was dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds. 1. Auburn. The deserted village has not been identified with any place in England. There is an Auburn in Wiltshire, but it does not correspond to this. It is common to say that Goldsmith drew his pictures from Lissoy, in Ireland, where he passed the most of his childhood. Many of the details fit Lissoy, the decent church, the hawthorn tree, the characters. Macaulay's criticism was that the village in its happy days was an English village, in its decayed state, an Irish type. Goldsmith asseverated . that all the conditions, of tyranny and depopulation, are true to English conditions. He said in the Dedication of the poem, "all my views and inquiries have led me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt to display." But this is not borne out by the evidence of the time; nor does Goldsmith himself cite any examples or facts in proof. It is true that the common land was being enclosed, but the final result of that was not entirely disastrous, and depopulation was going on in no such prodigious degree as Goldsmith represents. See Gibbin's Industry in England, §§ 166, 167, 200. 5. Goldsmith's sometimes affected diction is one of the contradictions in his poetry. Bowers, swain, train, cot, virgin, etc., are favourite words with him. 5-15. Goldsmith composed verse very slowly. In Table Talk in the European Magazine, for September, 1793, are given some reminiscences of a friend of his, Cook. He is quoted as saying that these ten lines were Goldsmith's second morning's work on the poem. 44. bittern. See note on Thomson's Spring, 1. 22. 83-96. Compare the personal references in the selection from The Traveller. 110. Reynolds dedicated to Goldsmith a print from his painting, Resignation, saying that the picture was "an attempt to express a character in The Deserted Village." 122. vacant. Empty of care; cf. 1. 257. 126. fluctuate in the gale. Another illustration of his return to the pedantry of the earlier school. Contrast with it 1. 128. 140. village preacher. Goldsmith embodied in this character qualities of his father and brother Henry, both of them remarkably lovable and single-minded men. He describes Henry Goldsmith in the Dedication of The Traveller, as "a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year." This brother died in 1768; it was soon afterwards that Goldsmith began The Deserted Village. In the Dedication of it to Reynolds he says: "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." his crutch. To illustrate the use of the musket. 158. shouldered 196. village mas 210. The ter. The character embodies characteristics of Thomas Byrne, the village schoolmaster, who was Goldsmith's early teacher. He also was unique in his way. 209. Terms. Probably means here, periods of assembling of courts. Tides. Ecclesiastical seasons. gauger, or exciseman, was something of a personage in rural districts. 217-218. Goldsmith draws the description from his own experience. He knew the inn scenes entirely too well, in the period he spent between leaving Dublin University and going to Edinburgh. 232. The twelve good rules. The rules ascribed to Charles I. commonly hung in the inns and such public places. They 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 companions. 7. Maintain no ill opinions. 8. Keep no bad company. 9. Encourage no vice. 10. Make no long meals. II. Repeat no grievances. 12. Lay no wagers. Game of goose. A game played with dice on a board; as described by Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes of the English People, it resembles the modern game known as Parchisi. 304. contiguous. Cf. l. 126. 316. artist; artisan. 309-324. The early eighteenth century was a period in which altruism was little known. The London social life, as reflected in the literature, took little account of the needs and wants of the lower class. The spending class often lived at the expense of the working class. To be in debt to a tradesman was something of a joke; to escape paying him was an amusing success. The sufferings of the poor were taken for granted; organized philanthropy of any kind was rare. 344. Altama. The Altamaha, a river in Georgia. General Oglethorpe (see notes on Thomson's Winter, ll. 359 ff.) founded, in 1732, the colony of Georgia, primarily to give refuge and new opportunity to a part of the debtor class in England. 345-362. Goldsmith seems to have known vaguely that the climate of Georgia is warm, and so painted from his imagination a tropical forest scene. See Citizen of the World, Letter XVII. 418. The Torno (Tornea) forms the boundary between northern Sweden and Finland, and flows into the Gulf of Bothnia. Pambamarca is a mountain near Quito in Ecuador. The two places are chosen as extremes. The last four lines are Johnson's. See Boswell's Life of Johnson, Vol. II., p. 7 (G. B. Hill's edition). RETALIATION Written just before Goldsmith's death, and left unfinished at his death. It was published about two weeks afterward, April, 1774The story told of its writing, is as follows: After a dinner of the club at St. James's Coffee-house, the company amused themselves in making epitaphs on Goldsmith. Garrick's is well known: Here lies NOLLY Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll, 1. Paul Goldsmith bided his time, and presently began his retaliation, in this poem. The general attitude of the literary group toward Goldsmith was so patronizing and consciously tolerant, that it is a great pleasure to see him turn the tables and show himself the cool and superior analyst of the others. His light, easy satire and keen penetration make each characterization a little masterpiece. Scarron (1610-1660), the author of the Roman Comique, which Goldsmith had just been translating. 