difference between the artificial heat of the schools

and the warmth of a real enthusiasm.

Art thou not she whom fav'ring fate
In all her splendour drest,

To show in how supreme a state
A mortal might be blest?
Bade beauty, elegance, and health,
Patrician birth, patrician wealth,

Their blessings on her darling shed;
Bade Hymen, of that generous race
Who freedom's fairest annals grace,

Give to thy love th' illustrious head.

Light as a dream, your days their circlets ran,
From all that teaches brotherhood to man

Mason.

Far, far removed; from want, from hope, from fear,
Enchanting music lull'd your infant ear,
Obeisant praises sooth'd your infant heart:
Emblasonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,

Detain'd your eye from nature; stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine,
Were your's unearn'd by toil.

Coleridge, Ode to Georgiana, Duchess of Gloucester.

Say did I err, chaste Liberty,

I

When, warm with youthful fire,

gave

the vernal fruits to thee,

That ripen'd on my lyre?

When, round thy twin-born sister's shrine

I taught the flowers of verse to twine

And blend in one their fresh perfume;
Forbade them, vagrant and disjoin'd,
To give to every wanton wind

Their fragrance and their bloom?

pause,

Mason.

Ye clouds, that far above me float and
Whose pathless march no mortal may controul !
Ye ocean waves, that, whereso'er ye roll,
Yield homage only to eternal laws!

Ye woods, that listen to the night-birds singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous steep reclin'd;
Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind!
Where, like a man belov'd of God,

Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
How oft, pursuing fancies holy,

My moonlight way o'er flow'ring weeds I wound, Inspir'd beyond the guess of folly,

By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound! O, ye loud waves, and O, ye forests high,

And O, ye clouds, that far above me soar'd!
Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky!
Yea, every thing that is and will be free,
Bear witness for me wheresoe'er ye be,

With what deep worship I have still adored

The spirit of divinest liberty.

Coleridge. France, An Ode.

The Elegy written in a churchyard in South Wales,

is not more below Gray's.

Of eagerness to obtain poetical distinction he had much more than Gray; but in tact, judgment, and learning, was exceedingly his inferior. He was altogether a man of talent, if I may be allowed to use the word talent according to the sense it bore in our old English; for he had a vehement desire of excellence, but wanted either the depth of mind or the industry that was necessary for producing anything that was very excellent.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

OLIVER, the second son of Charles and Anne Goldsmith, was born in Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728, at Pallas, in the Parish of Forgany or Forney in the County of Longford. By a mistake made in the note of his entrance in the college register, he is represented to have been a native of the county of Westmeath.

His father, who had before resided at Smith-hill in the county of Roscommon, (which has by some been erroneously said to be the birth-place of his son, Oliver,) removed thence to Pallas, and afterwards to his Rectory of Kilkenny West, in the county of Westmeath; and in the latter of these parishes, at

Lissoy, or Auburn, he built the house described as the Village-Preacher's modest mansion in the Deserted Village. His mother was daughter of the Rev. Oliver Jones, master of the diocesan school at Elphin. Their family consisted of five sons and three daughters.

In a letter from his elder sister, Catherine, the wife of Daniel Hodson, Esq. inserted in the Life of Goldsmith, which an anonymous writer, whom I suppose to have been Cowper's friend, Mr. Rose, from a passage in Mr. Nichol's Literary Anecdotes, prefixed to his Miscellaneous Works, wonders are told of his early predilection for the poetical art; but those who have observed the amplification with which the sprightly sallies of childhood are related by domestic fondness, will listen to such narrations with some abatement of confidence. It seems probable, that a desire of literary distinction might have been infused into his youthful mind by hearing of the reputation of his countryman, Parnell, with whom, as we learn from his life of that poet, his father and uncle were acquainted.

He received the first rudiments of learning from a school-master who taught in the village where his parents resided, and who had served as a quartermaster during the war of the Succession in Spain ; and from the romantic accounts which this man delighted to give of his travels, Goldsmith is sup

posed, by his sister, to have contracted his propensity for a wandering life. From hence he was removed successively to the school at Elphin, of which the Rev. Mr. Griffin was master, and to that of Athlone ; kept by the Rev. Mr. Campbell; and lastly, was placed under the care of the Rev. Patrick Hughes, of Edgeworthstown, in the county of Longford, to whose instruction he acknowledged himself to have been more indebted than to that of his other teachers.

It was probably that untowardness in his outward appearance, which never afterwards left him, that made his schoolfellows consider him a dull boy, fit only to be the butt of their ridicule.

On his last return after the holidays to the house of his master, an adventure befel him, which afterwards was made the ground-work of the plot in one of his comedies. Journeying along leisurely, and being inclined to enjoy such diversion as a guinea, that had been given him for pocket-money, would afford him on the road, he was overtaken by night at a small town called Ardagh. Here, inquiring for the best house in the place, he was directed to a gentleman's habitation that literally answered that description. Under a delusion, the opposite to that entertained by the knight of La Mancha, he rides up to the supposed inn; and having given his horse in charge to the ostler, enters without ceremony.