57-62. Here we have again the myth of a Golden Age of which the poets are so fond. History teaches plainly that there never was a time ere England's griefs began. 63-74. trade's unfeeling train. This is a remnant of the Mercantile Theory, wide-spread in Europe during the Middle Ages and not dead yet in unintelligent communities. According to this theory Commerce is a war, and when A. gains, B. must lose. An elementary knowledge of Economics shows us now, that where Commerce (Trade) is unrestricted, both A. and B. gain; otherwise there would be no Commerce. rural manners. The ordinary meanings attached to 'rustic manners' and 'bucolic manners' hardly bear out the poet's eulogy. What is there in city life that tends to refine and polish the manners? 75-96. The sincerity that breathes through these lines makes us feel that here is a bit of genuine autobiography. 97-112. unperceived decay. Evidently suggested by Vanity of Human Wishes, 293. Throughout this passage the influence of Johnson is perceptible. his latter end. Hear counsel and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.' Proverbs XIX. 20. 113-136. careless free from care. loud laugh. Fatness and laughter have long been associated - perhaps unjustly — with the idea of weak mentality. Compare: Let me have men about me that are fat: Yet Falstaff was a tun of a man. strains of the nightingale's song. Listen Eugenia,— Julius Cæsar, i. 2. 192–5. pause; the interval between the How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! Eternal passion! Eternal pain! Matthew Arnold's Philomela, 28-32. Compare also Keats' Ode to a Nightingale (p. 168 of this book). No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. A stiff and commonplace line, in Pope's earliest and worst manner. bloomy. Compare the opening lines of Milton's Sonnet to the Nightingale : O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warblest at eve, when all the woods are still. mantling = covering as with a mantle. 137-162. We can find many points of resemblance between this beautiful portrait of the village preacher and Chaucer's Poor Parson (Dryden's character of a Good Parson). Goldsmith's sketch seems to contain allusion to his father and to his brother Henry. To the latter he had dedicated The Traveller. disclose allow to be seen. mansion; in its original sense of dwelling-place' (Latin, 'manere,' to stay, remain). place = position, as in 'He has a doctrines fashioned to the chang place in the Custom-House.' ing hour. Perhaps Goldsmith was thinking of The Vicar of Bray: And this is law that I'll maintain Until my dying day, Sir, That whatsoever king shall reign Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir. shewed how tales of sorrow done. For this absolute use of the participle, compare L'Allegro 115, and see Whitney, § 395-7. fields were won. Compare Alexander's Feast, 66-8. His pity gave; his natural sentiment (Pity) relieved them before his theological virtue (Charity) came into play. 163-192. Allured to brighter worlds and led the way. In Chau As The service past. For the construction, compare line 157. some tall cliff. See this same figure with a different but equally fine application, in Matthew Arnold's Sonnet on Shakespeare: For the loftiest hill Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base terms periods during which the Justices hold court. tides ecclesiastical times or seasons, as Whitsuntide (= White + Sun day Time). presage measure the content of a barrel. foretell. gauge [gage]= to words of learned length and thundering sound. Goldsmith must have been thinking of the conversation of his friend Dr. Johnson, of whom he once said that it was no use arguing with Johnson; if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the butt end of it. 216-236. the twelve good rules; such as (4) Reveal No Secrets, (9) Encourage No Vice. English Poems, p. 353. from the wall to the copy-book. or something like it. They are all given in Hales' Longer In our day they have been transferred game of goose; Fox and Geese, royal has never been satisfactorily explained; perhaps the poet, being in a reminiscential mood, uses 'royal' subjectively, as when we say, 'I had a royal good time yesterday.' Chimney fire-place. 237-264. An hour's importance. Compare Burns' Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious! Tam O'Shanter, 57-8. the barber's tale. Since men first shaved, barbers have been noted for their talkativeness. See the character of Nello in George Eliot's Romola. woodman, in its original meaning of 'hunter.' the smith. Compare Longfellow's beautiful poem, The Village Blacksmith. mantling bliss the foaming ale. Shall kiss the cup. Compare Ben Jonson's song To Celia beginning: Drink to me only with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine. 265-302. This is very pretty poetry, but very poor Economics. Consult some elementary treatise on that subject, such as Laughlin's Elements of Political Economy. 303-308. The fencing-in of land once common is undoubtedly a grievous wrong to the English peasant. For the counterbalancing advantages which he has derived from the progress of civilization, see the concluding pages of the Third Chapter of Macaulay's History of England. 