unfortunately spoiled. How surprised Goldsmith would have been to know that boys and girls would busily study his poem in these very regions. 423. Goldsmith reverts to his theme, the search for happiness. He turns to the sage conclusion that geographical or political conditions have little to do with felicity, and lines 431, 432 are the wisest in the poem. Dr. Johnson, however, was the author of them. He wrote the last ten lines, excepting lines 433, 436. 436. Luke's iron crown: Two brothers, George and Luke Dosa, led a revolt against the Hungarian nobility early in the sixteenth century, but it was George who was tortured by a crown of red hot iron. Damiens' bed of steel: "Robert François Damiens was put to death with revolting barbarity, in the year 1757, for an attempt to assassinate Louis XV." THE DESERTED VILLAGE. NOTES. The Dedication: Sir Joshua, the great painter to whom the poem is dedicated in these graceful and touching words, was so pleased with the compliment that he painted a picture called "Resignation," representing an aged beggar, which was to be engraved and to carry the inscription: "This attempt to express a character in The Deserted Village is dedicated to Dr. Goldsmith by his sincere friend and admirer, Joshua Reynolds." Goldsmith was wrong in his opinion that England was "depopulating," but not wrong in his general view of the land question. When he inveighed "against the increase of our luxuries" he may have been a "professed ancient" to his own time, but he was also a prophet of the future. Many of the greatest nineteenth century thinkers, Carlyle and Ruskin especially, were to make his cry the burden of their teaching. Today, even "modern politicians" and economists shout no longer against him but for him and only the rash and ignorant person dares to claim that the production of luxuries can in the long run relieve economic distress. 12. Decent: Akin to Latin "decus," honor, and used in its frequent eighteenth century sense of becoming, comely, fit. Compare Wordsworth's Prelude, Book IV, 21: 24, etc. I saw the snow-white church upon her hill Sit like a throned Lady, sending out A gracious look all over her domain. This description, although in the slightly formal manner of the times, presents real memories of a real village. It is quite different in tone from the pastoral poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was usually written by men who knew little of country life at first hand, but who invented a pretty dream-land where the manners and customs were derived rather from Sicily than from England, and where the fruits of civilization might be enjoyed without its pains. On the other hand, Goldsmith does not present his village nearly as vividly as Crabbe or Burns or Wordsworth would have done. His poem is transitional between the conventionality of the older pastoral and modern realism. 39. One only master: In 1910, one-tenth of the inhabitants of England owned nine-tenths of the land. Whole villages often belong to the great landed estates as part of their property. See for an admirable description of such a village, the opening chapters of Trollope's novel, Dr. Thorne: and for a picture of the constant ill-feeling between the tillers of the soil and the landed gentry, Charles Kingsley's Yeast. 40. Half a tillage: The land is kept for shooting, not for agriculture. 44. The hollow-sounding bittern: A bittern is a kind of heron, a marsh-bird. 51. Ill fares the land, etc.: Goldsmith is deeply in earnest in the following passage. Note the strong progressive word, "hastening." And compare the long address of the Vicar in the nineteenth chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield, especially the passage beginning: "An accumulation of wealth, however, must necessarily be the consequence when, as at present, more riches flow in from external commerce than from internal industry," and ending: "Those, however, who are willing to move in a great man's vortex are only such as must be slaves, the rabble of mankind." "There is no wealth but life," said John Ruskin in a memorable epigram. And he accordingly defined the aim of political economy to be "The multiplication of human life at the highest standard." 58. Maintained its man: Peasant-proprietorship is stili urged by many thoughtful people as the solution of the land-question. Others prefer communal or state ownership, with carefully guarded methods of tenure. But what is the time of which Goldsmith is thinking when he says, "Ere England's griefs began"? Not the middle ages, with their system of villeinage. Not the fifteenth century, with the miseries of which one may read in the first book of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Hardly the sixteenth century, or the seventeenth. One fears that it was the Saturnian Age ever dear to poetic dream. 63. Trade's unfeeling train: Note the instinctive delight of the poet in agriculture and his distaste for commerce. It is worth noting that many of the great landholders in England today made their money in trade. 67. And every want to opulence allied: What are some of the wants "to opulence allied" as compared with those allied to poverty? 80. This entire line is the object of "view." 83. This the most touching section of the poem, is written in singularly pure and simple English. 103. For him no wretches, etc.: The following passage evinces Goldsmith's sensitiveness in a surprising way. The recoil from profiting by the painful labor of others is one of the best products of modern democracy. But here it is, in the full tide of the eighteenth century, felt as keenly as Ruskin could have felt it. Another eighteenth century worthy, the saintly American Quaker, John Wooiman, suffered agonies from this same cause. 