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[BOOK IV.

grown out of early impressions; were passionately responded to, by the warmer sensibilities of his nature; and had received supposed corroboration from his own experience. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that for four or five years before the Deserted Village was published, he had, by sundry country excursions into various parts of England, verified his fears of the tendency of overgrowing wealth to depopulate the land; and his remark to a friend who called upon him the second morning after he commenced the poem, was nearly to the same effect. Some of my friends 'differ with me on this plan,' he said, after describing the scheme, and think this depopulation of villages does not 'exist; but I am myself satisfied of the fact. I remember 'it in my own country, and have seen it in this.'

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The friend who so called upon him, in May 1768; who marks the date as exactly two years before the poem appeared; and who tells us that the writing of it, and its elaborate revision, extended over that whole interval of two years; was supposed by Scott to have been Lee Lewes the actor. It is difficult to understand how this mistake originated; but it would seem that Sir Walter had judged from only a small portion of the papers whose authorship he thus misstated, and which, except in apparently imperfect and garbled extracts, escaped even Goldsmith's later and more careful biographer. Acquaintance with the comedian had not yet begun; nor in the acknowledged (and somewhat dull) Memoirs of Lee Lewes, does the poet's name at any time occur: the real writer of the anecdotes was

Cooke, the young law student so often referred to as Goldsmith's countryman and near neighbour in the Temple ; and their curious details, till now, have been almost wholly . overlooked. They appeared from time to time in the European Magazine.

Cooke prefaces the mention of his calling on 'the Doctor' the second morning after the Deserted Village was begun, by an account of the Doctor's slowness in writing poetry, 'not from the tardiness of fancy, but the time he took in pointing the sentiments and polishing the versification.' An invaluable hint to the poetical aspirant, as already I have strongly urged. Indisputable wealth of genius, flung about in careless exuberance, has as often failed to make a poet, as one finished unsuperfluous masterpiece has succeeded, and kept a name in the Collections for ever. Goldsmith's manner of writing the Deserted Village, his friend tells us, was this: he first sketched a part of his design in prose, in which he threw out his ideas as they occurred to him; he then sat down carefully to verify them, correct them, and add such other ideas as he thought better fitted to the subject; and if sometimes he would exceed his prose design by writing several verses impromptu, these he would take singular pains afterward to revise, lest they should be found unconnected with his main design. Ten lines, from the fifth to the fifteenth, had been his second morning's work; and when Cooke entered his chamber he read them to him aloud.

Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease,

Seats of my youth, when every sport could please,

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How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,

Where humble happiness endear'd each scene!
How often have I paus'd on every charm,

The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm,
The never-failing brook, the busy mill,

The decent church that topp'd the neighbouring hill,
The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade

For talking age and whispering lovers made !

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Come,' he added, let me tell you this is no bad morning's work; and now, my dear boy, if you are not 'better engaged, I should be glad to enjoy a Shoemaker's 'Holiday with you.'

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This proposed enjoyment is then described by Cooke, in a simple, characteristic way. 'A Shoemaker's Holiday was a day of great festivity to poor Goldsmith, and was spent in the following innocent manner. Three or four of his ' intimate friends rendezvoused at his chambers to breakfast ' about ten o'clock in the morning; at eleven they pro'ceeded by the City-road and through the fields to 'Highbury Barn to dinner; about six o'clock in the evening they adjourned to White Conduit House to drink 6 tea; and concluded by supping at the Grecian or Temple Exchange Coffee Houses, or at the Globe in Fleet Street. 'There was a very good ordinary of two dishes and pastry, 'kept at Highbury Barn about this time at tenpence per 'head, including a penny to the waiter; and the company 'generally consisted of literary characters, a few Templars, 'and some citizens who had left off trade. The whole expenses of this day's fête never exceeded a crown, and were ' oftener from three-and-sixpence to four shillings; for which

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'the party obtained good air and exercise, good living, 'the example of simple manners, and good conversation."

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Truly, very innocent enjoyment; and shared not alone by Templars and small wits, but by humbler good fellows. One Peter Barlow, who acted now and then as amanuensis to Goldsmith; very poor, very proud in his way; who appeared always in one peculiar dress; who declared himself able to give only a specified small sum for his daily dinner, but who stood firmly on his ability to do this, and never permitted any one to do it for him; had made himself a great favourite with Goldsmith by his honest independence and harmless eccentricity, and had generally a place in the Shoemaker's Holiday. If the dinner cost even five shillings each, fifteenpence was still the limit of Peter's responsibility; and the balance was paid by Goldsmith. Many, too, were

his other pensioners, on less liberal terms than Peter. He had two or three poor authors always on his list, beside 'several widows and poor housekeepers;' and when he had no money to give the latter, he seldom failed to send them away with shirts or old clothes, sometimes with the whole contents of his breakfast table: saying with a smile of satisfaction after they were gone, 'Now let me only suppose 'I have eat a much heartier breakfast than usual, and I'm 'nothing out of pocket.' His last guinea, exclaims Cooke, after relating some stories of this kind, was the boundary of his munificence.

Yet Cooke was no enthusiast. He had rather, at the time these anecdotes were written, fallen into the Boswell way of talking of his old patron; and was careful to colour his picture, as though to adapt it for popular acceptance, with all due tints of vanity and folly. Unable to conceal, indeed, the pains he is at in doing this, his examples are often very amusing failures. One day, for instance, he tells us, Goldsmith being in company where many ladies were, and a ballad-singer happening to sing his favourite air of Sally Salisbury under the window, his envy and vanity broke out, and he exclaimed with some passion, 'How miserably this woman sings! Pray, Doctor,' rejoined the lady of the house,' could you do it better?' 'Yes, madam,' was the answer, amidst a general titter of distrust; and the company shall be judges.' He instantly began; when, adds Cooke, with a sort of naïve renewal of the wonder of the ladies, singing with some ear and

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