DR OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

(1728-1774.)

GOLDSMITH'S poetical works are limited, but they are exquisite in their kind; he is one of the pioneers who broke down the artificial barriers which convention had erected against a natural literature. He was the son of a humble Irish curate, and was born and spent his youthful years in the county of Longford. He received his education at the universities of Dublin and Edinburgh. Suddenly quitting the latter city, although in utter poverty, he resolved to make the tour of Europe. His fortunes on the Continent were singular and various; from a passage in the "Traveller," he seems to have often earned, by his flute, a supper and bed from the peasants. He returned to England in the same poverty; but, acquiring the friendship of Johnson, the critic's advice to publish his "Traveller" raised Goldsmith to a high rank of poetical celebrity. His comedies and other publications followed; the poet was enriched, but his irregular and careless habits, and his generous disposition, kept him in perpetual embarrassment. He possessed much of the warm-hearted merits of his countrymen, but perhaps more of their faults. He was, like Gay, at once the pet and the butt of his associates, among whom he numbered Pitt, Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He died of a painful disease in 1774, leaving a legacy of some L.2000 of debt.

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Goldsmith's two principal poems, "The Traveller" and the "Deserted Village," belong to the highest order of descriptive poetry. His ballad of "Edwin and Angelina" is an exquisite specimen of its class. His best comedy," She stoops to Conquer," is still a favourite; his miscellaneous prose works comprise An Inquiry into the present state of Polite Learning in Europe;" "The Vicar of Wakefield," one of the most delightful of domestic novels; the essays forming "The Citizen of the World." His compiled histories of England, Greece, and Rome, whose abridgments have so long formed standard school text books, have little merit beyond the grace of style; they were merely "hack" works for the booksellers. His "Animated Nature" was published posthumously.

Turn we to survey

Where rougher climes a nobler race display,

Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,

And force a churlish soil for scanty bread:

No product here the barren hills afford

But man and steel, the soldier and his sword:
No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
But winter ling'ring chills the lap of May:
No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
Yet still, e'en here, content can spread a charm,
Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.

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Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts tho' small,
He sees his little lot the lot of all;

Sees no contiguous palace rear its head,

To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal,
To make him loathe his vegetable meal;
But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
Each wish contracting fits him to the soil.
Cheerful at morn he wakes from short repose,
Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes;
With patient angle trolls the finny deep,

Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep;
Or seeks the den where snow-tracks mark the way,
And drags the struggling savage into day.
At night returning, ev'ry labour sped,
He sits him down the monarch of a shed;
Smiles by his cheerful fire, and round surveys
His children's looks, that brighten at the blaze;
While his lov'd partner, boastful of her hoard,
Displays her cleanly platter on the board:
And haply too some pilgrim, thither led,
With many a tale repays the nightly bed.1

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FROM THE DESERTED VILLAGE.”

THE VILLAGE INN.2

Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high,
Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye,
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspir'd,
Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retir'd,
Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound,
And news much older than their ale went round;
Imagination fondly stoops to trace

The parlour splendours of that festive place;
The white-wash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door;
The chest contriv'd a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day;
The pictures plac'd for ornament and use,
The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose;
The hearth, except when winter chill'd the day,
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel, gay;
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show,
Rang'd o'er the chimney, glisten'd in a row.

Vain transitory splendours! could not all

1 The floods of modern tourists are said to have made sad inroads on the simplicity of Swiss manners.

2 The scenery of the Deserted Village is furnished by the poet's youthful residence, Lissoy in Ireland. The extract has been selected as illustrative of Goldsmith's skill in simple description. The poem contains much finer passages: the clergyman is a portrait of his father.

Reprieve the tott'ring mansion from its fall?
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart;
Thither no more the peasant shall repair
To sweet oblivion of his daily care;

No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale,
No more the woodman's ballad shall prevail;
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear,
Relax his pond'rous strength, and lean to hear;
The host himself no longer shall be found,
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;
Nor the coy maid, half willing to be prest,
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest.

Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain,
These simple blessings of the lowly train;
To me more dear, congenial to my heart,
One native charm, than all the gloss of art;
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play,
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway;
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind,
Unenvy'd, unmolested, unconfin'd.

But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,
With all the freaks of wanton wealth array'd,
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain,
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain;
And, e'en while fashion's brightest arts decoy,
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy?

PROPOSED EPITAPH FOR EDMUND BURKE.

Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such,
We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much;
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 Townshend2 to lend him a vote;
Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining,
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.
In short, 'twas his fate, unemploy'd, or in place, sir,
To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor.

1 Retaliation is a collection of humorous epitaphs of the poet's friends in the "Literary Club," as a retort for some bantering he had undergone. The piece displays great skill in touching the foibles of characters; among the epitaph names, are Richard Cumberland, the dramatist and essayist; Bishop Douglas of Salisbury, the detector of Lauder's forgery on Milton; Macpherson, the editor of Ossian, &c.

