smith. His "Descriptive Sketches," published in 1793, are obviously the production of a mind in which the cadences of the "Traveller" still dwelt, and in which its cast of thought was not forgotten.* Goldsmith's verse cannot perhaps be said to aim high, but what it aims at it thoroughly attains. He was no aspirant after the glaring novelties of a specious and boastful originality; but seems to have been fully convinced that new varieties of poetical form were unnecessary or dangerous, and that the most available moods of that mighty lyre-our noble English vernacular-had been sufficiently tried, authenticated, and established by the practice of its loftiest masters. His object was not to open new channels of verse, but to fill the old with a clear, We need not go farther than the following description of the enjoyments of the rambling tourist, near the commencement of the poem : No gains too cheaply earned his fancy cloy, With bashful fear no cottage children steal Or desperate love, could lead a wanderer there. Those who prefer to detect imitation in its more private recesses, will compare the use of the personal pronoun in the passage imediately following the above Me, lured by hope its sorrows to remove, A heart that could not much itself approve, &c. with the corresponding lines in the Traveller- But me, not destin'd such delights to share, Some fleeting good that mocks me with the view. Wordsworth's poem is indeed far inferior to its finished and beautiful model; but Wordsworth was then young, nor had his muse yet learned that it was her high destiny to shine by no borrowed light or rather-as it was imagined in one of the ancient philosophies, that all the starry fires were originally imbibed and condensed from the igneous sphere above and around them-that it is the prerogative of genius, even though it should at first borrow its flame from the glories that encompass it, to glitter for ever after by self-sustained and independent effulgence. every inch is equally solid, and where no cement of poorer stuff is required to fill up crevices. He carried this notion so far as to presume to declare himself better pleased with Gray's Elegy in such a form as this The curfew tolls the knell of day, The lowing herd winds o'er the lea; The impatience of the narrator, In the Traveller, Goldsmith has expressed, in verse of unequalled grace, the philosophy of man and of society, which in other forms pervades his entire writings. The doctrine he discloses in this poetical survey, is the basis of all that strain of universal tolerance and moderation which constituted the whole extent of his political and moral views. And doubtless it is no bad philosophy. The great principle, that happiness is not to be sought in external circumstance but in the purity of the mind, that in Pope's pregnant words, " 'tis no where to be found or every where ;" and that this happiness-far more independent of peculiarities of government or laws than we are apt to imagine-each social community attempts to attain by the exclusive pursuit of some favourite principle which invariably, by being urged to excess, brings on national declension; this doctrine, understood in the privileged latitude of poetry, is unquestionably true. In these days of public spirit, when moderation is apt to be styled pusillanimity, we have little doubt that the part of the theory which tends to discourage political interference is rejected by many with scorn. The Montesquieus of the ale-house, who lecture upon the rights of the people, with brains as muddy as their beverage, visit it with their august disapproval. It is in vain to tell them that the government "works well”— -we beg pardon for the obsolete idiom-if they are not permitted to see the effects in their causes, to scrutinize the springs of the machinery, and to exercise their critical discrimination in a cataract of universal censure. They feel in pretty good health, it is true, and the shop is thriving; but then with such a tyranny above them, they know they ought to feel uncomfortable; and who shall dare question their right to be unhappy? If they please to enjoy the rapture of shuddering at the rapacity of a despotic aristocracy and a plethoric church, and the ruin of the nation, that has for centuries been of both; who is so cruel as to deprive breathing its last beneath the pressure under the fervour of patriotism and the dear drunken martyrs, staggering Porter, of their luxury of disconstating their case, we begin to symtent? Really, from the very force of pathize with it; and we should indeed lament that the influence of our poet should have been exerted to abridge such refined enjoyments, if there were sagacious statists in question or of any fear of his ever being read by the their intellects (in our day at least) ever condescending to sink to the pages of Goldsmith, from the study of those two profound journals with the astronomical designations which each successive day enlighten our political firmament. For Goldsmith had a cowardly notion, that as long as the weight of government does not press on individuals, they may relinquish all trouble about the secret involutions of its mechanism. Yet