poem, considered merely as a poem, is not necessarily the worse
on that account. The finest poem in the Latin language, indeed
the finest didactic poem in any language, was written in defence
of the silliest and meanest of all systems of natural and moral
philosophy. A poet may easily be pardoned for reasoning ill; but
he cannot be pardoned for describing ill, for observing the world
in which he lives so carelessly that his portraits bear no
resemblance to the originals, for exhibiting as copies from real
life monstrous combinations of things which never were and never
could be found together. What would be thought of a painter who
should mix August and January in one landscape, who should
introduce a frozen river into a harvest scene? Would it be a
sufficient defence of such a picture to say that every part was
exquisitely coloured, that the green hedges, the apple-trees
loaded with fruit, the waggons reeling under the yellow sheaves,
and the sun-burned reapers wiping their foreheads, were very
fine, and that the ice and the boys sliding were also very fine?
To such a picture the "Deserted Village" bears a great
resemblance. It is made up of incongruous parts. The village in
its happy days is a true English village. The village in its
decay is an Irish village. The felicity and the misery which
Goldsmith has brought close together belong to two different
countries; and to two different stages in the progress of
society. He had assuredly never seen in his native island such a
rural paradise, such a seat of plenty, content, and tranquillity,
as his "Auburn." He had assuredly never seen in England all the
inhabitants of such a paradise turned out of their homes in one
day and forced to emigrate in a body to America. The hamlet he
had probably seen in Kent; the ejectment he had probably seen in
Munster: but, by joining the two, he has produced something