis).

lines 141–2. are not in the first edition.

Its former strength was but plethoric ill. Cf. _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 98:—‘In short, the state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is only a symptom of its wretchedness.’ [Mitford.]

Yet still the loss, etc. In the first edition:—

Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide

Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride.

The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade. ‘Happy Country [he is speaking of Italy], where the pastoral age begins to revive! Where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural groupe of nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians [i.e. the Bolognese Academy of the _Arcadi_]. Where in the midst of porticos, processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn’d into shepherds, and shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent _ divertimenti_.’ (_Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, pp. 50–1.) Some of the ‘paste-board triumphs’ may be studied in the plates of Jacques Callot.

By sports like these, etc. A pretty and well-known story is told with regard to this couplet. Calling once on Goldsmith, Reynolds, having vainly tried to attract attention, entered unannounced. ‘His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, looking imploringly at his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past Goldsmith’s shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some portions of a poem; and looking more closely, he was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line was wet:—

By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d;

The sports of children satisfy the child.

(Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. pp. 347–8).

The sports of children. This line, in the first edition, was followed by:—

At sports like these, while foreign arms advance,

In passive ease they leave the world to chance.

Each nobler aim, etc. The first edition reads:—

When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul,

She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul.

This was changed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions to:—

When noble aims have suffer’d long controul,

They sink at last, or feebly man the soul.

No product here, etc. The Swiss mercenaries, here referred to, were long famous in European warfare.

They parted with a thousand kisses,

And fight e’er since for pay, like Swisses.

Gay’s _Aye and No, a Fable_.

breasts This fine use of ‘breasts’—as Cunningham points out—is given by Johnson as an example in his Dictionary.

With patient angle, trolls the finny deep. ‘Troll,’ i.e. as for pike. Goldsmith uses ‘finny prey’ in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 99:—‘The best manner to draw up the _finny prey_.’ Cf. also ‘warbling grove,’ _Deserted Village_, l. 361, as a parallel to ‘finny deep.’

the struggling savage, i.e. wolf or bear. Mitford compares the following:—‘He is a beast of prey, and the laws should make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the _ reluctant savage_ into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the hyena or the rhinoceros.’ (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 112.) See also Pope’s _Iliad_, Bk. xvii:—

But if the _savage_ turns his glaring eye,

They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.

lines 201–2 are not in the first edition.

For every want, etc. Mitford quotes a parallel passage in _Animated Nature_, 1774, ii. 123:—‘Every want thus becomes a means of pleasure, in the redressing.’

Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low. Probably Goldsmith only uses ‘low’ here in its primitive sense, and not in that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, _Tom Jones_, 1749, iii. 6:— ‘Some of the Author’s Friends cry’d—“Look’e, Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all that.” And all the young Critics of the Age, the Clerks, Apprentices, etc., called it _Low_ and fell a Groaning.’ See also _Tom Jones_, iv. 94, and 226–30. ‘There’s nothing comes out but the ‘most lowest’ stuff in nature’—says Lady Blarney in ch. xi of the _ Vicar_, whose author is eloquent on this topic in _The Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, pp. 154–6, and in _She Stoops to Conquer_, 1773 (Act i); while Graves (_Spiritual Quixote_, 1772, bk. i, ch. vi) gives the fashion the scientific appellation of _ tapino-phoby,_ which he defines as ‘a dread of everything that is _low_, either in writing or in conversation.’ To Goldsmith, if we may trust George Colman’s _Prologue_ to Miss Lee’s _Chapter of Accidents_, 1780, belongs the credit of exorcising this particular form of depreciation:—

When Fielding, Humour’s fav’rite child, appear’d,

_Low_ was the word—a word each author fear’d!

Till chas’d at length, by pleasantry’s bright ray,

Nature and mirth resum’d their legal sway;

And Goldsmith’s genius bask’d in open day.

According to Borrow’s _Lavengro_, ch. xli, Lord Chesterfield considered that the speeches of Homer’s heroes were frequently ‘exceedingly low.’

How often, etc. This and the lines which immediately follow are autobiographical. Cf. George Primrose’s story in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 24–5 (ch. i):—‘I passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant’s house towards night-fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day.’

gestic lore, i.e. traditional gestures or motions. Scott uses the word ‘gestic’ in _Peveril of the Peak_, ch. xxx, where King Charles the Second witnesses the dancing of Fenella:—‘He bore time to her motions with the movement of his foot—applauded with head and with hand—and seemed, like herself, carried away by the enthusiasm of the _gestic_ art.’ [Hales.]

Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Pope has ‘Life’s _idle business_’ (_Unfortunate Lady_, l. 81), and—

The _busy, idle_ blockheads of the ball.

Donne’s _Satires_, iv. l. 203.

And all are taught an avarice of praise. Professor Hales (_Longer English Poems_) compares Horace of the Greeks:—

Praeter laudem, nullius avaris.

