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too short; you should have given me your opinion of the design of the heroicomical poem which I sent you: you remember I intended to introduce the hero of the poem, as lying in a paltry alehouse. You may take the following specimen of the manner, which I flatter myself is quite original. The room in which he lies, may be described somewhat this way :

The window, patch'd with paper, lent a ray,
That feebly shew'd the state in which he lay.
The sanded floor, that grits beneath the tread :
The humid wall with paltry pictures spread;
The game of goose was there expos'd to view
And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew:
The seasons, fram'd with listing, found a place,
And Prussia's monarch shew'd his lamp-black face
The morn was cold; he views with keen desire,
A rusty grate unconscious of a fire.

An unpaid reck'ning on the frieze was scor'd,
And five crack'd tea-cups dress'd the chimney board.
And now imagine after his soliloquy, the landlord to make his
appearance, in order to dun him for the reckoning :-

Not with that face, so servile and so gay,
That welcomes every stranger that can pay,
With sulky eye he smoak'd the patient man,

Then pull'd his breeches tight, and thus began, &c.

All this is taken, you see, from nature. It is a good remark of Montaign[e]'s, that the wisest men often have friends, with whom they do not care how much they play the fool. Take my present follies as instances of regard. Poetry is a much easier, and more agreeable species of composition than prose, and could a man live by it, it were no unpleasant employment to be a poet.'

In Letter xxix of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 11922, which first appeared in The Public Ledger for May 2, 1760, they have a different setting. They are read at a club of authors by a 'poet, in shabby finery,' who asserts that he has composed them the day before. After some preliminary difficulties, arising from the fact that the laws of the club do not permit any author to inflict his own works upon the assembly without a money payment, he introduces them as follows:

Gentlemen, says he, the present piece is not one of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; there are none of your Turnuses or Dido's in it; it is an heroical description of nature. I only beg you'll endeavour to make your souls unison 1 with mine, and hear with the same enthusiasm with which I have written. The poem begins with the description of an author's bedchamber: the picture was sketched in my own apartment; for you must know, gentlemen, that I am myself the heroe. Then putting himself into the attitude of an orator, with all the emphasis of voice and action, he proceeded.

Where the Red Lion, &c.'

The verses then follow as they are printed at p. 48 of this volume; but he is unable to induce his audience to submit to a further sample. In a slightly different form, some of them were afterwards worked into The Deserted Village, 1770. (See 11. 227-36.)

1. 3. Where Calvert's butt, and Parsons' black champagne. The Calverts and Humphrey Parsons were noted brewers of 'entire butt beer' or porter, also known familiarly as 'British Burgundy' and 'black Champagne.' Calvert's 'Best Butt Beer' figures on the sign in Hogarth's Beer Street, 1751.

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1. 10. The humid wall with paltry pictures spread. Bewick gives the names of some of these popular, if paltry, decorations:- In cottages everywhere were to be seen the "Sailor's Farewell" and his "Happy Return,' Youthful Sports," and the Feats of Manhood," The Bold Archers Shooting at a Mark," The Four Seasons," &c.' (Memoir, 'Memorial Edition,' 1887, p. 263.)

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1. 11. The royal game of goose was there in view. (See note, p. 188, 1.232.)

1. 12. And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew. (See note, p. 187, 1. 232.)

1. 13. The Seasons, fram'd with listing. See note to 1. 10 above, as to 'The Seasons.' Listing, ribbon, braid, or tape is still used as a primitive encadrement. In a letter dated August 15, 1758, to his cousin, Mrs. Lawder (Jane Contarine), Goldsmith again refers to this device. Speaking of some 'maxims of frugality' with which he intends to adorn his room, he adds1 i. e. accord, conform.

my landlady's daughter shall frame them with the parings of my black waistcoat.' (Prior, Life, 1837, i. 271.)

1. 14. And brave Prince William. William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-65. The 'lamp-black face' would seem to imply that the portrait was a silhouette. In the letter quoted on p. 200 it is 'Prussia's monarch' (i. e. Frederick the Great). 1. 17. With beer and milk arrears. See the lines relative to the landlord in Goldsmith's above-quoted letter to his brother. In another letter of August 14, 1758, to Robert Bryanton, he describes himself as 'in a garret writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk score.' Hogarth's Distrest Poet, 1736, it will be remembered, has already realized this expectation.

