Chapter XVI: Introduction

He was born . . . at Pallas. This is the usual
account. But it was maintained by the family of the poet’s mother, and has
been contended (by Dr. Michael F. Cox in a Lecture on ‘The Country and
Kindred of Oliver Goldsmith,’ published in vol. 1, pt. 2, of the _Journal_
of the ‘National Literary Society of Ireland.’ 1900) that his real
birth-place was the residence of Mrs. Goldsmith’s parents, Smith-Hill
House, Elphin, Roscommon, to which she was in the habit of paying frequent
visits. Meanwhile, in 1897, a window was placed to Goldsmith’s memory in
Forgney Church, Longford,—the church of which, at the time of his
birth, his father was curate.

his academic career was not a success. ‘Oliver
Goldsmith is recorded on two occasions as being remarkably diligent at
Morning Lecture; again, as cautioned for bad answering at Morning and
Greek Lectures; and finally, as put down into the next class for neglect
of his studies’ (Dr. Stubbs’s _History of the University of Dublin_,
1889, p. 201 n.)

a scratched signature upon a window-pane. This,
which is now at Trinity College, Dublin, is here reproduced in facsimile.
When the garrets of No. 35, Parliament Square, were pulled down in 1837,
it was cut out of the window by the last occupant of the rooms, who broke
it in the process. (Dr. J. F. Waller in Cassell’s _Works_ of
Goldsmith, [1864–5], pp. xiii-xiv n.)

a poor physician. Where he obtained his diploma
is not known. It was certainly not at Padua (_Athenaeum_, July
21, 1894). At Leyden and Louvain Prior made inquiries but, in each case,
without success. The annals of the University of Louvain were, however,
destroyed in the revolutionary wars. (Prior, _Life_, 1837, i,
pp. 171, 178).

declared it to be by Goldsmith. Goldsmith’s
authorship of this version has now been placed beyond a doubt by the
publication in facsimile of his signed receipt to Edward Dilly for
third share of ‘my translation,’ such third share amounting to 6 pounds
13s. 4d. The receipt, which belongs to Mr. J. W. Ford of Enfield Old Park,
is dated ‘January 11th, 1758.’ (_Memoirs of a Protestant_,
etc., Dent’s edition, 1895, i, pp. xii-xviii.)

12, Green Arbour Court, Old Bailey. This was a
tiny square occupying a site now absorbed by the Holborn Viaduct and
Railway Station. No. 12, where Goldsmith lived, was later occupied by
Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. as a printing office. An engraving of the
Court forms the frontispiece to the _European Magazine_ for
January, 1803.

or some of his imitators. The proximate cause of
the _Citizen of the World_, as the present writer has suggested
elsewhere, _ may_ have been Horace Walpole’s _Letter from XoHo_
[Soho?], _a Chinese Philosopher at London, to his friend Lien Chi, at
Peking_. This was noticed as ‘in Montesquieu’s manner’ in the May issue
of the _Monthly Review_ for 1757, to which Goldsmith was a
contributor (_Eighteenth Century Vignettes_, first series,
second edition, 1897, pp. 108–9).

demonstrable from internal evidence. e.g.—The
references to the musical glasses (ch. ix), which were the rage in 1761–2;
and to the _Auditor_ (ch. xix) established by Arthur Murphy in
June of the latter year. The sale of the ‘Vicar’ is discussed at length in
chapter vii of the editor’s _Life of Oliver Goldsmith_ (‘Great
Writers’ series), 1888, pp. 110–21.

started with a loss. This, which to some critics
has seemed unintelliglble, rests upon the following: ‘The first three
editions, . . . resulted in a loss, and the fourth, which was not issued
until eight [four?] years after the first, started with a balance against
it of £2 16s. 6d., and it was not until that fourth edition had been
sold that the balance came out on the right side’ (_A Bookseller of
the Last Century_ [John Newbery] by Charles Welsh, 1885, p. 61). The
writer based his statement upon Collins’s ‘Publishing book, account of
books printed and shares therein, No. 3, 1770 to 1785.’

James’s Powder. This was a famous patent
panacea, invented by Johnson’s Lichfield townsman, Dr. Robert James of the
_Medicinal Dictionary_. It was sold by John Newbery, and had an
extraordinary vogue. The King dosed Princess Elizabeth with it; Fielding,
Gray, and Cowper all swore by it, and Horace Walpole, who wished to try it
upon Mme. du Deffand _in extremis_,
said he should use it if the house were on fire. William Hawes, the Strand
apothecary who attended Goldsmith, wrote an interesting _Account of the
late Dr. Goldsmith’s Illness, so far as relates to the Exhibition of Dr.
James’s Powders,_ etc., 1774, which he dedicated to Reynolds and Burke.
To Hawes once belonged the poet’s worn old wooden writing-desk, now in the
South Kensington Museum, where are also his favourite chair and cane.
Another desk-chair, which had descended from his friend, Edmund Bott, was
recently for sale at Sotheby’s (July, 1906).

GREEN ARBOUR COURT,

LITTLE OLD BAILEY

(as it appeared in 1803)

EDITIONS OF THE POEMS.

No collected edition of Goldsmith’s poetical works appeared until after
his death. But, in 1775, W. Griffin, who had published the _Essays_
of ten years earlier, issued a volume entitled _The Miscellaneous
Works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B., containing all his Essays and Poems_.
The ‘poems’ however were confined to ‘The Traveller,’ ‘The Deserted
Village,’ ‘Edwin and Angelina,’ ‘The Double Transformation,’ ‘A New
Simile,’ and ‘Retaliation,’—an obviously imperfect harvesting. In
the following year G. Kearsly printed an eighth edition of _Retaliation_,
with which he included ‘The Hermit’ (‘Edwin and Angelina’), ‘The Gift,’
‘Madam Blaize,’ and the epilogues to _The Sister_ and _She
stoops to Conquer_;* while to an edition of _The Haunch of
Venison_, also put forth in 1776, he added the ‘Epitaph on Parnell’
and two songs from the oratorio of _The Captivity_. The next
collection appeared in a volume of _Poems and Plays_ published
at Dublin in 1777, where it was preceded by a ‘Life,’ written by W.
Glover, one of Goldsmith’s ‘Irish clients.’ Then, in 1780, came vol. i of
T. Evans’s _ Poetical and Dramatic Works, etc., now first collected_,
also having a ‘Memoir,’ and certainly fuller than anything which had gone
before. Next followed the long-deferred _Miscellaneous Works,_
etc., of 1801, in four volumes, vol. ii of which comprised the plays and
poems. Prefixed to this edition is the important biographical sketch,
compiled under the direction of Bishop Percy, and usually described as the
_Percy Memoir_, by which title it is referred to in the ensuing
notes. The next memorable edition was that edited for the Aldine Series in
1831, by the Rev. John Mitford. Prior and Wright’s edition in vol. iv of
the _Miscellaneous Works_, etc., of 1837, comes after this;
then Bolton Corney’s excellent _Poetical Works_ of 1845; and
vol. i of Peter Cunningham’s _Works_, etc. of 1854. There are
other issues of the poems, the latest of which is to be found in vol. ii
(1885) of the complete _Works_, in five volumes, edited for
Messrs. George Bell and Sons by J. W. M. Gibbs.

* Some copies of this are dated 1777, and contain _The Haunch
of Venison_ and a few minor pieces.

