CHARLES CHURCHILL

(264) THE ROSCIAD. Lines 963-86. The title means "A Song about Roscius"; Roscius was a famous Roman actor, and his name came to be used for actors in general. The poem is a scathing criticism of contemporary London actors. James Quin, the actor satirized in this extract, was very successful, especially in Falstaff; his popularity finally waned before the growing splendor of Garrick's fame. 15. Hector's lovely widow: Andromache is a character in Ambrose Philips' Distressed Mother, adapted from Racine's Andromaque. ¶6. Rowe's gay rake: Lothario, in The Fair Penitent by Nicholas Rowe (1674-1708). ¶ 13. Brute: Sir John Brute, a character in Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife. ¶ 15. "Cato's": the reference is to Addison's tragedy of Cato.

(265) 24. Horatio: a young Genoese gentleman in Rowe's Fair Penitent. Dorax: a renegade Portuguese nobleman in Dryden's Don Sebastian. Falstaff: the great comic character in Shakspere's Henry IV.

(265) THE APOLOGY. Lines 314-87.

(266) 48. Procrustes: a robber of Greek legend, who laid all his prisoners on one bed; if they were too long for it, he cut off their limbs; if they were too short, he stretched them. 149. Waller: see note on Pope's "Spring," 1. 46 (P. 444). ¶62. Brent: Charlotte Brent, an opera-singer very popular in London at this time.

(267) THE GHOST. Book II. 653-76. The poem gets its name from the celebrated Cock Lane ghost; and Samuel Johnson (Pomposo), as one of those who investigated the mysterious rappings, comes in for a share of the ridicule, which Churchill made the more severe in this case because Johnson was a Tory while he himself was an ardent Liberal.

WILLIAM FALCONER

(267) THE SHIPWRECK. Canto III. 605-747. The poem recounts an actual event, the poet's shipwreck near Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, in 1749.

(268) 23. Maro's: Virgil's. ¶30. impervious-impassable, i. e., too terrible for mortals to go through. 41. Palemon: the supercargo.

(269) 49. unhappy chief: Albert, the captain. 174. Rodmond: first mate. 86. Arion: the poet, who was second mate.

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

"Homer has been admired by some for reducing a catalogue of ships into tolerably flowing verse; but who, except a poetical sailor, the nursling of Apollo educated by Neptune. would ever have thought of versifying his own sea-language? What other poet would ever have dreamt of reef-tackles, hall-yards, clue-garnets, bunt-lines, lashings, lannyards, and fifty other terms equally obnoxious to the soft singsong of modern poetasters? . . . . Many of his descriptions are, in our opinion, not at all inferior to anything of the kind we meet with in the Eneid, many passages in the third and fifth books of which we conceive, nevertheless, our author has had in view. They have not suffered, however, by his imitation, and his pilot appears to much greater advantage than the Palinurus of Virgil."-The Monthly Review, September, 1762.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

(271) THE TRAVELLER. "Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavored to show that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from our own, that each state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess."Dedicatory letter. 2. Scheld: a river flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands into the North Sea. Po: the great river of northern Italy, flowing east into the Adriatic Sea. 13. Carinthian: Carinthia is a mountainous district of Austria-Hungary; Goldsmith visited it in

1755, during his vagrant tour of the continent of Europe. 5. Campania's: Campania is a district in southern Italy. ¶ 13-22. Cf. "The Deserted Village," ll. 149-62 (p. 286).

(273) 84. Idra's: Idria (not Idra) is a town in Austria-Hungary famous for its quick silver mines. Arno's: the Arno flows through Tuscany, one of the most fertile regions of Italy. shelvy shelving, sloping gradually.

(274) 98. peculiar pain: pain proper to, peculiarly connected with, the excess of that particular good. ¶ 121. gelid-cool. 127. manners: morals.

(275) 144. plethoric ill: the ill attendant on a plethora, or superabundance (literally, excess of blood). 150. paste-board triumph: a procession or pageant, with pasteboard

masks, etc.

(276) 190. savage: wild beast.

(277) 238. Cf. Pope's "Rape of the Lock," I. 66, "And sport and flutter in the fields of air."¶253. gestic "Pertaining to action or motion, specifically to dancing."-The Century Dictionary.

