design to constitute a first-rate poet. The Deserted Village, Traveller, and Hermit, are all specimens, beautiful as such; but they are only birds' eggs on a string, and eggs of small birds too. One great magnificent whole must be accomplished before we can pronounce upon the maker to be the dronrys. Pope himself never earned this title by a work of any magnitude but his Homer, and that being a translation, only constitutes him an accomplished versifier. Distress drove Goldsmith upon undertakings neither congenial with his studies, nor worthy of his talents. I remember him, when in his chamber in the Temple, he shewed me the beginning of his Animated Nature: it was with a sigh such as genius draws, when hard necessity diverts it from its bent to drudge for bread, and talk of birds and beasts, and creeping things, which Pidcock's showman would have done as well. Poor fellow! he hardly knew an ass from a mule, nor a turkey from a goose, but when he saw it on the table. But publishers hate poetry,* and Paternoster-Row is not Parnassus,t" &c. Such is the testimony of men, who had a personal acquaintance with Goldsmith, and whose own talents the quantity of sterling ore which they contain, and not by the number of their verses, or the extent of their design. It is natural, however, for Mr. Cumberland, who has written epic poems himself, to indulge these sentiments! This is scarcely a liberal or just assertion at the present moment. There are poets, who, if report speaks true, can prove the contrary-witness Bloomfeld, Walter Scott, &c. &c. ↑ Camberland's Life, 257, 258. and and experience enabled them to form a due estimate of his moral and intellectual qualities. It is probable that the striking inconsistency between the elegance, propriety, and wisdom of his writings, and the aukwardness and folly of his conversation, arose from the irritability of his passions, which were excited by company, and clouded his faculties; while in the calmness of the closet his judgment had full power to operate. His intolerable vanity, which made him aspire to be universally brilliant and distinguished wherever he appeared, instead of giving him a superiority over the eminent, degraded him below the stupid. His perpetual failures and mortifications, arising from this cause, must have deeply affected the complacency of his mind, when alone: for with a rectitude of thinking, which in the hours of quiet and seclusion was exquisite, he must have reflected on the appearances, he was continually exhibiting in society, with the compunctious visitings of regret and shame. It was probably his lot, like all those who give up the rein to their passions, daily to sin in this way, and daily to repent. They, who heard him talk as if he was scarce capable of a clear comprehension of any thing; and if he did comprehend it, utterly unable to express and explain it; must have read, almost with a doubt of their own senses, successive publications by him on various subjects, in which he exhibited the power of expressing every thing in the neatest and most perspicuous manner; and relating even what he never pretended to understand or study deeply, better than those who understood it best." He is now writing a Natural History," said Johnson," and will make it as entertaining as an Arabian F 2 Arabian Tale." In another place this powerful critic has pronounced, that "Goldsmith was a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best, that which he was doing; a man, who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness." His poems I esteem to possess grea value, because they are both original, and among the most finished of their kind; but I never can yield to the school of criticism, of which Dr. Johnson was the master, that that is a very high kind! Goldsmith, was like Pope, a poet rather of reason than of fancy or pathos; and his popularity does not appear to me by any means a test (though a favourite test with Johnson) of his transcendent claims. But it seems the style of poetry he adopted, resulted not merely from the character of his genius, but from the conviction of his judgment that it was the best. For in his life of Parnell he has given us the following critical opinions. "The universal esteem in which Parnell's poems are held, and the reiterated pleasure they give in the perusal, are a sufficient test of their merit. He appears to me the last of that great school that had modelled itself upon the ancients, and taught English poetry to resemble what the generality of mankind have allowed to excel. A stadious and correct observer of antiquity, he set himself to consider nature with the lights it lent him; and he found that the more aid he borrowed from the one, the more delightfully he resembled the other. To copy nature is a task the most bungling workman workman is able to execute; to select such parts as contribute to delight, is reserved only for those, whom accident has blest with uncommon talents, or such as have read the ancients with indefatigable industry. Parnell is ever happy in the selection of his images, and scrupulously careful in the choice of his subjects. His productions bear no resemblance to those tawdry things, which it has for some time been the fashion to admire; in writing which the poet sits down without any plan, and heaps up splendid images without any selection; where the reader grows dizzy with praise and admiration, and yet soon grows weary, he scarce can tell why. Our poet on the contrary gives out his beauties with a more sparing hand; he is still carrying his reader forward, and just gives him refreshment sufficient to support him to his journey's end. At the end of his course the reader regrets that his way has been so short; he wonders that it gave him so little trouble, and so resolves to go the journey over again. "His poetical language is not less correct than his subjects are pleasing. He found it at that period, at which it was brought to its highest pitch of refinement; and ever since his time it has been gradually debasing. It is indeed amazing, after what has been done by Dryden, Addison, and Pope, to improve and harmonize our native tongue, that their successors should have taken so much pains to involve it into pristine barbarity. These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions, and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the more their writings are unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry. They have adopted 3 adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them, are silent, and those who make out their meaning are willing to praise, to shew they understand. From these follies and affectations the poems of Par nell," (and it may be added, those of Goldsmith) "are free; he has considered the language of poetry as the language of life, and conveys the warmest thoughts in the simplest expression." All this abstractedly may be very just; though it must be observed that it applies rather to the outward dress than to the substance and essence of poetry. At the same time we cannot help feeling a little disgust, when we consider the purpose with which it was written, and recollect that it became on every occasion the cant both of Goldsmith and Johnson, with a view to depress and degrade the compositions of Gray, Collins, and others of that stamp, to whom they undoubtedly alluded, and of whom they indulged an illiberal envy. But I am confident that neither Johnson nor Goldsmith possessed fancy or sensibility sufficiently lively to relish duly the higher flights of the muse. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader of Shakspeare's description of the real poet's powers. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen A local habitation, and a name." * Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V. Sc. 1. Instruction |