Most of the foregoing editions have been consulted for the following
notes; but chiefly those of Mitford, Prior, Bolton Corney, and Cunningham.
Many of the illustrations and explanations now supplied will not, however,
be found in any of the sources indicated. When an elucidatory or parallel
passage is cited, an attempt has been made, as far as possible, to give
the credit of it to the first discoverer. Thus, some of the illustrations
in Cunningham’s notes are here transferred to Prior, some of Prior’s to
Mitford, and so forth. As regards the notes themselves, care has been
taken to make them full enough to obviate the necessity, except in rare
instances, of further investigation. It is the editor’s experience that
references to external authorities are, as a general rule, sign-posts to
routes which are seldom travelled.*

* In this connexion may be recalled the dictum of Hume quoted by Dr.
Birkbeck Hill:—‘Every book should be as complete as possible within
itself, and should never refer for anything material to other books’ (_History
of England_, 1802, ii. 101).

THE TRAVELLER.

It was on those continental wanderings which occupied Goldsmith between
February, 1755 and February, 1756 that he conceived his first idea of
this, the earliest of his poems to which he prefixed his name; and he
probably had in mind Addison’s _Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax_,
a work in which he found ‘a strain of political thinking that was, at that
time [1701]. new in our poetry.’ (_Beauties of English Poesy_,
1767, i. III). From the dedicatory letter to his brother—which says
expressly, ‘as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from
Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed
to you’—it is plain that some portion of it must have been actually
composed abroad. It was not, however, actually published until the 19th of
December, 1764, and the title-page bore the date of 1765.* The publisher
was John Newbery, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the price of the book, a
quarto of 30 pages, was 1s. 6d. A second, third and fourth edition quickly
followed, and a ninth, from which it is here reprinted, was issued in
1774, the year of the author’s death. Between the first and the sixth
edition of 1770 there were numerous alterations, the more important of
which are indicated in the ensuing notes.

* This is the generally recognized first edition. But the late Mr.
Frederick Locker Lampson, the poet and collector, possessed a quarto copy,
dated 1764, which had no author’s name, and in which the dedication ran as
follows:—‘This poem is inscribed to the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, M.A.
By his most affectionate Brother Oliver Goldsmith.’ It was, in all
probability, unique, though it is alleged that there are octavo copies
which present similar characteristics. It has now gone to America with the
Rowfant Library.

In 1902 an interesting discovery was made by Mr. Bertram Dobell, to
whom the public are indebted for so many important literary ‘finds.’ In a
parcel of pamphlets he came upon a number of loose printed leaves entitled
_A Prospect of Society_. They obviously belonged to _The
Traveller_; but seemed to be its ‘formless unarranged material,’ and
contained many variations from the text of the first edition. Mr. Dobell’s
impression was that ‘the author’s manuscript, written on loose leaves, had
fallen into confusion, and was then printed without any attempt at
re-arrangement.’ This was near the mark; but the complete solution of the
riddle was furnished by Mr. Quiller Couch in an article in the _Daily
News_ for March 31, 1902, since recast in his charming volume _From
a Cornish Window_, 1906, pp. 86–92. He showed conclusively that
_The Prospect_ was ‘merely an early draft of _The
Traveller_ printed backwards in fairly regular sections.’ What had
manifestly happened was this. Goldsmith, turning over each page as
written, had laid it on the top of the preceding page of MS. and forgotten
to rearrange them when done. Thus the series of pages were reversed; and,
so reversed, were set up in type by a matter-of-fact compositor. Mr.
Dobell at once accepted this happy explanation; which—as Mr. Quiller
Couch points out—has the advantage of being a ‘blunder just so
natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable.’ One or two of the
variations of Mr. Dobell’s ‘find’—variations, it should be added,
antecedent to the first edition—are noted in their places.

The didactic purpose of _The Traveller_ is defined in the
concluding paragraph of the _Dedication_; and, like many of the
thoughts which it contains, had been anticipated in a passage
of _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 185:—‘Every mind
seems capable of entertaining a certain quantity of happiness, which no
institutions can encrease, no circumstances alter, and entirely
independent on fortune.’ But the best short description of the poem is
Macaulay’s:—‘In the _Traveller_ the execution, though
deserving of much praise, is far inferior to the design. No philosophical
poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble, and at the same time so
simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the
point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless
prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the varieties of scenery,
of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he
has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our
happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper
and regulation of our own minds.’ (_Encyclop. Britannica_,
Goldsmith, February, 1856.)

The only definite record of payment for _ The Traveller_ is
‘Copy of the Traveller, a Poem, 21_l_,’ in Newbery’s MSS.; but as the
same sum occurs in Memoranda of much later date than 1764, it is possible
that the success of the book may have prompted some supplementary fee.

A Prospect, i.e. ‘a view.’ ‘I went to Putney, and
other places on the Thames, to take ‘prospects’ in crayon, to carry into
France, where I thought to have them engraved’ (Evelyn, _Diary_,
20th June, 1649). And Reynolds uses the word of Claude in his Fourth
Discourse:—‘His pictures are a composition of the various draughts
which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects’
(_Works_, by Malone, 1798, i. 105). The word is common on old
prints, e.g. _An Exact Prospect of the Magnificent Stone Bridge at
Westminster_, etc., 1751.

Dedication. The Rev. Henry Goldsmith, says the
Percy _ Memoir_, 1801, p. 3, ‘had distinguished himself both at
school and at college, but he unfortunately married at the early age of
nineteen; which confined him to a Curacy, and prevented his rising to
preferment in the church.’

with an income of forty pounds a year. Cf. _The
Deserted Village_, ll. 141–2:—

A man he was, to all the country dear,

And passing rich with _forty pounds a year_.

Cf. also Parson Adams in ch. iii of _Joseph Andrews_, who has
twenty-three; and Mr. Rivers, in the _Spiritual Quixote_,
1772:—‘I do not choose to go into orders to be a curate all my
life-time, and work for about fifteen-pence a day, or twenty-five pounds
a year’ (bk. vi, ch. xvii). Dr. Primrose’s stipend is thirty-five in the
first instance, fifteen in the second (_Vicar of Wakefield_,
chapters ii and iii). But Professor Hales (_Longer English Poems_,
1885, p. 351) supplies an exact parallel in the case of Churchill, who, he
says, when a curate at Rainham, ‘prayed and starved on _ forty pounds a
year_.’ The latter words are Churchill’s own, and sound like a
quotation; but he was dead long before _The Deserted Village_
appeared in 1770. There is an interesting paper in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ for November, 1763, on the miseries and hardships of the
‘inferior clergy.’

But of all kinds of ambition, etc. In the first
edition of 1765, p. ii, this passage was as follows:—‘But of all
kinds of ambition, as things are now circumstanced, perhaps that which
pursues poetical fame, is the wildest. What from the encreased refinement
of the times, from the diversity of judgments produced by opposing systems
of criticism, and from the more prevalent divisions of opinion influenced
by party, the strongest and happiest efforts can expect to please but in a
very narrow circle. Though the poet were as sure of his aim as the
imperial archer of antiquity, who boasted that he never missed the heart;
yet would many of his shafts now fly at random, for the heart is too often
in the wrong place.’ In the second edition it was curtailed; in the sixth
it took its final form.

they engross all that favour once shown to her.
First version—‘They engross all favour to themselves.’

the elder’s birthright. Cunningham here aptly
compares Dryden’s epistle _To Sir Godfrey Kneller_, II. 89–92:—

Our arts are sisters, though not twins in birth;

For hymns were sung in Eden’s happy earth:

But oh, the painter muse, though last in place,

Has seized the blessing first, like Jacob’s race.

_Party_=faction. Cf. lines 31–2 on Edmund Burke in
_ Retaliation_:—

Who, born for the Universe, narrow’d his mind,

And to _party_ gave up what was meant for mankind.