let us do justice to the dastard, and dog as he is, give him a chance of his life. He did not conceive that if a government first perpetrated public robbery, and then connived at afraid of the gang with whom they its continuation, because were sworn to fellowship-that if after neutralizing by one measure the legitimate influence of an integral part of the constitution, they then hired a privileged parliamentary ruffian to sneer down its very existence-that in such a case of flagrant and unparalleled malversation as this, if such should of the subject. No, in such a case ever occur, silence was the only duty he would have felt that the primary instinct of self-preservation impelled Property to speak out against public Piracy. So that after all, perhaps our poet may still find some pardon from the lovers of aggregate meetings; and the patriotic journals which bid them be noisy when unmolested and mute under a chain of insults, may perhaps be sometimes superseded by the puerilities of a ninny like Goldsmith. But more than enough of them and of their oracles! However the philosophy of The Traveller may be praised or censured, there is, we presume, little dispute about the poetry. There has seldom been so much lively and varied description comprised in so small a space, and or namented with moral associations so of English poetry, and the passage which describes Britain and the British character (opening with the sudden transition so often admired) was seen to draw tears from Johnson. Yet, even the Traveller had not shewn the perfection which Goldsmith's genius was capable of attaining. It remained for him still to present to his countrymen a poem which contains a more accurate portraiture of nature in one of its sweetest phases, a more profound pathos, and a more exquisite selection of affecting images, than any production of its class in this or in any other language. The political views which are embodied in the Deserted Village are indeed similar to those of the Traveller; but the subject allowed of those minuter touches which confer on it a higher polish, and, by the verisimilitude of the depiction, a more lasting power over the affections. Could there be more of pathetic force conveyed in a single incidental circumstance than in the description of one dismantled spot, as being a place "Where once the garden smil'd, And still where many a garden flower grows wild." Few who rise from the perusal of the poem will be inclined to rate Cumberland's criticism of its author as very correct,either in principle or application. "That he was a poet," says this lively but superficial writer, "there is no doubt, but the paucity of his verses does not allow us to rank him in that high station where his genius might have carried him. There must be bulk, variety, and grandeur of 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, One and eggs of small birds too. great magnificent whole must be accomplished before we can pronounce the maker to be the ο ποιητής. Pope himself never earned this title by any work of magnitude but his Homer, and that being a translation, only constituted him an accomplished versifier." Is it necessary to supply any answer to such criticism as this? It amounts to no more than reminding us that Goldsmith is not a Shakspeare or a Milton; for the discussion of his claim to the name of Poet is but a question of words, and if we first arbitrarily confine the designation to such minds as these, of course it will follow, irresistibly, that Goldsmith has no right to receive it. But when the critic includes him in the same category as Pope, and involves him in a similar censure, the admirers of Goldsmith will, we believe, be quite satisfied, or flattered, with any verdict of condemnation which is shared with the author of the Essay on Man. Goldsmith indeed wrote little poetry, and projected no vast works of verse. Nay, we will admit that there are few writers who repeat themselves oftener; so that the actual quantity of his productions, by the process of rejecting iterations, might be still farther diminished. Many of the moral reflections of his Traveller and Deserted Village, occur in the Citizen of the World, the Vicar of Wakefield, and his miscellaneous Essays; and some of the ornamental images in both the poems occur not only in his own writings, but in those of preceding authors. Yet with all these abatements there will remain enough of excellence in the little volume of his verse to entitle him to the first rank among the poets of his day, and to a place which, in all its peculiarities of intellectual character, could unquestionably be filled by no other poet in the annals of our literary history. He died in the midst of a triumphant course. Every year that he lived would have added to his reputation. There is assuredly no symptom of decadence in the picturesque pages of his last work, the History of Animated Nature: a book which, not possessing indeed the character of authority only to be granted to faithful reports of personal observation, is yet unequalled for clearness of expression and all the charms of a most graceful style. Northcote tells us that he had just begun a novel