5. Dean. Thomas Barnard, Dean of Derry, afterward Bishop of Limerick. 1797). 7. William Burke (Bourke), a but, so far as is known, not a relation. He is one of those to whom the authorship af the Junius Letters has been ascribed. 8. Richard Burke, brother of Edmund Burke. 9. Richard Cumberland. See 6. Edmund Burke (1729?— friend of Edmund Burke, note, 1. 61. IO. Dr. Douglas (1721-1807), afterward Bishop of Salisbury. He wrote much on public matters; he and Johnson exposed the Cock-Lane ghost fraud. Earlier he had exposed the forgeries on which Lauder based his charge of plagiarism against Milton. Further on in the poem, Goldsmith calls Douglas "the scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks." II. David Garrick (1716–1779). 14. Ridge. An Irish lawyer. Reynolds. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792). 15. Hickey. Reynolds's lawyer. 34. Tommy Townshend (1733-1800), created Viscount Sydney in 1783; influential in the opposition party at this time. 61. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), though his plays are now forgotten, was at this time a popular dramatist. His plays were of the moral-sentimental type of comedy. He was so conceited that he did not see the irony in this satire. Sheridan put him into his Critic as Sir Fretful Plagiary. 115. William Kendrick (1725?-1779). He set himself up as a dramatic critic, lectured on Shakespeare, and attacked, justly, Johnson's edition of Shakespeare. Earlier, he had written a very objectionable review of Goldsmith's Enquiry. - - Hugh Kelly (1739-1777), the dramatist. William Woodfall (1746-1803), editor of The Morning Chronicle. 146. shifted his trumpet. Reynolds was very deaf. DESCRIPTION OF AN AUTHOR'S BEDROOM In Letter XXX. of the The Public Ledger, 1760. 1. 232. Citizen of the World; reprinted from 11-12. See notes on Deserted Village, 14. Prince William. Duke of Cumberland (1721-1765), third son of George II.; a distinguished soldier and commander. lamp-black face. Evidently a silhouette. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF A MAD DOG Printed in The Bee for October 27, 1759, and again in The Vicar of Wakefield, Chap. XVII.; modelled on an old French song. one. CHATTERTON (1752-1770) The debt that English poetry owes to Chatterton is an anomalous His acknowledged poems, while interesting because the work of their author, in themselves have had little influence or effect. The spurious ones, which he fathered on an invented fifteenth-century priest, Thomas Rowley, were a real contribution to the new romantic poetry, and were not without influence on the development of the romantic movement, now well under way. Chatterton's whole life seemed to be as much a quip of fate as is his paradoxical fame. He had two leading, and to him imperative, motives—a passion for the past, and a zeal for notoriety. The latter could hardly be called ambition for fame, since he was willing to achieve it by any means, and was less eager to accomplish something worthy than merely to attract attention to himself. He was born at Bristol, and lived his earlier years among the associations, and almost in the shadow, of St. Mary Redcliff cathedral. His earliest definite interest was in these as sociations and in such black-letter texts as came to his hand. This interest in time became his chief passion. When a mere child, he was using his knowledge to deceive gullible citizens of Bristol. Presently he learned of the growing interest in mediæval matters, and that suggested to him that he might find a larger public equally credulous. He tried Horace Walpole first, but was unsuccessful in his attempt on him. He wrote various poems and offered them, as the work of Thomas Rowley, to different editors, but unsuccessfully. At last, convinced of his own genius and of his versatility, he went to London, at the age of seventeen, to achieve celebrity by his pen. This was in 1770, at the time of the Wilkes agitation, when the periodicals were full of radical controversy. Chatterton chose as the quickest and most seasonable path to distinction, that of public satire. He got work published, both prose and verse how much cannot be known now. But it was not well paid; he did not publish enough to support him, and his circumstances became more and more distressing. At last, after four months of struggle, he put an end to his own life before he was eighteen years old. The fact that he was producing the Rowley poems as imitations hampered him, in expression and matter both. But the poems have, nevertheless, a rareness that mere imitation could never have given them. The work is uneven, and few of the pieces have any perfection of form as a whole. But they show power of suggestion and beauty of conception. There is a fineness about them that shows their author to be akin to the great romanticists that were to follow him. In 1777, Thomas Tyrwhitt collected and published the Rowley poems, and added to the collection an appendix in which he showed the poems to be a forgery. In 1871, Dr. Skeat edited Chatterton's poems. He corrected the spelling of the Rowley poems, and at the same time showed the sources of Chatterton's archaisms, and the sham character of many of them. The text used here is that of Skeat's edition. (London, 1891.) SONGS FROM ÆLLA Chatterton calls Ælla a “Tragical Interlude, or Discoursing Tragedy," and says it was written by Rowley and played before Wm. Canynge. He wrote to Dodsley about it, telling him of the existence |