309-320. It is amusing to notice how the poets abuse the city, yet how, with rare exception, they cannot bear to live anywhere else. Artist artisan. dome = building, house; thus Coleridge: In Xanada did Kubla Khan Kubla Khan, 1-2. 321-336. Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn. 'Goldsmith wrote in a pre-Wordsworthian age, when even in the realms of poetry a primrose was not much more than a primrose; but it is doubtful whether, either before, during or since Wordsworth's time, the sentiment that the imagination can infuse into the common and familiar things around us ever received more happy expression than in [this] well-known line.' Black's Life of Goldsmith, Cap. XIV. 337-362. Goldsmith's geography and natural history are not his strong points. The Altama [Altamahá] river in Georgia enters the Atlantic near the thirty-first parallel; the flora and fauna he describes are tropical. Tigers in Georgia! 363-384. For a somewhat similar scene, compare Longfellow's Evangeline, i. 5. seats. See note on Alexander's Feast, 26. 385-394. The thought here is certainly just, though the expression (especially in line 394) is feeble. In lines 343-368 of The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson has worked out this thought to a logical conclusion that agrees pretty well with that arrived at by Agur the son of Jakeh, some three thousand years ago: 'Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.' 395-426. anchoring commonly means 'coming to anchor,' but in Lear iv. 18-20, we have it used as here, meaning 'lying at anchor.' strand = yon tall anchoring bark Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. beach. The Strand in London, now the busiest street in the world, was once, no doubt, a mere path by the river-side. degenerate times. The time (1770) was certainly degenerate so far as Poetry was concerned. Thirteen years had elapsed since Gray published his Odes, and during this long night Goldsmith's Traveller (1764) twinkled a lonely star. My shame in crowds. Though he occasionally struck off a good thing, Goldsmith did not shine in conversation. In the blaze of Johnson's talk, who could? No one save Burke, and he modestly said, 'It is enough for me to have rung the bell for him.' Keep'st me so. It was not Poetry that kept Goldsmith poor, but his own thriftlessness. Torno [Tornea or Torneo], a river that marks the boundary-line between Sweden and Russia. It flows into the Gulf of Bothnia. A mountain in Ecuador. Pambamarca. 427-430. These four lines were added by Johnson and can hardly be said to improve the conclusion of the poem. WILLIAM COWPER. BORN at Berkhampstead, 1731. His father was a Church of England clergyman and court chaplain. At the age of six, Cowper lost his mother; his touching little poem On the Receipt of my Mother's Picture out of Norfolk, written many years later, commemorates his emotion on this occasion. He acquired some knowledge of the Latin poets at Westminster School, but did not proceed to the University. Admitted to the bar, success there was interfered with by an attack of insanity under the influence of which he attempted suicide. Eighteen months' medical treatment restored his intellect, but left him with a deep-seated religious melancholia that in a few years brought on another attack of insanity. After his second recovery, while leading a life of intolerable dulness at Olney, he took to writing moral satires for diversion. Only by exceeding charity can this diversion be said to be shared by his readers. To the inspiration of his vivacious friend Lady Austen we owe John Gilpin, perhaps the most humorous ballad in English-written by the most melancholy poet. To her suggestion also we owe The Task (1785), a poem which, though it has neither beginning, middle nor end, has a discernible purpose - to sing 'the praise of retirement and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue.'1 Its still-life descriptions, within their narrow limits, are almost perfect; its asceticism, its sentimentalism and its provincialism are easily discoverableand easily skipped. Cowper's translation of Homer (1791) proved· -as might have been expected — that the man who found a congenial subject in The Sofa and The Time Piece was not the man to sing of the heroes who drank delight of battle on the plains of windy Troy. His Letters preserve for us charming glimpses of English country life in the last century, and perhaps by these he will be remembered longer than by his more formal works. The declining years of his life were clouded by a third attack of insanity; from this he was mercifully delivered by death in 1800. BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIFE AND TIMES. - Cowper's Complete Works, comprising his Poems, Correspondence and Translations. Edited with Memoir of the Author, by Robert Southey. 8 vols. (Bohn's Library). This is the standard edition, if we cut out Southey's tedious Memoir. Goldwin Smith's Cowper (E. M. L.) gives all the essential facts in compact form, and succeeds in making really interesting the record of Cowper's uneventful life. 1 Goldwin Smith's Cowper, Cap. V. |