dication to his brother. Careless of any interests of his own which might be promoted by conciliating the powerful or the wealthy, it was intended not merely as a return of respect and attention for the kindness shown to his earlier years, but to bring into notice and perhaps preferment should the work become popular, a worthy though friendless clergyman. Allusions to the motive took place in conversation with his friends, and afterwards found its way into the newspapers; in a paragraph in imitation of a paper of Swift, where among other instances of men who have acted nobly, or as it is phrased, made great figures in the world, is the following" Dr. Goldsmith, when he dedicated his beautiful Poem the Traveller, to a man of no greater income than forty pounds a year."

The plan of the poem is in great measure new, though it is possible that Addison's Letter from Italy suggested the idea. Travels in prose had been often told; but to array them for the first time in the garb of poetry, promised something of stronger interest to the reader, while the situation in which the Traveller was projected and commenced, entitles its author in all probability to the honours of originality. But it is in the execution of such things we must seek for the merit that gives them popular favour; to do this well requires poetical powers of a high order, good taste, a philosophical spirit of observation, and that nice discrimination which seizes only upon such points as mark national peculiarities in the strongest

manner, and are immediately intelligible to the general reader. It is so far different from what is called local poetry, such as Denham's Cooper's Hill, which may have given the hint to Addison, that it overlooks in great degree the scenery of countries to fix upon and describe the moral characteristics of the people. Human nature is always difficult to pourtray in poetry with condensation and accuracy; but he who accomplishes this, is beyond question no ordinary poet.

We have proof at once of the judgment of Goldsmith, and of the plan being adapted to poetry of the highest order, in Lord Byron pursuing it in Childe Harold, which in all its leading points may be considered a kind of "Traveller" on a more extended scale. We find a similar survey of the people and countries through which they pass; the same attention to their distinguishing moral features; the same philosophical spirit of reflection, varying indeed with the opposite natures of the writers; many noble sentiments, and ideas of great moral sublimity, mingled with what is still more peculiar, the same reference to personal circumstances, feelings and recollections; both identifying themselves in a peculiar manner with their subject. Lord Byron, however, by amplifying the design, has gained a stronger hold upon the reader. Goldsmith looks down as from a height upon the countries under his eye, with the large and general views of a philosopher whose business is not with detail. Lord Byron travels more extensively and tells his

travels with more of the minuteness of a tourist ; he is more various and diversified, yet scarcely more vigorous, and certainly not more condensed: both are ethical; and both indulge freely in their respective political views. In Goldsmith we find not one objectionable sentiment, nothing that assaults or pains the religious or moral feelings of the reader; the same cannot be said of the author of Childe Harold. The main purpose of the former is to show that by the benevolent ordination of Providence, the sum of human happiness is in most countries, however varying in natural position, capabilities, or form of government, nearly the same; that content belongs to the mind and disposition of the individual, more than to the circumstances by which he is surrounded. Lord Byron, who had probably set out with no fixed plan in view, is willing to tell of all that interested him; not of moral characteristics only, but of manners, localities, and the associations derived from historical events; he therefore perhaps carries with him general readers more. The one is general in his philosophy, the other more local and particular. If Lord Byron be more various and interesting, we find in Goldsmith purity of thought and that high moral feeling pervading all his writings, the want of which is so often to be lamented in those of his noble successor; while in vigour and sublimity whenever occasion requires it, he is rarely inferior.

True poets probably differ little in their con

ception of what should be good subjects for the exercise of their art, as Thomson, by another coincidence, appears to have thought well of the design which Goldsmith lived to execute. His opinion, contained in a letter to Bubb Doddington, written from Paris in 1730, when on the tour of Europe with Mr. Talbot, was not made known till long after the death of the Irish poet :

"Your observation I find every day juster and juster, that one may profit more abroad by seeing than by hearing; and yet there are scarce any travellers to be met with who have given a landscape of the countries through which they have travelled, that have seen, as you express it, with the Muses' eye; though that is the first thing which strikes me, and what all readers and travellers in the first place demand. It seems to me that such a poetical landscape of countries, mixed with moral observations on their countries and people, would not be an ill-judged undertaking. But then the description of the different face of nature in different countries, must be particularly marked and characteristic; the portrait painting of nature."

So well do we find the idea thrown out in this passage fulfilled, that nothing appears in the Traveller but what is appropriate and distinct, or as the author of the Seasons says, marked and characteristic; the terms applied to one country or people cannot well be transferred to another; and it admits of doubt which of the nations, whether Italians, Swiss, French, Dutch or English, is most

happily drawn. By Dr. Johnson the latter seems to have been most prized; he was known often to repeat with a fervour of animation which brought tears into his own eyes, that noble passage, one of the most powerful and yet accurate in modern poetry, which gives so high and not undue picture of our countrymen :

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,

With daring aims irregularly great;

Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,

I see the lords of human kind pass by;
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band;

By forms unfashion'd fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagin'd right, above controul;
While e'en the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man."

A comparison between his description of Italy and that of Addison occurs immediately to the poetical reader; and if the same thought was suggested to himself, no tone of depreciation or jealousy appears to have been the result. The "Letter from Italy" is thus fairly and judiciously characterised a few years afterwards in one of his compilations for youth, the "Beauties of English Poesy: "-"Few poems have done more honour to English genius than this. There is in it a strain of political thinking that was, poetry. Had the harmony of this been equal to Pope's versification, it would be incontestably the finest poem in our language; but there is a dryness in the numbers which greatly lessens the pleasure

at that time, new in our