THE DESERTED VILLAGE. DEAR SIR, TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. I can have no expectations, in an address of this kind, either to add to your reputation, or to establish my own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, as I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to excel and I may lose much by the severity of your judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than you. Setting interest therefore aside, to which I never paid much attention, I must be indulged at present in following my affections. The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you. How far you may be pleased with the versification and mere mechanical parts of this attempt, I do not pretend to inquire; but I know you will object (and indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To this I can scarcely make any other answer than that I sincerely believe what I have written; that I have taken all possible pains, in my country excursions, for these four or five years past, to be certain of what I allege, and that all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real which I here attempt to display. But this is not the place to enter into an inquiry, whether the country be depopulating or not; the discussion would take up much room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician, to tire the reader with a long preface, when I want his unfatigued attention to a long poem. In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages, and all the wisdom of antiquity in that particular as erroneous. Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so many vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms have been undone. Indeed so much has been poured out of late on the other side of the question, that merely for the sake of novelty and variety, one would sometimes wish. to be in the right. I am, Dear Sir, Your sincere friend and ardent admirer, OLIVER GOLDSMITH. Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain; Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain, Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer's lingering blooms delayed: Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, Where humble happiness endeared each scene! The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The decent church that topt the neighbouring hill, The matron's glance that would those looks reprove. Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn; One only master grasps the whole domain, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, A time there was, ere England's griefs began, But times are altered; trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, And every pang that folly pays to pride. Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour, Amidst thy tangling walks and ruined grounds, And tell of all I felt, and all I saw ; And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, |