CRITICISM.-Macaulay; Essay on Goldsmith. Brings out clearly the fact that Goldsmith's misfortunes were due more to himself than to the neglect of society. In nearly every other respect, shows a complete misunderstanding of Goldsmith's character. De Quincey; Essay on Goldsmith. A review of Forster's Life of Goldsmith, in sympathy with the general tone of that work. Contains also, in characteristic DeQuincey style, digressions on the state of the literary body in France, and on the relation of literature to politics. Thackeray; Sterne and Goldsmith in The English Humorists. Contains little about Goldsmith's works, but shows a loveable estimate of his character. Fitzgerald; Principles of Comedy. Those interested in Goldsmith's dramatic genius will find some excellent criticism here. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. This poem, published in 1770, was dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds. Six years later Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, from which, had Goldsmith lived, he could have learned that the economic change he laments was a blessing in disguise for those poor emigrants to whom it seemed a curse. But we do not read The Deserted Village for its Political Economy: we read it for its idyllic sweetness; for its portraits of the village preacher, of the village schoolmaster, of the country inn; for its pathetic description of the poor emigrants; for the tender and noble feeling with which Goldsmith closes the poem in his Farewell to Poetry. I-34. Sweet Auburn! Attempts to identify Sweet Auburn' with any particular village are futile and unnecessary. The description is idealized, as any one who has had even small experience in the making of verses can see. lent (16) = yielded. simply (25) artlessly. Smutted (27) would not be used in serious poetic diction to-day. No description of Rustic Mirth to compare with these thirty-four lines had been written in England since Milton's L'Allegro. If one might point out a flaw in this gem, it would be the too frequent personification of abstract terms, such as gambol (21) and sleights (22). 35-50. The hollow-sounding bittern. The bittern has a hollow, throaty cry, and generally builds its nest on the ground. Perhaps this line is a reminiscence of Isaiah XIV. 23: 'I will also make it a possession for the bittern and pools of water; and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of Hosts.' lapwing, sometimes called the 'pewit,' from its cry. the 51-56. Princes and lords. Compare Burns' Cotter's Saturday Night, 165; also his song, For A' That and A' That (p. 113 of this book). Lines 55 and 56 point a real moral. The strength of a country lies largely in its yeomanry or small-farmer class. In this respect, France leads the world. 57-62. Here we have again the myth of a Golden Age of which the poets are so fond. History teaches plainly that there never was a time ere England's griefs began. 63-74. trade's unfeeling train. This is a remnant of the Mercantile Theory, wide-spread in Europe during the Middle Ages and not dead yet in unintelligent communities. According to this theory Commerce is a war, and when A. gains, B. must lose. An elementary knowledge of Economics shows us now, that where Commerce (Trade) is unrestricted, both A. and B. gain; otherwise there would be no Commerce. rural manners. The ordinary meanand bucolic manners' hardly ings attached to rustic manners · bear out the poet's eulogy. What is there in city life that tends to refine and polish the manners? 75-96. The sincerity that breathes through these lines makes us feel that here is a bit of genuine autobiography. 97-112. unperceived decay. Evidently suggested by Vanity of Human Wishes, 293. Throughout this passage the influence of Johnson is perceptible. his latter end. 'Hear counsel and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.' Proverbs XIX. 20. 113-136. careless free from care. = loud laugh. Fatness and laughter have long been associated — perhaps unjustly — with the idea of weak mentality. Compare: Let me have men about me that are fat: Julius Cæsar, i. 2. 192-5. Yet Falstaff was a tun of a man. pause; the interval between the strains of the nightingale's song. Listen Eugenia, — How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves! Eternal passion! Eternal pain! Matthew Arnold's Philomela, 28-32. Compare also Keats' Ode to a Nightingale (p. 168 of this book). No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. A stiff and commonplace line, in Pope's earliest and worst manner. bloomy. Compare the opening lines of Milton's Sonnet to the Nightingale : O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray mantling covering as with a mantle. = 137-162. We can find many points of resemblance between this beautiful portrait of the village preacher and Chaucer's Poor Parson (Dryden's character of a Good Parson). Goldsmith's sketch seems to contain allusion to his father and to his brother Henry. To the latter he had dedicated The Traveller. disclose allow to be seen. mansion; in its original sense of dwelling-place' (Latin, 'manere,' to stay, remain). place position, as in 'He has a doctrines fashioned to the chang place in the Custom-House.' ing hour. Perhaps Goldsmith was thinking of The Vicar of Bray: And this is law that I'll maintain Until my dying day, Sir, That whatsoever king shall reign tales of sorrow done. Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir. For this absolute use of the participle, com shewed how His pity pare L'Allegro 115, and see Whitney, § 395-7. fields were won. Compare Alexander's Feast, 66-8. gave; his natural sentiment (Pity) relieved them before his theological virtue (Charity) came into play. 163-192. Allured to brighter worlds and led the way. In Chau As The service past. For the construction, compare line 157. some tall cliff. See this same figure with a different but equally fine application, in Matthew Arnold's Sonnet on Shakespeare: For the loftiest hill Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base terms = periods during which the Justices hold court. tides ecclesiastical times or seasons, as Whitsuntide (= White + Sunday Time). presage foretell. measure the content of a barrel. gauge [gage]= to words of learned length and thundering sound. Goldsmith must have been thinking of the conversation of his friend Dr. Johnson, of whom he once said that it was no use arguing with Johnson; if his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with the butt end of it. 216-236. the twelve good rules; such as (4) Reveal No Secrets, (9) Encourage No Vice. English Poems, p. 353. from the wall to the copy-book. or something like it. They are all given in Hales' Longer In our day they have been transferred game of goose; Fox and Geese, royal has never been satisfactorily ex plained; perhaps the poet, being in a reminiscential mood, uses 'royal' subjectively, as when we say, 'I had a royal good time yesterday.' Chimney = fire-place. 237-264. An hour's importance. Compare Burns' Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, O'er a' the ills o' life victorious! Tam O'Shanter, 57-8. the barber's tale. Since men first shaved, barbers have been noted for their talkativeness. See the character of Nello in George Eliot's Romola. woodman, in its original meaning of 'hunter.' the smith. Compare Longfellow's beautiful poem, The Village Blacksmith. mantling bliss the foaming ale. Shall kiss the cup. Compare Ben Jonson's song To Celia beginning: Drink to me only with thine eyes And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine. 265-302. This is very pretty poetry, but very poor Economics. Consult some elementary treatise on that subject, such as Laughlin's Elements of Political Economy. 303-308. The fencing-in of land once common is undoubtedly a grievous wrong to the English peasant. For the counterbalancing advantages which he has derived from the progress of civilization, see the concluding pages of the Third Chapter of Macaulay's His-tory of England. 309-320. It is amusing to notice how the poets abuse the city, yet how, with rare exception, they cannot bear to live anywhere else. Artist: artisan. dome building, house; thus Coleridge: = In Xanada did Kubla Khan Kubla Khan, 1-2. 321-336. Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn. '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 [this] well-known line.' Black's Life of Goldsmith, Cap. XIV. 337-362. Goldsmith's geography and natural history are not his strong points. The Altama [Altamahá] river in Georgia enters the Atlantic near the thirty-first parallel; the flora and fauna he describes are tropical. Tigers in Georgia! 363-384. For a somewhat similar scene, compare Longfellow's Evangeline, i. 5. seats. See note on Alexander's Feast, 26. 385-394. The thought here is certainly just, though the expression (especially in line 394) is feeble. In lines 343-368 of The Vanity of Human Wishes, Johnson has worked out this thought to a logical conclusion that agrees pretty well with that arrived at by Agur the son of Jakeh, some three thousand years ago: 'Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.' 395-426. anchoring commonly means 'coming to anchor,' but in Lear iv. 18-20, we have it used as here, meaning 'lying at anchor.' yon tall anchoring bark strand Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight. beach. The Strand in London, now the busiest street in the world, was once, no doubt, a mere path by the river-side. degenerate times. The time (1770) was certainly degenerate so far as Poetry was concerned. Thirteen years had elapsed since Gray published his Odes, and during this long night Goldsmith's Traveller (1764) twinkled a lonely star. My shame in crowds. Though he occasionally struck off a good thing, Goldsmith did not shine in conversation. In the blaze of Johnson's talk, who could? No one save Burke, and he modestly said, 'It is enough for me to have rung the bell for him.' Keep'st me so. It was not Poetry that kept Torno [Tornea Goldsmith poor, but his own thriftlessness. or Torneo], a river that marks the boundary-line between Sweden and Russia. It flows into the Gulf of Bothnia. A mountain in Ecuador. Pambamarca. 427-430. These four lines were added by Johnson and can hardly be said to improve the conclusion of the poem. |