portion as they approached more finished compositions. In GOLDSMITH'S 'Hermit,' the language is always polished, and often ornamented. The best things in it are some neat turns of moral and pathetic sentiment, given with a simple conciseness that fits them for being retained in the memory. As to the story, it has little fancy or contrivance to recommend it.

We have already seen that GOLDSMITH possessed humor; and, exclusively of his comedies, pieces professedly humorous form a part of his poetical remains. His imitations of Swift are happy, but they are imitations. His tale of the 'Double Transformation' may vie with those of Prior. His own natural vein of easy humor flows freely in his 'Haunch of Venison' and 'Retaliation;' the first, an admirable specimen of a very ludicrous story made out of a common incident by the help of conversation and character; the other, an original thought, in which his talent at drawing portraits, with a mixture of the serious and the comic, is most happily displayed.

POEMS.

5*

VERSES

ON THE

DEATH OF DR. GOLDSMITH.

EXTRACT FROM A POEM

WRITTEN BY COURTNEY MELMOTH, ESQ.

ON THE DEATH OF EMINENT ENGLISH POETS.

THE TEARS OF GENIUS.

THE village bell tolls out the note of death,
And through the echoing air the length'ning sound,
With dreadful pause, reverberating deep,

Spreads the sad tidings o'er fair Auburn's vale.
There, to enjoy the scenes her bard had praised
In all the sweet simplicity of song,
GENIUS, in pilgrim garb, sequester'd sat,

And herded jocund with the harmless swains;
But when she heard the fate-foreboding knell,
With startled step, precipitate and swift,
And look pathetic, full of dire presage,
The church-way walk beside the neigb'ring green,
Sorrowing she sought; and there, in black array,
Borne on the shoulders of the swains he loved,
She saw the boast of Auburn moved along.

Touch'd at the view, her pensive breast she struck,
And to the cypress, which incumbent hangs,
With leaning slope and branch irregular,

O'er the moss'd pillars of the sacred fane,

The brier-bound graves shadowing with funeral gloom,
Forlorn she hied; and there the crowding wo
(Swell'd by the parent) press'd on bleeding thought,
Big ran the drops from her maternal eye,
Fast broke the bosom-sorrow from her heart,
And pale Distress sat sickly on her cheek,
As thus her plaintive Elegy began:-

'And must my children all expire?
Shall none be left to strike the lyre?
Courts Death alone a learned prize?
Falls his shafts only on the wise?
Can no fit marks on earth be found,
From useless thousands swarming round?
What crowding ciphers cram the land.
What hosts of victims, at command!
Yet shall the ingenious drop alone?
Shall Science grace the tyrant's throne?
Thou murd❜rer of the tuneful train,

I charge thee with my children slain !
Scarce has the sun thrice urged his annual tour,
Since half my race have felt thy barbarous power;
Sore hast thou thinn'd each pleasing art,
And struck a muse with every dart ;

Bard after bard obey'd thy slaughtering call,
Till scarce a poet lives to sing a brother's fall.
Then let a widow'd mother pay

The tribute of a parting lay;