That ages yet to follow cannot close.

O Goldsmith! how shall Sorrow now essay To murmur out her slow, incondite lay? In what sad accents mourn the luckless hour, That yielded thee to unrelenting power; Thee, the proud boast of all the tuneful train That sweep the lyre, or swell the polish'd strain? Much-honored Bard! if my untutor❜d verse Could pay a tribute worthy of thy hearse, With fearless hands I'd build the fane of praise, And boldly strew the never-fading bays. But, ah! with thee my guardian genius fled, And pillow'd in thy tomb his silent head: Pain'd Memory alone behind remains, And pensive stalks the solitary plains, Rich in her sorrows; honors without art She pays in tears redundant from the heart. And say, what boots it o'er thy hallow'd dust To heap the graven pile, or laurell'd bust; Since by thy hands already raised on high, We see a fabric tow'ring to the sky;

Where, hand in hand with Time, the sacred lore Shall travel on, till Nature is no more?

LINES BY W. WOTTY.

ADIEU, Sweet Bard! to each fine feeling true,
Thy virtues many, and thy foibles few,

---

Those form'd to charm e'en vicious minds, and these
With harmless mirth the social soul to please.
Another's woe thy heart could always melt;
None gave more free, for none more deeply felt.
Sweet Bard, adieu! thy own harmonious lays
Have sculptured out thy monument of praise:
Yes, these survive to Time's remotest day;
While drops the bust, and boastful tombs decay.
Reader, if number'd in the Muse's train,
Go, tune the lyre, and imitate his strain;
But, if no poet thou, reverse the plan,
Depart in peace, and imitate the man.

6*

THE TRAVELLER;

OR,

A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY.

DEDICATION.

TO THE REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

DEAR SIR,—I am sensible that the friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only inscribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addressed to a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income of forty pounds

a-year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a sacred office, where the harvest is great, and the laborers are but few; while you have left the field of ambition, where the laborers are many and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition what from the refinement of the times, from

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different systems of criticism, and from the divisions of party that which pursues poetical fame is the wildest.

Poetry makes a principal amusement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, painting and music come in for a share. As these offer the feeble mind a less laborious entertainment, they at first rival poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all that favor once shown to her, and though but younger sisters, seize upon the elder's birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is still in greater danger from the mistaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favor of blank verse and Pindaric odes, choruses, anapests and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every absurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to say; for error is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art still more dangerous, I mean party. Party entirely distorts the judgment, and destroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the distemper. Like the tiger, that seldom desists from pursuing man after having once preyed upon human flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes ever after the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire some halfwitted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having lost the character of a wise one. Him they dignify with the name of poet: his tawdry lampoons are called satires; his turbulence is said to be force, and his frenzy fire.

What reception a poem may find, which has neither abuse,

party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I solicitous to know. My aims are right. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavored to shew that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from our own; that every state has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may be carried to a mischievous excess. There are few can judge better than yourself how far these positions are illustrated in this poem. dear Sir, your most affectionate brother,

I am,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.