Such readers generally admire, etc. ‘I suppose this
paragraph to be directed against Paul Whitehead, or Churchill,’ writes
Mitford. It was clearly aimed at Churchill, since Prior (_Life_,
1837, ii. 54) quotes a portion of a contemporary article in the _St.
James’s Chronicle_ for February 7–9, 1765, attributed to Bonnell
Thornton, which leaves little room for doubt upon the question. ‘The
latter part of this paragraph,’ says the writer, referring to the passage
now annotated, ‘we cannot help considering as a reflection on the memory
of the late Mr. Churchill, whose talents as a poet were so greatly and so
deservedly admired, that during his short reign, his merit in great
measure eclipsed that of others; and we think it no mean acknowledgment of
the excellencies of this poem [_The Traveller_] to say that,
like the stars, they appear the more brilliant now that the sun of our
poetry is gone down.’ Churchill died on the 4th of November, 1764, some
weeks before the publication of _The Traveller_. His powers, it
may be, were misdirected and misapplied; but his rough vigour and his
manly verse deserved a better fate at Goldsmith’s hands.

tawdry was added in the sixth edition of 1770.

blank verse. Cf. _The Present State of Polite
Learning_, 1759, p. 150—‘From a desire in the critic of
grafting the spirit of ancient languages upon the English, has proceeded
of late several disagreeable instances of pedantry. Among the number, I
think we may reckon _blank verse_. Nothing but the greatest sublimity
of subject can render such a measure pleasing; however, we now see it used
on the most trivial occasions’—by which last remark Goldsmith
probably, as Cunningham thinks, intended to refer to the efforts of
Akenside, Dyer, and Armstrong. His views upon blank verse were shared by
Johnson and Gray. At the date of the present dedication, the latest
offender in this way had been Goldsmith’s old colleague on _The
Monthly Review_, Dr. James Grainger, author of _The Sugar Cane_,
which was published in June, 1764. (Cf. also _The Bee_ for 24th
November, 1759, ‘An account of the Augustan Age of England.’)

and that this principle, etc. In the first edition
this read—‘and that this principle in each state, and in our own in
particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess.’

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow. Mitford
(Aldine edition, 1831, p. 7) compares the following lines from Ovid:—

Solus, inops, exspes, leto poenaeque relictus.

_Metamorphoses_, xiv. 217.

Exsul, inops erres, alienaque limina lustres, etc.

_Ibis_. 113.

slow. A well-known passage from Boswell must here be
reproduced:—‘Chamier once asked him [Goldsmith], what he meant by _slow_,
the last word in the first line of _The Traveller_,

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

Did he mean tardiness of locomotion? Goldsmith, who would say something
without consideration, answered “yes.” I [Johnson] was sitting by, and
said, “No, Sir, you do not mean tardiness of locomotion; you mean, that
sluggishness of mind which comes upon a man in solitude.” Chamier believed
then that I had written the line as much as if he had seen me write it.’
[Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, iii. 252–3.) It is quite
possible, however, that Goldsmith meant no more than he said.

the rude Carinthian boor. ‘Carinthia,’ says
Cunningham, ‘was visited by Goldsmith in 1755, and still (1853) retains
its character for inhospitality.’

Campania. ‘Intended,’ says Bolton Corney, ‘to denote
_La campagna di Roma_. The portion of it which extends from Rome to
Terracina is scarcely habitable.’

a lengthening chain. Prior compares Letter iii of
_The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 5:—‘The farther I
travel I feel the pain of separation with stronger force, those ties that
bind me to my native country, and you, are still unbroken. By every
remove, I only drag a greater length of chain.’ But, as Mitford points
out, Cibber has a similar thought in his _Comical Lovers_,
1707, Act v:—‘When I am with Florimel, it [my heart] is still your
prisoner, _it only draws a longer chain after it_.’ And earlier still
in Dryden’s ‘All for Love’, 1678, Act ii, Sc. 1:—

My life on’t, he still drags a chain along,

That needs must clog his flight.

with simple plenty crown’d. In the first edition
this read ‘where mirth and peace abound.’

the luxury of doing good. Prior compares Garth’s
_Claremont_, 1715, where he speaks of the Druids:—

Hard was their Lodging, homely was their Food,

For all their _Luxury was doing Good_.

my prime of life. He was seven-and-twenty when he
landed at Dover in February, 1756.

That, like the circle bounding, etc. Cf. _Vicar
of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 160–1 (ch. x):—‘Death, the only
friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with
the view, and like his horizon, still flies before him.’ [Prior.]

And find no spot of all the world my own. Prior
compares his namesake’s lines _In the Beginning of_ [Jacques] _Robbe’s
Geography_, 1700:—

My destin’d Miles I shall have gone,

By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE,

And _found no Foot of Earth my own._

above the storm’s career. Cf. 1. 190 of _The
Deserted Village._

should thankless pride repine? First edition,
‘’twere thankless to repine.’

Say, should the philosophic mind, etc. First
edition:—

’Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,

To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply’d

hoard. ‘Sum’ in the first edition.

Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own. In the
first version this was—

Boldly asserts that country for his own.

And yet, perhaps, etc. In the first edition, for
this and the following five lines appeared these eight:—

And yet, perhaps, if states with states we scan,

Or estimate their bliss on Reason’s plan,

Though patriots flatter, and though fools contend,

We still shall find uncertainty suspend;

Find that each good, by Art or Nature given,

To these or those, but makes the balance even:

Find that the bliss of all is much the same,

And patriotic boasting reason’s shame!

On Idra’s cliffs. Bolton Corney conjectures that
Goldsmith meant ‘Idria, a town in Carniola, noted for its mines.’
‘Goldsmith in his “History of Animated Nature” makes mention of the mines,
and spells the name in the same way as here.’ (Mr. J. H. Lobban’s _Select
Poems of Goldsmith_, 1900, p. 87). Lines 84–5, it may be added, are
not in the first edition.

And though the rocky-crested summits frown. In the
first edition:—

And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.

lines 91–2. are not in the first editions.

peculiar, i.e. ‘proper,’ ‘appropriate.’

winnow, i.e. ‘waft,’ ‘disperse.’ John Evelyn refers
to these ‘sea-born gales’ in the ‘Dedication’ of his _Fumifugium_,
1661:— ‘Those who take notice of the scent of the orange-flowers
from the rivage of Genoa, and St. Pietro dell’ Arena; the blossomes of the
rosemary from the Coasts of Spain, many leagues off at sea; or the
manifest, and odoriferous wafts which flow from Fontenay and Vaugirard,
even to Paris in the season of roses, with the contrary effect of those
less pleasing smells from other accidents, will easily consent to what I
suggest [i.e. the planting of sweet-smelling trees].’ (_Miscellaneous
Writings_, 1825, p. 208.)

Till, more unsteady, etc. In the first edition:—

But, more unsteady than the southern gale,

Soon Commerce turn’d on other shores her sail.

There is a certain resemblance between this passage and one of the later
paradoxes of Smollett’s Lismahago;—‘He affirmed, the nature of
commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having
flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so
continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no
instance of the tide’s rising a second time to any considerable influx in
the same nation’ (_Humphry Clinker_, 1771, ii. 192. Letter of
Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis).

lines 141–2. are not in the first edition.

Its former strength was but plethoric ill. Cf.
_The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 98:—‘In short, the
state resembled one of those bodies bloated with disease, whose bulk is
only a symptom of its wretchedness.’ [Mitford.]

Yet still the loss, etc. In the first edition:—

Yet, though to fortune lost, here still abide

Some splendid arts, the wrecks of former pride.

