While self-dependent power can time defy, 23 "Dr. Johnson favoured me at the same time by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's Deserted Village, which are only the last four." Boswell, by Croker, p. 174.P. C. EDWIN AND ANGELINA. (THE HERMIT.) A BALLAD. "Written 1764, and privately printed the same year, 'for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland,'—and first published in 1766, in The Vicar of Wakefield, vol. i. pp. 70-77. The text here given is that of The Vicar of Wakefield, compared with the poem as printed by Goldsmith in 1767, in his Poems for Young Ladies, and the edition of Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works, published in 1801, under the unacknowledged superintendence of Bishop Perry."-CUNNING HAM. THE FOLLOWING LETTER, ADDRESSED TO THE PRINTER OF THE ST. JAMES'S CHRONICLE, APPEARED IN THAT PAPER IN JUNE, M.DCC.LXVII. SIR, As there is nothing I dislike so much as newspaper controversy, particularly upon trifles, permit me to be as concise as possible in informing a correspondent of yours, that I recommended Blainville's Travels, because I thought the book was a good one; and I think so still. I said, I was told by the bookseller that it was then first published; but in that, it seems, I was misinformed, and my reading was not extensive enough to set me right. Another correspondent of yours accuses me of having taken a ballad, I published some time ago, from one by the ingenious Mr. Percy. I do not think there is any great resemblance between the two pieces in question. If there be any, his ballad is taken from mine. I read it to Mr. Percy some years ago; and he (as we both 1 The Friar of Orders Gray.'-Reliq. of Anc. Poetry, vol. i. p. 243. 56 considered these things as trifles at best) told me with his usual good humour, the next time I saw him, that he had taken my plan to form the fragments of Shakespeare into a ballad of his own. He then read me his little Cento, if I may so call it, and I highly approved it. Such petty anecdotes as these are scarcely worth printing; and, were it not for the busy disposition of some of your correspondents, the public should never have known that he owes me the hint of his ballad, or that I am obliged to his friendship and learning for communications of a much more important nature. I am, Sir, yours, &c. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. |