There, as I past with careless steps and slow, The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, Nor is it any romantic and impossible peasantry that is gradually brought before us. There are no Norvals in Lissoy. There is the old woman-Catherine Geraghty, they say, was her name--who gathered cresses in the ditches near her cabin. There is the village preacher whom Mrs. Hodson, Goldsmith's sister, took to be a portrait of their father; but whom others have identified as Henry Goldsmith, and even as the uncle Contarine; they may all have contributed. And then comes Paddy Byrne. Amid all the pensive tenderness of the poem this description of the schoolmaster, with its strokes of demure humour, is introduced with delightful effect: "Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, For e'en though vanquished, he could argue still; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew All this is so slmple and natural that we cannot fail to believe in the reality of Auburn, or Lissoy, or whatever the village may be supposed to be. We visit the clergyman's cheerful fireside; and look in on the noisy school; and sit in the evening in the ale-house to listen to the profound politics talked there. But the crisis comes. Auburn delenda est. Here, no doubt, occurs the least probable part of the poem. Poverty of soil is a common cause of emigration; land that produces oats (when it can produce oats at all) three-fourths mixed ACME BIOG. III.-10. with weeds, and hay chiefly consisting of rushes, naturally discharges its surplus population as families increase; and though the wrench of parting is painful enough, the usual result is a change from starvation to competence. It more rarely happens that a district of peace and plenty, such as Auburn was supposed to see around it, is depopulated to add to a great man's estate. His seat, where solitary sports are seen, * Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;" and so forth. This seldom happens; but it does happen; and it has happened, in our own day, in England. It is within the last twenty years that an English landlord, having faith in his riches, bade a village be removed and cast elsewhere, so that it should no longer be visible from his windows: and it was forthwith removed. But any solitary instance like this is not sufficient to support the theory that wealth and luxury are inimical to the existence of a hardy peasantry; and so we must admit, after all, that it is poetical exigency rather than political economy that has decreed the destruction of the loveliest village of the plain. Where, asks the poet, are the driven poor to find refuge, when even the fenceless commons are seized upon and divided by the rich? In the great cities?— "To see profusion that he must not share; 1 It is in this description of a life in cities that there occurs an oftenquoted passage, which has in it one of the most perfect lines in English poetry: "Ah! turn thy eyes Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. Has wept at tales of innocence distrest; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer's door she lays her head. And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown." 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 the well-known line, "Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn.” No one has as yet succeeded in defining accurately and concisely what "Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, Indeed, the pathetic side of emigration has never been so powerfully presented to us as in this poem : "When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last, And worst of all, in this imaginative departure, we find that Poetry herself is leaving our shores. She is now to try her voice "On Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side;" and the poet, in the closing lines of the poem, bids her a passionate and tender farewell "Add thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid, Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, In So ends this graceful, melodious, tender poem, the position of which in English Literature, and in the estimation of all who love English Literature, has not been disturbed by any fluctuations of literary fashion. We may give more attention at the moment to the new experiments of the poetic method; but we return only with renewed gratitude to the old familiar strain, not the least merit of which is that it has nothing about it of foreign tricks or graces. English literature there is nothing more thoroughly English than these writings produced by an Irishman. And whether or not it was Paddy Byrne, and Catharine Geraghty, and the Lissoy ale-house that Goldsmith had in his mind when he was writing the poem, is not of much consequence: the manner and language and feeling are all essentially English; so that we never think of calling Goldsmith anything but an English poet. The poem met with great and immediate success. Of course every thing that Dr. Goldsmith now wrote was read by the public; he had not to wait for the recommendation of the reviews; but, in this case, even the reviews had scarcely any thing but praise in the welcome of his new book. It was dedicated, in graceful and ingenious terms, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who returned the compliment by painting a picture and placing on the engraving of it this inscription: “This attempt to express a character in the Deserted Village is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith by his sincere friend and admirer, Sir Joshua Reynolds." What Goldsmith got from Griffin for the poem is not accurately known; and this is a misfortune, for the knowledge would have enabled us to judge whether at that time it was possible for a poet to court the draggle-tail muses without risk of starvation. if fame were his chief object in the composition of the poem, he was sufficiently rewarded; and it is to be surmised that by this time the people in Ireland-no longer implored to get subscribers-had heard of the proud position won by the vagrant youth who had "taken the world for his pillow" some eighteen years before. But That his own thoughts had sometimes wandered back to the scenes ; and friends of his youth during this labour of love, we know from his letters. In January of this year, while as yet the Deserted Village was not quite through the press, he wrote to his brother Maurice and expressed himself as most anxious to hear all about the relatives from whom he had been so long parted. He has something to say about himself too; wishes it to be known that the King has lately been pleased to make him Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting which he has just established;" but gives no very flourishing account of his circumstances. "Honours to one in my situation are something like ruffles to a man that wants a shirt." However, there is some small legacy of fourteen or fifteen pounds left him by his uncle Contarine, which he understands to be in the keeping of his cousin Lawder; and to this wealth he is desirous of foregoing all claim his relations must settle how it may be best expended. But there is not a reference to his literary achievements, or the position won by them; not the slightest yielding to even a pardonable vanity; it is a modest, affectionate letter. The only hint that Maurice Goldsmith receives of the esteem in which his brother is held in London, is contained in a brief mention of Johnson, Burke, and others as his friends. "I have sent my cousin Jenny a miniature picture of myself, as I believe it is the most acceptable present I can offer. I have ordered it to be left for her at George Faulkenor's, folded in a letter. The face, you well know, is ugly enough; but it is finely painted. I will shortly also send my friends over the Shannon some mezzotinto prints of myself, and some more of my friends here, such as Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, and Colman. I believe I have written an hundred letters to different friends in your country, and never received an answer from any of them. I do not know how to account for this, or why they are unwilling to keep up for me those regards which I must ever retain for them." The letter winds up with an appeal for news, news, news. CHAPTER XV. OCCASIONAL WRITINGS. SOME two months after the publication of the Deserted Village, when its success had been well assured, Goldsmith proposed to himself the relaxation of a little Continental tour; and he was accompanied by three ladies, Mrs. Horneck and her two pretty daughters, who doubtless took more charge of him than he did of them. This Mrs. Horneck, the widow of a certain Captain Horneck, was connected with Reynolds, while Burke was the guardian of the two girls; so that it was natural that they should make the acquaintance of Dr. Goldsmith. |