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of vice preach it up in the ale house, if they are permitted to preach it over the parson's fire.

"As I do not know of the desertion of a village that has not been the consequence of systematic improvement, I wonder Doctor Goldsmith did not depict the effects of such improvement on the clergyman's mansion and lands.

"Why the schoolmaster's noisy mansion too should fall in the general ruin of a DESERTED VILLAGE I cannot see; for since such villages are deserted only that the country may be better inhabited in separate houses, the farmers, with their other improvements, will always carry on those of their children's education; and as sister arts thrive best together, agriculture will require and pay well for skill in the practical mathematics and mechanics, and be reciprocally advanced by their advance. "When I read Dr. Goldsmith's exclamation,

66

-The man of wealth and pride

Takes up a space that many poor supplied;

Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds,

Space for his horses, equipage and hounds,"

I cannot sufficiently express my wonder, that so good a descriptive poet should have forgot what Mr. Pope long ago so happily and justly expressed, viz.

"Yet hence the poor are clothed, the poor are fed;
Health for himself, and for his children bread

The labourer bears.

"Evidently nothing can contribute so much to the convenience and comfort of the countryman, both farmer and labourer, as the great man's choice to make his environs smile, and to promote a spirit of improvement throughout, which will reach to the boundary of his estate.

"I must not conclude without observing that it is really astonishing a man of Doctor Goldsmith's genius and profound acquirements should be such a dupe to vulgar prejudice on the subject of inclosing commons under proper regulations, as he evidently shows himself to be in the following lines:

"Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside

To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride?

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"I have not quoted these lines only to show that Dr. Goldsmith has been duped by vulgar prejudices, but for a much better purpose, viz. to take occasion in humble prose to give an antidote against the alluring poison conveyed in this, his captivating poetry.

"He asks, in a complaining strain, where Poverty with his flock shall reside?-I will tell him. He may reside at the selfsame spot, as he has hitherto, with only this difference, that he will become Plenty.

"While he drives his flock to a fenceless common, they must pick such a scanty blade as will scarce allow them or their master to live. He ought not to wonder that the sons of wealth deny him leave to starve on a bare-worn common, which is none of his, and can do him no good. If he will but be patient, he may soon see that these sons of wealth will, for their own sake, soon fence and divide this common, and allow him such terms that his flock and he may both thrive, and he find his particular good in that of the public.

"I cannot forbear smiling at the picture Dr. Goldsmith draws of England

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When every rood of ground maintain'd its man."

In all the calculations which are made of the number of men that England can maintain, we have nothing like this-four men to the acre. In what archives does he find this fact? In what happy æra was England thus populous, and thus cultivated? It must surely have been in the heroic times of Arthur. It could not be from the happier climate of Ireland the Doctor took his ideas and applied them to her less fertile sister England. Doctor Parnell, whose life he has written, gives no such favourable account of the culture of Ireland, as to corn, when he assures us that

"Half an acre's crop was half a sheaf."

It is indeed no wonder that Doctor Goldsmith should talk of desertion, destruction and depopulation when he judges of plenty

by a standard to which our highest improvements in agriculture are by no means equal.

"His description of an Englishman, however, in that happy, (I had almost said fabulous) situation, is, however, rather curious: "For him light labour spread her wholesome store,

Just gave what life requir'd, but gave no more.
His best companions, innocence and health,

And his best riches, ignorance of wealth."

That labour which was necessary to cultivate a rood of ground, must have been light indeed, as he must have been idle almost all the time the crop was growing. And I am inclined to think that a theory which promises

"Just what life requires, but no more,"

that is, barely enough to retain body and soul in union, would, in practice, be found very liable, from a variety of causes and accidents, frequently not to give so much.

In short, I cannot become so serious a convert to Doctor Goldsmith's theory, as not to think that in our present state of improvement, we may be much happier in general, if our people's labour will produce them, in all human probability, considerably more than what will just sustain life, though their labour be not so very light; unless we can suppose that in cases of disappointment by the ordinary means, men are to be supported by an extraordinary providence, by manna, &c. sent from heaven.