_Ars Poetica_, l. 324.

copper lace. ‘St Martin’s lace,’ for which, in Strype’s day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress’s ‘copper tail’ in _Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 60.

To men of other minds, etc. Prior compares with the description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of _Animated Nature_, 1774:—‘But we need scarce mention these, when we find that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a valley.’

Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf. Dryden in _Annus Mirabilis_, 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—

And view the ocean leaning on the sky.

the tall rampire’s, i.e. rampart’s (Old French, _rempart, rempar_). Cf. _Timon of Athens_, Act v. Sc. 4:—‘Our rampir’d gates.’

bosom reign in the first edition was ‘breast obtain.’

Even liberty itself is barter’d here. ‘Slavery,’ says Mitford, ‘was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their parents for a certain number of years.’

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 147.

dishonourable graves. _Julius Caesar_, Act i. Sc. 2.

Heavens! how unlike, etc. Prior compares a passage from a manuscript _ Introduction to the History of the Seven Years’ War_:—‘How unlike the brave peasants their ancestors, who spread terror into either India, and always declared themselves the allies of those who drew the sword in defence of freedom.’*

* J. W. M. Gibbs (_Works_, v. 9) discovered that parts of this _History_, hitherto supposed to have been written in 1761, were published in the _Literary Magazine_, 1757–8.

famed Hydaspes, i.e. the _fabulosus Hydaspes_ of Horace, Bk. i. Ode xxii, and the _Medus Hydaspes_ of Virgil, _ Georg_, iv. 211, of which so many stores were told. It is now known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its name.

Pride in their port, etc. In the first edition these two lines were inverted.

Here by the bonds of nature feebly held. In the first edition—

See, though by circling deeps together held.

Nature’s ties was ‘social bonds’ in the first edition.

Where kings have toil’d, and poets wrote for fame. In the first edition this line read:—

And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame.

Yet think not, etc. ‘In the things I have hitherto written I have neither allured the vanity of the great by flattery, nor satisfied the malignity of the vulgar by scandal, but I have endeavoured to get an honest reputation by liberal pursuits.’ (Preface to _ English History._) [Mitford.]

Ye powers of truth, etc. The first version has:—

Perish the wish; for, inly satisfy’d,

Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.

Mr. Forster thinks (_Life_, 1871, i. 375) that Goldsmith altered this (i.e. ‘ragged pride’) because, like the omitted _Haud inexpertus loquor_ of the _ Enquiry_, it involved an undignified admission.

lines 365–80 are not in the first edition.

Contracting regal power to stretch their own. ‘It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from it is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in a state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.’ (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, i. 202, ch. xix.)

When I behold, etc. Prior compares a passage in Letter xlix of _ The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 218, where the Roman senators are spoken of as still flattering the people ‘with a shew of freedom, while themselves only were free.’

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. Prior notes a corresponding utterance in _The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, i. 206, ch. xix:—‘What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.’

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. Cf. Dr. Primrose, _ut supra_, p. 201:—‘The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.’ Cf. also Churchill, _The Farewell_, ll. 363–4 and 369–70:—

Let not a Mob of Tyrants seize the helm,

Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm...

Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring,

Be slaves to one, and be that one a King.

lines 393–4. Goldsmith’s first thought was—

Yes, my lov’d brother, cursed be that hour

When first ambition toil’d for foreign power,—

an entirely different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more logical. (Dobell’s _Prospect of Society_, 1902, pp. xi, 2, and Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory substitution is due to Johnson.

Have we not seen, etc. These lines contain the first idea of the subsequent poem of _The Deserted Village_ (_q.v._).

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. The Oswego is a river which runs between Lakes Oneida and Ontario. In the _Threnodia Augustalis_, 1772, Goldsmith writes:—

Oswego’s dreary shores shall be my grave.

The ‘desarts of Oswego’ were familiar to the eighteenth-century reader in connexion with General Braddock’s ill-fated expedition of 1755, an account of which Goldsmith had just given in _An History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son_, 1764, ii. 202–4.

marks with murderous aim. In the first edition ‘takes a deadly aim.’

pensive exile. This, in the version mentioned in the next note, was ‘famish’d exile.’

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go. This line, upon Boswell’s authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck Hill’s _ Boswell_, 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith’s original ran:—

And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.

(Dobell’s _Prospect of Society_, 1902, p. 3).

How small, of all, etc. Johnson wrote these concluding ten lines with the exception of the penultimate couplet. They and line 420 were all—he told Boswell—of which he could be sure (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, _ut supra_). Like Goldsmith, he sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse. The first couplet is apparently a reminiscence of a passage in his own _Rasselas_, 1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks of ‘the task of a king . . . who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm.’ (Grant’s _Johnson_, 1887, p. 89.) ‘I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another,’ he told that ‘vile Whig,’ Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. ‘It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _ Boswell_, 1887, ii. 170).

The lifted axe. Mitford here recalls Blackmore’s

Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.

