But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,
He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave.
His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears,
The fond companion of his helpless years,
Silent went next, neglectful of her charms,
And left a lover's for a father's arms.
With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes,
And bless'd the cot where every pleasure rose :
And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a
tear,

And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear;
Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief
In all the silent manliness of grief.

O Luxury thou cursed by Heaven's decree,
How ill exchanged are things like these for thee!
How do thy potions, with insidious joy,
Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy !
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown,
Boast of a florid vigour not their own.

At every draught more large and large they grow,
A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe;
Till sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound,
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.
Even now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done;
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand,
I see the rural virtues leave the land.
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail
That idly waiting flaps with every gale,
Downward they move, a melancholy band,
Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand.
Contented Toil, and hospitable Care,
And kind connubial Tenderness are there;
And Piety with wishes placed above,
And steady Loyalty, and faithful Love.
And thou sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,
Still first to fly where sensual joys invade;
Unfit in these degenerate times of shame
To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame;
Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried,
My shame in crowds, my solitary pride;
Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe,
That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ;
Thou guide, by which the nobler arts excel,
Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well;
Farewell, and O! where'er thy voice be tried,
On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,
Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,
Or winter wraps the polar world in snow,
Still let thy voice, prevailing over time,
Redress the rigours of the inclement clime;
Aid slighted truth with thy persuasive strain;
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain;
Teach him, that states of native strength possest,
Though very poor, may still be very blest ;
That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away;
While self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky*.

[* The four last lines were supplied by Dr. Johnson.]

THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.

A POETICAL EPISTLE TO ROBERT NUGENT LORD CLAREŤ.

THANKS, my Lord, for your venison,for finer or fatter Never ranged in a forest, or smoked in a platter; The haunch was a picture for painters to study, The fat was so white, and the lean was so ruddy: Though my stomach was sharp, I could scarce help

regretting

To spoil such a delicate picture by eating;

I had thoughts, in my chambers, to place it in view,
To be shown to my friends as a piece of virtu :
As in some Irish houses, where things are so-80,
One gammon of bacon hangs up for a show:
But, for eating a rasher of what they take pride in,
They'd as soon think of eating the pan it is fried in. |
But hold-let me pause-don't I hear you pro-

nounce,

This tale of the bacon a damnable bounce;
Well! suppose it a bounce-sure a poet may try,
By a bounce now and then, to get courage to fly. I

But, my lord, it's no bounce: I protest in my turn,
It's a truth-and your lordship may ask Mr. Burn.
To go on with my tale-as I gazed on the haunch,
I thought of a friend that was trusty and staunch,
So I cut it, and sent it to Reynolds undrest,
To paint it, or eat it, just as he liked best.
Of the neck and the breast I had next to dispose:
"Twas a neck and a breast that might rival Monroe's:
But in parting with these I was puzzled again,
With the how, and the who, and the where, and

the when.

There's H-d, and C-y, and H-rth, and H—f,
I think they love venison-I know they love beef.
There's my countryman Higgins-Oh! let him alone
For making a blunder, or picking a bone.
But hang it-to poets who seldom can eat,
Your very good mutton 's a very good treat;
Such dainties to them their health it might hurt,
It's like sending them ruffles, when wanting a shirt.

[ The leading idea of this poem is from Boileau's third Satire, and several of the passages are from the same quarter. The truth is that Goldsmith, with his many merits and great originality, was an unsparing plagiarist. We shall instance here one of his thefts, the more so that it is unnoticed by Mr. Prior, and is as yet we believe unknown. " Painting and Music," he says in his dedication of The Traveller, "at first rival poetry, and at length supplant her; they engross all that favour once shown to her, and though but younger sisters, seize upon the elder's birth-right." This is wholesale from Dryden :

Our arts are sisters though not twins in birth;
For hymns were sung in Eden's happy earth:
But O, the painter Muse, though last in place,
Has seized the blessing first like Jacob's race.
To Sir Godfrey Kneller

"The

[This was an old saying with Goldsmith. king," he writes to his brother," has lately been pleased to make me Professor of Ancient History in a Royal Academy of Painting, which he has just established, but there is no salary annexed; and I took it rather as a compliment to the institution than any benefit to myself Honours to one in my situation, are something like ruffles to one that wants a shirt." This is not noticed by Mr. Prior, who has traced many of Goldsmith's thoughts from verse to prose and from prose to verse.]

