cellent land, having given a
hundred pounds for my predecessor's good-will. Nothing could exceed the
neatness of my little inclosures: the elms and hedge-rows appearing with
inexpressible beauty. My house consisted of but one story, and was
covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness." It is
quite certain that an author familiar with the country, and with a
memory stocked with a multitude of kindred scenes, would have given a
more determinate outline to this picture. But whether he would have
given to his definite outline the fascination that belongs to the
vagueness of Goldsmith, is wholly another question.

Again, in the sixth chapter, Mr. Burchell is called upon to assist the
Vicar and his family in "saving an after-growth of hay." "Our labors,"
he says, "went on lightly; we turned the swath to the wind." It is plain
that Goldsmith never saved much hay; turning a swath to the wind may be
a good way of making it, but it is a slow way of gathering it. In the
eighth chapter of this charming story, the Doctor says,--"Our family
dined in the field, and we sat, or rather reclined, round a temperate
repast, _our cloth spread upon the hay_. To heighten our satisfaction,
the blackbirds answered each other from opposite hedges, the familiar
redbreast came and pecked the crumbs from our hands, and every sound
seemed but the echo of tranquillity." This is very fascinating; but it
is the veriest romanticism of country-life. Such sensible girls as
Olivia and Sophia would, I am quite sure, never have spread the
dinner-cloth upon hay, which would most surely have set all the gravy
aflow, if the platters had not been fairly overturned; and as for the
redbreasts, (with that rollicking boy Moses in my mind,) I think they
must have been terribly tame birds.

But this is only a farmer's criticism,--a Crispin feeling the bunions on
some Phidian statue. And do I think the less of Goldsmith, because he
wantoned with the literalism of the country, and laid on his prismatic
colors of romance where only white light lay? Not one whit. It only
shows how Genius may discard utter faithfulness to detail, if only its
song is charged with a general simplicity and truthfulness that fill our
ears and our hearts.

As for Goldsmith's verse, who does not love it? It is wicked to consume
the pages of a magazine with extracts from a poem that is our daily
food, else I would string them all down this column and the next, and
every one shou