The ‘lifted axe’ he also traces to Young and Blackmore, with both of whom Goldsmith seems to have been familiar; but it is surely not necessary to assume that he borrowed from either in this instance.

Luke’s iron crown. George and Luke Dosa, or Doscha, headed a rebellion in Hungary in 1513. The former was proclaimed king by the peasants; and, in consequence suffered, among other things, the torture of the red-hot iron crown. Such a punishment took place at Bordeaux when Montaigne was seventeen (Morley’s Florio’s _ Montaigne_, 1886, p. xvi). Much ink has been shed over Goldsmith’s lapse of ‘Luke’ for George. In the book which he cited as his authority, the family name of the brothers was given as Zeck,—hence Bolton Corney, in his edition of the _ Poetical Works_, 1845, p. 36, corrected the line to—

_Zeck’s_ iron crown, etc.,

an alteration which has been adopted by other editors. (See also Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. 370.)

Damien’s bed of steel. Robert-Francois Damiens, 1714–57. Goldsmith writes ‘Damien’s.’ In the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_ for 1757, vol. xxvii. pp. 87 and 151, where there is an account of this poor half-witted wretch’s torture and execution for attempting to assassinate Louis XV, the name is thus spelled, as also in other contemporary records and caricatures. The following passage explains the ‘bed of steel’:—‘Being conducted to the Conciergerie, an ‘iron bed’, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend to see what degree of pain he could support,’ etc. (Smollett’s _History of England_, 1823, bk. iii, ch. 7, § xxv.) Goldsmith’s own explanation—according to Tom Davies, the bookseller—was that he meant the rack. But Davies may have misunderstood him, or Goldsmith himself may have forgotten the facts. (See Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. 370.) At pp. 57–78 of the _ Monthly Review_ for July, 1757 (upon which Goldsmith was at this date employed), is a summary, ‘from our correspondent at Paris,’ of the official record of the Damiens’ Trial, 4 vols. 12 mo.; and his deed and tragedy make a graphic chapter in the remarkable _Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous_, by George Augustus Sala, 1863, iii. pp. 154–180.

line 438. In the first edition of ‘The Traveller’ there are only 416 lines.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

After having been for some time announced as in preparation, _The Deserted Village_ made its first appearance on May 26, 1770.* It was received with great enthusiasm. In June a second, third, and fourth edition followed, and in August a fifth was published. The text here given is that of the fourth edition, which was considerably revised. Johnson, we are told, thought _The Deserted Village_ inferior to _The Traveller_: but ‘time,’ to use Mr. Forster’s words, ‘has not confirmed _that_ judgment.’ Its germ is perhaps to be found in ll. 397–402 of the earlier poem.

* In the American _Bookman_ for February, 1901, pp. 563–7, Mr. Luther S. Livingston gives an account (with facsimile title-pages) of three _octavo_ (or rather duodecimo) editions all dated 1770; and ostensibly printed for ‘W. Griffin, at Garrick’s Head, in Catherine-street, Strand.’ He rightly describes their existence as ‘a bibliographical puzzle.’ They afford no important variations; are not mentioned by the early editors; and are certainly not in the form in which the poem was first advertised and reviewed, as this was a quarto. But they are naturally of interest to the collector; and the late Colonel Francis Grant, a good Goldsmith scholar, described one of them in the _Athenaeum_ for June 20, 1896 (No. 3582).

Much research has been expended in the endeavour to identify the scene with Lissoy, the home of the poet’s youth (see _Introduction_, p. ix); but the result has only been partially successful. The truth seems that Goldsmith, living in England, recalled in a poem that was English in its conception many of the memories and accessories of his early life in Ireland, without intending or even caring to draw an exact picture. Hence, as Lord Macaulay has observed, in a much criticized and characteristic passage, ‘it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity, as his “Auburn.” He had assuredly never seen in England all the inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but, by joining the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen in any part of the world.’ (_Encyclop. Britannica_, 1856.) It is obvious also that in some of his theories—the depopulation of the kingdom, for example—Goldsmith was mistaken. But it was not for its didactic qualities then, nor is it for them now, that _The Deserted Village_’ delighted and delights. It maintains its popularity by its charming _genre_-pictures, its sweet and tender passages, its simplicity, its sympathetic hold upon the enduring in human nature. To test it solely with a view to establish its topographical accuracy, or to insist too much upon the value of its ethical teaching, is to mistake its real mission as a work of art.

Dedication. I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel. This modest confession did not prevent Goldsmith from making fun of the contemporary connoisseur. See the letter from the young virtuoso in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 145, announcing that a famous ‘torse’ has been discovered to be not ‘a Cleopatra bathing’ but ‘a Hercules spinning’; and Charles Primrose’s experiences at Paris (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 27–8).

