His couplets have the same slow and stately march as Johnson's; and if we can suppose similar images of rural and domestic life to have arrested the attention of that writer, we can scarcely conceive that he would have expressed them in different language.
Some of the lines in The Deserted Village are said to be closely copied from a poem by Welsted, called the [Greek: Oikographia]; but I do not think he will be found to have levied larger contributions on it, than most poets have supposed themselves justified in making on the neglected works of their predecessors.
The following particulars relating to this poem, which I have extracted from the letter of Dr. Strean before referred to, cannot fail to gratify that numerous class of readers with whom it has been a favourite from their earliest years.
The poem of The Deserted Village took its origin from the circumstance of General Robert Napper (the grandfather of the gentleman who now lives in the house within half a mile of Lissoy, and built by the General), having purchased an extensive tract of the country surrounding Lissoy, or Auburn; in consequence of which, many families, here called cottiers, were removed to make room for the intended improvements of what was now to become the wide domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the face of his new acquisition; and were forced "with fainting steps," to go in search of "torrid tracts" and "distant climes."
This fact alone might be sufficient to establish the seat of the poem; but there cannot remain a doubt in any unprejudiced mind, when the following are added; viz. that the character of the village-preacher, the above-named Henry, (the brother of the poet,) is copied from nature. He is described exactly as he lived; and his "modest mansion" as it existed. Burn, the name of the village-master, and the site of his school-house, and Catherine Giraghty, a lonely widow;
The wretched matron forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread;
(and to this day the brook and ditches, near the spot where her cabin stood, abound with cresses) still remain in the memory of the inhabitants, and Catherine's children live in the neighbourhood. The pool, the busy mill, the house where "nut-brown draughts inspired," are still visited as the poetic scene; and the "hawthorn-bush" growing in an open space in front of the house, which I knew to have three trunks, is now reduced to one; the other two having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying away pieces of it to be made into toys, &c. in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem. All these contribute to the same proof; and the "decent church," which I attended for upwards of eighteen years, and which "tops the neighbouring hill," is exactly described as seen from Lissoy, the residence of the preacher.
I should have observed, that Elizabeth Delap, who was a parishioner of mine, and died at the age of about ninety, often told me she was the first who put a book into Goldsmith's hand; by which she meant, that she taught him his letters: she was allied to him, and kept a little school.
The Hermit is a pleasing little tale, told with that simplicity which appears so easy, and is in fact so difficult, to be obtained. It was imitated in the Ballad of a Friar of Orders Grey, in Percy's Reliques of English Poetry.
His Traveller was, it is said, pronounced by Mr. Fox to be one of the finest pieces in the English language. Perhaps this sentence was delivered by that great man with some qualification, which was either forgotten or omitted by the reporter of it; otherwise such praise was surely disproportioned to its object.