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Remote from towns he ran his godly race,

Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place; 4
Unpractised he to fawn, or seek for power,5
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; "
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."
His house was known to all the vagrant train; 8
He chid their wanderings but relieved their pain.
The long-remembered beggar was his guest,
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast;
The ruined spendthrift,9 now no longer proud,
Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; 10
The broken 11 soldier, kindly bade to stay,

Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,

Wept o'er his wounds or tales of sorrow done,12
Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.
Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow,
And quite forgot their vices in their woe;

Careless their merits or their faults to scan,

His pity gave ere charity 13 began.

EXERCISES TO CHAPTER XIX.

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Ex. 1. Prepare the passage on p. 342, with the following notes :1. Where in what. 2. Sedate is here used in its primitive Latin sense, and is settled. 3. Darkling in the dark. The ling in this word is an old adverbial ending. So we had naselings =on the nose, and others. 4. Skies was a very common poetic equivalent for God or heaven in the eighteenth century. So Pope has, in his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 1. 413,—

And keep awhile one parent from the sky.

5. Petitions, a rather clumsy word, forced upon Dr. Johnson by the exigencies of his measure, instead of prayer. 6. This deem is to be connected with the previous imperative cease. 7. Leave to Heaven the what and the how much. 8. The antecedent to whose must be got out of his. 9. Specious hardly seems the right word here. The word probably had then a better meaning than it has now, and was perhaps equivalent to with some show of right and truth. 10. So, in Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. I., 1. 285 :

Submit ;-in this or any other sphere

Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear.

11. The sibilant sound in these two lines is excessive. 12. Collective man is a clumsy phrase for all mankind. 13. Transmuted into good by the power of patience.

Ex. 2. Prepare the two passages from Goldsmith with the following

notes:

PROSE. 1. The word affinity finely expresses that extremely distant rela

tionship, that attenuated connection, which could gain these poor creatures a dinner or a bed for a night. 2. This is just the kindly practical joke that Goldsmith would himself have played upon such persons. The finest element in his writings is the heart in them, which is never wrong or out of place. 3. Plundered is the wrong word. A city is plundered, or a winecellar; but the things taken are stolen. 4. Mutilated. The Latin element of our language sometimes contributes a grave and ceremonious humour to a phrase. Cut short would not have been so fine.

POETRY. 1. Country, in the local sense of "the country-side." 2. Surpassingly. 3. The usual stipend for a curate in the eighteenth century. 4. His place his post (i.e., for a higher or wealthier). 5. This may be compared with Chaucer's lines about a "porë persoun of a toun" in the Prologue :

1

He settë not his benefice to hyre,

And leet his sheep encombred in the myre,
And ran to Londone, unto seyntë Poules,
To seeken him a chaunterie for soules.

6. Like the Vicar of Bray, in the popular ballad :

And this is law, that I'll maintain
Until my dying day, sir,

That whatsoever king shall reign,
Still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir.

The antithesis is

7. A neat antithesis, with which no fault can be found. not sought for, but comes naturally to the poet from the nature of the case: he was so eager to help others, that he had no time to help himself. 8. The vagrant train is one of those artificial expressions that were considered very poetical in Pope's time. Compare such phrases from Pope as the quivered deaths (=arrows), steely stores of war, a friendly form (=a friend), the menial train (=the servants). 9. One who spends what others have gained for him by thrift. 10. See the passage quoted from the Vicar of Wakefield. Goldsmith, throughout his original writings, everywhere uses only his own experience; and this portrait of a country clergyman is said to be taken from his brother. 11. Campbell has the phrase war-broken. 12. Done = done with, or past. 13. His feelings of pity had helped the poor creatures, and prevented any appeal to principle or to charity.

Ex. 3. Write a short paper comparing the portraits of a country parson, as presented by Chaucer, Dryden, and Goldsmith, in (a) general tone; (b) special characteristics; and (c) self-consistency.

Ex. 4. Prepare the passage on p. 344 with the following notes:

1. From the Latin pestis = a plague. "The plague" was generally, in the sixteenth century, called "the pest." 2. Idiom, from the Greek idioma =something peculiar (to the language it belongs to). From the same root is idiot, which in Greek meant simply private person. But it is very doubtful whether any foreign (or French) idioms have ever kept their place in the English language. The French, je ne suis que is found in Chaucer (for example, I n'am but dead), but it very soon died out after him. 3. The fabric the main body of the language. 4. Phraseology = =manner of combining words into phrases. 5. Like the Académie Française. 6. An Academy, by setting up certain writings as "models," makes new writers mere imitators of these, and thus increases "dependence," and kills off originality.

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1.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CONTEMPORARIES OF JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH.