He is since dead. Henry Goldsmith died in May, 1768, at the age of forty-five, being then curate of Kilkenny West. (See note, p. 164.)

a long poem. ‘I might dwell upon such thoughts . . . were I not afraid of making this preface too tedious; especially since I shall want all the patience of the reader, for having enlarged it with the following verses.’ (Tickell’s Preface to Addison’s _ Works_, at end.)

the increase of our luxuries. The evil of luxury was a ‘common topick’ with Goldsmith. (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, ii. 217–8.) Smollett also, speaking with the voice of Lismahago, and continuing the quotation on p. 169, was of the opinion that ‘the sudden affluence occasioned by trade, forced open all the sluices of luxury, and overflowed the land with every species of profligacy and corruption.’ (_Humphry Clinker_, 1771, ii. 192.—Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis.)

Sweet AUBURN. Forster, _Life_, 1871, ii. 206, says that Goldsmith obtained this name from Bennet Langton. There is an Aldbourn or Auburn in Wiltshire, not far from Marlborough, which Prior thinks may have furnished the suggestion.

Seats of my youth. This alone would imply that Goldsmith had in mind the environment of his Irish home.

The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill. This corresponds with the church of Kilkenny West as seen from the house at Lissoy.

[Illustration: ] KILKENNY WEST CHURCH

(R. H. Newell)

The hawthorn bush. The Rev. Annesley Strean, Henry Goldsmith’s successor at Kilkenny West, well remembered the hawthorn bush in front of the village ale-house. It had originally three trunks; but when he wrote in 1807 only one remained, ‘the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of it away to be made into toys, etc., in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem.’ (_Essay on Light Reading_, by the Rev. Edward Mangin, M.A., 1808, 142–3.) Its remains were enclosed by a Captain Hogan previously to 1819; but nevertheless when Prior visited the place in 1830, nothing was apparent but ‘a very tender shoot [which] had again forced its way to the surface.’ (Prior, _ Life_, 1837, ii. 264.) An engraving of the tree by S. Alken, from a sketch made in 1806–9, is to be found at p. 41 of Goldsmith’s _Poetical Works_, R. H. Newell’s edition, 1811, and is reproduced in the present volume.

[Illustration: ] HAWTHORN TREE

(R. H. Newell)

How often have I bless’d the coming day. Prior, _Life_, 1837, ii. 261, finds in this an allusion ‘to the Sundays or numerous holidays, usually kept in Roman Catholic countries.’

Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen. Strean’s explanation (Mangin, _ut supra_, pp. 140–1) of this is as follows:—‘The poem of _The Deserted Village_, took its origin from the circumstance of general Robert Napper [Napier or Naper], (the grandfather of the gentleman who now [1807] lives in the house, within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the general) having purchased an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or _Auburn_; in consequence of which many families, here called _cottiers_, were removed, to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the face of his new acquisition; and were forced, “_with fainting steps,_” to go in search of “_torrid tracts_” and “_distant climes._”’

Prior (_Life_, 1837, i. 40–3) points out that Goldsmith was not the first to give poetical expression to the wrongs of the dispossessed Irish peasantry; and he quotes a long extract from the _Works_ (1741) of a Westmeath poet, Lawrence Whyte, which contains such passages as these:—

Their native soil were forced to quit,

So Irish landlords thought it fit;

Who without ceremony or rout,

For their improvements turn’d them out ...

How many villages they razed,

How many parishes laid waste ...

Whole colonies, to shun the fate

Of being oppress’d at such a rate,

By tyrants who still raise their rent,

Sail’d to the Western Continent.

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest. ‘Of all those sounds,’ says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl, ‘there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.’ . . . ‘I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird’s note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed it.’ (_Animated Nature_, 1774, vi. 1–2, 4.)

Bewick, who may be trusted to speak of a bird which he has drawn with such exquisite fidelity, refers (_Water Birds_, 1847, p. 49) to ‘the hollow booming noise which the bittern makes during the night, in the breeding season, from its swampy retreats.’ Cf. also that close observer Crabbe (_The Borough_, Letter xxii, ll. 197–8):—

And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,

Gave from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made.

Mitford compares _Confessio Amantis_, fol. 152:—

A kynge may make a lorde a knave,

And of a knave a lord also;

and Professor Hales recalls Burns’s later line in the _Cotter’s Saturday Night_, 1785:—

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.

But Prior finds the exact equivalent of the second line in the verses of an old French poet, De. Caux, upon an hour-glass:—

C’est un verre qui luit,

Qu’un souffle peut détruire, et qu’un souffle a produit.

A time there was, ere England’s griefs began. Here wherever the locality of Auburn, the author had clearly England in mind. A caustic commentator has observed that the ‘time’ indicated must have been a long while ago.

opulence. In the first edition the word is ‘luxury.’

And, many a year elapsed, return to view. ‘It is strongly contended at Lishoy, that “_the Poet_,” as he is usually called there, after his pedestrian tour upon the Continent of Europe, returned to and resided in the village some time. . . . It is moreover believed, that the havock which had been made in his absence among those favourite scenes of his youth, affected his mind so deeply, that he actually composed great part of the Deserted Village ‘at’ Lishoy.’ (_Poetical Works, with Remarks_, etc., by the Rev. R. H. Newell, 1811, p. 74.)