The paste-board triumph and the cavalcade. ‘Happy
Country [he is speaking of Italy], where the pastoral age begins to
revive! Where the wits even of Rome are united into a rural groupe of
nymphs and swains, under the appellation of modern Arcadians [i.e. the
Bolognese Academy of the _Arcadi_]. Where in the midst of porticos,
processions, and cavalcades, abbes turn’d into shepherds, and
shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent _ divertimenti_.’
(_Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, pp. 50–1.) Some of
the ‘paste-board triumphs’ may be studied in the plates of Jacques Callot.

By sports like these, etc. A pretty and well-known
story is told with regard to this couplet. Calling once on Goldsmith,
Reynolds, having vainly tried to attract attention, entered unannounced.
‘His friend was at his desk, but with hand uplifted, and a look directed
to another part of the room; where a little dog sat with difficulty on his
haunches, looking imploringly at his teacher, whose rebuke for toppling
over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced, and looked past
Goldsmith’s shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some
portions of a poem; and looking more closely, he was able to read a
couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line
was wet:—

By sports like these are all their cares beguil’d;

The sports of children satisfy the child.

(Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. pp. 347–8).

The sports of children. This line, in the first
edition, was followed by:—

At sports like these, while foreign arms advance,

In passive ease they leave the world to chance.

Each nobler aim, etc. The first edition reads:—

When struggling Virtue sinks by long controul,

She leaves at last, or feebly mans the soul.

This was changed in the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions to:—

When noble aims have suffer’d long controul,

They sink at last, or feebly man the soul.

No product here, etc. The Swiss mercenaries, here
referred to, were long famous in European warfare.

They parted with a thousand kisses,

And fight e’er since for pay, like Swisses.

Gay’s _Aye and No, a Fable_.

breasts This fine use of ‘breasts’—as
Cunningham points out—is given by Johnson as an example in his
Dictionary.

With patient angle, trolls the finny deep. ‘Troll,’
i.e. as for pike. Goldsmith uses ‘finny prey’ in _The Citizen of the
World_, 1762, ii. 99:—‘The best manner to draw up the _finny
prey_.’ Cf. also ‘warbling grove,’ _Deserted Village_, l.
361, as a parallel to ‘finny deep.’

the struggling savage, i.e. wolf or bear. Mitford
compares the following:—‘He is a beast of prey, and the laws should
make use of as many stratagems and as much force to drive the _
reluctant savage_ into the toils, as the Indians when they hunt the
hyena or the rhinoceros.’ (_Citizen of the World_, 1762, i.
112.) See also Pope’s _Iliad_, Bk. xvii:—

But if the _savage_ turns his glaring eye,

They howl aloof, and round the forest fly.

lines 201–2 are not in the first edition.

For every want, etc. Mitford quotes a parallel
passage in _Animated Nature_, 1774, ii. 123:—‘Every want
thus becomes a means of pleasure, in the redressing.’

Their morals, like their pleasures, are but low.
Probably Goldsmith only uses ‘low’ here in its primitive sense, and not in
that which, in his own day, gave so much umbrage to so many
eighteenth-century students of humanity in the rough. Cf. Fielding, _Tom
Jones_, 1749, iii. 6:— ‘Some of the Author’s Friends cry’d—“Look’e,
Gentlemen, the Man is a Villain; but it is Nature for all that.” And all
the young Critics of the Age, the Clerks, Apprentices, etc., called it _Low_
and fell a Groaning.’ See also _Tom Jones_, iv. 94, and 226–30.
‘There’s nothing comes out but the ‘most lowest’ stuff in nature’—says
Lady Blarney in ch. xi of the _ Vicar_, whose author is
eloquent on this topic in _The Present State of Polite Learning_,
1759, pp. 154–6, and in
_She Stoops to Conquer_, 1773 (Act i); while Graves (_Spiritual
Quixote_, 1772, bk. i, ch. vi) gives the fashion the scientific
appellation of _ tapino-phoby,_ which he defines as ‘a dread of
everything that is _low_, either in writing or in conversation.’ To
Goldsmith, if we may trust George Colman’s _Prologue_ to Miss
Lee’s _Chapter of Accidents_, 1780, belongs the credit of
exorcising this particular form of depreciation:—

When Fielding, Humour’s fav’rite child, appear’d,

_Low_ was the word—a word each author fear’d!

Till chas’d at length, by pleasantry’s bright ray,

Nature and mirth resum’d their legal sway;

And Goldsmith’s genius bask’d in open day.

According to Borrow’s _Lavengro_, ch. xli, Lord Chesterfield
considered that the speeches of Homer’s heroes were frequently
‘exceedingly low.’

How often, etc. This and the lines which
immediately follow are autobiographical. Cf. George Primrose’s story in
_The Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 24–5 (ch. i):—‘I
passed among the harmless peasants of Flanders, and among such of the
French as were poor enough to be very merry; for I ever found them
sprightly in proportion to their wants. Whenever I approached a peasant’s
house towards night-fall, I played one of my most merry tunes, and that
procured me not only a lodging, but subsistence for the next day.’

gestic lore, i.e. traditional gestures or motions.
Scott uses the word ‘gestic’ in _Peveril of the Peak_, ch. xxx,
where King Charles the Second witnesses the dancing of Fenella:—‘He
bore time to her motions with the movement of his foot—applauded
with head and with hand—and seemed, like herself, carried away by
the enthusiasm of the _gestic_ art.’ [Hales.]

Thus idly busy rolls their world away. Pope has
‘Life’s _idle business_’ (_Unfortunate Lady_, l. 81), and—

The _busy, idle_ blockheads of the ball.

Donne’s _Satires_, iv. l. 203.

And all are taught an avarice of praise. Professor
Hales (_Longer English Poems_) compares Horace of the Greeks:—

Praeter laudem, nullius avaris.

_Ars Poetica_, l. 324.

copper lace. ‘St Martin’s lace,’ for which, in
Strype’s day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress’s ‘copper tail’
in _Citizen of the World_, 1762, ii. 60.

To men of other minds, etc. Prior compares with the
description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of _Animated
Nature_, 1774:—‘But we need scarce mention these, when we find
that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and
in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this
country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon
approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a
valley.’

Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf.
Dryden in _Annus Mirabilis_, 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—

And view the ocean leaning on the sky.

the tall rampire’s, i.e. rampart’s (Old French, _rempart,
rempar_). Cf. _Timon of Athens_, Act v. Sc. 4:—‘Our
rampir’d gates.’

bosom reign in the first edition was ‘breast
obtain.’

Even liberty itself is barter’d here. ‘Slavery,’
says Mitford, ‘was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their
parents for a certain number of years.’

A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith
uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of _The Citizen of the
World_, 1762, i. 147.

dishonourable graves. _Julius Caesar_,
Act i. Sc. 2.

Heavens! how unlike, etc. Prior compares a passage
from a manuscript _ Introduction to the History of the Seven Years’
War_:—‘How unlike the brave peasants their ancestors, who
spread terror into either India, and always declared themselves the allies
of those who drew the sword in defence of freedom.’*

* J. W. M. Gibbs (_Works_, v. 9) discovered that parts of
this _History_, hitherto supposed to have been written in 1761, were
published in the _Literary Magazine_, 1757–8.

famed Hydaspes, i.e. the _fabulosus Hydaspes_
of Horace, Bk. i. Ode xxii, and the _Medus Hydaspes_ of Virgil,
_ Georg_, iv. 211, of which so many stores were told. It is now
known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its
name.

Pride in their port, etc. In the first edition
these two lines were inverted.

Here by the bonds of nature feebly held. In the
first edition—

See, though by circling deeps together held.

Nature’s ties was ‘social bonds’ in the first
edition.

Where kings have toil’d, and poets wrote for fame.
In the first edition this line read:—

And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame.

