Nature and on life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute." To this well-expressed encomium another critic happily adds: “He looks also with a heart that feels for all mankind. His sympathies are universal. His touching description of the peasant perishing in the snow, the Siberian exile, or the Arab pilgrims, are all marked with that humanity and true feeling which show that the poet's virtues formed the magic of his song." Thomson was a born poet. Critics have allowed him invention, fancy, wit, and humor of the most voluptuous kind. "His faults," it has been aptly said, 66 were those of his style. He is often inelegant, and his diction is at times too gaudy and ornamental; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect or affectation or false ornaments."

"Agamemnon," his

In the drama Thomson failed. tragedy, we are told, was "only endured." It struggled with great difficulty through the first night. We have a ludicrous picture of the author on that hapless night appearing in panting haste before some friends with whom he was to sup, and pitiably excusing his delay by relating how at the play the anguish of his soul had broken out in perspiration, and had so disordered his wig as to render him unpresentable till he had been refitted by a barber.

On his poem of "Liberty" Thomson is said to have spent two years, but his best two productions are "The Castle of Indolence" and "The Seasons." "The Seasons" abounds in fine passages; perhaps the most striking are the description of the contagion among the ships at Carthage and that of the caravan at Mecca. This bit from "Summer" is an example of the poet's happy diction:

'Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glow-worm lights his gem; and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields
The world to night; not in her winter robe

Of massy Stygian woof, but loose arrayed

The silent hours of love, with purest ray
Sweet Venus shines.

The fairest lamp of night."

Thomson's" Castle of Indolence" has in it more pure poesy than the "Seasons," and is consequently less widely popular, though some critics have considered it his best poem. The materials of this exquisite poem he is said to have derived originally from Tasso, though from the marked similarity between it and the "Faery Queen," the direct inspiration of the poet might seem to have been drawn from Spenser. Thomson, though less elegant, had the same luxuriant exuberance that characterizes the elder poet, and it is the true source of his power. "The Castle of Indolence" was a poem after his own heart. Here he finds a subject entirely in unison with his own listless temper; and the description of this luxurious palace of ease, with its lotos-eating inmates, is indeed perfect and delightful, doing equal honor to the genius and the supreme laziness of the poet who has been seen eating peaches off a tree, with both hands in his waistcoat pockets! Thus, in numbers that

"Softer fall than petals from blown roses on the grass,"

he describes that restful "lovely spot of ground" whereon he built his "Castle,"

"Was nought around but images of rest:

Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ;
And flowery beds that slumb'rous influence kest,
From poppies breathed; and beds of pleasant green,

Where never yet was creeping creature seen.
Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets played,
And hurled everywhere their waters' sheen;
That, as they bickered through the sunny glade,
Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made.

"Joined to the prattling of the purling rills,
Were heard the lowing herds along the valo,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And now and then sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves 'plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds y'blent inclined all to sleep.

"Full in the passage of the vale above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,

Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood:

And up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out below,

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye:
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
Forever flushing round a summer-sky:
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of 'noyance or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest."

Thomson received his highest praise in the prologue to his posthumous tragedy, "Coriolanus." "His works," said Lord Lyttleton, "contain no line which dying he I could wish to blot."

Worthy of notice among the minor poets of this era is

Akenside, author of the "Pleasures of Imagination," a poet of taste and genius, and Beattie, whose fame rests upon his unfinished poem, "The Minstrel," a composi tion which has been commended for the correctness of its style and the genius displayed in it, though in our day it is but little read.

In this age lived and wrote the sacred bard, Dr. Watts, whose poetry, consisting almost wholly of the fine devotional hymns so well known, will ever give his name a place in the annals of our literature. These hymns are, it is true, unequal in merit, yet the best of them as sacred lyrics have never been excelled; and when, inspired by the grandeur of his subject and elevated by pure religious fervor, he forgets the narrow dogmas of creed in expansive and sublime conceptions of the Infinite, nothing can excel in grandeur and majesty his inspired numbers, as in stanzas like this,

"Our lives through various scenes are drawn,

And vexed with trifling cares;

While Thine eternal thought moves on
Thine undisturbed affairs."

In the literary annals of this period few names stand higher or fairer than Goldsmith's. In massive force of understanding, in sagacious knowledge of the world, and in moral poise of character, he was surpassed by his cotemporary, Dr. Johnson; yet though in strength and solidity Johnson bears the palm, Goldsmith far excelled him in that inimitable grace and poetic elegance that are part and parcel of the man. Johnson might perhaps too demand notice as an excellent reasoner in rhyme, though one could not disparage the craft by according to him the title of poet. In the "Vanity of Human Wishes" he takes expanded views of human nature, society, and manners, yet the same composition, in his own high-sounding,

sonorous prose, would have been far more admirable. Nature has been lavish of rhymers, but chary of poets; and it is well to remember this wise maxim, "Never sing your thought when you can say it.” In the world of letters Johnson was crowned king, and though it must be allowed that he depressed the literature of imagination and poetry, he conferred a lasting benefit upon the language by elevating that of the understanding.

Oliver Goldsmith was born at Pallas, a small village in the county of Longford, Ireland, on the 10th of November, 1728. His father, a poor curate, eked out his scanty salary by cultivating the soil. Succeeding to a rectory, he removed to Lissoy, where Goldsmith's youth was spent, and where he found the materials for his "Deserted Village."

At Trinity College, where, after a good country education, he was admitted a sizar, it is related of the poet that ―good-natured, thoughtless, and irregular—having unexpectedly come into possession of thirty guineas, he provided for the lads and lasses of the neighborhood a bountiful collation, and made due preparation for an Irish jig in his own apartment. His tutor, grim and awful, broke in upon the festivities, and routed the dancers after beating the host in the very presence of his guests! Goldsmith fled in mortification from college, and having soon exhausted his remaining guineas, wandered about the country for some time in the utmost poverty.

He was found by his good brother Henry, clothed, and carried back to college, and in 1749 was admitted to the degree of B. A. His father in the mean time had died. Returning to his home in Lissoy, he idled away two years among his relatives, spent one year as tutor in a gentleman's family, and then his uncle having given him twenty pounds to study the law, proceeded to Dublin for that pur