time No other poems besides his, published between Gray's Odes and Cowper's Table Talk, can be said to have lived. It is no wonder the Deserted Village was so widely popular. The heart of the people was not dead, though something chill and cold. It warmed towards a presence so genial, so graceful, so tender. Here, as in his other poem, Goldsmith entertained not only an artistic but also a didactic purpose. He wished to set forth the evils of the Luxury that was prevailing more and more widely in his day. This is a thrice old theme; but indeed what theme is not so? No doubt the vast growth of our commerce and increase of wealth in the middle and latter part of the last century especially suggested it in Goldsmith's time. Possibly enough in handling it Goldsmith made some blunders; the work could scarcely be his, if it were free from blunders. He has often been taunted by later critics with his false political economy; and it has been pointed out how he was propagating his errors at the very time when Adam Smith was first preaching the truths of that great science. Errors he undoubtedly commits-errors of fact and errors of interpretation. He was wrong in his belief that England was at the time of his writing rapidly depopulating. In the dedication of his poem to Sir Joshua Reynolds, he admits that the objection will be made by him and "several of our best and wisest friends" "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," he says, "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 enquiries have led me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt to display." But it certainly was not the case. He was obviously wrong in ascribing this supposed depopulation to the great commercial prosperity of the time. Whatever sentimental, whatever real objections may be urged against Trade, it cannot be denied that it multiplies and widens fields of labour, and so creates populations. Large towns with their myriad inhabitants are the offspring of commerce. Goldsmith and his age disbelieved in large towns; they thought such unions of men mere conspiracies of vice; they held, to invert the text, that wheresoever the eagles were gathered together, there the carcase would be. And large towns do include great and wide miseries; but to say that they are signs of present depopulation is to contradict their very definition. Goldsmith's fallacy lies in identifying Trade and Luxury; see the poem passim. Observe the mere phrase "Trade's unfeeling train." Again, the picture drawn of the emigrants in their new land is certainly much exaggerated. Such experience as befalls the hero of Martin Chuzzlewit is very much what Goldsmith conceives to await all emigrants. He sees the tears and the agonies of the leavetaking; and surely no one can make light of these sorrows; but he sees nothing of the hope and confidence that lie beneath such distresses, however severe and temporarily overwhelming. He forgets that even those earliest and saddest of emigrants, though "some natural tears they shed, yet wiped them soon." He knows not, or he ignores, the happier side of the exile's prospects. He cannot fancy his hearth blazing as brightly on the other shore of the Atlantic as in the old country, or picture any "smiling village" there with gay swains and coy-glancing maidens. He imagines only swamps and jungles, and whirlwinds and sunstrokes, and wild beasts and worse wild men, and shrieks and despair. See ll. 341-358, and Traveller, 405-422. But he is not always in the wrong. His attacks on Luxury, when he really means Luxury and not something else in some way associated with that cardinal pest, are well-deserved and often vigorously made. And when he deplores the accumulation of land under one ownership -how " one only master grasps the whole domain"-and how consequently the old race of small proprietors is exterminated-how "a bold peasantry, their country's pride" is perishing, he certainly cannot be laughed down as a maintainer of mere idle grievances. One may agree with him in his view in this matter, or one may disagree; but it cannot be denied that here he has a right to his view-that this is a question open to serious doubt and difficulty. I suppose there are few persons who will not allow there is something to regret in the almost total disappearance of the class of small freeholders, however much that something may seem to be com pensated for by what has come in their place. The present experience of Belgium, of Switzerland, of certain parts of Germany, certainly says much in their favour. (See Mill's Polit. Econ. Book II. Chaps. vii. and viii.) As the question is generally discussed by Political Economists, it lies between small farms and large farms-between la petite culture, and la grande culture; most English writers, with one most distinguished exception, till lately at least, declaring for the latter. As it presented itself to Goldsmith, it lay between small farms and large parks-between a system of small ground-plots assiduously cultivated, and wide estates reserved for seclusion and pleasure. He saw, or thought he saw, tracts of land reclaimed not from wildness but from cultivation, that they might form sometimes an artificial wilderness, always some idle and unproductive enclosure. "Half a tillage," as it seemed, "stinted the smiling plain;" and in his eyes there was no smile possible for the plain like that of the waving corn, which is, as