Yet think not, etc. ‘In the things I have hitherto
written I have neither allured the vanity of the great by flattery, nor
satisfied the malignity of the vulgar by scandal, but I have endeavoured
to get an honest reputation by liberal pursuits.’ (Preface to _
English History._) [Mitford.]

Ye powers of truth, etc. The first version has:—

Perish the wish; for, inly satisfy’d,

Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.

Mr. Forster thinks (_Life_, 1871, i. 375) that Goldsmith
altered this (i.e. ‘ragged pride’) because, like the omitted _Haud
inexpertus loquor_ of the _ Enquiry_, it involved an
undignified admission.

lines 365–80 are not in the first edition.

Contracting regal power to stretch their own. ‘It
is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much
as possible; because whatever they take from it is naturally restored to
themselves; and all they have to do in a state, is to undermine the single
tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.’ (_Vicar of
Wakefield_, 1766, i. 202, ch. xix.)

When I behold, etc. Prior compares a passage in
Letter xlix of _ The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 218, where
the Roman senators are spoken of as still flattering the people ‘with a
shew of freedom, while themselves only were free.’

Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
Prior notes a corresponding utterance in _The Vicar of Wakefield_,
1766, i. 206, ch. xix:—‘What they may then expect, may be seen by
turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the
poor, and the rich govern the law.’

I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. Cf. Dr.
Primrose, _ut supra_, p. 201:—‘The generality of mankind also
are of my
way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at
once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest
distance from the greatest number of people.’ Cf. also Churchill, _The
Farewell_, ll. 363–4 and 369–70:—

Let not a Mob of Tyrants seize the helm,

Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm...

Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring,

Be slaves to one, and be that one a King.

lines 393–4. Goldsmith’s first thought was—

Yes, my lov’d brother, cursed be that hour

When first ambition toil’d for foreign power,—

an entirely different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more
logical. (Dobell’s _Prospect of Society_, 1902, pp. xi, 2, and
Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory substitution
is due to Johnson.

Have we not seen, etc. These lines contain the
first idea of the subsequent poem of _The Deserted Village_ (_q.v._).

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. The
Oswego is a river which runs between Lakes Oneida and Ontario. In the
_Threnodia Augustalis_, 1772, Goldsmith writes:—

Oswego’s dreary shores shall be my grave.

The ‘desarts of Oswego’ were familiar to the eighteenth-century reader in
connexion with General Braddock’s ill-fated expedition of 1755, an
account of which Goldsmith had just given in _An History of England,
in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son_, 1764, ii. 202–4.

marks with murderous aim. In the first edition
‘takes a deadly aim.’

pensive exile. This, in the version mentioned in
the next note, was ‘famish’d exile.’

To stop too fearful, and too faint to go. This
line, upon Boswell’s authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck Hill’s
_ Boswell_, 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith’s original ran:—

And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.

(Dobell’s _Prospect of Society_, 1902, p. 3).

How small, of all, etc. Johnson wrote these
concluding
ten lines with the exception of the penultimate couplet. They and line 420
were all—he told Boswell—of which he could be sure (Birkbeck
Hill’s _Boswell_, _ut supra_). Like Goldsmith, he
sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse. The first couplet is
apparently a reminiscence of a passage in his own _Rasselas_,
1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks of ‘the task of a king . . .
who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or
harm.’ (Grant’s _Johnson_, 1887, p. 89.) ‘I would not give half
a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another,’ he
told that ‘vile Whig,’ Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. ‘It is of no moment to
the happiness of an individual’ (Birkbeck Hill’s _ Boswell_,
1887, ii. 170).

The lifted axe. Mitford here recalls Blackmore’s

Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.

The ‘lifted axe’ he also traces to Young and Blackmore, with both of whom
Goldsmith seems to have been familiar; but it is surely not necessary to
assume that he borrowed from either in this instance.

Luke’s iron crown. George and Luke Dosa, or Doscha,
headed a rebellion in Hungary in 1513. The former was proclaimed king by
the peasants; and, in consequence suffered, among other things, the
torture of the red-hot iron crown. Such a punishment took place at
Bordeaux when Montaigne was seventeen (Morley’s Florio’s _ Montaigne_,
1886, p. xvi). Much ink has been shed over Goldsmith’s lapse of ‘Luke’ for
George. In the book which he cited as his authority, the family name of
the brothers was given as Zeck,—hence Bolton Corney, in his edition
of the _ Poetical Works_, 1845, p. 36, corrected the line to—

_Zeck’s_ iron crown, etc.,

an alteration which has been adopted by other editors. (See also Forster’s
_Life_, 1871, i. 370.)

Damien’s bed of steel. Robert-Francois Damiens,
1714–57. Goldsmith writes ‘Damien’s.’ In the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_
for 1757, vol. xxvii. pp. 87 and 151, where there is an account of this
poor half-witted wretch’s torture and execution for attempting to
assassinate Louis XV, the name is thus spelled, as also in other
contemporary records and caricatures. The following passage explains the
‘bed of steel’:—‘Being conducted
to the Conciergerie, an ‘iron bed’, which likewise served for a chair, was
prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was
again applied, and a physician ordered to attend to see what degree of
pain he could support,’ etc. (Smollett’s _History of England_,
1823, bk. iii, ch. 7, § xxv.) Goldsmith’s own explanation—according
to Tom Davies, the bookseller—was that he meant the rack. But Davies
may have misunderstood him, or Goldsmith himself may have forgotten the
facts. (See Forster’s _Life_, 1871, i. 370.) At pp. 57–78 of
the _ Monthly Review_ for July, 1757 (upon which Goldsmith was
at this date employed), is a summary, ‘from our correspondent at Paris,’
of the official record of the Damiens’ Trial, 4 vols. 12 mo.; and his deed
and tragedy make a graphic chapter in the remarkable _Strange
Adventures of Captain Dangerous_, by George Augustus Sala, 1863,
iii. pp. 154–180.

line 438. In the first edition of ‘The Traveller’
there are only 416 lines.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

After having been for some time announced as in preparation, _The
Deserted Village_ made its first appearance on May 26, 1770.* It was
received with great enthusiasm. In June a second, third, and fourth
edition followed, and in August a fifth was published. The text here given
is that of the fourth edition, which was considerably revised. Johnson, we
are told, thought _The Deserted Village_ inferior to _The
Traveller_: but ‘time,’ to use Mr. Forster’s words, ‘has not
confirmed _that_ judgment.’ Its germ is perhaps to be found in ll.
397–402 of the earlier poem.

* In the American _Bookman_ for February, 1901, pp.
563–7, Mr. Luther S. Livingston gives an account (with facsimile
title-pages) of three _octavo_ (or rather duodecimo) editions all
dated 1770; and ostensibly printed for ‘W. Griffin, at Garrick’s Head, in
Catherine-street, Strand.’ He rightly describes their existence as ‘a
bibliographical puzzle.’ They afford no important variations; are not
mentioned by the early editors; and are certainly not in the form in which
the poem was first advertised and reviewed, as this was a quarto. But they
are naturally of interest to the collector; and the late Colonel Francis
Grant, a good Goldsmith scholar, described one of them in the _Athenaeum_
for June 20, 1896 (No. 3582).

