Impell'd, with steps unceasing, to pursue

Some fleeting good, that mocks me with the view;
That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,

Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;

My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,

And find no spot of all the world my own."

Equally well-remembered are the lines in which he records the humble musical performances by which he won his way through France :

"To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
I turn; and France displays her bright domain.
Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please,
How often have I led thy sportive choir,
With tuneless pipe, beside the murmuring Loire ?
Where shading elms along the margin grew,
And, freshen'd from the wave the Zephyr flew ;
And haply, though my harsh touch faltering still,
But mock'd all tune, and marr'd the dancer's skill;
Yet would the village praise my wondrous power,
And dance, forgetful of the noontide hour.

Alike all ages. Dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,

And the gay grandsire, skill'd in gestic lore,

Has frisk'd beneath the burthen of threescore."

The description of Holland, "where the broad ocean leans against the land," and the lines on England, containing the familiar :

"Pride in their port, defiance in their eye

I see the lords of human kind pass by,"

which his "illustrious friend" declaimed to Boswell in the Hebrides "with such energy that the tear started into his eye," might also find a place in a less-limited memoir than the present. Fortunately, however, there is no need to speak of a poem, which for three-quarters of a century has been an educational book, as if it were an undiscovered country. Nor can it add anything to a reputation so time-honoured to say that, when it first appeared, it obtained the suffrages of critics as various as Burke and Fox and Langton and Reynolds. The words of Johnson, spoken a century ago, are even truer now. Its merit is established; and individual praise or censure can neither augment nor diminish it.

The first edition, as we have said, appeared in December, 1764. A second, a third, and a fourth followed rapidly. There was a fifth in 1768, a sixth in 1770, and a ninth in 1774, the year of the author's death. He continued to revise it carefully up to the sixth edition, after which there do not seem to have been any further corrections. In one or two of the alterations, as in the cancelled passage in the dedication, is to be detected that reassurance as to recognition which prompts the removal of all traces of a less sanguine or prosperous past. In his first version he had spoken of his "ragged pride." In the second, this went the way of that indiscreet Latin quotation, which in the first edition of the "Enquiry" betrayed the pedestrian character of his continental experiences. But though the reception accorded to "The Traveller" was unmistakeable, even from the publisher's point of view, there is nothing to show with absolute certainty that its success.

brought any additional gain to its author. The original amount paid for "Copy of the Traveller, a Poem," as recorded in the Newbery MSS., is £21. There is no note of anything further; although, looking to the fact that the same sum occurs in some memoranda of a much later date than 1764, it is just possible (as Prior was inclined to believe) that the success of the book may have been followed by a supplementary fee.

O

CHAPTER VII.

NE of the results of that sudden literary importance,

which excited so much astonishment in the minds of the less discriminating of Goldsmith's contemporaries, was the inevitable revival of his earlier productions; and in June, 1765, Griffin of Fetter Lane put forth a threeshilling duodecimo of some two hundred and thirty pages under the title of "Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith." bore the motto "Collecta revirescunt," and was embellished by a vignette from the hand of Bewick's friend and Stothard's rival, the engraver Isaac Taylor. In a characteristic preface Goldsmith gave his reasons for its publication. "Most of these essays," he said, “have been regularly reprinted twice or thrice a year, and conveyed to the public through the kennel of some engaging compilation. If there be a pride in multiplied editions, I have seen some of my labours sixteen times reprinted, and claimed by different parents as their own." And then he goes on, in a humourous anecdote, to vindicate his prior claim to any profit arising from his performances, finally winding up by a burlesque draft upon Posterity, which, as it is omitted in the second edition of 1766, may be reprinted here:

"Mr. Posterity. Sir, Nine hundred and ninety-nine years after sight hereof, pay the bearer, or order, a thousand pounds' worth of praise, free from all deductions whatsoever, it being a commodity that will then be very serviceable to him, and place it to the accompt of, &c.”

Most of the papers contained in this volume have already been referred to in the preceding pages. Such are the "Reverie at the Boar's Head," the "Adventures of a Strolling Player," the "Distresses of a Common' Soldier," and the "Beau Tibbs" sequence, only two of which it reproduces. There are others from The Bee, The Busy Body, and The Lady's Magazine. But the freshest contribution consists of a couple of poems, which figure at the end as Essays xxvi. and xxvii. One is "The Double Transformation," an obvious imitation of that easy manner of tale-telling, which Prior had learned from La Fontaine. Prior's method, however, is more accurately copied than his manner, for nothing is more foreign to Goldsmith's simple style than the profusion of purely allusive wit with which the author of "Alma" decorated his Muse. The other is an avowed imitation of Swift, entitled "A New Simile"; but it is hardly as good as "The Logicians Refuted," while indirectly it illustrates the inveteracy of that brogue which Goldsmith never lost, and, it is asserted, never cared to lose. No one but a confirmed Milesian would, we imagine, rhyme "stealing" and "failing." Elsewhere he scans "Sir Charles," "Sir Chorlus," after the manner of Captain Costigan; and more than once he pairs sounds like "sought" and "fault," a peculiarity only to be explained by a habit of mispronunciation.