poem, The Deserted Village, and in it I catch, for the first time, as the prevailing and predominant note, the note of feminine compassion, the note of humble happiness and humble grief. In Goldsmith’s verse we hear nothing of great folks except to be told how small and insignificant are the ills which they can cause or cure.

[Pg 38]

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath hath made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.

Goldsmith’s themes in The Deserted Village are avowedly:

The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made.

We seem to have travelled centuries away from the Troilus and Cressida, or the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer, from the Red Cross Knight and Una, from the Britomart, the Florimel, the Calidore, the Gloriana of Spenser, from the kingly ambitions and princely passions of Shakespeare, from the throes and denunciations of Paradise Lost, and equally from the coffee-house epigrams and savage satire of Pope. We have at last got among ordinary people, among humble folk, people of our own flesh and blood, with simple joys and simple sorrows. What could be more unlike the poetry we have so far been surveying than these lines from The Deserted Village?—

[Pg 39] Sweet was the sound when oft at evening’s close Up yonder hill the village murmur rose, There, as I passed, with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came softened from below. The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young, The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school.

[Pg 39]

Which of you does not remember the description in the same poem of the Village Clergyman? the man who was to all his country dear, etc. Some of you, I daresay, know it by heart. Nothing is too lowly, some would say, nothing too mean, for Goldsmith’s tender Muse. He loves to dwell on the splendour of the humble parlour, on the whitewashed wall, the sanded floor, the varnished clock, the chest of drawers, and the chimney-piece with its row of broken teacups. Truly it is a feminine Muse which can make poetry, and, in my opinion, very charming poetry, out of broken teacups.

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