With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestick joy:
_The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel_,
To men remote from power, but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.'

He added, 'These are all of which I can be sure[13].' They bear a small
proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight
verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a
person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite
smoothly; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by
_Luke_, as by _Lydiat_[14], in _The Vanity of Human Wishes_. The truth
is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the _Respublica
Hungarian_[15], there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year
1514, headed by two brothers, of the name of _Zeck_, George and Luke.
When it was quelled, _George_, not _Luke_, was punished by his head
being encircled with a red-hot iron crown: '_corona candescente ferrea
coronatur_[16].' The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl
of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland.

Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he
furnished to Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_, which are only the last
four:

'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.'