found general circulation; but perhaps the most quoted is the celebrated one so much in harmony

with the spirit and tendency of the

IBRARY

argument

NIA

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade." The similes of the hare returning to her haunts, the bird teaching her young to fly, "the tall cliff that lifts its awful form," the description of the village schoolmaster, the apostrophe to poetry, all found advocates. But more especially the picture of the village preacher fixed attention for its excellence, as being at once minute and comprehensive in the characteristics, skilful in their selection, true to nature in general effect, and as forming not only the most finished specimen of a Christian pastor, but one of the most admirable pieces of poetical painting in the whole range of ancient and modern poetry. More than one of his relatives have been put forward as claimants for this character; his father by Mrs. Hodson, his brother by others, and his uncle Contarine by the Rev. Dr. O'Connor. The fact perhaps is, that he fixed upon no one individual, but borrowing like all good poets and painters a little from each, drew the character by their combination.

His obligations to predecessors were, as in the instance of the Traveller, few, or rather it would be difficult to say that he has borrowed from any. In the character of the Village Preacher there are the lines

"Truth from his lips prevail'd with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remain'd to pray:"

which bear some resemblance in expression though not in thought, to a passage in the Britannia Rediviva of Dryden

"Our vows are heard betimes, and Heaven takes care,
To grant before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise who came to pray.”

The admired simile which concludes the description of the same character, is supposed by high classical authority, to be taken from a Roman poet. "But as Claudian has come in my way," says the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield in his Memoirs, "and the subject turns on the obligations of the moderns to the ancients, I will step out of the road to discover the origin of perhaps the sublimest simile that English poetry can boast.

As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.'

'Ut altus Olympi

Vertex, qui spatio ventos hiemesque relinquit,
Perpetuum nullâ temeratus nube serenum,
Celsior exsurgit pluviis, auditque ruentes
Sub pedibus nimbos, et rauca tonitrua calcat ;
Sic patiens animus per tanta negotia liber
Emergit, similisque sui: justique tenorem
Flectere non odium cogit, non gratia suadet.

CLAUD. de Mall. Theod. Cons. 206.' "

He adds another quotation from Statius, tending as he also thinks to resemblance

"Stat sublimis apex, ventosque imbresque serenus
Despicit."

Theb. ii. 35.

Scholars like Mr. Wakefield, strongly imbued with classical partialities, too frequently seem willing to take from the merit due to modern writers, in order to add to the already abundant store of the ancients. To such, a preference for the companions of their youth and the favourites of their riper years, is perhaps unavoidable; much of their happiness is made up by dwelling on their superiority, and the haze of antiquity serves to magnify deserts, which no reader of taste will deny, though some may believe they have more than a due share of admiration. With the more ardent lovers of classical authors we are perhaps more than with others, disposed to contest a point of criticism, from the knowledge that the course of their studies has a tendency to bias the judgment. Admitting some general resemblance in the simile, it may be observed that no English poet of equal education has so few obligations to the ancients as Goldsmith; he treats of no subject in common with them, has no reference to their gods, heroes, opinions, or manners, rarely descends to a translation, or one at least such as he thought worth preserving, and in all his poems scarcely a mythological allusion so much hackneyed by other writers, occurs. His topics, descriptions, and incidents are modern, domestic, and almost wholly applicable to English life, manners, and character. Had he borrowed in this instance, he would probably have taken more by extending the imitation, as it offers a fine field for poetical description. Indeed in the two passages there are distinctive differences which, taking a liberal view of such things seem to point to a different origin, or that the respective writers wrote each from original impressions. The lines of Goldsmith are few and general, those of Claudian detailed and specific; in the former we find no reference to the winds of winter, to falling rains, to treading under foot, black, threatening clouds and the hoarse thunder; while the more picturesque points of the English poet, the "awful form," the "swelling from the vale," and the "eternal sunshine settling on its head," are wanting in the Roman writer.

But if a source other than the imagination of the poet be sought, we may find it in another quarter; he was then employed in writing the first volume of Animated Nature, in which Ulloa, the traveller in South America who has furnished him with many other facts, is expressly quoted as affording the substance of the following striking description, which however, forms only part of further details on the same subject. "On those places next the highest summits, vegetation is scarcely carried on; here and there a few plants of the most hardy kind appear. The air is intolerably cold; either continually refrigerated with frosts, or disturbed with tempests. All the ground here wears an eternal covering of ice and snows that seems constantly accumulating. Upon emerging from this war of the elements, he ascends into a purer and serener region, where vegetation entirely ceases; where the precipices,

composed entirely of rocks, arise perpendicularly above him; while he views beneath him all the combat of the elements; clouds at his feet; and thunders darting upward from their bosoms below; a thousand meteors, which are never seen on the plain, present themselves. Circular rainbows; mock suns; the shadow of the mountain projected upon the body of the air; and the traveller's own image, reflected as in a looking-glass, upon the opposite cloud. Such are, in general, the wonders that present themselves to a traveller in his journey either over the Alps or the Andes." *

A phrase used in the passage

"In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs, and God has given my share,"

is the same as one of Collins in his second Eclogue

"Ye mute companions of my toils that bear
In all my griefs, a more than equal share."

A strange origin has been found by an anonymous writer for the thought in the celebrated passage, "Princes and lords may flourish or may fade," &c., in an old French Poet, De Caux, who in one of his poems on an hour glass, comparing the world to it, says