26 Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' 27 bed of steel, To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own. 28 26 George and Luke Dosa were two brothers who headed an unsuccessful revolt against the Hungarian nobles at the opening of the sixteenth century; and George (not Luke) underwent the torture of the red-hot iron-crown, as a punishment for allowing himself to be proclaimed king of Hungary, 1513, by the rebellious peasants.-See Biographie Universelle, xi. 604. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania, called Szecklers or Zecklers.-FORSTER'S Goldsmith, i. 395, (ed. 1854.)-P. C. 27 Robert François Damiens was put to death with revolting barbarity, in the year 1757, for an attempt to assassinate Louis XV. P. C. 28 Dr. Johnson, being questioned by Boswell, avowed the authorship of the ten concluding verses of The Traveller, (excepting the last couplet but one,) and also of the 420th line: "To stop too fearful, and too faint to go.”—C. THE DESERTED VILLAGE. A POEM. The Deserted Village, a Poem by Dr. Goldsmith: London: Printed for W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head, in Catherine Street, Strand, 1770,” 4to, was first published in May, 1770, and ran through six editions in the same year in which it was first published. The price was 2s. The sum received by Goldsmith for "The Deserted Village," is unknown.-CUNNING HAM. 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 enquire; 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 enquiries have led me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt to display. But this is not the place to enter into an enquiry, whether the country be depopulating or not: the discussion would take up much room, and I should prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician, to tire the reader with a long preface, when I want his unfatigued attention to a long poem. In regretting the depopulation of the country, I inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here also I expect the shout of modern politicians against me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest national advantages; and all the wisdom of antiquity, in that particular, as erroneous. Still, however, I must remain a professed ancient on that head, and continue to think those luxuries prejudicial to states by which so |