Much research has been expended in the endeavour to identify the scene
with Lissoy, the home of the poet’s youth (see _Introduction_, p.
ix); but the result has only been partially successful. The truth seems
that Goldsmith, living in England, recalled in a poem that was English in
its conception many of the memories and accessories of his early life in
Ireland, without intending or even caring to draw an exact picture. Hence,
as Lord Macaulay has observed, in a much criticized and characteristic
passage, ‘it is made up of incongruous parts. The village in its happy
days is a true English village. The village in its decay is an Irish
village. The felicity and the misery which Goldsmith has brought close
together belong to two different countries, and to two different stages in
the progress of society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island
such a rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity,
as his “Auburn.” He had assuredly never seen in England all the
inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one day and
forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he had probably seen
in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in Munster; but, by joining
the two, he has produced something which never was and never will be seen
in any part of the world.’ (_Encyclop. Britannica_, 1856.) It
is obvious also that in some of his theories—the depopulation of the
kingdom, for example—Goldsmith was mistaken. But it was not for its
didactic qualities then, nor is it for them now, that _The Deserted
Village_’ delighted and delights. It maintains its popularity by its
charming _genre_-pictures, its sweet and tender passages, its
simplicity, its sympathetic hold upon the enduring in human nature. To
test it solely with a view to establish its topographical accuracy, or to
insist too much upon the value of its ethical teaching, is to mistake its
real mission as a work of art.

Dedication. I am ignorant of that art in which you are
said to excel. This modest confession did not prevent Goldsmith from
making fun of the contemporary connoisseur. See the letter from the young
virtuoso in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 145,
announcing that a famous ‘torse’ has been discovered to be not ‘a
Cleopatra bathing’ but ‘a Hercules spinning’; and Charles Primrose’s
experiences at Paris (_Vicar of Wakefield_, 1766, ii. 27–8).

He is since dead. Henry Goldsmith died in May,
1768, at the age of forty-five, being then curate of Kilkenny West. (See
note, p. 164.)

a long poem. ‘I might dwell upon such thoughts . .
. were I not afraid of making this preface too tedious; especially since I
shall want all the patience of the reader, for having enlarged it with the
following verses.’ (Tickell’s Preface to Addison’s _ Works_, at
end.)

the increase of our luxuries. The evil of luxury
was a ‘common topick’ with Goldsmith. (Birkbeck Hill’s _Boswell_,
1887, ii. 217–8.) Smollett also, speaking with the voice of Lismahago, and
continuing the quotation on p. 169, was of the opinion that ‘the sudden
affluence occasioned by trade, forced open all the sluices of luxury, and
overflowed the land with every species of profligacy and corruption.’ (_Humphry
Clinker_, 1771, ii. 192.—Letter of Mr. Bramble to Dr. Lewis.)

Sweet AUBURN. Forster, _Life_, 1871, ii.
206, says that Goldsmith obtained this name from Bennet Langton. There is
an Aldbourn or Auburn in Wiltshire, not far from Marlborough, which Prior
thinks may have furnished the suggestion.

Seats of my youth. This alone would imply that
Goldsmith had in mind the environment of his Irish home.

The decent church that topp’d the neighbouring hill.
This corresponds with the church of Kilkenny West as seen from the house
at Lissoy.

KILKENNY WEST CHURCH

(R. H. Newell)

The hawthorn bush. The Rev. Annesley Strean, Henry
Goldsmith’s successor at Kilkenny West, well remembered the hawthorn bush
in front of the village ale-house. It had originally three trunks; but
when he wrote in 1807 only one remained, ‘the other two having been cut,
from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of it away to be made into
toys, etc., in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem.’ (_Essay
on Light Reading_, by the Rev. Edward Mangin, M.A., 1808, 142–3.)
Its remains were enclosed by a Captain Hogan previously to 1819; but
nevertheless when Prior visited the place in 1830, nothing was apparent
but ‘a very tender shoot [which] had again forced its way to the surface.’
(Prior, _ Life_, 1837, ii. 264.) An engraving of the tree by S.
Alken, from a sketch made in 1806–9, is to be
found at p. 41 of Goldsmith’s _Poetical Works_, R. H. Newell’s
edition, 1811, and is reproduced in the present volume.

HAWTHORN TREE

(R. H. Newell)

How often have I bless’d the coming day. Prior,
_Life_, 1837, ii. 261, finds in this an allusion ‘to the
Sundays or numerous holidays, usually kept in Roman Catholic countries.’

Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen.
Strean’s explanation (Mangin, _ut supra_, pp. 140–1) of this is as
follows:—‘The poem of _The Deserted Village_, took its
origin from the circumstance of general Robert Napper [Napier or Naper],
(the grandfather of the gentleman who now [1807] lives in the house,
within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the general) having purchased
an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or _Auburn_; in
consequence of which many families, here called _cottiers_, were
removed, to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to
become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the
face of his new acquisition; and were forced, “_with fainting steps,_”
to go in search of “_torrid tracts_” and “_distant climes._”’

Prior (_Life_, 1837, i. 40–3) points out that Goldsmith was not
the first to give poetical expression to the wrongs of the dispossessed
Irish peasantry; and he quotes a long extract from the _Works_
(1741) of a Westmeath poet, Lawrence Whyte, which contains such passages
as these:—

Their native soil were forced to quit,

So Irish landlords thought it fit;

Who without ceremony or rout,

For their improvements turn’d them out ...

How many villages they razed,

How many parishes laid waste ...

Whole colonies, to shun the fate

Of being oppress’d at such a rate,

By tyrants who still raise their rent,

Sail’d to the Western Continent.

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest. ‘Of
all those sounds,’ says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl,
‘there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.’ . . . ‘I
remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird’s note
affected the whole village; they
considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or
made one to succeed it.’ (_Animated Nature_, 1774, vi. 1–2, 4.)

Bewick, who may be trusted to speak of a bird which he has drawn with such
exquisite fidelity, refers (_Water Birds_, 1847, p. 49) to ‘the
hollow booming noise which the bittern makes during the night, in the
breeding season, from its swampy retreats.’ Cf. also that close observer
Crabbe (_The Borough_, Letter xxii, ll. 197–8):—

And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home,

Gave from the salt-ditch side the bellowing boom.

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made.

Mitford compares _Confessio Amantis_, fol. 152:—

A kynge may make a lorde a knave,

And of a knave a lord also;

and Professor Hales recalls Burns’s later line in the _Cotter’s
Saturday Night_, 1785:—

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings.

But Prior finds the exact equivalent of the second line in the verses of
an old French poet, De. Caux, upon an hour-glass:—

C’est un verre qui luit,

Qu’un souffle peut détruire, et qu’un souffle a
produit.

A time there was, ere England’s griefs began. Here
wherever the locality of Auburn, the author had clearly England in mind. A
caustic commentator has observed that the ‘time’ indicated must have been
a long while ago.

opulence. In the first edition the word is
‘luxury.’

And, many a year elapsed, return to view. ‘It is
strongly contended at Lishoy, that “_the Poet_,” as he is usually
called there, after his pedestrian tour upon the Continent of Europe,
returned to and resided in the village some time. . . . It is moreover
believed, that the havock which had been made in his absence among those
favourite scenes of his youth, affected his mind so deeply, that he
actually composed great part of the Deserted Village ‘at’ Lishoy.’ (_Poetical
Works, with Remarks_, etc., by the Rev. R. H. Newell, 1811, p. 74.)

Notwithstanding the above, there is no evidence that Goldsmith ever
returned to his native island. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Daniel
Hodson, written in 1758, he spoke of hoping to do so ‘in five or six
years.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, i. 49). But in another letter,
written towards the close of his life, it is still a thing to come. ‘I am
again,’ he says, ‘just setting out for Bath, and I honestly say I had much
rather it had been for Ireland with my nephew, but that pleasure I hope to
have before I die.’ (Letter to Daniel Hodson, no date, in possession of
the late Frederick Locker Lampson.)

Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew.
Here followed, in the first edition:—

Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range,

Trace every scene, and wonder at the change,

Remembrance, etc.