AVID HUME (1711-1776), is known in literature both as an historian and as a philosopher. He left both law and commerce for literature, and supported himself in his youth chiefly by acting as tutor to several noblemen. In 1763 he was Secretary to the British Embassy in Paris, and on his return was appointed an Under-Secretary of State. Hume's title to

lasting fame rests entirely upon his philosophical works, which, although of a negative character, have perhaps done more to stimulate thought than the treatises of any half-dozen British thinkers. His History of England is now seldom read.

The two chief qualities of his style are ease and perspicuity. He attained ease of expression by careful and hard work in his composition; and the perspicuity of his style arises from his exactitude and care in the use of his terms. Though a Scotchman, he avoided Scotticisms with the greatest assiduity.

2. ADAM SMITH (1723–1790), was another Scotchman who supported the intellectual claims of his country, and who is the founder of the science of Political Economy. He studied at Glasgow and Oxford. He was Professor of Logic and then of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow; and, by the influence of the Duke of Buccleuch, was appointed Commissioner of Customs in Scotland. His greatest work is an

Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

Nations.

This book, which was published in 1776, was the first to advocate the abolition of all commercial restrictions whatever-a doctrine known in later years as Free Trade; to prove that enlightened selfinterest, by promoting its own ends, promotes the good of all; that

industry and commerce need no guidance from the State; and that wealth does not consist in gold and silver, but in the abundance of food, clothing, and commodities. His work on Moral Philosophy is called the

Theory of Moral Sentiments;

and its fundamental doctrine is, that sympathy is the basis of all the human virtues.

3. THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771) is one of the most remarkable examples in English Literature of a man who has made for himself a high fame by the very smallest amount of work. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge; graduated in Civil Law; and was appointed Professor of Modern History in his University; but he never delivered any lectures. He spent most of his life at Cambridge, chiefly in reading, and was one of the most learned men in Europe. He was a very shy, very fastidious, and somewhat indolent man. His fastidiousness is seen in the small quantity of poetry he wrote, and the elaborate care with which he polished the lines. Much of his workmanship is absolutely perfect. His works are not to be enumerated by volumes, but by separate short poems, and almost by lines. His best known poems are:

Elegy written in a Country Churchyard;
Pindaric Odes;

On a Distant Prospect of Eton College;
Hymn to Adversity.

He is said to have taken seven years in the writing of his Elegy, which contains only thirty-two stanzas.* Mr. Palgrave, the editor of the Golden Treasury of English Songs and Lyrical Poems, says that they are "perhaps the noblest stanzas in our language.' He stands alone with Milton as the most careful workman in English poetry; and in "finish" he is unrivalled. His reading lay chiefly in the classical and Italian poets; and this raised the standard of his naturally fastidious taste. His poems are full of classical allusions; and even the idioms are now and then Greek or Latin. "But," says Professor Craik, "the gorgeous brocade of the verse does not hide the true fire and fancy beneath." His Letters have been generally

*They are quatrains in iambic pentameter, alternately rhymed.

admitted to be superior to Pope's, or Swift's, and even to Horace Walpole's. There can be no better study in poetry than the careful and thorough examination of the Elegy. The language is absolutely truthful; it is always simple, though never bald, and the finish of the verse is beyond praise.

The following stanzas from his ode on the Progress of Poesy describe the feelings of Gray concerning three English poets:

Far from the sun and summer gale,1

In thy 2 green lap was Nature's Darling 3 laid,
What time where lucid Avon stray'd,

To him the mighty Mother 5 did unveil

Her awful face: The dauntless Child

Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smil'd.

6

"This pencil take (she said), whose colours clear 7
Richly paint the vernal 8 year;

Thine too, these golden keys, immortal Boy!

This can unlock the gates of Joy,9

Of Horror 10 that, and thrilling Fears,11

Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears." 12

Nor second He,13 that rode sublime

Upon the seraph-wings of Extasy 14

The secrets of th' Abyss to spy.

He pass'd the flaming 15 bounds of Place 16 and Time:

The living Throne, the sapphire blaze,

Where Angels tremble, while they gaze,

He saw; but, blasted with excess of light,17

Closed his eyes in endless night.18

Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car

Wide o'er the fields of Glory bear

Two Coursers of ethereal race,

With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.

Two contemporaries and friends of Gray worth mention are THOMAS WARTON (1728-1790), and JOSEPH WARTON (1722–1800). Thomas Warton was Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and is the author of a

History of English Poetry,

"which," Professor Craik says, "unfinished as it is, is still perhaps our greatest work in this department of literary history." Dr. Joseph Warton was Head-master of Winchester School, and wrote an able essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.