generally, as degraded by similar "comic and grotesque figures of a Flemish landscape." But critics of less questionable judgment than Sir Egerton, have considered this as the very triumph of genius, to communicate interest to the well-known scenes and events of ordinary life, and to dignify the humble annals of the poor, by investing them with the charms of poetry, without destroying either their reality or their simplicity. That Goldsmith has succeeded in doing this, will hardly be denied; that he is entitled to little credit for his success-that his touches of nature are low, and that he has marred a serious poem by "comic' descriptions," in a very bad style and very unfortunate," -are opinions peculiar, we think, to Sir Egerton Brydges. But what can be expected from the critic who declares that Goldsmith "did not possess fancy or sensibility," and that "he is the poet rather of reason than pathos "?1 The Deserted Village' is full of

pathos.

'Edwin and Angelina' is a singularly beautiful ballad; but the original idea, and some of the sentiments, are borrowed from an old poem in Percy's 'Reliques of ancient Poetry.' 'The Haunch of Venison,' and 'Retaliation' were occasional poems, written in haste, and not published till after the author's death; yet, if we make some little allowance for the want of that correctness which they would probably have received, had Goldsmith himself revised them for the press, they are not unworthy of him. His smaller pieces scarcely required a separate notice, except perhaps, the 'Logicians Refuted,' in imitation of Swift, which has all the merit which an imitation can possess.2

In claiming for Goldsmith a very high place among English poets, we do but ask that which public opinion has already assigned him. But to those who are unwilling to admit the voice of the many as decisive in matters of criticism, it may not be improper to quote the authority of one who, himself a poet of the very first order, is scarcely less distinguished for his just appreciation of poetical excellence in others. "Goldsmith's poetry," says Thomas Campbell,3 "enjoys a calm and steady popularity. It inspires us, indeed, with no admiration of daring design, or of fertile invention; but it presents, within its narrow

1 Censura Literaria.'

2 See note on the doubts as to the authenticity of this piece, at p. 76, vol. ii.-ED.

3 Specimens of the British Poets.'

limits, a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. His descriptions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some passages, be said to approach to the reserved and prosaic; but he unbends from this graver strain of reflection to tenderness, and even to playfulness, with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own; and connects extensive views of the happiness and interests of society, with pictures of life that touch the heart by their familiarity. *** He is no disciple of the gaunt and famished school of simplicity. * * * He uses the ornaments which must always distinguish true poetry from prose; and when he adopts colloquial plainness, it is with the utmost care and skill, to avoid a vulgar humility. There is more of this sustained simplicity, of this chaste economy and choice of words in Goldsmith, than in any modern poet, or perhaps than would be attainable or desirable as a standard for every writer of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such a style would be too difficult. There is a noble propriety even in the careless strength of great poems, as in the roughness of castle walls; and, generally speaking, where there is a long course of story, or observation of life to be pursued, such exquisite touches as those of Goldsmith would be too costly materials for sustaining it. * * * His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives back the image of Nature unruffled and minutely. * * * * His chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist, and throws a charm of Claude-like softness over his descriptions of homely objects that would seem only fit to be the subjects of Dutch painting. But his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble things without a vulgar association; and he inspires us with a fondness to trace the simplest recollections of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its ale-house, and listen to—

"The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door.'"

'She Stoops

Of his two comedies we have already spoken. to Conquer' was the more popular on the stage; but the critic will give the decided preference to the 'Good-Natured Man,’ which, for wit, elegance, and originality, is equal to the best dramas of Vanbrugh and Cibber.

With the following high estimate of Goldsmith's merit as an

author, by two writers, themselves inferior to none in the republic of letters, we shall close our memoir :

Of Goldsmith Dr. Johnson says :-" Whether we take him as a poet, as a comic writer, or as an historian, he stands in the first class." 1 And, in another place, Boswell records that Johnson said:-"Whatever he (Goldsmith) wrote, he did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey; and every year he lived, would have deserved it better. ."2 In his 'Life of Parnell,' the same eminent critic pays Goldsmith the following tribute :- "The life of Dr. Parnell is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith—a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing-a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness. What such an author

"The wreath of Goldsmith," says Sir Walter Scott, “is unsullied; he wrote to exalt virtue and expose vice; and he accomplished his task in a manner which raises him to the highest rank among British authors. We close his volumes with a sigh that such an author should have written so little from the stores of his own genius, and that he should have been so prematurely removed from the sphere of literature which he adorned." H. B.5

994

1 Boswell's Life of Johnson,' vol. iii., p. 280. 2 Ibid., vol. vii., p. 85.

3 Johnson. Lives of the Poets.' The fact that Johnson, notwithstanding his high opinion of Goldsmith, omitted to include him in the 'Lives of the most Eminent English Poets,' has been remarked upon as singular. Malone has accounted for the fact: see the following Appendix, p. 63.—ED.

