DR OLIVER GOLDSMITH. (1728-1774.) GOLDSMITH'S poetical works are limited, but they are exquisite in their kind; he is one of the pioneers who broke down the artificial barriers which convention had erected against a natural literature. He was the son of a humble Irish curate, and was born and spent his youthful years in the county of Longford. He received his education at the universities of Dublin and Edinburgh. Suddenly quitting the latter city, although in utter poverty, he resolved to make the tour of Europe. His fortunes on the Continent were singular and various; from a passage in the "Traveller," he seems to have often earned, by his flute, a supper and bed from the peasants. He returned to England in the same poverty; but, acquiring the friendship of Johnson, the critic's advice to publish his "Traveller" raised Goldsmith to a high rank of poetical celebrity. His comedies and other publications followed; the poet was enriched, but his irregular and careless habits, and his generous disposition, kept him in perpetual embarrassment. He possessed much of the warm-hearted merits of his countrymen, but perhaps more of their faults. He was, like Gay, at once the pet and the butt of his associates, among whom he numbered Pitt, Burke, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. He died of a painful disease in 1774, leaving a legacy of some L.2000 of debt. 66 Goldsmith's two principal poems, "The Traveller" and the "Deserted Village," belong to the highest order of descriptive poetry. His ballad of "Edwin and Angelina" is an exquisite specimen of its class. His best comedy," She stoops to Conquer," is still a favourite; his miscellaneous prose works comprise An Inquiry into the present state of Polite Learning in Europe;" "The Vicar of Wakefield," one of the most delightful of domestic novels; the essays forming "The Citizen of the World." His compiled histories of England, Greece, and Rome, whose abridgments have so long formed standard school text books, have little merit beyond the grace of style; they were merely "hack" works for the booksellers. His "Animated Nature" was published posthumously. Turn we to survey Where rougher climes a nobler race display, Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread, And force a churlish soil for scanty bread: No product here the barren hills afford But man and steel, the soldier and his sword: ве Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts tho' small, Sees no contiguous palace rear its head, To shame the meanness of his humble shed; Or drives his vent'rous ploughshare to the steep; 66 THE VILLAGE INN.2 Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, The parlour splendours of that festive place; Vain transitory splendours! could not all 1 The floods of modern tourists are said to have made sad inroads on the simplicity of Swiss manners. 2 The scenery of the Deserted Village is furnished by the poet's youthful residence, Lissoy in Ireland. The extract has been selected as illustrative of Goldsmith's skill in simple description. The poem contains much finer passages: the clergyman is a portrait of his father. Reprieve the tott'ring mansion from its fall? No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, PROPOSED EPITAPH FOR EDMUND BURKE. Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 1 Retaliation is a collection of humorous epitaphs of the poet's friends in the "Literary Club," as a retort for some bantering he had undergone. The piece displays great skill in touching the foibles of characters; among the epitaph names, are Richard Cumberland, the dramatist and essayist; Bishop Douglas of Salisbury, the detector of Lauder's forgery on Milton; Macpherson, the editor of Ossian, &c. 2 M. P. for Whitchurch. WILLIAM FALCONER. (1730-1770.) WILLIAM FALCONER, a Scotch sailor, born of humble parents in Edinburgh, published in 1762 his Shipwreck,-a poem which depicted an actual disaster, and introduced into literature the technicalities of seamanship. The merits of the piece, and its dedication to the Duke of York, procured for the poet promotion in the navy. He subsequently produced a political satire, and a Marine Dictionary." He perished on board an East India merchantman, which was supposed to have foundered in the Indian Ocean. The Shipwreck is a composition of singular merit from a man with Falconer's opportunities. A second edition engrafted on it new episodes and emendations, which do not seem to have improved it. The scene of the disaster is Cape Colonna (the ancient Sunium) in Greece, and the poet alludes with power and beauty to the classic objects of these shores. The characters are drawn with vigour and graphicness of lineament. The technical terms of a ship's management are interwoven with great skill into a harmonious versification; and, in his description of the storm and of the catastrophe, the poet rises into sublimity, while the whole scene is mellowed by the most amiable and tender affections of humanity. 66 * The vessel, while the dread event draws nigh, In vain the cords and axes were prepar'd, 1 Minerva's worship at the lake Tritonis in Africa procured for her this name.--Herod. iv. 180. Ovid applies to Athens the appellation Tritonis, as the city of Minerva. Her shatter'd top half-buried in the skies, And quivering with the wound, in torment reels; The bleeding bull beneath the murd'rer's blows ;- ERASMUS DARWIN, M. D. (1731-1802.) DR ERASMUS DARWIN was born "at Elston, near Newark." On completing his medical education at Edinburgh, he settled as a physician, first at Nottingham, and then at Litchfield. After the death of his first wife, in 1770, he formed an advantageous second marriage, and his poetic wing was no longer fluttered with dread of the probable desertion of his practice, as a consequence of indulgence in its Parnassian flights. His "Botanic Garden," the origination of which is claimed by his euphuistic biographer, Miss Anna Seward, was completed in 1792, in three parts, published at considerable intervals. The poem is adorned with the Rosicrucian machinery of gnomes, sylphs, and nymphs. This specimen of the application of science to the purposes of poetry possesses great merit as regards accuracy and extent of information, and its adaptation to the knowledge of the time, for Darwin was an accomplished, though somewhat pedantic, professional and general scholar; but, as poetry, the "Botanic Garden" can boast little above the merit of metallically-polished versification. It exhibits abundance of fancy, but nothing of lite, passion, or imagination, and resembles a hortus siccus, or a zoological museum, compared with living flowers or living animals; it fatigues with its countless and fantastic personifications, but individual passages display great vigour and real splendour of expression and Darwin, who stands between the old and new poetic ages, the last singer on the lyre of Pope, may possibly claim the merit of having restrained the luxuriance of irregularity into which the verse of the nineteenth century threatened to rush. 1 Darwin's birth happens in the same year with that of Cowper; and, like Cowper, he was an elderly man when he published his poetry; in every thing else they are antipodes of each other:-the one is the extreme type of the artificial school; the other is the most graceful ornament of the natural. This is seen in his extensive notes, and in his large work, "Zoonomia," or "The Laws of Organic Life." |