And thus polluting honour in its source, Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. Even now, perhaps, as there some pilgrim strays 22 Thro' tangled forests, and thro' dangerous ways; 23 Where beasts with man divided empire claim, And the brown Indian marks with murderous aim; 21 Where wild] · Oh! let me fly a land that spurns the brave, Goldsmith's Threnodia Augustalis. 22 Through tangled] The forests are dark and tangled.' An. Nat. vol. i. p. 400. 23 Where beasts] 'Where man in his savage state owns inferior strength, and the beasts claim divided dominion.' Gold. An. Nat. vol. ii. p. 9, 12. There, while above the giddy tempest flies, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, Vain, very vain, my weary search to find That bliss which only centres in the mind: Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose, To seek a good each government bestows? 24 In every government, though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain, How small of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. 25 The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel, 24 In every] Every mind seems capable of entertaining a certain quantity of happiness, which no constitutions can increase, no circumstances alter, and entirely independent on fortune.' Cit. of the World, i. p. 185. 25 lifted axe] 'Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.' The lifted axe.' v. Blackmore's Eliza, p. 76. v. Blackmore's K. Arthur, p. 220. 'When with her lifted axe proud Martha stood.' v. State Poems, vol. ii. p. 328. 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. А РОЕМ. "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. |