While thus I debated, in reverie center'd, An acquaintance, a friend, as he call'd himself, enter'd ;

An under-bred, fine-spoken fellow was he,

And he smiled as he look'd at the venison and me. "What have we got here ?-why, this is good eating!

Your own, I suppose-or is it in waiting!" "Why, whose should it be?" cried I with a flounce, "I get these things often ;" but that was a bounce; "Some lords, my acquaintance, that settle the nation,

Are pleased to be kind; but I hate ostentation."

"If that be the case then," cried he, very gay, "I'm glad I have taken this house in my way. To-morrow you take a poor dinner with me; No words-I insist on't-precisely at three : We'll have Johnson, and Burke; all the wits will be there;

My acquaintance is slight or I'd ask my Lord Clare.
And, now that I think on't, as I am a sinner,
We wanted this venison to make out a dinner!
What say you-a pasty, it shall and it must,
And my wife, little Kitty, is famous for crust.
Here, porter-this venison with me to Mile-end ;
No stirring, I beg, my dear friend, my dear friend!"
Thus snatching his hat, he brush'd off like the wind,
And the porter and eatables follow'd behind.

Left alone to reflect, having emptied my shelf, And "nobody with me at sea but myself: " Though I could not help thinking my gentleman hasty,

Yet Johnson, and Burke, and a good venison pasty, Were things that I never disliked in my life, Though clogg'd with a coxcomb, and Kitty his wife. So next day in due splendour to make my approach,

I drove to his door in my own hackney-coach. When come to the place where we all were to dine,

(A chair-lumber'd closet just twelve feet by nine), My friend bade me welcome, but struck me quite dumb,

With tidings that Johnson and Burke would not

come;

"For I knew it," he cried, " both eternally fail,
The one with his speeches, and t'other with Thrale;
But no matter, I'll warrant we'll make up the party,
With two full as clever, and ten times as hearty.
The one is a Scotchman, the other a Jew,
They're both of them merry, and authors like you;
The one writes the Snarler, the other the Scourge;
Some thinks he writes Cinna-he owns to Panurge."
While thus he described them by trade and by

name,

They enter'd, and dinner was served as they came.

At the top a fried liver and bacon were seen, At the bottom was tripe in a swinging tureen; At the sides there were spinnage and pudding made hot;

In the middle a place where the pasty-was not. Now, my lord, as for tripe it's my utter aversion, And your bacon I hate like a Turk or a Persian ; So there I sat stuck, like a horse in a pound, While the bacon and liver went merrily round: But what vex'd me most, was that d'd Scottish rogue,

With his long-winded speeches, his smiles, and his brogue:

66

And, Madam," quoth he, "may this bit be my A prettier dinner I never set eyes on; [poison, Pray a slice of your liver, though may I be curst, But I've eat of your tripe, till I'm ready to burst."

"The tripe," quoth the Jew, with his chocolate cheek,

"I could dine on this tripe seven days in a week: I like these here dinners so pretty and small; But your friend there, the doctor, eats nothing at all."

"O-ho!" quoth my friend, "he'll come on in a trice,

He's keeping a corner for something that's nice : There's a pasty"-" A pasty!" repeated the Jew; "I don't care if I keep a corner for't too." "What the de'il, mon, a pasty!" re-echoed the Scot;

"Though splitting, I'll still keep a corner for that." "We'll all keep a corner," the lady cried out; "We'll all keep a corner," was echoed about, While thus we resolved, and the pasty delay'd, With looks that quite petrified enter'd the maid: A visage so sad and so pale with affright, Waked Priam in drawing his curtains by night. But we quickly found out, for who could mistake her?