it were, the gold-haired child of it. Then, like the gentle recluse Gray, and like the bright day-labourer Burns, he felt much sympathy with the merriments and sadnesses and interests of the common country-folk. Their life was precious to him; and he could not bear to think that the area of it was being narrowed, that for them no more the blazing hearth should burn where it had been wont, not because they were dead, but because they were ejected wanderers. It is from this sincere sympathy, apart from all theories and theorizings, that the force and beauty of this poem spring. When Goldsmith thinks of the decay or destruction of those scenes he prized so highly, a genuine sorrow penetrates him, and he gives it tongue as in this poem; he becomes the loving elegist of the old yeomanry. It may or it may not have been well, that that order should have passed away; but its passing must be wept for. Often it may be well for our friends to leave us; but certainly we sigh sadly when they go. But Goldsmith was assured it was not well that that old order should be uprooted; therefore his grief is aggravated; and with his tears there are mixed shame and indignation. 101. 1. Auburn. There is a village of this name, sometimes spelt Albourne, in Wiltshire (some 8 miles N. E. of Marlborough), which some Gazetteers identify with the scene of this poem, quite fancifully. 2. swain. A favourite word in the Poetic Diction of the last century. 4. parting. See the Elegy, 1. 9. [Explain this use of on.] 102. 12. [What is here meant by decent?] 13. See Cotter's Sat. Night, 81. 16. remitting. In the same absolute way avíŋut is used by Attic writers and by Herodotus; e. g. Soph. Philoct. 764: Gammon is a 19. circled. Comp. went round in 1. 22. So circle and circulate of the wine-cup. congener. 29. sidelong. Sidney uses "sideward” (Arcad. iii.). Holinshed has the form sidelingwise. Probably the long is a corruption of the adverbial termination ling, which yet survives in groveling and darkling. So flatlong, headlong, endlong. Comp. noseling. In oldest English the term occurs in the forms linga or lunga; thus bæclinga = backwards, handlunga = hand to hand. In Lowland Scotch the form is lins, as in hafflins (Cotter's Sat. Night, 62), aiblins (Twa Dogs, 147), darklins, backlins, &c. See a paper by Dr Morris in Philol. Soc. Transactions for 1862-3. 34. were. Comp. the famous FUIMUS Troes, FUIT Ilium (Æn. ii. 318). 35. the lawn. See Gray's Elegy, too. 40. stints thy smiling plain = deprives thy plain of the beauty and luxuriance which once characterized it. A various form of stint is stunt. 42. Obs. the alliteration here. 43. glades. Glade, ultimately connected with glitter, denotes a break or open space in a wood, where the light shines. 44. hollow sounding. Goldsmith does not hyphen or link together the parts of his 52. [What does he mean by men decay? That they decay morally, or numerically? See the following lines.] 53. See Cotter's Sat. Night, 165: "Princes and lords are but the breath of kings." Comp. For a' that and a' that: "A prince can mak a belted knight, 103. 55. See Introduction. 57. Perhaps it was most nearly so in the 15th and 16th centuries. 58. rood is but another form of rod, which to begin with denoted the pole used in landmeasuring. So perch is properly a measuring pole (of less length than the rod). In ecclesiastical language Rood the Cross. (So there is no idea of any transversity in the Greek σravpós.) Hence Holyrood, rood-loft, by the holy rood (Rich. III. III. ii.), Rondee (at Chester), &c. 60. [Why her?] 66. unwieldy. Spenser uses weeldlesse in F. Q. IV. iii. Wieldly, obsolete now, occurs in Chaucer's Troil. and Cress. 76. forlorn. See note in Hymn Nat. 196. lorn is connected with lose. Comp. rear and raise, chair and chaise, &c. 84. [What part of the sentence is my latest hours to crown?] 92. [What part of the sentence is I felt?] 93. an hare. Our present rule that a rather than an is to be used before a word beginning with a consonant or a sounded h is of comparatively modern date. In Oldest English (what is commonly called A.S.) the shortened form does not occur. In Medieval writers an is the more common form: thus in the Ormulum we find an man, in Mandeville's Travels, an hors, &c. (Stratmann); but a also is found. The distinction between the numeral and the article was only then completely forming. In Chaucer's writings it seems fairly formed; he has oo, oon, on for the former; a and an, as now, for the latter. Before he commonly prefers the form an, as an hare (C. T. 686), an holy man (Ib. 5637), an housbond (Ib. 5736) &c. This was perhaps due to French influence. In the Authorized Version of the Bible we have an house (1 Kings ii. 24, and often elsewhere), an husband (Num. xxx. 6, &c.), but also a husband elsewhere, an hundred again and again, an host, Psalm xxvii. 3, an hair, an habitation, an hand, an hymn, &c., &c., but a horse. It must be remembered that the language of the A. V. is older than the time of James I.; it belongs rather to the age of Henry VIII., in some points perhaps to a still older age, as the Wickcliffite translation had much influence on all succeeding versions. Shakspere's usage is pretty much that which is now followed; as "a hauke, a horse, or a husband." Much A. about N. III., Fol. of 1623,"a hare," I Hen. IV. I. iii. But with regard to many words custom fluctuated. In the case of the word hare perhaps euphony would seem to favour the fuller form of the article. 