(278) 276. frieze: a coarse woolen cloth. instead of the more costly silver or gold lace

copper-lace: lace finished with copper,

(279) 313-15. An allusion to the long and heroic struggle of the Netherlands against Spain (1567-1609), under the leadership of William of Orange and his son Maurice, by which the Dutch states gained their independence. 313. Belgic: the word is derived from "Belgae," the Romans' name for tribes which in the time of the Roman Empire occupied a large region including Belgium and the Netherlands; it does not here refer to Belgium, which did not join in the revolt of the Netherlands. 318. the western spring: an allusion to England's position in the west of Europe, in contrast to eastern Europe and to India, referred to in the next two lines. 319. Arcadian: Arcadia was a beautiful pastoral region in southern Greece. 320. Hydaspis: a river in India; it was famous as the scene of one of Alexander's victories, but still more for fabulous stories, as that it ran gold and jewels. 343-92. These lines, doubtless inspired in part by Johnson, were directed against John Wilkes and his faction. Wilkes was a political agitator, who in his paper, The North Briton, attacked the king's minisces and the message of the king himself; for the latter offense he was imprisoned, and later, for an indecent publication, he was expelled from Parliament and outlawed, shortly before "The Traveller" appeared; he became a popular hero, but was intolerable to a sturdy Tory and moralist like Johnson.

(281) 397-422. These lines are a "Deserted Village" in little. 403, 494. Cf. "The Deserted Village," ll. 65, 66 (p. 283). 411. Oswego: a river in New York state, flowing into Lake Ontario. 420, 429-34, 437, 438. These lines were written by Johnson; see Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Globe ed., p. 173.

(282) 436. Luke's iron crown: George (not Luke) Dozsa headed a revolt in Hungary, in 1514, and was tortured by being seated on a red-hot iron throne and crowned with a red hot iron crown, because he had let the peasants proclaim him king. Damiens' bed of steel: Robert François Damiens was tortured and then torn to pieces by four horses, for attempting the life of Louis XV, in 1757; the bed of steel was an ingenious device for prolonging his life and sufferings.

(282) THE DESERTED VILLAGE. "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."-Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds. "Not only did the enclosures of commons deprive the poor of valuable rights; but also enclosures in the sense of substitution of 'severalties' for the old 'champion' system admittedly led to the consolidation of farms, the eviction of small holders, and so. .. to the ultimate increase of

poor rates...

In the end, of course, enclosures added to the general wealth of the country and thereby increased the demand for labor. But in the meantime they degraded' small holders into landless laborers. . . . . It is a significant fact that in 1774 the Elizabethan Act was repealed which had aimed at securing to every cottage its four acres of ground attached. But indubitably the chief cause of the advance of pauperism in this period [1742-84] was the rise in prices as compared with wages.”—Social England, ed. by H. D. Traill. Vol. V.

To the frequent queries whether "sweet Auburn' is the Irish village of Lissoy, the poet's early home, Forster's statement in his Life and Times of Oliver Goldsmith (chap. vii) is a sufficient answer: "Scenes of the poet's youth had doubtless risen in his memory as he wrote, mingling with, and taking altered hue from, later experiences; .... it is even possible that he may have caught the first hint of his design from a local Westmeath poet and schoolmaster, who in his youth had given rhymed utterance to the old tenant grievances of the Irish rural population; nor could complaints that were also loudest in those boyish days at Lissoy, of certain reckless and unsparing evictions by which one General Naper (Napper or Napier) had persisted in improving his estate, have passed altogether from Goldsmith's memory. But there was nothing local in his present aim; or if there was, it was the rustic life and rural scenery of England."

(283) 25. simply: in simple fashion.

(285) 122. vacant: empty of care. 142. forty pounds: this was a common salary for a curate in a small parish at that time; it was about twice the wages of a farm-laborer, and about a fourth less than the wages of a mason or carpenter. This sketch of the good preacher doubtless owes something to the poet's memories of his father and brother, and perhaps also to Chaucer's description of the "poor parson."

(287) 196. the village master: the teacher of the village school at Lissoy, "Paddy" Byrne, a retired quartermaster of an Irish regiment, no doubt furnished some elements of this portrait. 209. terms: the sessions of the law courts, which are determined in part by certain days, such as Easter, which shift their place in the calendar from year to year. tides: times and seasons, as Christmastide, Whitsuntide (the original meaning, from O.E. "tid," time, season). 210. gauge: measure the capacity of a barrel or keg.