That she came with some terrible news from the baker:

And so it fell out, for that negligent sloven
Had shut out the pasty on shutting his oven.
Sad Philomel thus-but let similes drop-
And now that I think on't, the story may stop.
To be plain, my good lord, it's but labour mis-
placed,

To send such good verses to one of your taste;
You've got an odd something-a kind of discern-

ing

A relish a taste-sicken'd over by learning;
At least, it's your temper, as very well known,
That you think very slightly of all that's your own:
So, perhaps, in your habits of thinking amiss, [this.
You may make a mistake, and think slightly of

PAUL WHITEHEAD was the son of a tailor, in London; and, after a slender education, was placed as an apprentice to a woollen-draper. He afterwards went to the Temple, in order to study law. Several years of his life (it is not quite clear at what period) were spent in the Fleet-prison, owing to a debt which he foolishly contracted, by putting his name to a joint security for 30007. at the request of his friend Fleetwood, the theatrical manager, who persuaded him that his signature was a mere matter of form. How he obtained his liberation we are not informed.

In the year 1735 he married a Miss Anne Dyer, with whom he obtained ten thousand pounds. She was homely in her person, and very weak in intellect; but Whitehead, it appears, always treated her with respect and tenderness.

He became, in the same year, a satirical rhymer against the ministry of Walpole; and having published his "State Dunces," a weak echo of the manner of the "Dunciad," he was patronised by the opposition, and particularly by Bubb Doddington. In 1739 he published the "Manners," a satire, in which Mr. Chalmers says, that he attacks every thing venerable in the constitution. The poem is not worth disputing about; but it is certainly a mere personal lampoon, and no attack on the constitution. For this invective he was summoned to appear at the bar of the House of Lords, but concealed himself for a time, and the affair was dropped. The threat of prosecuting him, it was suspected, was meant as a hint to Pope, that those who

satirised the great might bring themselves into danger; and Pope (it is pretended) became more cautious. There would seem, however, to be nothing very terrific in the example of a prosecution, that must have been dropped either from clemency or conscious weakness. The ministerial journals took another sort of revenge, by accusing him of irreligion; and the evidence, which they candidly and consistently brought to substantiate the charge, was the letter of a student from Cambridge, who had been himself expelled ¦ from the university for atheism.

In 1744 he published another satire, entitled the "Gymnasiad," on the most renowned boxers of the day. It had at least the merit of being harmless.

By the interest of Lord Despenser, he obtained a place under government, that of deputy treasurer of the chamber; and, retiring to a handsome cottage, which he purchased at Twickenham, he lived in comfort and hospitality, and suffered his small satire and politics to be equally forgotten. Churchill attacked him in a couplet,—

"May I (can worse disgrace on manhood fall?)

Be born a Whitehead, and baptised a Paul."

| Mankind are all hunters in various degree ;
The priest hunts a living-the lawyer a fee,
The doctor a patient-the courtier a place,
Though often, like us, he's flung out in the chase.
With the sports, &e.

The cit hunts a plumb-while the soldier hunts
The poet a dinner-the patriot a name; [fame,
And the practised coquette, though she seems to
In spite of her airs, still her lover pursues. [refuse,
With the sports, &e.

Let the bold and the busy hunt glory and wealth; All the blessing we ask is the blessing of health, With hound and with horn through the woodlands

to roam,

And, when tired abroad, find contentment at home. With the sports, &e.

THE father of this writer was a fellow of Pembroke college, Oxford, prebendary of Wells, and vicar of St. Mary's at Taunton, in Somersetshire. When Judge Jefferies came to the assizes at Taunton, to execute vengeance on the sharers of Monmouth's rebellion, Mr. Harte waited upon him in private, and remonstrated against his severities. The judge listened to him attentively, though he had never seen him before. It was not in Jefferies' nature to practise humanity; but, in this solitary instance, he showed a respect for its advocate; and in a few months advanced the vicar to a prebendal stall in the cathedral of Bristol. At the Revolution the aged clergyman resigned his preferments, rather than take the oath of allegiance to King William ; an action which raises our esteem of his intercession with Jefferies, while it adds to the unsalutary examples of men supporting tyrants, who have had the virtue to hate their tyranny.

