MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

THE CLOWN'S REPLY.

[This piece is traced in print no farther back than 1777, though the date attached shows that it was written while Goldsmith was a medical student in Edinburgh.-ED.]

JOHN TROTT was desir'd by two witty peers

To tell them the reason why asses had ears;

"An't please you," quoth John, "I'm not given to letters,
Nor dare I pretend to know more than my betters;
Howe'er, from this time, I shall ne'er see your graces—
As I hope to be sav'd!—without thinking on asses."
Edinburgh, 1753.

A PROLOGUE,

1

WRITTEN AND SPOKEN BY THE POET LABERIUS, A ROMAN KNIGHT, WHOM CÆSAR FORCED UPON THE STAGE.

PRESERVED BY MACROBIUS.

6

[First printed in the chapter on the stage in Goldsmith's Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning,' 1759. In the second edition of the Enquiry' (1774), which the author revised just before his death, this poem was amongst the matter omitted. Goldsmith has translated, or rather imitated, only about the fore-half of the Latin original.—ED.]

WHAT! no way left to shun th' inglorious stage,
And save from infamy my sinking age!
Scarce half alive, oppress'd with many a year,
What in the name of dotage drives me here?

1 Decimus Laberius, a Roman knight and popular farce-writer. Julius Cæsar commanded his appearance in one of his own plays.— -ED.

A time there was, when glory was my guide,
Nor force nor fraud could turn my steps aside;
Unaw'd by power, and unappal'd by fear,
With honest thrift I held my honour dear:
But this vile hour disperses all my store,
And all my hoard of honour is no more;
For, ah! too partial to my life's decline,
Cæsar persuades, submission must be mine;
Him I obey, whom heaven itself obeys,
Hopeless of pleasing, yet inclin'd to please.
Here then at once I welcome every shame,
And cancel, at threescore, a life of fame :

No more niy titles shall my children tell,
The old buffoon will fit my name as well:
This day beyond its term my fate extends,
For life is ended when our honour ends.

THE LOGICIANS REFUTED.'

[IN IMITATION OF DEAN SWIFT.]

[First appeared in the 'Busy Body,' No. 5, Oct. 18, 1759, where it is heralded by the statement that it is "an original poem by the late Dean Swift, communicated to the 'Busy Body' by a nobleman of distinguished learning_and_taste. It seems to have first appeared as the work of Goldsmith in Evans's edition of the Poems, 1780, where it got the sub-heading (which we put in brackets), "In imitation of Dean Swift." Percy and his successors have since included the poem in the 'Works,' though the doubt of its being by Goldsmith, caused by Faulkner's claiming it for Swift (as mentioned in the note below), has never been set at rest.—ED.]

LOGICIANS have but ill defined

As rational, the human kind: 2

1 This singularly happy imitation was adopted by Mr. Faulkner, the Dublin publisher of Swift, as a genuine poem by that author, and as such it has been reprinted in almost every successive edition of the Dean's works. Even Sir Walter Scott has fallen into the same mistake, and has inserted this piece, without any remark, in his excellent edition of Swift's 'Works' published in 1814.—B. [It also appears in Scott's second edition, 1824.]-ED.

2 So in Busy Body' edition. Nearly all the editors have substituted "mind" for "kind."-ED.

REASON, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
Wise Aristotle and Smiglesius,1

By ratiocinations specious,

5

Have strove to prove with great precision,
With definition and division,

Homo est ratione præditum ;

They never importune his Grace,
Nor ever cringe to men in place;
Nor undertake a dirty job,

Nor draw the quill to write for B-b.3
Fraught with invective they ne'er go
To folks at Pater-Noster Row:
No judges, fiddlers, dancing-masters,
No pickpockets, or poetasters,
Are known to honest quadrupeeds;

1 Smiglecius, a Polish logician: died 1618.-ED.

2 Busy Body' edition reads "reason-boasting mortal's pride."-ED.

3 So in Busy Body.' The editors make the word Bob, and annotate

it as a reference to Sir Robert Walpole. This no doubt is right, whether the piece was written by Goldsmith or Swift, though Walpole was the contemporary of Swift, and not of Goldsmith.-ED.

No single brute his fellows leads.
Brutes never meet in bloody fray,
Nor cut each others' throats for pay.
Of beasts, it is confess'd, the ape
Comes nearest us in human shape:
Like man, he imitates each fashion,
And malice is his ruling passion:
But both in malice and grimaces,
A courtier any ape surpasses.
Behold him humbly cringing wait
Upon the minister of state:
View him soon after to inferiors
Aping the conduct of superiors:
He promises with equal air,
And to perform takes equal care.
He in his turn finds imitators;

At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters,
Their master's manners still contract,
And footmen lords and dukes can act.
Thus at the court, both great and small
Behave alike, for all ape all.

[STANZAS]

ON THE TAKING OF QUEBEC,

[AND DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE.]

[First published in the 'Busy Body,' Oct. 22, 1759, on receipt of the news of Ĝeneral Wolfe's victory and death (Sept. 13, 1759).—ÊD.]

AMIDST the clamour of exulting joys,

Which triumph forces from the patriot heart,
Grief dares to mingle her soul-piercing voice,
And quells the raptures which from pleasures start.
O Wolfe!1 to thee a streaming flood of woe,
Sighing we pay, and think e'en conquest dear;
Quebec in vain shall teach our breast to glow,

Whilst thy sad fate extorts the heart-wrung tear.

1 Goldsmith claimed relationship with this gallant soldier, whose character he greatly admired, and whose death he thus laments in his

Alive, the foe thy dreadful vigour fled,

And saw thee fall with joy pronouncing eyes: Yet they shall know thou conquerest, though dead! Since from thy tomb a thousand heroes rise.

ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH,

STRUCK BLIND BY LIGHTNING.

Imitated from the Spanish.

[This seems to have been first printed in The Bee,' No. 1, 1759. -ED.]

SURE 'twas by Providence design'd,
Rather in pity than in hate,

That he should be, like Cupid, blind,
To save him from Narcissus' fate.

A SONNET.

[First printed in 'The Bee,' No. 3, 1759. Mr. Bolton Corney says it is an imitation from the French of Saint-Pavin.-ED.]

WEEPING, murmuring, complaining,
Lost to every gay delight,
Myra, too sincere for feigning,

Fears th' approaching bridal night.

Yet, why this killing soft dejection,
Why dim thy beauty with a tear? 1
Had Myra follow'd my direction,

She long had wanted cause of fear.

History of England' (first edition, 1771, v. iv., p. 400): "Perhaps the loss of the English that day was greater, than the conquest of Canada was advantageous. But it is the lot of mankind only to know true merit on that dreadful occasion when they are going to lose it."-B. Prior says Wolfe's mother was Henrietta Goldsmith, of Limerick.-ED. 1 We restore 'The Bee' text here. Most editions have in lieu of this couplet

"Yet why impair thy bright perfection,
Or dim, &c."

The change was made in the first collected edition of the Poems and Plays, that by Evans, 1780, and thence has been adopted by most of the succeeding editors, Percy included.-ED.