displace it in favor in the next generation. But Goldsmith is always successful when he draws upon his personal experiences, and The Traveller resolves itself into a poem of personal observations based on his European wanderings. It shows, in general, sound sense, and maintains a high level of poetic execution. Goldsmith never writes without revealing grace, gentle humor and pathos, and genuineness of feeling; and The Traveller is no exception. It pleases by its fastidiousness and refinement of expression; it is always clear; and it is so easily memorable that even a casual reading fixes it in the mind.

Contemporary Opinion. The Traveller was praised by the best critics of the time. Johnson, who was indefatigable as an advertising agent for his friends, pronounced it "the best poem which had appeared since the age of Pope." Boswell assumed that Dr. Johnson had written it, and when this was denied, he intimated that, though Johnson might not have written it with his own hand, yet except for his influence it never would have been written. “He imitates you, sir," he said when Johnson was praising The Traveller. "Why, no, sir," answered Johnson, 'Jack Hawksworth was one of my imitators, but not Goldsmith. Goldy, sir, has great merit." "But, sir, he is much indebted to you for getting so high in the public estimation," said Boswell. "Why, sir,” replied Johnson, "he has perhaps got sooner to it by his intimacy with me."

When Johnson, not long after its publication, took the poem to Sir Joshua Reynolds's house and read it aloud to the painter's sister, she is said to have remarked at the close, “Well, I never more shall think Dr. Goldsmith ugly." More conventional was Bennett Langton's criticism, who said of it, four years after Goldsmith's death, "There is not a bad line in The Traveller — not one of Dryden's careless verses." Charles James Fox, the statesman and orator, pronounced it, according to Reynolds, one of the finest poems in the English language. This remark,

repeated to Johnson, brought from him the comment, "The merit of The Traveller is so well established that Mr. Fox's praise cannot augment it, nor his censure diminish it." "Goldsmith," he continued, “was a man who, whatever he wrote, did it better than any other man could do. He deserved a place in Westminster Abbey; and every year he lived he would have deserved it better." Another admirer of the poem was Edmund Burke, eminent as a statesman, an orator, and a man of letters, and one of the keenest thinkers and best critics of the eighteenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Biographies of Goldsmith have been written by Sir James. Prior (1837), John Forster (1849), Washington Irving (1849), Sir Walter Scott (1828), William Black (English Men of Letters Series) (1878), Austin Dobson (Great Writers Series) (1888), Richard Ashe King (1910), and F. Frankfort Moore (1910).

For essays on Goldsmith, see those by Macaulay in Miscellaneous Essays or in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Thackeray in English Humorists, De Quincey in The Eighteenth Century Scholarship and Literature, and Leigh Hunt in his Classic Tales.

For the general conditions and life of the period, consult Boswell's Life of Johnson, Dobson's Eighteenth Century Vignettes, Traill's Social England, Vol. V, Gibbins's Industry in England or Warner's Landmarks in English Industrial History, and Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century. An account of the London of Goldsmith's day is given in Besant's London in the Eighteenth Century.

Goldsmith is the hero of the novel, The Jessamy Bride, by F. Frankfort Moore.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE

DEDICATION

TO SIR JOSHUA Reynolds

DEAR SIR, 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 scarce 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