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1. 20. A cap by night—a stocking all the day. With this last line,' says The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 121, 'he [the author] seemed so much elated, that he was unable to proceed: There gentlemen, cries he, there is a description for you; Rab[e]lais's bed-chamber is but a fool to it:

A cap by night-a stocking all the day!

There is sound and sense, and truth, and nature in the trifling compass of ten little syllables." (Letter xxix.) Cf. also The Deserted Village, 1. 230:—

A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.

If Goldsmith's lines did not belong to 1759, one might suppose he had in mind the later Pauvre Diable of his favourite Voltaire. (See also APPENDIX B.)

ON SEEING MRS. ** PERFORM IN THE CHARACTER OF ****.

These verses, intended for a specimen of the newspaper Muse, are from Letter lxxxii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 87, first printed in The Public Ledger, October 21, 1760.

ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHT HON. ***

From Letter ciii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 164, first printed in The Public Ledger, March 4, 1761. The verses are

given as a 'specimen of a poem on the decease of a great man.' Goldsmith had already used the trick of the final line of the quatrain in An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize, ante, p. 198.

AN EPIGRAM.

From Letter cx of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 193, first printed in The Public Ledger, April 14, 1761. It had, however, already been printed in the Ledger, ten days before. Goldsmith's animosity to Churchill (cf. note to 1. 41 of the dedication to The Traveller) was notorious; but this is one of his doubtful pieces. Charity' (Author's note).

1. 3. virtue.

1. 4. bounty. (Author's note).

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Settled at One Shilling-the Price of the Poem '

TO G. C. AND R. L.

From the same letter as the preceding. George Colman and Robert Lloyd of the St. James's Magazine were supposed to have helped Churchill in The Rosciad, the 'it' of the epigram.

TRANSLATION OF A SOUTH AMERICAN ODE. From Letter cxiii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 209, first printed in The Public Ledger, May 13, 1761.

THE DOUBLE TRANSFORMATION.

The Double Transformation first appeared in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith, 1765, where it figures as Essay xxvi, occupying pp. 229-33. It was revised for the second edition of 1766, becoming Essay xxviii, pp. 241-45. This is the text here followed. The poem is an obvious imitation of what its author calls (Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, 1764, ii. 140) that 'French elegant easy manner of telling a story,' which Prior had caught from La Fontaine. But the inherent simplicity of Goldsmith's style is

curiously evidenced by the absence of those illustrations and ingenious allusions which are Prior's chief characteristic. And although Goldsmith included The Ladle and Hans Carvel in his Beauties of English Poesy, 1767, he refrained wisely from copying the licence of his model.

1. 2. Jack Book-worm led a college life. The version of 1765 reads 'liv'd' for 'led.'

1. 6. And freshmen wonder'd as he spoke. The earlier version adds here

Without politeness aim'd at breeding,

And laugh'd at pedantry and reading.

1. 18. Her presence banish'd all his peace. Here in the first version the paragraph closes, and a fresh one is commenced as follows:

:

Our alter'd Parson now began

To be a perfect ladies' man;
Made sonnets, lisp'd his sermons o'er,
And told the tales he told before,
Of bailiffs pump'd, and proctors bit,
At college how he shew'd his wit;
And, as the fair one still approv'd,
He fell in love—or thought he lov'd.
So with decorum, &c.

The fifth line was probably a reminiscence of the college riot in which Goldsmith was involved in May, 1747, and for his part in which he was publicly admonished. (See Introduction,

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p. xi, 1. 3.)

1. 27. usage. This word, perhaps by a printer's error, is 'visage' in the first version

1. 39. Skill'd in no other arts was she. Cf. Prior :

For in all Visits who but She,

To Argue, or to Repartée.

1. 46. Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Cf. Spectator, No. 494-'At length the Head of the Colledge came out to him, from an inner Room, with half a Dozen Night-Caps upon his Head.' See also Goldsmith's essay on the Coronation (Essays, 1766, p. 238), where Mr. Grogan speaks of his wife as habitually

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