improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour 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 dis temper. 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 half-witted 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 endeavoured to moderate the rage of all. I have attempted to show, that there may be equal happiness in states that are differently governed from our own; that every state has a particular share of happiness, and that his 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. I am, dear Sir, Your most affectionate brother, OLIVER GOLDSMITH. THE TRAVELLER. REMOTE, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Laugh at the jests or pranks that never fail, Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale; Or press the bashful stranger to his food, But me, not destined such delights to share, Look downward where a hundred realms appear; That good which makes each humbler bosom vain? And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind Exults in all the good of all mankind. Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crown'd; Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round; Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale; Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale; To see the hoard of human bliss so small; Some spot to real happiness consign'd, Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest, But where to find that happiest spot below, Who can direct, when all pretend to know? The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone |