The front, including a wing, extends, as nearly as could be judged by pacing it, sixty-eight feet by a depth of twenty-four; it consisted of two stories, with five windows in each. The roof has been off for a period of twenty years; the gable ends remain, but the front and back walls of the upper story have crumbled away, and if the hand of the destroyer be not stayed, will soon wholly disappear. Two or three wretched cottages for labourers, surrounded by mud, adjoin it on the left. Behind the house is an orchard of some extent and the remains of a garden, both utterly neglected. In front, a pretty avenue of double rows of ash trees, which formed the approach from the high road, about sixty yards distant, and at one time presented an object of interest to travellers, has, like every other trace of care or superintendence, disappeared-cut down by the ruthless hand of some destroyer. No picture of desolation can be more complete. As if an image of the impending ruin had been present, the poet has painted with fearful accuracy what his father's house was to be

'Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled,
And still where many a garden flower grows wild;
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose,
The Village Preacher's modest mansion rose.'

And we contemplate the realization of the melancholy scene as we do the poem of the unfortunate Falconer, who, while singing the story of one shipwreck, scarcely conceived he was fated to perish by a second.

"A visiter to this spot will be tempted to believe, from the ignorance he finds among many of the neighbouring peasantry, that little enthusiasm exists regarding the name of him who nevertheless gives it all its importance. We found some unexpected instances of this. In Ireland the legend of a saint, or of a miracle, is universally familiar and never forgotten; but not so the memorials of her distinguished men. These have too often passed away with contemporary generations. Nor are the middling and upper classes exempt from the charge of neglecting what it should be their first ambition affectionately to cherish. It is not that they are indifferent to the fame of their celebrated countrymen, but we require more obvious proofs of the fact; it is in the public statue and the column, that their professions of admiration should be brought to the test of performance." pp. 24—26.

"In order,' writes the Rev. Mr. Handcock, 'to be accurate in the description you require of the place, I rode there immediately on receipt of your letter; it is a snug farm-house in view of the high road, to which a straight avenue leads with double rows of ash trees, six miles northeast of this town. The farm is still held under the Naper family by a nephew of Goldsmith, at present in America. In the front view of the house is the "decent church" of Kilkenny West, that literally "tops the neighbouring hill;" and in a circuit of not more than half a mile diameter around the house, and "the never failing brook," "the busy mill," "the hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade," "the brook with mantling cresses spread," "the straggling fence that skirts the way, with blossomed furze unprofitably gay,' "the thorn that lifts its head on high, where once the sign-post caught the passing eye," "the house where nut-brown draughts inspired," in short every striking object in the picture. There are besides many ruined houses in the neighbourhood, bespeaking a better state of population than at present.

"In the house at Lissoy lived Goldsmith's father, at first curate to an uncle named Green, and "passing rich on forty pounds a year." After the death of the incumbent he obtained the living. This gentleman and

his wife were the genuine Dr. and Mrs. Primrose. Though a man of learning there are many laughable instances of his simplicity and ignorance of mankind recorded in the neighbourhood to this day. Here Goldsmith was instructed in the first stage of his learning.'"

p. 278. "The details of the poem sufficiently show that he had each (England and Ireland) occasionally in view; the picture is neither wholly from imagination, nor wholly from reality; from any one place, or from any one division of the kingdom; but from the remembrance or observation of many circumstances belonging to either island, which with the skill of a poet are worked up into a perfect whole. Thus the flourishing state of trade, the influx of wealth and luxury, the song of the nightingale, and many other incidental details, hold good only of England. On the other hand, the stream of emigration, which has for a century largely and steadily flowed towards America, and much of the local scenery and objects belong to Ireland.

"The allusions bearing upon Lissoy are numerous; the following are supposed to apply to the Sundays or numerous holidays, usually kept in Roman catholic countries.

'How often have I blessed the coming day
When toil remitting lent its turn to play.'

"To the succeeding are traced the origin of the poem

'The man of wealth and pride

Takes up the space that many poor supplied,
Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,
Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds.'

"The general character of the adjoining country, particularly in the rear of the house, being a plain, Auburn is appropriately characterised 'loveliest village of the plain. As the scene of enjoyment in early life, and of boyish delights, he with equal truth and affection calls them

'Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth when every sport could please,
How often have I loitered o'er thy green!'

“And again—

'How often have I paused on every charm!'

"Personal allusions such as these may be admissible in poetry not strictly meant to be accurately descriptive, yet taken with the context, their application to the feelings and circumstances of the writer is perfectly compatible with the fact.

The never-failing brook, the busy mill,'

are found in a hollow, the road to which lies at the end of the village in a turning to the left as we proceed from his paternal residence; the stream which moves it is small, and the mill of rude construction, and of the overshot kind, but he may have had also in view that of Ballymahon, which existed at that period above the bridge of that town, and where afterwards he was known to spend many hours.

'The decent church that tops the neighbouring hill,'

was that in which his father officiated; it crowned a height of gentle elevation in front of their residence, and though distant about a mile, from its conspicuous situation constantly in their eye.

VOL. XXI.-NO. 42.

64

"Such an object was not likely to escape his recollection. The term decent is that perhaps which describes it most exactly; being clean and very homely without pretension to any other quality. Between it and the house lies a valley occupied by a sheet of water, alluded to probably

in the line

'The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool.'

"Another natural object

'The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade,
For talking age, and whispering lovers made,'

was larger than ordinary trees of that description, with surrounding seats as here represented; it rose with a double trunk, shaded a considerable portion of ground opposite the alehouse, and from being at the confluence of two roads, presented sufficient space for the evening assemblages of the villagers, described as having

'Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree.'

The selection of a 'hawthorn bush,' so rarely of sufficient dimensions to perform the office here assigned, when so many nobler tenants of the forest affording ampler shade and more majesty of description for his verse were at poetical command to use on the occasion, is considered another proof of the identity of the spot from which the picture was drawn. The celebrity of this tree has been fatal to it. The material objects immortalised by poets are too frequently sacrificed to the admiration they excite, as if spoliation were the truest test of devotion in the eyes of admirers; and poetry thus seems like the unnatural mother of mythology, content to prey upon her own offspring. Every traveller hither for a period of forty years, carried away a portion of the trees as a relic either of the poem or of his pilgrimage; when the branches had been destroyed, the trunks were attacked; and when these disappeared, even the roots were partially dug up, so that in 1820, scarcely a vestige remained, either above or below ground, notwithstanding a resident gentleman, by building round it, endeavoured to prevent its utter extinction. At the period of the writer's visit (1830) a very tender shoot had again forced its way to the surface, which he in imitation of so many other inconsiderate idlers felt disposed to seize upon as a memorial of his visit; but if permitted to remain, though this is unlikely, may renew the honours paid to its prede

cessor.

"Opposite the remains of the hawthorn stands the alehouse

'where nut-brown draughts inspired,

Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retired,'

still appropriated to its original use, chiefly by the care of Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt it after being long in a state of decay. By the same hand it was supplied with the sign of the Three Jolly Pigeons,' with new copies of the twelve good rules,' and the 'royal game of goose,' not omitting even the

'broken tea-cups wisely kept for show

Ranged o'er the chimney glistened in a row,'

which for better security in the frail tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were embedded in the mortar. Most of these have again disappeared, sacrifices to the love of relics, and sold no doubt to admiring visiters as the originals referred to in the poem; even

the sign is no longer to be seen, removed either by cupidity or the ravages of time.

"The allusions to America, as the destined home of voluntary exiles,

who

- 'took a long farewell and wished in vain, For seats like these beyond the western main,'

are in perfect keeping with truth, the late celebrated John Wesley having remarked the large efflux of persons thither from Ireland as far back as the year 1770, though it prevailed at a much earlier period. Indeed, whenever by the alleged cupidity of landlords, the rivalry of other tenants, or their own imprudence, the lower class of Irish become unsettled, they seldom refix permanently in another part of their own country, or even in England or Scotland, but commonly seek a distant, and as they are led to believe, a more advantageous settlement in the New World.

"The pathetic lines

'Yon widow'd solitary thing
That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;
She, wretched matron, forced in age for bread,
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,'

are supposed to apply to a female named Catherine Geraghty, whom the poet had known in earlier and better days, and who was well remembered by some of the inhabitants when Dr. Strean served the curacy of the parish. The brook and ditches near the spot where her cabin stood, still furnish cresses, and several of her descendants reside in the neighbourhood.

"To his own instructer, Thomas Byrne, is supposed to belong the description of a personage so important to youth.

'There in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,
The village master taught his little school.'

But the portrait, though good as a general sketch, wants that individuality which, from the actual peculiarities of the person in question, might have been given it; one probable characteristic however is retained

'While words of learned length, and thundering sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around.'

The school-house is still shown; here there may be some straining of fact as to identity, for no place built expressly for such purpose having existed at that time, the common cottages which are constructed loosely of mud and stone would have crumbled long ere this, few of them without great care attaining the age of a century.

"No lines in the poem point more strongly to the abode of his youth, than

'Along thy glades a solitary guest,

The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest.'

"In the immediate vicinity of the village, and in more than one direction, is found a considerable portion of water; a river, likewise, with several small lakes, pools, and marsh lands, lie around Ballymahon, to which is now added the course of the Grand Canal from Dublin; to several of these, water-fowl continue to resort, and among others the bird which he has thought proper to notice in the foregoing lines. In

the opening of the sixth volume of Animated Nature, it is thus poetically adverted to, with the effects of its call upon the minds of the villagers. "Those who have walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of unfrequented rivers, must remember a variety of notes from different waterfowl: the loud scream of the wild goose, the croaking of the mallard, the whining of the lapwing, and the tremulous neighing of the jacksnipe. But of all these sounds, there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern. It is impossible for words to give those who have not heard this evening call an adequate idea of its solemnity. It is like an interrupted bellowing of a bull, but hollower and louder, and is heard at a mile's distance as if issuing from some formibable being that resided at the bottom of the waters.

I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed it. I do not speak ludicrously; but if any person in the neighbourhood died, they supposed it could not be otherwise, for the night-raven had foretold it; but if nobody happened to die, the death of a cow or sheep gave completion to the prophecy.'" pp. 380-383.

We have been surprised in the perusal of a late Life of Cowper by Mr. Southey, to find no allusion to the dulcet strains of this admirable poet. He recounts Pope, Gray, Akenside, Glover, Churchill, and Crabbe, but omits any reference to the author of the Traveller, Deserted Village, and Hermit. Perhaps Goldsmith may be regarded by Mr. Southey as a minor or indifferent poet, as Cowper seems to have considered Pope, and as Byron deemed Cowper. If so, in the dispensation of poetical justice, the poet-laureate himself may in his turn be ruthlessly despoiled, by an unsparing hand, of those blooming laurels which now cluster so proudly and thickly around him.

It is to be regretted that a man who was capable of writing the Traveller, Deserted Village, and so many other works of standard eminence, should have been obliged by the penury of his circumstances to bring out productions so lame and imperfect as the lives of Bolingbroke and Parnell. He was sensible of the occasional effects of his haste, and wrote to Mr. Langton with reference to it in the following strain :"God knows I am tired of this kind of finishing, which is but bungling work; and that not so much my fault as the fault of my scurvy circumstances." To some one else he observed, "I must write a book, while you are pondering over a word or a phrase."

After the biographies alluded to, came out in quick succession, the humorous and admirable jeux d'esprit, Retaliation, and the Haunch of Venison, the latter addressed to his friend, Lord Clare, and a History of England in four volumes. This History, as well as that of Rome which preceded, and the History of Greece which followed it, possesses all the graceful attractiveness of his style, and the usual ingenuity of his reflections.