Chapter XXVII: Appendix: D

FRAGMENTS OF TRANSLATIONS, ETC., BY GOLDSMITH.

To the Aldine edition of 1831, the Rev. John Mitford added several
fragments of translation from Goldsmith’s _Essays_. About a
third of these were traced by Bolton Corney in 1845 to the _Horace_
of Francis. He therefore compiled a fresh collection, here given.

_From a French version of Homer_.

The shouting army cry’d with joy extreme,

He sure must conquer, who himself can tame!

_The Bee_, 1759, p. 90.

The next is also from Homer, and is proposed as an improvement of Pope:—

They knew and own’d the monarch of the main:

The sea subsiding spreads a level plain:

The curling waves before his coursers fly:

The parting surface leaves his brazen axle dry.

_Miscellaneous Works_, 1801, iv. 410.

From the same source comes number three, a quatrain from Vida’s _Eclogues_:—

Say heavenly muse, their youthful frays rehearse;

Begin, ye daughters of immortal verse;

Exulting rocks have crown’d the power of song!

And rivers listen’d as they flow’d along.

_Miscellaneous Works_, 1801, iv. 427.

Another is a couplet from Ovid, the fish referred to being the _scarus_
or bream:—

Of all the fish that graze beneath the flood,

He, _only_, ruminates his former food.

_History of the Earth,_ etc., 1774, iii. 6.

Bolton Corney also prints the translation from the _Spectator_,
already given in this volume. His last fragment is from the posthumous
translation of Scarron’s _ Roman Comique_:—

Thus, when soft love subdues the heart

With smiling hopes and chilling fears,

The soul rejects the aid of art,

And speaks in moments more than years.

_The Comic Romance of Monsieur Scarron_, 1775, ii. 161.

It is unnecessary to refer to any other of the poems attributed to
Goldsmith. Mitford included in his edition a couple of quatrains inserted
in the _Morning Chronicle_ for April 3, 1800, which were said
to be by the poet; but they do not resemble his manner. Another piece with
the title of _The Fair Thief_ was revived in July, 1893, by an
anonymous writer in the _Daily_
_Chronicle_, as being possibly by Goldsmith, to whom it was
assigned in an eighteenth-century anthology (1789–80). Its discoverer,
however, subsequently found it given in Walpole’s _Noble Authors_
(Park’s edition, 1806) to Charles Wyndham, Earl of Egremont. It has no
great merit; and may safely be neglected as an important addition to
Goldsmith’s _Works_, already burdened with much which that
critical author would never have reprinted.