Notwithstanding the above, there is no evidence that Goldsmith ever returned to his native island. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel Hodson, written in 1758, he spoke of hoping to do so ‘in five or six years.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, i. 49). But in another letter, written towards the close of his life, it is still a thing to come. ‘I am again,’ he says, ‘just setting out for Bath, and I honestly say I had much rather it had been for Ireland with my nephew, but that pleasure I hope to have before I die.’ (Letter to Daniel Hodson, no date, in possession of the late Frederick Locker Lampson.)

Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew. Here followed, in the first edition:—

Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range,

Trace every scene, and wonder at the change,

Remembrance, etc.

In all my griefs—and God has given my share. Prior notes a slight similarity here to a line of Collins:—

Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear,

_In all my griefs_, a more than equal share!

_Hassan; or, The Camel Driver._

In _The Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, p. 143, Goldsmith refers feelingly to ‘the neglected author of the Persian eclogues, which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language.’ He included four of them in _The Beauties of English Poesy_, 1767, i. pp. 239–53.

To husband out, etc. In the first edition this ran:—

My anxious day to husband near the close,

And keep life’s flame from wasting by repose.

Here to return—and die at home at last. Forster compares a passage in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 153:—‘There is something so seducing in that spot in which we first had existence, that nothing but it can please; whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity, we long to die in that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate every calamity.’ The poet Waller too—he adds—wished to die ‘like the stag where he was roused.’ (_Life_, 1871, ii. 202.)

[Illustration: ] South View from Goldsmith’s Mount

(R.H. Newell)

How happy he. ‘How blest is he’ in the first edition.

And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly. Mitford compares _The Bee_ for October 13, 1759, p. 56:—‘By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the conflict. The only method to come off victorious, is by running away.’

surly porter. Mr. J. M. Lobban compares the _Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 123:—‘I never see a nobleman’s door half opened that some surly porter or footman does not stand full in the breach.’ (_Select Poems of Goldsmith_, 1900, p. 98.)

Bends. ‘Sinks’ in the first edition. _unperceived decay_. Cf. Johnson, _Vanity of Human Wishes_, 1749, l. 292:—

An age that melts with unperceiv’d decay,

And glides in modest innocence away;

and _Irene_, Act ii, Sc. 7:—

And varied life steal unperceiv’d away.

While Resignation, etc. In 1771 Sir Joshua exhibited a picture of ‘An Old Man,’ studied from the beggar who was his model for Ugolino. When it was engraved by Thomas Watson in 1772, he called it ‘Resignation,’ and inscribed the print to Goldsmith in the following words:—‘This attempt to express a Character in _The Deserted Village_, is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith, by his sincere Friend and admirer, JOSHUA REYNOLDS.’

Up yonder hill. It has been suggested that Goldsmith was here thinking of the little hill of Knockaruadh (Red Hill) in front of Lissoy parsonage, of which there is a sketch in Newell’s _Poetical Works_, 1811. When Newell wrote, it was already known as ‘Goldsmith’s mount’; and the poet himself refers to it in a letter to his brother-in-law Hodson, dated Dec. 27, 1757:—‘I had rather be placed on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most pleasing horizon in nature.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, p. 43.)

And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made. In _Animated Nature_, 1774, v. 328, Goldsmith says:—‘The nightingale’s pausing song would be the proper epithet for this bird’s music.’ [Mitford.]

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. (Cf. Goldsmith’s Essay on _ Metaphors_ (_British Magazine_):—‘Armstrong has used the word ‘fluctuate’ with admirable efficacy, in his philosophical poem entitled _The Art of Preserving Health_.

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all

The sounding forest ‘fluctuates’ in the storm,

To sink in warm repose, and hear the din

Howl o’er the steady battlements.

The sad historian of the pensive plain. Strean (see note to l. 13) identified the old watercress gatherer as a certain Catherine Giraghty (or Geraghty). Her children (he said) were still living in the neighbourhood of Lissoy in 1807. (Mangin’s _Essay on Light Reading_, 1808, p. 142.)

The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. ‘The Rev. Charles Goldsmith is allowed by all that knew him, to have been faithfully represented by his son in the character of the Village Preacher.’ So writes his daughter, Catharine Hodson (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, p. 3). Others, relying perhaps upon the ‘forty pounds a year’ of the Dedication to _The Traveller_, make the poet’s brother Henry the original; others, again, incline to kindly Uncle Contarine (_vide Introduction_). But as Prior justly says (_Life_, 1837, ii. 249), ‘the fact perhaps is that he fixed upon no one individual, but borrowing like all good poets and painters a little from each, drew the character by their combination.’

with forty pounds a year. Cf. Dedication to _The Traveller_, p. 3, l. 14.

Unpractis’d. ‘Unskilful’ in the first edition.

More skilled. ‘More bent’ in the first edition.

The long remember’d beggar. ‘The same persons,’ says Prior, commenting upon this passage, ‘are seen for a series of years to traverse the same tract of country at certain intervals, intrude into every house which is not defended by the usual outworks of wealth, a gate and a porter’s lodge, exact their portion of the food of the family, and even find an occasional resting-place for the night, or from severe weather, in the chimney-corner of respectable farmers.’ (_Life_, 1837, ii. 269.) Cf. Scott on the Scottish mendicants in the ‘Advertisement’ to _The Antiquary_, 1816, and Leland’s _Hist. of Ireland_, 1773, i. 35.

The broken soldier. The disbanded soldier let loose upon the country at the conclusion of the ‘Seven Years’ War’ was a familiar figure at this period. Bewick, in his _Memoir_ (‘Memorial Edition’), 1887, pp. 44–5, describes some of these ancient campaigners with their battered old uniforms and their endless stories of Minden and Quebec; and a picture of two of them by T. S. Good of Berwick belonged to the late Mr. Locker Lampson. Edie Ochiltree (_Antiquary_)—it may be remembered—had fought at Fontenoy.

Allur’d to brighter worlds. Cf. Tickell on Addison—‘Saints who taught and led the way to Heaven.’

And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. Prior compares the opening lines of Dryden’s _Britannia Rediviva_:—

Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care

To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;

Preventing angels met it half the way,

And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

As some tall cliff, etc. Lucan, Statius, and Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with French literature, and the rarity of his ‘obligations to the ancients,’ it is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the _Academy_ for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain (1595–1674) to Richelieu:—

Dans un paisible mouvement

Tu t’élèves au firmament,

Et laisses contre toi murmurer cette terre;

Ainsi le haut Olympe, à son pied sablonneux,

Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre,

Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux.

Or another French model—indicated by Mr. Forster (_Life_, 1871, ii. 115–16) by the late Lord Lytton—may have been these lines from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720):—

Au milieu cependant de ces peines cruelles

De notre triste hiver, compagnes trop fidèles,

Je suis tranquille et gai. Quel bien plus précieux

Puis-je espérer jamais de la bonté des dieux!

Tel qu’un rocher dont la tête,

Égalant le Mont Athos,

Voit à ses pieds la tempête

Troubler le calme des flots,

La mer autour bruit et gronde;

Malgré ses emotions,

Sur son front élevé règne une paix profonde,

Que tant d’agitations

Et que ses fureurs de l’onde

Respectent à l’égal du nid des alcyons.

On the other hand, Goldsmith may have gone no further than Young’s _Complaint: Night the Second_, 1742, p. 42, where, as Mitford points out, occur these lines:—

As some tall Tow’r, or lofty Mountain’s Brow,

Detains the Sun, Illustrious from its Height,

While rising Vapours, and descending Shades,

With Damps, and Darkness drown the Spatious Vale:

Undampt by Doubt, Undarken’d by Despair,

_Philander_, thus, augustly rears his Head.

Prior also (_Life_, 1837, ii. 252) prints a passage from _Animated Nature_, 1774, i. 145, derived from Ulloa, which perhaps served as the raw material of the simile.

Full well they laugh’d, etc. Steele, in _Spectator_, No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—‘_Eubulus_ has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good Stomach and chearful Aspect, when _Eubulus_ seems to intimate that Things go well.’

Yet he was kind, etc. For the rhyme of ‘fault’ and ‘aught’ in this couplet Prior cites the precedent of Pope:—

Before his sacred name flies ev’ry fault,

And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

(_Essay on Criticism_, l. 422). He might also have cited Waller, who elides the ‘l’:—

Were we but less indulgent to our fau’ts,

And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.

Goldsmith uses a like rhyme in _Edwin and Angelina_, Stanza xxxv:—

But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,

And well my life shall pay;

I’ll seek the solitude he sought,

And stretch me where he lay.

Cf. also _Retaliation_, ll. 73–4. Perhaps—as indeed Prior suggests—he pronounced ‘fault’ in this fashion.

[Illustration: ] THE SCHOOL HOUSE

(R. H. Newell)

That one small head could carry all he knew. Some of the traits of this portrait are said to be borrowed from Goldsmith’s own master at Lissoy:—‘He was instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic’—says his sister Catherine, Mrs. Hodson—‘by a schoolmaster in his father’s village, who had been a quartermaster in the army in Queen Anne’s wars, in that detachment which was sent to Spain: having travelled over a considerable part of Europe and being of a very romantic turn, he used to entertain Oliver with his adventures; and the impressions these made on his scholar were believed by the family to have given him that wandering and unsettled turn which so much appeared in his future life.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, pp. 3–4.) The name of this worthy, according to Strean, was Burn (Byrne). (Mangin’s _ Essay on Light Reading_, 1808, p. 142.)