In all my griefs—and God has given my share.
Prior notes a slight similarity here to a line of Collins:—

Ye mute companions of my toils, that bear,

_In all my griefs_, a more than equal share!

_Hassan; or, The Camel Driver._

In _The Present State of Polite Learning_, 1759, p. 143,
Goldsmith refers feelingly to ‘the neglected author of the Persian
eclogues, which, however inaccurate, excel any in our language.’ He
included four of them in _The Beauties of English Poesy_, 1767,
i. pp. 239–53.

To husband out, etc. In the first edition this ran:—

My anxious day to husband near the close,

And keep life’s flame from wasting by repose.

Here to return—and die at home at last.
Forster compares a passage in _The Citizen of the World_, 1762,
ii. 153:—‘There is something so seducing in that spot in which we
first had existence, that nothing but it can please; whatever vicissitudes
we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever we wander, our
fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity, we long to die in
that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate
every calamity.’ The poet Waller too—he adds—wished to die
‘like the stag where he was roused.’ (_Life_, 1871, ii. 202.)

South View from Goldsmith’s Mount

(R.H. Newell)

How happy he. ‘How blest is he’ in the first
edition.

And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly.
Mitford compares _The Bee_ for October 13, 1759, p. 56:—‘By
struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the
conflict. The only method to come off victorious, is by running away.’

surly porter. Mr. J. M. Lobban compares the _Citizen
of the World_, 1762, i. 123:—‘I never see a nobleman’s door
half opened that some surly porter or footman does not stand full in the
breach.’ (_Select Poems of Goldsmith_, 1900, p. 98.)

Bends. ‘Sinks’ in the first edition. _unperceived
decay_. Cf. Johnson, _Vanity of Human Wishes_, 1749, l. 292:—

An age that melts with unperceiv’d decay,

And glides in modest innocence away;

and _Irene_, Act ii, Sc. 7:—

And varied life steal unperceiv’d away.

While Resignation, etc. In 1771 Sir Joshua
exhibited a picture of ‘An Old Man,’ studied from the beggar who was his
model for Ugolino. When it was engraved by Thomas Watson in 1772, he
called it ‘Resignation,’ and inscribed the print to Goldsmith in the
following words:—‘This attempt to express a Character in _The
Deserted Village_, is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith, by his sincere
Friend and admirer, JOSHUA REYNOLDS.’

Up yonder hill. It has been suggested that
Goldsmith was here thinking of the little hill of Knockaruadh (Red Hill)
in front of Lissoy parsonage, of which there is a sketch in Newell’s _Poetical
Works_, 1811. When Newell wrote, it was already known as
‘Goldsmith’s mount’; and the poet himself refers to it in a letter to his
brother-in-law Hodson, dated Dec. 27, 1757:—‘I had rather be placed
on the little mount before Lishoy gate, and there take in, to me, the most
pleasing horizon in nature.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, p. 43.)

And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made. In
_Animated Nature_, 1774, v. 328, Goldsmith says:—‘The
nightingale’s pausing song would be the proper epithet for this bird’s
music.’ [Mitford.]

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. (Cf.
Goldsmith’s Essay on _ Metaphors_ (_British Magazine_):—‘Armstrong
has used the word ‘fluctuate’ with admirable efficacy, in his
philosophical poem entitled _The Art of Preserving Health_.

Oh! when the growling winds contend, and all

The sounding forest ‘fluctuates’ in the storm,

To sink in warm repose, and hear the din

Howl o’er the steady battlements.

The sad historian of the pensive plain. Strean (see
note to l. 13) identified the old watercress gatherer as a certain
Catherine Giraghty (or Geraghty). Her children (he said) were still living
in the neighbourhood of Lissoy in 1807. (Mangin’s _Essay on Light
Reading_, 1808, p. 142.)

The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. ‘The
Rev. Charles Goldsmith is allowed by all that knew him, to have been
faithfully represented by his son in the character of the Village
Preacher.’ So writes his daughter, Catharine Hodson (_Percy Memoir_,
1801, p. 3). Others, relying perhaps upon the ‘forty pounds a year’ of the
Dedication to _The Traveller_, make the poet’s brother Henry
the original; others, again, incline to kindly Uncle Contarine (_vide
Introduction_). But as Prior justly says (_Life_, 1837, ii.
249), ‘the fact perhaps is that he fixed upon no one individual, but
borrowing like all good poets and painters a little from each, drew the
character by their combination.’

with forty pounds a year. Cf. Dedication to _The
Traveller_, p. 3, l. 14.

Unpractis’d. ‘Unskilful’ in the first edition.

More skilled. ‘More bent’ in the first edition.

The long remember’d beggar. ‘The same persons,’
says Prior, commenting upon this passage, ‘are seen for a series of years
to traverse the same tract of country at certain intervals, intrude into
every house which is not defended by the usual outworks of wealth, a gate
and a porter’s lodge, exact their portion of the food of the family, and
even find an occasional resting-place for the night, or from severe
weather, in the chimney-corner of respectable farmers.’ (_Life_,
1837, ii. 269.) Cf. Scott on the Scottish mendicants in the
‘Advertisement’ to _The Antiquary_, 1816, and Leland’s _Hist.
of Ireland_, 1773, i. 35.

The broken soldier. The disbanded soldier let loose
upon the country at the conclusion of the ‘Seven Years’ War’ was a
familiar figure at this period. Bewick, in his _Memoir_
(‘Memorial Edition’), 1887, pp. 44–5, describes some of these ancient
campaigners with their battered old uniforms and their endless stories of
Minden and Quebec; and a picture of two of them by T. S. Good of Berwick
belonged to the late Mr. Locker Lampson. Edie Ochiltree (_Antiquary_)—it
may be remembered—had fought at Fontenoy.

Allur’d to brighter worlds. Cf. Tickell on Addison—‘Saints
who taught and led the way to Heaven.’

And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
Prior compares the opening lines of Dryden’s _Britannia Rediviva_:—

Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care

To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;

Preventing angels met it half the way,

And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.

As some tall cliff, etc. Lucan, Statius, and
Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and
deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with
French literature, and the rarity of his ‘obligations to the ancients,’ it
is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the _Academy_
for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the
following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain (1595–1674) to
Richelieu:—

Dans un paisible mouvement

Tu t’élèves au firmament,

Et laisses contre toi murmurer cette terre;

Ainsi le haut Olympe, à son pied sablonneux,

Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre,

Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux.

Or another French model—indicated by Mr. Forster (_Life_,
1871, ii. 115–16) by the late Lord Lytton—may have been these lines
from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720):—

Au milieu cependant de ces peines cruelles

De notre triste hiver, compagnes trop fidèles,

Je suis tranquille et gai. Quel bien plus précieux

Puis-je espérer jamais de la bonté des dieux!

Tel qu’un rocher dont la tête,

Égalant le Mont Athos,

Voit à ses pieds la tempête

Troubler le calme des flots,

La mer autour bruit et gronde;

Malgré ses emotions,

Sur son front élevé règne une paix profonde,

Que tant d’agitations

Et que ses fureurs de l’onde

Respectent à l’égal du nid des alcyons.

On the other hand, Goldsmith may have gone no further than Young’s _Complaint:
Night the Second_, 1742, p. 42, where, as Mitford points out, occur
these lines:—

As some tall Tow’r, or lofty Mountain’s Brow,

Detains the Sun, Illustrious from its Height,

While rising Vapours, and descending Shades,

With Damps, and Darkness drown the Spatious Vale:

Undampt by Doubt, Undarken’d by Despair,

_Philander_, thus, augustly rears his Head.

Prior also (_Life_, 1837, ii. 252) prints a passage from _Animated
Nature_, 1774, i. 145, derived from Ulloa, which perhaps served as
the raw material of the simile.

Full well they laugh’d, etc. Steele, in _Spectator_,
No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—‘_Eubulus_
has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he
shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear
dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good
Stomach and chearful Aspect, when _Eubulus_ seems to intimate
that Things go well.’

Yet he was kind, etc. For the rhyme of ‘fault’ and
‘aught’ in this couplet Prior cites the precedent of Pope:—

Before his sacred name flies ev’ry fault,

And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

(_Essay on Criticism_, l. 422). He might also have cited
Waller, who elides the ‘l’:—

Were we but less indulgent to our fau’ts,

And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.

Goldsmith uses a like rhyme in _Edwin and Angelina_, Stanza
xxxv:—

But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,

And well my life shall pay;

I’ll seek the solitude he sought,

And stretch me where he lay.

Cf. also _Retaliation_, ll. 73–4. Perhaps—as indeed Prior
suggests—he pronounced ‘fault’ in this fashion.

THE SCHOOL HOUSE

(R. H. Newell)

That one small head could carry all he knew. Some
of the traits of this portrait are said to be borrowed from Goldsmith’s
own master at Lissoy:—‘He was instructed in reading, writing, and
arithmetic’—says his sister Catherine, Mrs. Hodson—‘by a
schoolmaster in his father’s village, who had been a quartermaster in the
army in Queen Anne’s wars, in that detachment which was sent to Spain:
having travelled over a considerable part of Europe and being of a very
romantic turn, he used to entertain Oliver with his adventures; and the
impressions these made on his scholar were believed by the family to have
given him that wandering and unsettled turn which so much appeared in his
future life.’ (_Percy Memoir_, 1801, pp. 3–4.) The name of this
worthy, according to Strean, was Burn (Byrne). (Mangin’s _ Essay on
Light Reading_, 1808, p. 142.)

Near yonder thorn. See note to l. 13.

The chest contriv’d a double debt to pay. Cf. the
_Description of an Author’s Bedchamber_, p. 48, l. ult.:—

A cap by night—a stocking all the day!

The twelve good rules. ‘A constant one’ (i.e.
picture) ‘in every house was “King Charles’ Twelve Good Rules.”’ (Bewick’s
_Memoir_, ‘Memorial Edition,’ 1887, p. 262.) This old
broadside, surmounted by a rude woodcut of the King’s execution, is still
prized by collectors. The rules, as ‘found in the study of King Charles
the First, of Blessed Memory,’ are as follow:— ‘1. Urge no healths;
2. Profane no divine ordinances; 3. Touch no state matters; 4. Reveal no
secrets; 5. Pick no quarrels; 6. Make no comparisons; 7. Maintain no ill
opinions; 8. Keep no bad company; 9. Encourage no vice; 10. Make no long
meals; 11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no Wagers.’ Prior, _Misc.
Works_, 1837, iv. 63, points out that Crabbe also

makes the ‘Twelve Good Rules’ conspicuous in the _Parish Register_
(ll. 51–2):—

There is King Charles, and all his Golden Rules,

Who proved Misfortune’s was the best of schools.

Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, kept a copy of these rules in the
servants’ hall at Windsor Castle.

the royal game of goose. The ‘Royal and
Entertaining Game of the Goose’ is described at length in Strutt’s _Sports
and Pastimes_, bk. iv, ch. 2 (xxv). It may be briefly defined as a
game of compartments with different titles through which the player
progresses according to the numbers he throws with the dice. At every
fourth or fifth compartment is depicted a goose, and if the player’s cast
falls upon one of these, he moves forward double the number of his throw.

While broken tea-cups. Cf. the _Description of
an Author’s Bedchamber_, p. 48, l. 18:—

And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.

Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt the ale-house at Lissoy, did not
forget, besides restoring the ‘Royal Game of Goose’ and the ‘Twelve Good
Rules,’ to add the broken teacups, ‘which for better security in the frail
tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were
embedded in the mortar.’ (Prior, _Life_, 1837, ii. 265.)

Shall kiss the cup. Cf. Scott’s _Lochinvar_:—

The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,

He quaff’d off the wine and he threw down the cup.

Cf. also _The History of Miss Stanton_ (_British Magazine_,
July, 1760).—‘The earthen mug went round. _Miss touched the cup_,
the stranger pledged the parson,’ etc.

Between a splendid and a happy land. Prior compares
_The Citizen of the World_, 1762, i. 98:—‘Too much
commerce may injure a nation as well as too little; and . . . there is a
wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire.’

To see profusion that he must not share. Cf. _Animated
Nature_, iv. p. 43:—‘He only guards those luxuries he is not
fated to share.’ [Mitford.]

To see those joys. Up to the third edition the
words were _each joy_.

There the black gibbet glooms beside the way. The
gallows, under the savage penal laws of the eighteenth century, by which
horse-stealing, forgery, shop-lifting, and even the cutting of a hop-bind
in a plantation were punishable with death, was a common object in the
landscape. Cf. _Vicar of Wakefield_, 1706, ii. 122:—‘Our
possessions are paled up with new edicts every day, and hung round with
gibbets to scare every invader’; and _ Citizen of the World_,
1762, ii. 63–7. Johnson, who wrote eloquently on capital punishment in
_The Rambler_ for April 20, 1751, No. 114, also refers to the
ceaseless executions in his _London_, 1738, ll. 238–43:—

Scarce can our fields, such crowds at Tyburn die,

With hemp the gallows and the fleet supply.

Propose your schemes, ye senatorian band,

Whose ways and means support the sinking land:

Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring,

To rig another convoy for the king.

Where the poor houseless shivering female lies.
Mitford compares Letter cxiv of _The Citizen of the World_,
1762, ii. 211:—‘These _poor shivering females_ have once seen
happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been prostituted
to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity
of winter. Perhaps now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to
wretches whose hearts are insensible, or debauchees who may curse, but
will not relieve them.’ The same passage occurs in _The Bee_,
1759, p. 126 (_A City Night-Piece_).

Near her betrayer’s door, etc. Cf. the foregoing
quotation.

wild Altama, i.e. the Alatamaha, a river in
Georgia, North America. Goldsmith may have been familiar with this name in
connexion with his friend Oglethorpe’s expedition of 1733.

crouching tigers, a poetical licence, as there are
no tigers in the locality named. But Mr. J. H. Lobban calls attention to a
passage from _Animated Nature_ [1774, iii. 244], in which
Goldsmith seems to defend himself:—‘There is an animal of
America, which is usually called the Red Tiger, but Mr. Buffon calls it
the Cougar, which, no doubt, is very different from the tiger of the east.
Some, however, have thought proper to rank both together, and I will take
leave to follow their example.’

The good old sire. Cf. _Threnodia Augustalis_,
ll. 16–17:—

The good old sire, unconscious of decay,

The modest matron, clad in homespun gray

a father’s. ‘Her father’s’ in the first edition.

silent. ‘Decent’ in the first edition.

On Torno’s cliffs, or Pambamarca’s side.
‘Torno’=Tornea, a river which falls into the Gulf of Bothnia; Pambamarca
is a mountain near Quito, South America. ‘The author’—says Bolton
Corney—‘bears in memory the operations of the French philosophers in
the arctic and equatorial regions, as described in the celebrated
narratives of M. Maupertuis and Don Antonio de Ulloa.’

That trade’s proud empire, etc. These last four
lines are attributed to Johnson on Boswell’s authority:—‘Dr. Johnson
. . . favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith’s
_ Deserted Village_, which are only the ‘last four’.’ (Birkbeck
Hill’s _Boswell_, 1887, ii. 7.)