g it in his
Dictionary. Perhaps, indeed, it may be admitted that the literary
charm of the _Traveller_ is more apparent than the value of any
doctrine, however profound or ingenious, which the poem was supposed
to inculcate. We forget all about the "particular principle of
happiness" possessed by each European state, in listening to the
melody of the singer, and in watching the successive and delightful
pictures that he calls up before the imagination.

"As in those domes where Caesars once bore sway,
Defaced by time, and tottering in decay,
There in the ruin, heedless of the dead,
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed;
And, wondering man could want the larger pile,
Exults, and owns his cottage with a smile."

Then notice the blaze of patriotic idealism that bursts forth when he
comes to talk of England. What sort of England had he been familiar
with when he was consorting with the meanest wretches--the poverty
stricken, the sick, and squalid--in those Fleet-Street dens? But it is
an England of bright streams and spacious lawns of which he writes;
and as for the people who inhabit the favoured land--

"Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
With daring aims irregularly great;
Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
I see the lords of human kind pass by."

"Whenever I write anything," Goldsmith had said, with a humorous
exaggeration which Boswell, as usual, takes _au serieux_, "the public
_make a point_ to know nothing about it." But we have Johnson's
testimony to the fact that the _Traveller_ "brought him into high
reputation." No wonder. When the great Cham declares it to be the
finest poem published since the time of Pope, we are irresistibly
forced to think of the _Essay on Man_. What a contrast there is
between that tedious and stilted effort, and this clear burst of
bird-song! The _Traveller_, however, did not immediately become
popular. It was largely talked about, naturally, among Goldsmith's
friends; and Johnson would scarcely suffer any criticism of it. At a
dinner given long afterwards at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and fully
reported by the invaluable Boswell, Reynolds remarked, "I was glad to
hear Charles Fox say it was one of the finest poems in the English
language." "Why were you glad?" said Langton. "You surely had no doubt
of this before?" Hereupon Johnson struck in: "No; the merit of the
_Traveller_ is so well established, that Mr. Fox's praise