Near yonder thorn. See note to l. 13.

The chest contriv’d a double debt to pay. Cf. the _Description of an Author’s Bedchamber_, p. 48, l. ult.:—

A cap by night—a stocking all the day!

The twelve good rules. ‘A constant one’ (i.e. picture) ‘in every house was “King Charles’ Twelve Good Rules.”’ (Bewick’s _Memoir_, ‘Memorial Edition,’ 1887, p. 262.) This old broadside, surmounted by a rude woodcut of the King’s execution, is still prized by collectors. The rules, as ‘found in the study of King Charles the First, of Blessed Memory,’ are as follow:— ‘1. Urge no healths; 2. Profane no divine ordinances; 3. Touch no state matters; 4. Reveal no secrets; 5. Pick no quarrels; 6. Make no comparisons; 7. Maintain no ill opinions; 8. Keep no bad company; 9. Encourage no vice; 10. Make no long meals; 11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no Wagers.’ Prior, _Misc. Works_, 1837, iv. 63, points out that Crabbe also

makes the ‘Twelve Good Rules’ conspicuous in the _Parish Register_ (ll. 51–2):—

There is King Charles, and all his Golden Rules,

Who proved Misfortune’s was the best of schools.

Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, kept a copy of these rules in the servants’ hall at Windsor Castle.

the royal game of goose. The ‘Royal and Entertaining Game of the Goose’ is described at length in Strutt’s _Sports and Pastimes_, bk. iv, ch. 2 (xxv). It may be briefly defined as a game of compartments with different titles through which the player progresses according to the numbers he throws with the dice. At every fourth or fifth compartment is depicted a goose, and if the player’s cast falls upon one of these, he moves forward double the number of his throw.

While broken tea-cups. Cf. the _Description of an Author’s Bedchamber_, p. 48, l. 18:—

And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.

Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt the ale-house at Lissoy, did not forget, besides restoring the ‘Royal Game of Goose’ and the ‘Twelve Good Rules,’ to add the broken teacups, ‘which for better security in the frail tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were embedded in the mortar.’ (Prior, _Life_, 1837, ii. 265.)

Shall kiss the cup. Cf. Scott’s _Lochinvar_:—

The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,

He quaff’d off the wine and he threw down the cup.

Cf. also _The History of Miss Stanton_ (_British Magazine_, July, 1760).—‘The earthen mug went round. _Miss touched the cup_, the stranger pledged the parson,’ etc.

Between a splendid and a happy land. Prior compares _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 98:—‘Too much commerce may injure a nation as well as too little; and . . . there is a wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire.’

To see profusion that he must not share. Cf. _Animated Nature_, iv. p. 43:—‘He only guards those luxuries he is not fated to share.’ [Mitford.]

To see those joys. Up to the third edition the words were _each joy_.

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The gallows, under the savage penal laws of the eighteenth century, by which horse-stealing, forgery, shop-lifting, and even the cutting of a hop-bind in a plantation were punishable with death, was a common object in the landscape. Cf. _Vicar of Wakefield_, 1706, ii. 122:—‘Our possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with gibbets to scare every invader’; and _ Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 63–7. Johnson, who wrote eloquently on capital punishment in _The Rambler_ for April 20, 1751, No. 114, also refers to the ceaseless executions in his _London_, 1738, ll. 238–43:—

Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die,

With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply.

Propose your schemes, ye senatorian band,

Whose ways and means support the sinking land:

Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring,

To rig another convoy for the king.

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. Mitford compares Letter cxiv of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 211:—‘These _poor shivering females_ have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been prostituted to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them.’ The same passage occurs in _The Bee_, 1759, p. 126 (_A City Night-Piece_).

Near her betrayer’s door, etc. Cf. the foregoing quotation.

wild Altama, i.e. the Alatamaha, a river in Georgia, North America. Goldsmith may have been familiar with this name in connexion with his friend Oglethorpe’s expedition of 1733.

crouching tigers, a poetical licence, as there are no tigers in the locality named. But Mr. J. H. Lobban calls attention to a passage from _Animated Nature_ [1774, iii. 244], in which Goldsmith seems to defend himself:—‘There is an animal of America, which is usually called the Red Tiger, but Mr. Buffon calls it the Cougar, which, no doubt, is very different from the tiger of the east. Some, however, have thought proper to rank both together, and I will take leave to follow their example.’

The good old sire. Cf. _Threnodia Augustalis_, ll. 16–17:—

The good old sire, unconscious of decay,

The modest matron, clad in homespun gray

a father’s. ‘Her father’s’ in the first edition.

silent. ‘Decent’ in the first edition.

On Torno’s cliffs, or Pambamarca’s side. ‘Torno’=Tornea, a river which falls into the Gulf of Bothnia; Pambamarca is a mountain near Quito, South America. ‘The author’—says Bolton Corney—‘bears in memory the operations of the French philosophers in the arctic and equatorial regions, as described in the celebrated narratives of M. Maupertuis and Don Antonio de Ulloa.’

