THE

Ꭲ Ꭱ Ꭺ Ꮩ Ꭼ Ꮮ Ꮮ Ꭼ Ꭱ ;

OR,

A PROSPECT OF SOCIETY.

A

POEM.

[“ The Traveller" was published in December 1764, and was the earliest production to which Goldsmith prefixed his name. As Dr. Johnson was the first to introduce it to the good opinion of the public, in a manner which could not fail to draw attention, it will not be uninteresting to look back at what he then said, and observe how perfectly all judges of poetry have concurred in his opinion:

"The author has, in an elegant dedication to his brother, a country clergyman, given the design of his poem. Without espousing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to shew that there may be equal happiness in other states, though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar principle of happiness, and that this principle in each state, and in our own in particular, may be carried to a mischievous excess.' That he may illustrate and enforce this important position, the author places himself on a summit of the Alps, and turning his eyes around in all directions, upon the different regions that lie before him, compares not merely their situation and policy, but those social and domestic manners, which, after a very few deductions, make the sum total of human life.

'Ev'n now where Alpine solitudes ascend,
I sit me down a pensive hour to spend ;
And, plac'd on high above the storm's career,
Look downward where an hundred realms appear;
Lakes, forests, cities, plains, extending wide,
The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.
When thus Creation's charms around combine,
Amidst the store, should thankless pride repine?
Say, should the philosophic mind disdain

That good which makes each humbler bosom vain?
Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,

These little things are great to little man;

And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind
Exults in all the good of all mankind.'

“The author already appear by his numbers to be a versifier, and by his scenery to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness. The goods of life are either given by nature or procured by ourselves. Nature has distributed her gifts in very different proportions, yet all her children are content; but the acquisitions of art are such as terminate in good or evil, as they are differently regulated or combined.