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theGood Natured Man.'33 It was first offered to Garrick, with Johnson and Burke's recommendation; and when he, doubting of its success, declined it, it was given to Colman, who produced it in January, 1768. Johnson wrote the prologue, and Shuter threw his own rich and peculiar colouring of humour over the character of Croaker; 59 but the play was not very successful. It was withdrawn after nine nights, but not till it had produced £500 to the author; the greater part of which Goldsmith spent in furnishing his chambers, and increasing his establishment. Some part of it went, without doubt, in charity; for one of his biographers, 40 who was well acquainted with him, asserts that at this time our doctor, as he was now universally called, had a constant levee of his distrest countrymen, whose wants, as far as he was able, he always relieved, and he has often been known to leave himself even without a guinea, in order to supply the necessities of others.'

38 The joke in act v. of the Landlady, 'Pipes and tobacco for the Lamb.' 'The Angel has been outrageous this half hour,' is taken from Brome's Covent Garden Weeded, p. 34. Second volume of plays, 8vo.

3 Goldsmith owned that he was indebted for his first conception of the character of Croaker to Johnson's Suspirius in the Rambler. Croaker's reading the incendiary letter in the fourth act was received with a roar of approbation. 40 Mr. T. Evans, p. xvi. of his Memoir.

At the time that Goldsmith was composing his comedy, he was also earning considerable sums of money by compiling popular histories for the booksellers. The History of Rome is one; the History of Greece, published after his death, it is said, cannot with certainty be ascribed to him. For his History of England he had £500, and for his abridgment of the Roman History £50. The chief merit of these works is in the grace and elegance of their style. The facts are said (for I have not myself read them) to be often incorrectly and superficially stated. Histories of those two great nations, eminent above all others for their polity, their genius, and their power, are not to be written without those extensive researches, and those stores of recondite learning, that an author like Goldsmith had neither leisure, nor inclination to possess. Our writers were compiling histories, when they should have been employed in the more useful, though humble occucupation of collecting materials, and arranging information. The labours of the critic and the antiquary must precede and prepare the tale of the historian :—a History of Greece or Rome is not to be formed from the text of Herodotus or Livy. The half-eaten medal, and the mouldering inscription, the long buried manuscript, and the forgotten scholiast; the poetry of the stage, and the superstition of the temple, will often be the

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only guide to truth; and the painful labours of many a diligent scholar must prepare for us those rich materials on which the comprehensive mind, and philosophical powers of some future writer will erect his work. When time has thus been called upon to unrol his treasures, and to display his pages of truth, many of the sweet and seductive histories of antiquity will lose all but their charm of eloquence.

Goldsmith was often called on to contribute prefaces and dedications to the works of different authors, as Guthrie's History of the World, and Brooke's System of Natural History. The attention that he bestowed on this latter work afterwards led to his composing his History of the Earth and Animated Nature; they were all written as a means of livelihood. Pay no regard to the muses (he said to a friend), I have always found productions in prose more sought after and better paid for'-and again by courting the muses I shall starve; but by my other labours I shall eat, drink, have good clothes, and enjoy the luxuries of life.'

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Amidst the drudgery of such compilations, when the hand of genius might well be weary of its tasks, Goldsmith seized some happier hours in which he composed his delightful poem of the Deserted Village, inferior only to the Traveller. It has been very justly remarked,41 that it abounds with

See the narrative, p. 130, prefixed to his works.

couplets and single lines so simply beautiful in point of sentiment, so musical in cadence, and so perfect in expression, that the ear is delighted to retain them for their melody, the mind treasures them for their truth, while their tune of tender melancholy, and their touching pathos indelibly engraves them on the heart. His delineation of rural scenery, his village portraits, his moral, political, and classical allusions, while marked by singular fidelity, chasteness, and elegance, are all chiefly distinguished for their natural and pleasing character. The finishing is exquisitely delicate, without being overwrought, and with the feeling of tenderness and melancholy which runs through

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42 One day I met the poet Harding at Oxford, a half crazy creature, as poets generally are, with a huge broken brick and some bits of thatch upon the crown of his hat; on my asking him for a solution of this Prosopopeia, Sir,' said he, 'to-day is the anniversary of the celebrated Dr. Goldsmith's death, and I am now in the character of his Deserted Village.'-Colman's Ran. Records, i. 307.

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43 It is generally believed that by Auburn' he intended to designate his native village, Lishoy, in Ireland, and that General Robert Napier was the depopulator of this unfortunate parish. Lishoy is about seven Irish miles distant from Athlone; Pallas is a small estate about ten miles from Lishoy.-Lishoy was formerly the estates of the Dillons, who sold it in 1730 to General Napier, who amassed a large fortune at Vigo. He enclosed a domain of nine miles in circumference, in which were included three respectable families -the Dausons, Lemans, Newsteads, with all their tenants and dependants. Upon the general's death his house was robbed by the indignant peasants, and all his woods cut down.

the poem, there is occasionally mixed up a slight tincture of pleasantry, which gives an additional interest to the whole.' To this very justly written summary of its merits, I shall only add that the transitions (so difficult a part of the poet's task) are managed in the most masterly manner, with all the grace and spirit of lyric poetry; but that there are some marks of occasional weakness and negligence in the versification. A warm and cordial friendship had long existed between the poet and Sir J. Reynolds, and the Deserted Village is inscribed to him in a very elegant and affectionate dedication.

Soon after the publication of this poem he accompanied some ladies, the Miss Hornecks, in

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A gentleman in company with the venerable Dr. Tully, of Athlone, objecting that the description of Auburn could not be intended for Lishoy, as Goldsmith was in England when he wrote the Deserted Village; 'Do you then suppose, sir,' said the doctor, that Milton was in hell when he wrote Paradise Lost?' An edition of Goldsmith with plates and descriptions of the local scenery of Lishoy, supposed to be alluded to by Goldsmith, was published in 1811, in 4to. by the Rev. R. H. Newell, B. D. Fellow of Saint John's College, Cork. There is a village named 'Aubourn,' seven miles south of Lincoln, in a recluse situation, on a gently rising hill, the river winding at its foot.

44 One of the greatest blemishes is the frequent insertion of the word' here' to fill up the line. Goldsmith is said to have been four or five years collecting materials for this poem, and was actually engaged in the construction of it two years. Dr. Anderson has pointed out a few instances of carelessness in parts of the poem, chiefly in repetition of the same words,

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