That trade’s proud empire, etc. These last four lines are attributed to Johnson on Boswell’s authority:—‘Dr. Johnson . . . favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith’s _ Deserted Village_, which are only the ‘last four’.’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, ii. 7.)

PROLOGUE OF LABERIUS.

This translation, or rather imitation, was first published at pp. 176–7 of _An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_, 1759 (Chap. xii, ‘Of the Stage’), where it is prefaced as follows:— ‘MACROBIUS has preserved a prologue, spoken and written by the poet [Decimus] Laberius, a Roman knight, whom Caesar forced upon the stage, written with great elegance and spirit, which shews what opinion the Romans in general entertained of the profession of an actor.’ In the second edition of 1774 the prologue was omitted. The original lines, one of which Goldsmith quotes, are to found in the _Saturnalia_ of Macrobius, lib. ii, cap. vii (_Opera_, London, 1694). He seems to have confined himself to imitating the first fifteen:—

Necessitas, cujus cursus transversi impetum

Voluerunt multi effugere, pauci potuerunt,

Quo me detrusit paene extremis sensibus?

Quem nulla ambitio, nulla umquam largitio,

Nullus timor, vis nulla, nulla auctoritas

Movere potuit in juventa de statu;

Ecce in senecta ut facile labefecit loco

Viri Excellentis mente clemente edita

Submissa placide blandiloquens oratio!

Etenim ipsi di negare cui nihil potuerunt,

Hominem me denegare quis posset pati?

Ergo bis tricenis annis actis sine tota

Eques Romanus Lare egressus meo

Domum revertar mimus. nimirum hoc die

Uno plus vixi mihi quam vivendum fuit.

Rollin gives a French translation of this prologue in his _Traité des Études_. It is quoted by Bolton Corney in his _Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith_, 1845, pp. 203–4. In his Aldine edition of 1831, p. 114, Mitford completed Goldsmith’s version as follows:—

Too lavish still in good, or evil hour,

To show to man the empire of thy power,

If fortune, at thy wild impetuous sway,

The blossoms of my fame must drop away,

Then was the time the obedient plant to strain

When life was warm in every vigorous vein,

To mould young nature to thy plastic skill,

And bend my pliant boyhood to thy will.

So might I hope applauding crowds to hear,

Catch the quick smile, and HIS attentive ear.

But ah! for what has thou reserv’d my age?

Say, how can I expect the approving stage;

Fled is the bloom of youth—the manly air—

The vigorous mind that spurn’d at toil and care;

Gone is the voice, whose clear and silver tone

The enraptur’d theatre would love to own.

As clasping ivy chokes the encumber’d tree,

So age with foul embrace has ruined me.

Thou, and the tomb, Laberius, art the same,

Empty within, what hast thou but a name?

Macrobius, it may be remembered, was the author, with a quotation from whom Johnson, after a long silence, electrified the company upon his first arrival at Pembroke College, thus giving (says Boswell) ‘the first impression of that more extensive reading in which he had indulged himself’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, i. 59). If the study of Macrobius is to be regarded as a test of ‘more extensive reading’ that praise must therefore be accorded to Goldsmith, who cites him in his first book.

ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH STRUCK BLIND WITH LIGHTNING.

This quatrain, the original of which does not appear to have been traced, was first published in _The Bee_ for Saturday, the 6th of October, 1759, p. 8. It is there succeeded by the following Latin epigram, ‘in the same spirit’:—

LUMINE Acon dextro capta est Leonida sinistro

Et poterat forma vincere uterque Deos.

Parve puer lumen quod habes concede puellae

Sic tu caecus amor sic erit illa Venus.

There are several variations of this in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1745, pp. 104, 159, 213, 327, one of which is said to be ‘By a monk of Winchester,’ with a reference to ‘Cambden’s _Remains_, p. 413.’ None of these corresponds exactly with Goldsmith’s text; and the lady’s name is uniformly given as ‘Leonilla.’ A writer in the _ Quarterly Review_, vol. 171, p. 296, prints the ‘original’ thus—

Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,

Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos.

Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori;

Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit illa Venus;

and says ‘it was written by Girolamo Amalteo, and will be found in any of the editions of the _Trium Fratrum Amaltheorum Carmina_, under the title of ‘De gemellis, fratre et sorore, luscis.’ According to Byron on Bowles (_Works_, 1836, vi. p. 390), the persons referred to are the Princess of Eboli, mistress of Philip II of Spain, and Maugiron, minion of Henry III of France, who had each of them lost an eye. But for this the reviewer above quoted had found no authority.

THE GIFT.

This little trifle, in which a French levity is wedded to the language of Prior, was first printed in _The Bee_, for Saturday, the 13th of October, 1759. Its original, which is as follows, is to be found where Goldsmith found it, namely in