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1771.

Et. 43.

Flushed with the success of his wily policy, however, Hermes is now betrayed into a violation of the laws of the fight, which might have escaped a less subtle eye than that of Phoebus; but the fraud is detected, exposed, and laughed at. Nothing can be more charming than the facility and grace with which the poet thus expresses all the various incidents to which an ordinary game of chess might be subject, while, at the same time, he never for an instant lays aside the dignity, the politeness, the poetry of his heroic verse. Nor is the absence of all effort more apparent in Vida's Latin than in Goldsmith's English lines.

He smil❜d, and turning to the Gods he said;
Though, Hermes, you are perfect in your trade,
And you can trick and cheat to great surprise,
These little slights no more shall blind my eyes;
Correct then if you please ye move you thus disguise.
The Circle laugh'd aloud; & Maia's son

(As if it had but by mistake been done)

Recalled his Archer, &c.

The combat is now resumed with greater desperation on both sides, and its fortunes vary more and more. Its interest becomes at last too intense for the spectators. Mars secretly helps Hermes, Vulcan moves on tip-toe to the aid of Phoebus, every art and resource is called in on both sides, Mercury becomes fretful, Apollo more cheerful. Then the Queens meet in deadly encounter, while countless lives are poured out around them; and the black amazon is slain by the white, who, in return, falls, struck by a sable archer. But the fair monarch's bereavement is soon consoled by the spirit and ambition which brings one of his lost partner's attendants gallantly up into her place.

("Then ye pleas'd King gives orders to prepare

The Crown, ye Sceptre, and ye Royal Chair,
And owns her for his Queen.")

At this, the vexation of Hermes becomes for a time irrepressible; but, warned by the loss into which again his temper betrays him, he recovers self-possession, effects a diversion by new arts, resumes his masterly stratagems, places a new queen by his black monarch's side, and again with equal forces threatens and appals his adversary.

Fierce comes ye sable Queen, with fatal threat
Surrounds ye Monarch in his royal seat ;

Rusht here and there, nor rested till she slew
The last remainder of ye whiten'd crew.
Sole stood ye King; ye midst of all ye plain,
Weak and defenseless, his companions slain.
As when ye ruddy morn ascending high
Has chac'd ye twinkling stars from all ye sky;
Your star, fair Venus, still retains its light,
And loveliest goes ye latest out of sight.
No safety's left, no gleams of hope remain;
Yet did he not as vanquisht quit ye plain :
But try'd to shut himself between ye foe,
Unburt through swords and spears he hop'd to go,
Untill no room was left to shun ye fatal blow.
For if none threaten'd his immediate fate,

And his next move must ruin all his state;

All their past toil and labour is in vain,

Vain all ye bloody carnage of yo plain,

Neither would triumph then, ye laurel neither gain.

}

But not so fortunate is the fair-haired king, on whom the rival monarch now steadily advances, and, watching his opportunity for bringing up his queen, smiles as the fatal blow, no longer evitable, is struck by his swarthy partner. The fight is over, and Mercury remains master of the field. The Victor could not from his insults keep; But laugh'd and sneer'd to see Apollo weep.

VOL. II.

T

1771.

Et. 43.

1771.

Et. 43.

Jove call'd him near, and gave him in his hand
The pow'rful happy and mysterious wand,
By which ye Shades are call'd to purer day,
When penal fire has purg'd their sins away;
By which ye guilty are condemn'd to dwell
In ye dark mansions of ye deepest hell;
By which he gives us sleep, or sleep denies,
And closes at ye last ye dying eyes.

Soon after this, ye heavenly Victor brought
The game on earth, and first th' Italians taught.
For (as they say) fair Scacchi he espy'd
Feeding her cygnets in ye silver tide,
(Scacchi ye loveliest Seriad of ye place)
And as she stray'd, took her to his embrace.
Then, to reward her for her virtue lost,
Gave her ye Men and chequer'd board, embost
With gold and silver curiously inlay'd;
And taught her how ye Game was to be play'd.
Ev'n now 'tis honour'd with her happy name;
And Rome and all ye world admire ye Game.
All which ye Seriads told me heretofore,

When my boy-notes amus'd ye Serian shore.

And so, resuming the progress of my narrative, I leave, without further remark, these pleasant and lively verses, which I should scarcely have quoted at such length if they were not here for the first time printed,*—as yet remained generally inaccessible, and, in whatever view they be regarded, are at least a striking and unexpected new fact in the life of Oliver Goldsmith.