95. [What part of the sentence is my long vexations past? Translate the phrase into Latin, and Greek.] 104. 100. [What does age mean here?] hounds and horns. Titus Andr. II. iii. 27. 105. surly is probably cognate with sour. 106. spurn is connected with spur, which means radically a foot-mark. In the primitive sense of to push away with the foot, spurn is common in Shakspere, as K. John, II. i. 24, &c. 107. latter end. A common Bible phrase, e.g. Prov. xix. 20. 115. careless = Lat. securus, and old Eng. secure. See Van. of H. W. 355. 118. [What part of the sentence is to meet their young?] 121. bayed. Bay is from the old French abayer = aboyer, "de ad. baubari. De là le subst. abois, proprement extrémité où est réduit le cerf, le Sanglier, sur les fins, lorsque les chiens l'entourent en aboyant" (Burguy). 122. the vacant mind. So Shaksp. Comp. Lat. vacuus. "The wretched slave Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind Gets him to rest," &c. [Give other instances of this use of spoke.] 124. pause, is used technically of "a stop or intermission in music" (Johnson). It is often employed in our older writers in this sense of the nightingale's singing. 126. fluctuate in the gale. Comp. the common use of float, which is ultimately connected with fluctuate, flow, &c. 128. bloomy is used also by Milton and Dryden. 130. plashy = puddle-like. Comp. the Dutch plas, and our splash. 132. [In what other senses is mantling used?] 135. [What part of the sentence is she here?] 137. Copse = coppice = old Fr. copeiz, which is derived from couper, which is derived from the Lat. colaphus a fist-blow, (Brachet). [The garden. Why the ?] 139. [What is meant by the place disclose?] Comp. Wordsworth's To a Highland Girl at Inversnaid: "These trees-a veil just half withdrawn." 140. mansion = the Lowland Scotch manse; but last century poets use it in a general sense. Mansio was properly the house of the lord of the manor. 105. 141. See the Traveller, 10-22. Comp. Chaucer's Prologue, 479-530.-Crabbe sketches the opposite sort of parson in his Village, Book I: And doth not he, the pious man, appear, He 'passing rich, with forty pounds a year?' Ah! no; a shepherd of a different stock, And far unlike him, feeds this little flock," &c. 142. Forty pounds seems to have commonly been a curate's income about the middle of the last century. Churchill, when a curate at Rainham, "prayed and starved on forty pounds a year," to use his own words. [Explain passing here.] 143. See Heb. xii. 1. Remote from towns, &c. See London, 6, &c. 144 place, not village or place of abode, but = post, position. The word was especially used of political appointments; comp. place-man, place-seeker, &c. 146. Like the famous Vicar of Bray. [Explain to here?] 148. [What part of the sentence is this line?] 155. The broken soldier. Comp. "fracti bello," En. ii. 13, "infractos adverso Marte," Æn. xii. 1; see also Hor. Sat. I. i. 5.-Campbell's Soldier's Dream: "And fain was their war-broken soldier to stay." bade. Bidden and Bid (as Merch. of V. II. v. 11) are the common, and the correct forms. See note on the Traveller, 358. 156. talked the night away. Comp. the exquisite phrase in Callimachus' Epigram (1. the Greek usage of the word) on hearing of the death of his friend Heracleitus: ἐμνήσθην δ' ὁσσάκις αμφότεροι ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν. 157. [What is the force of done here?] 162. [What is the precise meaning of charity here?] 171. parting. See Gray's Elegy, 89. 172. dismayed = strictly, deprived of might, un-strengthened. 181. [What part of the sentence is the service past?] 106. 189. [Explain cliff here?] 198. truant is said to be of Keltic origin. In Breton there is truant "gueux, vagabond" (Burguy). In Kymric tru, miserable. Hence Medieval Latin formed trutannus. The old meaning was simply a vagabond. Then it came to mean wandering away from the place where one ought to be, the place of one's duty, which is commonly its sense in Shakspere. In Merry W. of W. V. i., it occurs in the special sense in which it is now generally used: "Since I plucked geese, played truant, and whipped top, I knew not what 'twas to be beaten till lately." (Comp. micher, 1 Hen. IV. II. iv.) In mod. Fr. truand = vagrant. 201-4. These two couplets furnished Webster with mottoes, and something more, for his two excellent pictures. 205. aught simply, a-whit; as awhile=a-while, another an-other, &c. "conveniunt celebrantque dapes vicinia supplex." Comp. Twa dogs, 125: "When rural life, o' every station, Unite in common recreation." 208. cypher and zero are probably various corruptions of one and the same word. See Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop. 209. tides here times, seasons; as in King John, III. i. 85: "Among the high tides in the Calendar," &c. 'Christ-tide, I pray you," says Ananias in the Alchemist, when Face talks of Christmas. We still speak of Whitsuntide; and have a proverb that "time and tide wait for no man,' when perhaps tide has the secondary meaning of opportunity. Tide is cognate with Germ. Zeit. What is now the common meaning of the word—a meaning derived from the primitive sense-would scarcely be pertinent here. [What is meant by terms here?] 210. gauge = measure the capacities of vessels. Gauger has acquired the special meaning of one who so measures vessels containing excisable liquors. |