2 M. P. for Whitchurch.

WILLIAM FALCONER.

(1730-1770.)

WILLIAM FALCONER, a Scotch sailor, born of humble parents in Edinburgh, published in 1762 his Shipwreck,-a poem which depicted an actual disaster, and introduced into literature the technicalities of seamanship. The merits of the piece, and its dedication to the Duke of York, procured for the poet promotion in the navy. He subsequently produced a political satire, and a Marine Dictionary." He perished on board an East India merchantman, which was supposed to have foundered in the Indian Ocean.

The Shipwreck is a composition of singular merit from a man with Falconer's opportunities. A second edition engrafted on it new episodes and emendations, which do not seem to have improved it. The scene of the disaster is Cape Colonna (the ancient Sunium) in Greece, and the poet alludes with power and beauty to the classic objects of these shores. The characters are drawn with vigour and graphicness of lineament. The technical terms of a ship's management are interwoven with great skill into a harmonious versification; and, in his description of the storm and of the catastrophe, the poet rises into sublimity, while the whole scene is mellowed by the most amiable and tender affections of humanity.

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FROM THE SHIPWRECK.”—CANTO III.
But now Athenian mountains they descry,
And o'er the surge Colonna frowns on high;
Beside the Cape's projecting verge are placed
A range of columns, long by time defac'd;
First planted by Devotion to sustain,
In elder times, Tritonia's' sacred fane.
Foams the wild beach below with madd'ning rage,
Where waves and rocks a dreadful combat wage.
The sickly heaven, fermenting with its freight,
Still vomits o'er the main the feverish weight.

*

The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh,
Seems more impatient o'er the waves to fly :
Fate spurs her on :-thus issuing from afar,
Advances to the sun some blazing star;
And, as it feels th' attraction's kindling force,
Springs onward with accelerated course.

In vain the cords and axes were prepar'd,
For now th' audacious seas insult the yard;
High o'er the ship they throw a horrid shade,
And o'er her burst in terrible cascade.
Uplifted on the surge, to heaven she flies,

1 Minerva's worship at the lake Tritonis in Africa procured for her this name.--Herod. iv. 180. Ovid applies to Athens the appellation Tritonis, as the city of Minerva.

Her shatter'd top half-buried in the skies,
Then headlong plunging, thunders on the ground,
Earth groans! air trembles! and the deeps resound!
Her giant bulk the dread concussion feels,

And quivering with the wound, in torment reels;
So reels, convuls'd with agonising throes,

The bleeding bull beneath the murd'rer's blows ;-
Again she plunges ! hark! a second shock
Tears her strong bottom on the marble rock :
Down on the vale of Death, with dismal cries,
The fated victims, shuddering, roll their eyes
In wild despair; while yet another stroke,
With deep convulsion, rends the solid oak:
Till like the mine, in whose infernal cell
The lurking demons of destruction dwell,
At length asunder torn, her frame divides,
And crashing spreads in ruin o'er the tides.

ERASMUS DARWIN, M. D.

(1731-1802.)

DR ERASMUS DARWIN was born "at Elston, near Newark." On completing his medical education at Edinburgh, he settled as a physician, first at Nottingham, and then at Litchfield. After the death of his first wife, in 1770, he formed an advantageous second marriage, and his poetic wing was no longer fluttered with dread of the probable desertion of his practice, as a consequence of indulgence in its Parnassian flights. His "Botanic Garden," the origination of which is claimed by his euphuistic biographer, Miss Anna Seward, was completed in 1792, in three parts, published at considerable intervals. The poem is adorned with the Rosicrucian machinery of gnomes, sylphs, and nymphs. This specimen of the application of science to the purposes of poetry possesses great merit as regards accuracy and extent of information, and its adaptation to the knowledge of the time, for Darwin was an accomplished, though somewhat pedantic, professional and general scholar; but, as poetry, the "Botanic Garden" can boast little above the merit of metallically-polished versification. It exhibits abundance of fancy, but nothing of lite, passion, or imagination, and resembles a hortus siccus, or a zoological museum, compared with living flowers or living animals; it fatigues with its countless and fantastic personifications, but individual passages display great vigour and real splendour of expression and Darwin, who stands between the old and new poetic ages, the last singer on the lyre of Pope, may possibly claim the merit of having restrained the luxuriance of irregularity into which the verse of the nineteenth century threatened to rush.

1 Darwin's birth happens in the same year with that of Cowper; and, like Cowper, he was an elderly man when he published his poetry; in every thing else they are antipodes of each other:-the one is the extreme type of the artificial school; the other is the most graceful ornament of the natural.

This is seen in his extensive notes, and in his large work, "Zoonomia," or "The Laws of Organic Life."