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* Since this was written, I am happy to find that the poem will be included in one of the volumes of a most interesting and valuable edition of the Works of Goldsmith, which as these sheets are passing through the press is announced by Mr. Murray. This edition, by far the most complete which has yet been issued, will have the advantage of Mr. Peter Cunningham's care and knowledge in preparing and illustrating the text, which in some important cases will for the first time be printed with anything like reasonable accuracy. To all readers Mr. Murray's book will commend itself as the edition of the works of this delightful writer.

CHAPTER X.

A ROUND OF PLEASURES.

1771.

It may have been on hearing the Haunch of Venison read in the Beauclerc and Bunbury circles (it was from a copy which Lord Clare had given Bunbury they were printed after the writer's death) that Horace Walpole conceded to the "silly changeling," as he called Goldsmith, "bright gleams "of parts;" this being the style of verse he relished most, and could value beyond Travellers and Deserted Villages.* It was in a later letter that Walpole made it a kind of boast that he had never exchanged a syllable with Johnson in his life, and had never been in a room with him six times; for the necessity of finding himself, once a year at least, perforce in the same room with him, and with Goldsmith too, did not till the present year begin. On St. George's day, 1771, Sir Joshua Reynolds took the chair at the first annual dinner of the Royal Academy: where the entertainers, himself and his fellow academicians, sat surrounded by such evidence of

*

"I should like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey, even though he wrote Lord "Buckhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle. I have no thirst to know "the rest of my contemporaries, from the absurd bombast of Doctor Johnson down "to the silly Doctor Goldsmith; though the latter changeling has had bright "gleams of parts, and the former had sense till he changed it for words, and sold "it for a pension. Don't think me scornful. Recollect that I have seen Pope and "lived with Gray." Coll. Lett. v. 345-6.

1771.

Æt. 43.

1771. claims to admiration as their own pencils had adorned the Et. 43. walls with, and their guests were the most distinguished men

of the day; the highest in rank and the highest in genius, the poet as well as the prince, the minister of state and the man of trade.* It was one of the happy devices of the president by which he steered the new and unchartered Academy through those quicksands and shoals that had wrecked the chartered institution out of which it rose. Academies cannot create genius; academies had nothing to do with the begetting of Hogarth, or Reynolds, or Wilson, or Gainsborough, the greatest names of our English school; but

* Goldsmith attended every dinner until his death, and so became personally known to several men of rank belonging to both parties in the state, who doubtless at any other time or in any other place would hardly have remembered or acknowledged his name. It was on the occasion of Johnson's last appearance at this famous dinner (in 1784), that he left his seat by desire of the Prince of Wales, and went to the head of the table to be introduced. It was at the dinner two years later, that the Prince of Wales had on his right hand the ill-fated Duke of Orleans, so soon to perish on the scaffold, who sat exactly under Reynolds's fine full-length portrait of him, and of whom Sir Joshua remarked, when the Duke rose to address the company, that he never saw a man stand so gracefully in a position which few men, the arms being wholly unemployed, could sustain with dignity or ease. At the dinner three years later the Prince of Wales was again present, and this was the occasion when Burke, catching sight of the print-seller Boydell at one of the tables while toasts to the high-born and to dignitaries of state were freely circulating, scrawled the following note in pencil, and sent it up to Sir Joshua. "This end of the table, in which, as there are many admirers of the art, there are "many friends of yours, wish to drink an English tradesman, who patronises the "art better than the Grand Monarque of France:" whereupon, the Prince heartily approving, Boydell's health went round with acclamation. The attraction of these celebrated dinners has suffered no diminution since. All who have had the privilege of invitation to them can testify to the extraordinary interest they still excite; to the fact that princes and painters, men of letters and ministers of state, tradesmen and noblemen, still assemble at that hospitable table, with objects of a common admiration and sympathy around them; to the happy occasion which their friendly greetings afford for the suspension of all excitements of rivalry, not between artists or academicians alone, but between the most eager combatants of public life, ministerial and ex-ministerial; and to the very striking effect with which, as the twilight of the summer evening gathers round while the dinner is in progress, the sudden lighting of the room at its close, as the president proposes the health and pronounces the name of the sovereign, appears to give new and startling life to the forms and colours on the pictured walls.

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