The accounts that are preserved of his son, the poet, are not very minute or interesting. The date of his birth has not even been settled. A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine fixes it about 1707; but by the date of his degrees at the university, this supposition is utterly inadmissible; and all circumstances considered, it is impossible to suppose that he was born later than 1700. He was educated at Marlborough college, and took his degree of master of arts at Oxford, in 1720*. He was introduced to Pope at an early period of his life; and, in return for the abundant adulation which he offered to that poet, was rewarded with his encouragement, and even his occasional assistance in versification. admirer as he was of Pope, his manner leans more to the imitation of Dryden. In 1727 he published, by subscription, a volume of poems, which he dedicated to the Earl of Peterborough, who, as the author acknowledges, was the first patron of his muse. In the preface it is boasted, that the poems had been chiefly written under the age of nineteen. As he must have been several years turned of twenty, when he made this boast, it exposes either his sense or veracity to some suspicion. He either concealed what improvements he had made in the poems, or showed a bad judgment in not having improved them.

Yet,

[* This, according to Mr. Croker's showing, (Boswell, vol. i. p. 378) is not the case. The Walter Harte who took his degree of A.M. at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1720, was not the poet; for he was of St. Mary's Hall, and made A.M. on the 21st January 1730. This one fact removes Mr. Campbell's after difficulties.]

His next publications, in 1730 and 1735, were an "Essay on Satire," and another on "Reason," to both of which Pope is supposed to have contributed many lines. Two sermons, which he printed, were so popular as to run through five editions. He therefore rose, with some degree of clerical reputation, to be principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford; and was so much esteemed, that Lord Lyttelton recommended him to the Earl of Chesterfield, as the most proper tutor and travelling companion to his son. Harte had, indeed, every requisite for the preceptorship of Mr. Stanhope, that a Grævius or Gronovius could have possessed; but none of those for which we should have supposed his father to have been most anxious. He was profoundly learned, but ignorant of the world, and awkward in his person and address. His pupil and he, however, after having travelled together for four years, parted with mutual regret; and Lord Chesterfield showed his regard for Harte by procuring for him a canonry of Windsor.

During his connexion with Lord Peterborough, that nobleman had frequently recommended to him to write the life of Gustavus Adolphus. For this historical work he collected, during his travels, much authentic and original information. It employed him for many years, and was published in 1759; but either from a vicious taste, or from his having studied the idioms of foreign languages, till he had forgotten those of his own, he wrote his history in a style so obscure and uncouth, that its merits, as a work of research, were overlooked, and its reception from the public was cold and mortifying. Lord Chesterfield, in speaking of its being translated into German, piously wishes "that its author had translated it into English; as it was full of Germanisms, Latinisms, and all isms but Anglicisms." All the time, poor Harte thought he was writing a style less laboured and ornate than that of his contemporaries; and when George Hawkins, the bookseller, objected to some of his most violent phrases, he used to say, "George, that is what we call writing.' This infatuation is the more surprising, that his Sermons, already mentioned, are marked by no such affectation of manner; and he published in 1764 "Essays on Husbandry," which are said to be remarkable for their elegance and perspicuity.

Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, said, "that Harte was excessively vain: that he left London on the day his Life of Gustavus' was published, to avoid the great praise he was to receive; but

Robertson's History of Scotland' having come out the same day, he was ashamed to return to the scene of his mortification*." This sarcastic anecdote comes in the suspicious company of a blunder as to dates, for Robertson's "History of Scotland" was published a month after [before?] Harte's "Life of Gustavus ;" and it is besides rather an odd proof of a man's vanity, that he should have run away from expected compliments+.