114. The village murmur: Charmingly analyzed in the following lines. Only we should hardly today take a pensive pleasure in hearing, even blended with other sounds, "the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind." Carlyle, looking down at a village from a hill-top, takes especial satisfaction in watching the colored smoke that spouts from cottage chimneys and suggests dinners a-cooking (Sartor Resartus). Is anything too homely to be proper material for poetry? Gabbling geese, mooing cows, screaming children, barking dogs, none of them produce music. What is the secret of their charm to the imagination in this passage? 129. Yon widow'd solitary thing: This single figure on whom our eyes are now fixed anticipates the type of subject dear to Wordsworth in poetry and to Millet in painting. This special old woman has been identified by curious critics as one Catherine Gerarty but really, Goldsmith need not have had any individual in mind. 142. Passing rich with forty pounds a year: "Passing" is used in the sense often found in Shakespeare: the expression "passing strange" still seems hardly obsolete. I In Goldsmith's dedication of The Traveller to his brother Henry, a clergyman in Ireland, we read that the poem "is addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year. now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice." This whole description is most deservedly a familiar quotation. 160, 161. Would these two lines appear admirable, do you think, to our modern Associated Charities? 194. With blossom'd furze: One of the lines that shows Goldsmith the poet. 196. The village master: Identified with Thomas Byrne, famillarly known as "Paddy Byrne," an old soldier who taught school in Lissoy when the poet was a little boy. 209. Terms are the terms of law-courts and universities. Tides are not tides on the sea, but seasons like Christmastide, Eastertide. 210. Gauge: "A gauger is in some places a sworn officer, whose duty it is to measure the contents of hogsheads, barrels, or casks." 220. Compare the talk at the Inn with similar scenes presented by Dickens and George Eliot. Old-fashioned English inns have furnished much delightful material to literature. 225, etc. The following description of an author's bed-chamber was sent by Goldsmith to his brother some time earlier than the date of The Deserted Village. It is doubtless a picture of his own way of living in the days of his poverty. A comparison with the passage in the text will show the careful and minute art which has gone to shaping a poem so seemingly spontaneous, so easy and simple in movement, as The Deserted Village. Writers in the eighteenth century spared no pains with their lines, and the best of them well knew that case and plainness in the style were no result of an easy-going way of writing but of deliberate effort. Where the Red Lion, staring o'er the way, Invites each passing stranger that can pay; The Muse found Scroggen stretch'd beneath a rug. And brave prince William show'd his lampblack face. The rusty grate unconscious of a fire: With beer and milk arrears the frieze was scor'd, And five crack'd teacups dress'd the chimney board; A nightcap deck'd his brows instead of bay, A cap by night,-a stocking all the day! 232. The twelve good rules: Portraits of King Charles, by a queer twist of favor become a popular hero, in those days adorned inns and lodgings much as portraits of Lord Byron did within living memory. Beneath the portrait would be engraved the Twelve Rules assigned to the Royal Martyr. They ran: 1. Urge no healths. 2. Profane no divine ordinances. 3. Touch no state. matters. 4. Reveal no secrets. 5. Pick no quarrels. 6. Make no companions. 7. Maintain no ill opinions. 8. Keep no bad company. 9. Encourage no vice. 10. Make no long meal. 11. Re peat no grievances. 12. Lay no wagers. The royal game of goose was a species of checkers. Goldsmith, for once, is less afraid of the concrete than Wordsworth. See The Prelude, Book I, 509, for a description of the Royal Game of Goose. 244. The woodman's ballad: The woodman is the man used to the woods, the hunter. Perhaps he sang a ballad of Robin Hood and the good greenshawe. 262. The toiling pleasure sickens into pain: Again a line that summarizes a whole train of thought and experience. 265-286. Carlyle, a little over half a century later, was to say much the same thing with even more force. What in Goldsmith is admirable general statement becomes in Carlyle direct analysis: "The condition of England is justly regarded as one of the most ominous and withal one of the strangest ever seen in this world. England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of workers: The work they have done is here, abundant, exuberant, on every hand of us; and behold, some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, Touch it not, ye workers; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit." Past and Present. 287. Female: Now a vulgarism, but in good use at that time. 295. Other great invectives against luxury may be found in the writings of Ruskin, Tolstoy, and William Morris. It is noteworthy that poets and artists are especially prominent among the enemies of extravagance and waste. Can you cite any instances in history of the process described by Goldsmith? 308. Even the bare-worn common: This line illustrates the change then going on in agricultural holdings. 316. Artist: Artizan. In Goldsmith's 318. The black gibbet: This is no fancy picture. time many trifling offences were punishable by death, and the gallows, with a corpse hanging from it, was still a familiar object on country cross-roads. Goldsmith makes clear that it was to be met in the city also. 341. Shortly before this time, the philanthropist Oglethorpe, the founder of the State of Georgia, had welcomed a number of poor debtors to the colony of Georgia. This fact has worked on Goldsmith's imagination. But the description given here does not at all resemble Georgia, although the Aitama is a Georgian river. 363-384. Although there is a good deal of poetic conventionality in the account of the departure of the exiles, and although many lines have rather a prim eighteenth century quality, the general feeling in this passage is sweet and sound. Similar scenes |