before his death; and a second Vicar of Wakefield may have been buried in the tomb of Goldsmith. The moral characteristics of the man The fine couplet in the opening passage of the Traveller, Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain is apparently anticipated by Cibber ;-" When I am with Florimel, it (my heart) is still your prisoner-it only draws a longer chain after it ;"—and certainly by himself in the Citizen of the World, "The ties that bind me to my native country and you are still unbroken; by every remove I only drag a greater length of chain." There is a pretty idea in one of his essays, where enlarging on the advantages of the restrictions of rhyme in poetry, he tells us that "Fancy like a fountain plays highest by diminishing the aperture." Did he derive this thought from the following neat verses of M. de la Faye? De la contrainte rigoureuse L'onde s'éleve dans les airs, &c. They may be seen praised and vindicated in Voltaire's preface to his Edipe. But we shun the easy task of imputing plagiarisms. There are those, we doubt not, who would term the elegy on Mrs. Blaize a scandalous larceny, because The king himself has followed her When she has walked before, is forestalled in Shakespeare; Pandar. Do not you follow the young lord Paris? Troil. & Cress. III. i. But we do not sympathize in the perpetual advertisements of stolen goods with which some of our modern journals abound. We will never condescend to edit a Parnassian Hue and Cry. nance. are known to the world. Garrick employed the licensed exaggeration of satire when he styled him a "scholar, rake, Christian, dupe, gambler, and poet;" but there is much more truth in the catalogue than would be sufficient to keep the falsehood in counteHis early wanderings, vague and aimless, had never gained him admission into any valuable foreign society; and, accordingly, they had given him little practical experience. Virtues uncorrupted, and faults uncorrected, he returned as he went; and his subsequent life as a professed author was not calculated to supply the deficiencies of his youth. But amid all his errors, let us never forget the deep and unvarying attachment of Goldsmith to his country and his family; the attachment that dictated his memorable reply to the duke-then earl-of Northumberland, (who had sent for the poet to apprise him of his unsolicited readiness to promote his interests by any means in his power)-that "he had a brother, a clergyman in Ireland, who stood in need of help!" And let us not forget that many of his faults arose from those very susceptibilities which lay at the root of his genius. A genius so tender and touching in its written results is seldom an accession to the real happiness of its gifted possessor. Fixed upon ideal excellencies it sees the mixed character of human life with discontent; stimulating the imagination to preposterous hopes it makes disappointments at once more frequent and more acute; and magnifying supposed wrongs to undue importance, it perpetually swells momentary vexations into permanent resentments, and thus, by an ingenuity in self-annoyance, finds in imaginary insults real misfortune. Truly and finely has Goethe written in his exquisite "Torquato Tasso"--which is perhaps the most pathetic description ever drawn of the maladies of this over-wrought sensibility. Thou dost not to the pictured martyr grudge SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF EDWARD LASCELLES, GENT. CHAP. XXIII. NAPLES. Meminisse juvabit.— Virgil. "See Naples and die!" was once remarked by some dreamy tourist, and every vain Neapolitan caught the echo up; "See Naples and live as long as you can to enjoy it," is the maxim which I would recommend in preference, to the attention of my readers. Naples is, indeed, a place where one may be truly said to awaken to a full consciousness of existence. The balmy air laden with the fragrance of the orange, the citron, and the myrtle; the magnificent landscapes that present themselves on every side, in all those varieties of form and hue which the pencils of Claude, or Titian, or Salvator loved to pourtray; the interesting remains of antiquity which recall the names and the deeds of "the mighty men of Rome," and fill the memory with the enchanting imaginings of Homer and Virgil; all this, added to the delightful society, which may be said to consist of the gay and the talented of almost every nation, form a combination of attractions not perhaps to be equalled in any other corner of the earth. With so much to see and so much to enjoy, it may be supposed that during my stay at Naples my time was fully occupied. In the society of my kind French friends I visited every spot pleasing for its beauty, or interesting for its antiquity. With them I wandered through the now deserted streets of the once populous Pompeii; and lingering among the ruins of its houses, its temples and its theatres, I wondered to think how like ourselves were the Romans of two thousand years ago. We treaded our way through streets which still bore the marks of the wheels by which they were traversed so many centuries ago; we entered the shops on either side, and could almost fancy |