The failure of his historical work is alleged to have mortified him so deeply, as to have affected his health. All the evidence of this, however, is deduced from some expressions in his letters, in which he complains of frequent indisposition. His biographers, first of all take it for granted, that a man of threescore could not possibly be indisposed from any other cause than from reading harsh reviews of his "Life of Gustavus ;" and then, very consistently, show the folly of his being grieved at the fate of his history, by proving that his work was reviewed, on the whole, rather in a friendly and laudatory manner. Harte, however, was so far from being a martyr, either

to the justice or injustice of criticism, that he prepared a second edition of the "Life of Gustavus" for the press; and announced, in a note, that he had finished the "History of the thirty years War in Germany." His servant Dore, afterwards an innkeeper at Bath, got possession of his MSS. and this work is supposed to be irrecoverably lost. In the mean time, he was struck with a palsy in 1766, which attacked him again in 1769, and put a period to his life five years after. At the time of his death he was vicar of St. Austel and Blazy in Cornwall.

His poetry is little read; and I am aware of hazarding the appearance of no great elegance of taste, in professing myself amused and interested by several parts of it, particularly by his "Amaranth." In spite of pedantry and grotesqueness, he appears, in numerous passages, to have condensed the reflection and information of no ordinary mind. If the reader dislikes his story of "Eulogius," I have only to inform him, that I have take some pains to prevent its being more prolix than is absolutely necessary, by the mechanical reduction of its superfluities.

In ancient times scarce talk'd of, and less known,
When pious Justin fill'd the eastern throne,
In a small dorp, till then for nothing famed,
And by the neighbouring swains Thebaïs named,
Eulogius lived an humble mason he;
In nothing rich, but virtuous poverty.
From noise and riot he devoutly kept,
Sigh'd with the sick, and with the mourner wept;
Half his earn'd pittance to poor neighbours went ;
They had his alms and he had his content.
Still from his little he could something spare
To feed the hungry, and to clothe the bare,
He gave, whilst aught he had, and knew no bounds;
The poor man's drachma stood for rich men's
pounds;

He learnt with patience, and with meekness taught,
His life was but the comment of his thought.

On the south aspect of a sloping hill, Whose skirts meandering Penus washes still,

[Boswell by Croker, vol. iv. p. 449.]

[ "Harte's Life of Gustavus Adolphus, Mr. Chalmers tells us, was a very unfortunate publication. Hume's House of Tudor came out the same week, and Robertson's History of Scotland only a month before; and after perusing these, poor Harte's style could not certainly be endured.' Mr. Chalmers perhaps may require to be told that industry in collecting, examining, and arranging the materials of history, and fidelity in using them, are the first qualities of an historian: that in those qualities Harte has not been surpassed; that in the opinion of military men Harte's is the best military history in our language, and that it is rising and will continue to rise in repute."-SOUTHEY, Quar. Rev. vol. xi. p. 497.]

Our pious labourer pass'd his youthful days
In peace and charity, in prayer and praise.
No theatres of oaks around him rise,
Whose roots earth's centre touch, whose head the
skies;

No stately larch-tree there expands a shade
O'er half a rood of Larisséan glade:

No lofty poplars catch the murmuring breeze,
Which loitering whispers on the cloud-capp'd trees;
Such imagery of greatness ill became

A nameless dwelling, and an unknown name!
Instead of forest-monarchs, and their train,
The unambitious rose bedeck'd the plain;
On skirting heights thick stood the clustering vine,
And here and there the sweet-leaved eglantine ;
One lilac only, with a statelier grace,
Presumed to claim the oak's and cedar's place,
And, looking round him with a monarch's care,
Spread his exalted boughs to wave in air.

This spot, for dwelling fit, Eulogius chose,
And in a month a decent home-stall rose,
Something, between a cottage and a cell-
Yet virtue here could sleep, and peace could dwell-
From living stone (but not of Parian rocks),
He chipp'd his pavement, and he squared his

blocks :

And then, without the aid of neighbours' art,
Perform'd the carpenter's and glazier's part.
The site was neither granted him, nor giv'n;
'Twas nature's ; and the ground-rent due to heav'n.
Wife he had none: nor had he love to spare;
An aged mother wanted all his care.