The author explains the nature of his book in his title-page when he calls it “A Chorographicall Description of tracts, rivers, mountaines, forests, and other parts of this renowned Isle of Great Britaine, with intermixture of the most remarquable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarityes, pleasures, and commodities of the same; digested in a Poem.” The maps with which it is illustrated are curious for the impersonations of the nymphs of wood and water, the sylvan gods, and other characters of the poem; to which the learned Selden supplied notes. Ellis calls it “a wonderful work, exhibiting at once the learning of an historian, an antiquary, a naturalist, and a geographer, and embellished by the imagination of a poet.”—Ed.
In the dedication of the first part to Prince Henry, the author says of his work, “it cannot want envie: for even in the birth it alreadie finds that.”—Ed.
An elegant poet of our times alludes, with due feeling, to these personal sacrifices. Addressing Poetry, he exclaims—
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“In devotion to thy heavenly charms, I clasp’d thy altar with my infant arms; For thee neglected the wide field of wealth; The toils of interest, and the sports of health.” |
How often may we lament that poets are too apt “to clasp the altar with infant arms.” Goldsmith was near forty when he published his popular poems—and the greater number of the most valued poems were produced in mature life. When the poet begins in “infancy,” he too often contracts a habit of writing verses, and sometimes, in all his life, never reaches poetry.
Vol. ii. p. 355.