he material, as yet
formless and unarranged, out of which it was to be finally evolved."

Now--line for corresponding line--the text discovered by Mr. Dobell often
differs, and sometimes considerably, from that of the first edition of
_The Traveller_, and these variations are highly interesting, and make Mr.
Dobell's 'find' a valuable one. But on studying the newly discovered
version I very soon found myself differing from Mr. Dobell's opinion that
we had here the formless, unarranged material out of which Goldsmith built
an exquisitely articulated poem.[1] And, doubting this, I had to doubt
what Mr. Dobell deduced from it--that "it was in the manner in which a
poem, remarkable for excellence of form and unity of design, was created
out of a number of verses which were at first crudely conceived and
loosely connected that Goldsmith's genius was most triumphantly
displayed." For scarcely had I lit a pipe and fallen to work on
_A Prospect of Society_ before it became evident to me (1) that the lines
were not "unarranged," but disarranged; and (2) that whatever the reason
of this disarray, Goldsmith's brain was not responsible; that the disorder
was too insane to be accepted either as an order in which he could have
written the poem, or as one in which he could have wittingly allowed it to
circulate among his friends, unless he desired them to believe him mad.
Take, for instance, this collocation:--

"Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old!
Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold;
Where shading elms beside the margin grew,
And freshen'd from the waves the zephyr blew."

Or this:--

"To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
We turn, where France displays her bright domain.
Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please,
How often have I led thy sportive choir
With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire?
No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display,
But Winter lingering chills the lap of May;
No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast,
But meteors glare and frowning storms invest."

Short of lunacy, no intellectual process would account for that sort of
thing, whereas a poem more pellucidly logical than _The Traveller_ does
not exist in English. So, having lit another pipe, I took a pencil and
began some simple counting, with this result:--

The first 42 lines of _The Pros