4 Sir Walter Scott. Memoir of Goldsmith.'

5 This memoir was written in 1848, for Bohn's edition of Goldsmith. It has been corrected and slightly added-to, as regards some matters of fact and reference, for the present edition.—ED.

APPENDIX TO THE LIFE OF GOLDSMITH.

GOLDSMITH'S BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY LIFE.

(See Life,' pp. 2-8.)

THE 'Gentleman's Magazine' for 1820 (Part II. p. 618) reports a meeting held at Ballymahon on the 29th November of that year to celebrate the anniversary of Goldsmith's birth.1 The business of this meeting was opened by the Rev. Mr. Graham, of Lifford, who said, among other things::

"But superadded to his general merit as a poet, a philosopher, and historian, Goldsmith possesses a more endearing claim, if possible, upon the veneration of his country: unlike Swift, Congreve, and others, he never denied his country, or left it a matter of doubt to posterity; on the contrary, we see that, although he had left it early, and poor-though he could boast of having received no more than common civility in it, and but little of that even, from persons on whom he had the strongest claim,— the love of Ireland was ever uppermost in his mind wherever he went. Her lovely scenery is immortalized in his poems, and he never gave up his intention of returning to the spot where first he drew his breath, 'till he resigned that breath in the arms of a beloved countryman, who attended his deathbed with the tender solicitude of an affectionate brother.' To his brother, the Rev. Henry Goldsmith, at Lissoy, was his 'Traveller' addressed, and to the post-office of Ballymahon the packet, containing that immortal poem, was directed. That Lissoy is the identical spot from which he drew the enchanting scenery of his 'Deserted Village,' has been demonstrated by the late ingenious Dr. Newell of Cambridge University, who, a few years age, republished his poems, with drawings of the Parsonage-house, the Church, the Mill, and the Hawthorn tree, accompanied by notes, which put the matter beyond all doubt to those acquainted with the local history of the country; and this demonstration, gentlemen, came from the pen of a learned Englishman, notwithstanding a line or two in the poem which would seem to indicate that the description was intended for an English village :

"A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintained its man.

1 The correct date (Nov. 10th) was not then known. -ED.

See ante, p. 2.

"The scene of his celebrated comedy, 'The Mistakes of a Night,' was laid in the town of Ardagh, in this immediate neighbourhood, as related in Otridge's splendid edition of his works, and confirmed to me by the late Sir Thomas Fetherston, Baronet, a short time before his death. Some friend had given the young poet a present of a guinea on his going from his mother's residence, in this town, to a school in Edgeworthstown, where, it appears, he finished his education, of which he received the rudiments from the reverend Mr. Hughes, vicar of this parish. He had diverted himself on the way the whole day, by viewing the gentlemen's seats on the road, until the fall of night, when he found himself a mile or "two out of his direct road, in the middle of the street of Ardagh. Here he inquired for the best house in the place, meaning an inn; but being wilfully misunderstood by a wag, a fencing-master, of the name of Kelly, who boasted of having been the instructor of the celebrated Marquis of Granby, he was directed to the large old-fashioned residence of Sir Ralph Fetherston, the landlord of the town, where he was shown into the parlour, where he found the hospitable master of the house sitting by a good fire. His mistake was immediately perceived by Sir Ralph, who being a man of humour, and well acquainted with the poet's family, encouraged him in the deception. Goldsmith ordered a good supper, invited his host and the family to partake of it, treated them with a bottle or two of wine, and at going to bed, ordered a hot cake to be prepared for his breakfast; nor was it till his departure, when he called for the bill, that he discovered that, while he imagined he was at an inn, he had been hospitably entertained in a private family of the first rank in the country. . . The natal spot of Goldsmith, as well as that of Homer, is in some danger of being disputed by posterity. Such has been the blundering stupidity of several of the early editors of our poet's works, in the biographical scraps which they prefixed to them, that one of them tells us he was born at Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, merely because he had many relations in that neighbourhood, and among them his cousin-german, the grandfather of my venerable friend here, John Goldsmith, of Ballyoughter, Esq.; and in the very same page almost, gives us his epitaph, written by Dr. Johnson, directly contradicting that allegation in these words, which are inscribed on his monument in Westminster Abbey:

"Natus in Hibernia Forniæ Longfordiensis

In loco cui nomen Pallas.'

"Another biographer, worthy to be classed among the early editors of Shakespeare, gives the original words of this epitaph, and translates them thus in a parallel column, transferring the birth-place of the Poet into the county of Wexford,- He was born at Fernes, in the province of Leinster, at a place where Pallas had set her name.' An unlucky mistake respecting the natal spot of our poet, occurs also on the books of Trinity College, owing to the residence of his uncle Henry at Lissoy, or the circumstance of his father having resided there; the entry runs thus: 1744, Olivarius Goldsmith, Siz. Filius Caroli Clerici, ann. agens 15, natus in Comitatu Westmeath, educatus sub Ferula M. Hughes -Tutor, M. Wilder.' But, notwithstanding these very contradictory