TO THE

REV. HENRY GOLDSMITH.

DEAR SIR,

I AM fenfible that the friendship between us can acquire no new force from the ceremonies of a Dedication; and perhaps it demands an excuse thus to prefix your name to my attempts, which you decline giving with your own. But as a part of this Poem was formerly written to you from Switzerland, the whole can now, with propriety, be only infcribed to you. It will also throw a light upon many parts of it, when the reader understands, that it is addressed to a man, who, despifing Fame and Fortune, has retired early to Happiness and Obscurity, with an income of forty pounds a year.

I now perceive, my dear brother, the wisdom of your humble choice. You have entered upon a facred office, where the harveft is great, and the labourers are but few; while you have left the field of Ambition, where the labourers are many, and the harvest not worth carrying away. But of all kinds of ambition, what from the refinement of the times from different fyftems of criticism, and from

VOL. II.

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the

the divifions of party, that which pursues poetical fame is the wildeft.

Poetry makes a principal amufement among unpolished nations; but in a country verging to the extremes of refinement, Painting and Mufic come in for a fhare. As thefe offer the feeble mind a lefs laborious entertainment, they at firft rival Poetry, and at length fupplant her; they engrofs all that favour once fhewn to her, and, though but younger fifters, feize upon the elder's birthright.

Yet, however this art may be neglected by the powerful, it is ftill in great danger from the miftaken efforts of the learned to improve it. What criticisms have we not heard of late in favour of blank verfe, and Pindaric odes, choruffes, anapefts and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence! Every abfurdity has now a champion to defend it; and as he is generally much in the wrong, so he has always much to fay; for error is ever talkative.

But there is an enemy to this art ftill more dangerous, I mean Party. Party entirely diftorts the judgment, and deftroys the taste. When the mind is once infected with this disease, it can only find pleasure in what contributes to increase the diftemper. Like the tyger, that feldom defifts from purfuing man, after having once preyed upon human

2

flesh,

flesh, the reader, who has once gratified his appetite with calumny, makes, ever after, the most agreeable feast upon murdered reputation. Such readers generally admire fome half-witted thing, who wants to be thought a bold man, having loft the character of a wife one. Him they dignify with the name of poet his tawdry lampoons are called fatires; his turbulence is faid to be force, and his phrenzy fire.

What reception a Poem may find, which has neither abuse, party, nor blank verse to support it, I cannot tell, nor am I folicitous to know. My aims are right. Without efpoufing the cause of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have endeavoured to fhew, that there may be equal happiness in ftates, that are differently governed from our own; that every ftate has a particular principle of happiness, and that this principle in each may 'be carried to a mischievous excefs. There are few can judge, better than yourself, how far thefe pofitions are illuftrated in this Poem. I am,

DEAR SIR,

YOUR MOST AFFECTIONATE BROTHER,

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

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