that pass in review
before him; the illustrations, with which he relieves and varies his
main subject, are judiciously interspersed; and as he never raises his
tone too far beyond his pitch at the first starting, so he seldom sinks
much below it. The thought at the beginning appears to have pleased him;
for he has repeated it in "the Citizen of the World:"

Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
My heart untravel'd fondly turns to thee;
Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

"The further I travel, I feel the pain of separation with stronger
force; those ties that bind me to my native country and you are still
unbroken. By every remove I only drag a greater length of chain."

To the poetical compositions of Goldsmith, in general, may be applied
with justice that temperate commendation which he has given to the works
of Parnell in his life of that Poet. "At the end of his course the
reader regrets that his way has been so short; he wonders that it gave
him so little trouble; and so resolves to go the journey over again."
There is much to solace fatigue and even to excite pleasure, but nothing
to call forth rapture. We stay to contemplate and enjoy the objects on
our road; but we feel that it is on this earth we have been travelling,
and that the author is either not willing or not able to raise us above
it. No writer in the English language has combined such various
excellences as a novelist, a writer of comedies, and a poet.

FOOTNOTES
[1] He took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, Feb. 27, 1749. _Prior's Life
of Goldsmith_, vol. i. p.98. ED.
[2] He also helped himself by writing street-ballads. _Prior_, vol. i.
p. 75. ED.

* * * * *

ERASMUS DARWIN.

Erasmus, the seventh child and fourth son of Robert Darwin, Esq. by his
wife Elizabeth Hill, was born at Elston, near Newark, in
Nottinghamshire, on the 12th of December 1731. He was educated at the
Grammar school of Chesterfield, in Derbyshire, under the Rev. Mr.
Burrows, and from thence sent to St. John's College, Cambridge, where he
had for his tutor Dr. Powell, afterwards Master of the College, to whose
learning and goodness, Mason, another of his pupils, has left a
testimony in one of his earliest poems.

After proceeding Bachelor in Medicine at Cambridge, Darwin went to
Edinburgh, in order to pursue his studies in that science to more
advantage. When he