(288) 231. use: perhaps to hide discolored places on the walls. 232. The twelve good rules. These rules, which were ascribed to Charles I, were as follows: "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 comparisons; 7. Maintain no ill opinions; 8. Keep no bad company; 9. Encourage no vice; 10. Make no long meals; 11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no wagers." ¶248. mantling bliss: the cup of ale, covered with foam.

(290) 316. artist artisan; here, a tailor. 322. chariots: coaches. torches: the streets of London were still so badly lighted that torches were commonly used at night. ¶ 330. thorn: the hawthorn bush. 344. Altama: the Altamaha, a river in Georgia; the colony of Georgia was founded in 1733, especially as a refuge for debtors and other distressed persons.

(292) 418. Torno's cliffs: probably the cliffs on Lake Tornea in the north of Sweden. Pambamarca's: Pambamarca is a mountain in Ecuador, South America. ¶ 427-30. These lines were written by Johnson; see Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson Globe ed., p. 174.

(293) RETALIATION. Lines 1-22, 29–42, 61–78, 93-124, 137-46. Among Garrick's manuscripts was found the following statement: "At a meeting of a company of gentlemen, who were well known to each other, and diverting themselves, among many other things, with the peculiar oddities of Dr. Goldsmith, who never would allow a superior in any art, from writing poetry down to dancing a hornpipe, the doctor, with great eagerness, insisted on trying his epigrammatic powers with Mr. Garrick, and each of them was to write the other's epitaph. Mr. Garrick immediately said that his epitaph was finished, and spoke the following distich extempore:

Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll,
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll.

Goldsmith, upon the company's laughing very heartily, grew very thoughtful, and either would not or could not write anything at that time; however, he went to work, and some weeks after produced the following printed poem, called 'Retaliation,' which has been much admired, and gone through several editions. The public in general have been mistaken in imagining that this poem was written in anger by the doctor; it was just the contrary; the whole on all sides was done with the greatest good humor."

(293) 1. Scarron: Paul Scarron (1610-60), a French burlesque poet and dramatist. 5. Our Dean: Thomas Barnard, Dean of Derry, Ireland. ¶6. Burke: Edmund Burke, the orator. ¶ 7. Will: William Burke, a cousin of Edmund. 8. Dick: Richard Burke, brother of Edmund. 19. Cumberland's: Richard Cumberland was a writer of popular sentimental plays. ¶ 10. Douglas: John Douglas, a Scotchman, Canon of Windsor. ¶ 11. Garrick: David Garrick, the actor. 14. Ridge John Ridge, an Irish barrister. anchovy: a small fish of rich flavor. Reynolds: Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. lamb see ll. 87-96. 15. Hickey: Tom Hickey, an Irish attorney. 28. Townshend: a member of Parliament and minor politician. 32. nice: particular, fastidious, intellectually and morally. 133. a drudge: i e., a party drudge, merely doing the will of his political superiors.

B. C.

(294) 38. Terence: the famous writer of Roman comedies, living in the second century mender of hearts: see the following lines. ¶44. rout: a social assemblage.

(295) 77. Kenricks: William Kenrick, a reviewer and play-writer, was an enemy of Goldsmith. Kellys: Hugh Kelly was a writer of sentimental comedy, with whom Goldsmith had had some differences, while Garrick had taken him into favor. Woodfalls: William Woodfall was the publisher of The Morning Chronicle. ¶80. be-Rosciused: see note on Churchill's "Rosciad," p. 487. 86. Beaumonts: Francis Beaumont (1584-1616), in collaboration with John Fletcher, wrote many excellent plays. Bens: Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) was Shakspere's greatest contemporary in the drama. ¶94. hard of hearing: while studying the pictures in the Vatican, Reynolds caught a cold which resulted in deafness and obliged him to use an ear-trumpet. 195. Correggios: Correggio (1494-1534) was one of the most famous of the Italian painters contemporary with Raphael.

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM

"The author already appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier, and by his scenery to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness. . . . . . . Such is the poem [" The Traveller"], on which we now congratulate the public as on a production to which, since the death of Pope, it will not be easy to find anything equal."-The Critical Review, December, 1764. (Boswell attributes the article to Johnson.)

""The Traveller' is one of those delightful poems that allure by the beauty of their scenery, a refined elegance of sentiment, and a correspondent happiness of expression. . . But though our author makes no great figure in political philosophy, he does not fail to entertain us with his poetical descriptions. . . We must now refer the reader to the poem itself, which we cannot but recommend to him as a work of very considerable merit.”—The Monthly Review, January, 1765.

