he wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and idiomatic expression; but still it is select and refined expression. 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. But let us not imagine that the serene graces of this poet were not admirably adapted to his subjects. His poetry is not that of impetuous, but of contemplative sensibility; of a spirit breathing its regrets and recollections, in a tone that has no dissonance with the calm of philosophical reflection. He takes rather elevated speculative views of the causes of good and evil in society; at the same time, the objects which are most endeared to his imagination are those of a familiar and simple interest; and the domestic affections may be said to be the only genii of his romance. The tendency towards abstracted observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly with the compendious form of expression which he studied; whilst the homefelt joys, on which his

* There is, perhaps, no couplet in English rhyme more per. spicuously condensed than those two lines of the Traveller,' in which he describes the once flattering, vain, and happy character of the French.

"They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem, Till seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.' VOL. XXX.

B

fancy loved to repose, required at once the chastest and sweetest colours of language, to make them harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical poem. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives back the image of nature unruffled and minutely. He has no redundant thoughts, or false transports; but seems, on every occasion, to have weighed the impulse to which he surrendered himself. Whatever ardour or casual felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he gained a high degree of purity and self-possession. 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 varnished clock that clicked behind the door.'

He betrays so little effort to make us visionary by the usual and palpable fictions of his art; he keeps apparently so close to realities, and draws certain conclusions, respecting the radical interests of man, so boldly and decidedly, that we pay him a compliment, not always extended to the tuneful tribe, that of judging his sentiments by their strict and logical interpretation. In thus judging him by the test of his philosophical spirit, I am not prepared to say, that he is a purely impartial theorist. He advances general positions, respecting the happiness of society, founded on limited views of truth, and under the bias of local feelings. He contemplates only one side of the question. It must be always thus in poetry. Let the mind be ever so tranquilly disposed to reflection, yet if it retains poetical sensation, it will embrace only those speculative opinions that fall in with the tone of the im

agination. Yet I am not disposed to consider his principles as absurd, or his representations of life as the mere reveries of fancy.

In the Deserted Village' he is an advocate for the agricultural, in preference to the commercial prosperity of a nation; and he pleads for the blessings of the simpler state, not with the vague predilection for the country which is common to poets, but with an earnestness that professes to challenge our soberest belief. Between Rousseau's celebrated letter on the influence of the sciences, and this popular poem, it will not be difficult to discover some resemblance of principles. They arrive at the same conclusions against luxury; the one from contemplating the ruins of a village, and the other from reviewing the downfal of empires. But the English poet is more moderate in his sentiments than the philosopher of Geneva; he neither stretches them to such obvious paradox, nor involves them in so many details of sophistry; nor does he blaspheme all philosophy and knowledge in pronouncing a malediction on luxury. Rousseau is the advocate of savageness, Goldsmith only of simplicity. Still, however, his theory is adverse to trade, and wealth, and arts. He delineates their evils, and disdains their vaunted benefits. This is certainly not philosophical neutrality; but a neutral balancing of arguments would have frozen the spirit of poetry. We must consider him as a pleader on that side of the question, which accorded with the predominant state of his heart; and, considered in that light, he is the poetical advocate of many truths. He revisits a spot consecrated by his earliest and tenderest recollections; he misses the bloomy flush of life, which had marked its once busy, but now depopulated scenes; he beholds the inroads of monopolizing wealth, which had driven the peasant to emigration; and, tracing the sources of the evil to Trade's proud empire,' which has

so often proved a transient glory, and an enervating good, he laments the state of society, where wealth accumulates and men decay.' Undoubtedly, counter-views of the subject might have presented themselves, both to the poet and philosopher. The imagination of either might have contemplated, in remote perspective, the replenishing of empires beyond the deep, and the diffusion of civilized existence, as eventual consolations of futurity, for the present sufferings of emigration. But those distant and cold calculations of optimism would have been wholly foreign to the tone and subject of the poem. It was meant to fix our patriotic sympathy on an innocent and suffering class of the community, to refresh our recollections of the simple joys, the sacred and strong local attachments, and all the manly virtues of rustic life. Of such virtues the very remembrance is by degrees obliterated in the breasts of a commercial people. It was meant to rebuke the luxurious and selfish spirit of opulence, which, imitating the pomp and solitude of feudal abodes, without their hospitality and protection, surrounded itself with monotonous pleasure grounds, which indignantly 'spurned the cottage from the green.'

On the subject of those mis-named improvements, by the way, in which

Along the lawn, where scatter'd hamlets rose, 'Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,"

the possessors themselves of those places have not been always destitute of compunctions similar to the sentiments of the poet. Mr. Potter, in his 'Observations on the Poor Laws,' has recorded an instance of it. When the late Earl of Leicester was complimented upon the completion of his great design at Holkham, he replied, "It is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country. I look round, not a house is to be seen but mine.

I am the Giant of Giant Castle; and have eat up all my neighbours”.'

Although Goldsmith has not examined all the points and bearings of the question suggested by the changes in society which were passing before bis eyes, he has strongly and affectingly pointed out the immediate evils with which those changes were pregnant. Nor, while the picture of Auburn delights the fancy, does it make an useless appeal to our moral sentiments. It may be well sometimes that society, in the very pride and triumph of its improvement, should be taught to pause and look back upon its former steps; to count the virtues that have been lost, or the victims that have been sacrificed by its changes. Whatever may be the calculations of the poetical economist as to ultimate effects, the circumstance of agricultural wealth being thrown into large masses, and of the small farmer exiled from his scanty domain, foreboded a baneful influence on the independent character of the peasantry, which it is by no means clear that subsequent events have proved to be either slight or imaginary.

Pleasing as Goldsmith is, it is impossible to ascribe variety to his poetical character; and Dr. Johnson has justly remarked something of an echoing resemblance of tone and sentiment between the 'Traveller' and 'Deserted Village.' But the latter is certainly an improvement on its predecessor. The field of contemplation in the Traveller' is rather desultory. The other poem has an endearing locality, and introduces us to beings with whom the imagination contracts an intimate friendship. Fiction, in poetry, is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted resemblance; and this ideal beauty of nature has been seldom united with so much sober fidelity as in the groups and scenery of the ‘Deserted Village.'