"Doctor Goldsmith's declaration of his long nurs'd hopes to die at home, (at Auburn) at last, is very natural and very tender. But, surely if Auburn is become a deserted village in consequence of the general improvement of the country (and I can conceive no other reason to exist) the Doctor will find it a more agreeable retreat on that very account; and, when he comes

"Amidst the swains to show his book-learned skill,"

If he has acquired a few more rational notions of just policy, he will not be the less agreeable, or less instructive companion."

Such, Mr. Editor, are the remarks of this agricultural critic, which will naturally remind those of your readers who have peruged Dr. Goldsmith's poem, of what that ingenious bard has himself observed in his dedication to it, that he had been assured by several of his best and wisest friends, and expected to be assured

so by his patrons too, that the depopulation he deplored was no where to be seen, and that the disorders he lamented were only to be found in his own imagination.

C. R.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.-NOTES OF A DESULTORY READER.

"An honest man's the noblest work of God," says Pope: a line which Goldsmith somewhere condemns as unworthy of the poet. But why it is so considered, I am at a loss to conceive. Does Goldsmith mean, that an honest man is a less noble work, for instance, than a world or a sun with a system of worlds revolving round him, and enlightened by him? Or, would he give to talents the superiority over virtue, which latter quality in its utmost extent, must be intended by Pope in his epithet, honest? Or does hè disapprove of the sentiment, as seeming to assign limits to Omnipotence?

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I cannot presume, that the critic would put a mere physical existence, however stupendous it might be, above the intellective, moral entity, man-man at least of the best mould. And admitting, that there are higher orders of being than the human, yet as that is the highest we are acquainted with or have any satisfactory knowledge of, the poet, speaking as a man, and addressing himself to men, with a view of animating them to the attainment of the perfection of their nature, seems to me, to be quite correct in the sentiment he has uttered. It is, moreover, in consonance with the grand idea of Lucan, which makes virtue the highest sphere, and indeed essence of the Deity.

Est que dei sedes nisi terra, et pontus, et aer,
Et cœlum, et virtus?

Thus rendered by Rowe:

Is there a place that God would choose to love,
·Beyond this earth, the seas, yon heaven above,

And virtuous minds the noblest throne for Jove!

Doctor Franklin too, in the account he has given us of his life,

finds fault with this couplet of the same poet:

Immodest words admit of no defence,
For want of decency is want of sense.

The Doctor would rather have it,

Immodest words admit of this defence,

That want of decency is want of sense.

I am not struck with the propriety of the alteration. Pope would seem to say, that however ingenious might be the apology offered for the use of immodest words, and whatever wit might be connected with them, neither the apology nor the wit would be of any avail; since indecency is so intrinsically disgusting as to be atoned for by no set-off or counterpoise, and that the very resort to it, is evidence of a want of sense and genius. The emendation proposed, appears to say no more; but it has an epigrammatic point in it, which Pope's couplet wants.

There is a mode of expression involving, when considered, an obvious grammatical error, which yet is to be met with in writers of the best reputation for correctness. Among others, it is to be found in Blackstone. The inaccuracy I allude to, consists in saying, these kind of things, for this kind of things. The pronoun agrees with kind and not things. Possibly, it might be urged, that kind is a noun of multitude, and therefore plural as well as singular. But the plurality of such nouns, is never, I presume, marked by the demonstrative or adjective pronoun. It is only shown in the verb to which they are the nominative case, as in the common example of, turba ruunt. And sometimes also, as I find, on looking into Murray's Grammar, by the relatives, they, them, their.

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Rowe the poet, seems to have justly appreciated the eloquence of the book of Job, having, in his Fair Penitent, closely imitated the following passage, which is found in the 7th and 8th verses of the third chapter.

"Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day."

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