"That luxury is at present depopulating our country, not only by preventing marriage, but driving our villagers over the western ocean, we may perhaps be disposed to deny with the best and wisest of Dr. Goldsmith's friends, but we do not therefore read his poem with the less pleasure. As a picture of fancy it has great beauty; and if we shall occasionally remark that it is nothing more, we shall very little derogate from its merit. . . . . In this extract [11-48] there is a strain of poetry very different from the quaint phrase and forced construction into which our fashionable bards are distorting prose. . . . . .. This [ll. 57-74] is fine painting and fine poetry, notwithstanding the absurdity of supposing that there was a time when England was equally divided among its inhabitants by a rood to a man: if it was yossible that such an equal division could take place, either in England or any other coun

....

try, it could not continue ten years; wherever there is property, there must of necessity be poverty and riches. This passage [ll. 97-112] though it is fine, is fanciful. Does he who retires into the country to crown 'a youth of labor with an age of ease' use no knife, eat no sugar, and wear neither shirt nor breeches? If he does, for him the mine must be explored, the deep tempted, and 'the pale artist ply the sickly trade.' The following description of the parish priest would have done honor to any poet of any age."—The Monthly Review June, 1770. in a review of "The Deserted Village."

"This is a very elegant poem, written with great pains, yet bearing every possible mark of facility. In our last number we gave an extract from it containing the picture of a country curate; we shall now present the public with the description of a country schoolmaster and a village ale-house, which we think particularly picturesque."-The London Magazine, June, 1770.

....

JAMES BEATTIE

(295) THE MINSTREL. Book I. xix-xxii, xxxii-xxxv, liii-lv. "The design was to trace the progress of a poetical genius, born in a rude age, from the first dawning of fancy and reason till that period at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel. I have endeavored to imitate Spenser in the measure of his verse, and in the harmony, simplicity, and variety of his composition. Antique expressions I have avoided. To those who may be disposed to ask what could induce me to write in so difficult a measure, I can only answer that it pleases my ear, and seems, from its Gothic structure and original, to bear some relation to the subject and spirit of the poem. It admits both simplicity and magnificence of sound and of language, beyond any other stanza that I am acquainted with. It allows the sententiousness of the couplet as well as the more complex modulation of blank verse. What some critics have remarked, of its uniformity growing at last tiresome to the ear, will be found to hold true only when the poetry is faulty in other respects."-Preface.

THOMAS CHATTERTON

(298) BRISTOWE TRAGEDIE. Stanzas 1-3, 54-88, 92-98. "Bristowe" is an early form for "Bristol." The historical basis of the ballad is probably the execution of Sir Baldwin Fulford, at Bristol, in 1461, during the Wars of the Roses; Fulford, a partisan of the house of Lancaster, had opposed the claim of Edward IV to the throne of England. ¶ 2. han=has.

(300) 63. enshone-showed. moe more. 71. weedes garments. ¶ 72. plyghte= condition. 78. Echone each one. 179. of-by. Henrie's: the reference is to Henry VI, who had recently been deposed and whom Edward IV had succeeded-illegitimately, as the Lancastrians believed.

-no.

(301) 85. moe=more. ¶ 105. mynsterr-minster, cathedral.

(302) 135. Gloucester: the Duke of Gloucester, afterward Richard III. 138. Ne

(303) 160. stroke=struck. ¶ 169. Kynwulph-hylle: "So called from Kenwulf, king of Mercia, and probably the same spot which still bears the name of King's Down, a very eminent part of the city."-Dean Milles. ¶ 173. Powle's-Paul's.

(303) THE ACCOUNTE OF W. CANYNGES FEAST. William Canynge was the imaginary friend and patron of the imaginary poet-priest Rowley, to whom Chatterton attributed most of his poems in imitation of poetry of the fifteenth century; this poem, however, he ascribes to Canynge. 1. han-has. 2. Byelecoyle=fair welcoming. beseeme-appear.

(304) 4. snoffellesnuff up. cheorte cheerful, pleasant. 16. Swotelye sweetly. 17. Syche-so. coyne-keen. ¶9. Heie stylle-they still, i. e., when the minstrels became silent. ne-nothing. 11. echone each one, every. deene dine. ¶ 12. Gyfif. Iscamm Tyb. Gorges: other imaginary friends of Canynge.