Boswell, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of this lively song, sent it to The London Magazine for June, 1774 (vol. xliii, p. 295), with the following:—
‘To the Editor of The London Magazine.
SIR,—I send you a small production of the late Dr. Goldsmith, which has never been published, and which might perhaps have been totally lost had I not secured it. He intended it as a song in the character of Miss Hardcastle, in his admirable comedy, She stoops to conquer; but it was left out, as Mrs. Bulkley who played the part did not sing. He sung it himself in private companies very agreeably. The tune is a pretty Irish air, called The Humours of Balamagairy, to which, he told me, he found it very difficult to adapt words; but he has succeeded happily in these few lines. As I could sing the tune, and was fond of them, he was so good as to give me them about a year ago, just as I was leaving London, and bidding him adieu for that season, little apprehending that it was a last farewell. I preserve this little relick in his own handwriting with an affectionate care.
I am, Sir,
Your humble Servant,
JAMES BOSWELL.’
When, seventeen years later, Boswell published his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., he gave an account of his dining at General Oglethorpe’s in April, 1773, with Johnson and Goldsmith; and he says that the latter sang the Three Jolly Pigeons, and this song, to the ladies in the tea-room. Croker, in a note, adds that the younger Colman more appropriately employed the ‘essentially low comic’ air for Looney Mactwolter in the [Review; or the] Wags of Windsor, 1808 [i.e. in that character’s song beginning—‘Oh, whack! Cupid’s a mannikin’], and that Moore tried to bring it into good company in the ninth number of the Irish Melodies. But Croker did not admire the tune, and thought poorly of Goldsmith’s words. Yet they are certainly fresher than Colman’s or Moore’s:—
Sing—sing—Music was given,
To brighten the gay, and kindle the loving;
Souls here, like planets in Heaven,
By harmony’s laws alone are kept moving, etc.
[TRANSLATION.]
These lines, which appear at p. 312 of vol. V of the History of the Earth and Animated Nature, 1774, are freely translated from some Latin verses by Addison in No 412 of the Spectator, where they are introduced as follows:—‘Thus we see that every different Species of sensible Creatures has its different Notions of Beauty, and that each of them is most affected with the Beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere more remarkable than in Birds of the same Shape and Proportion, where we often see the Male determined in his Courtship by the single Grain or Tincture of a Feather, and never discovering any Charms but in the Colour of its own Species.’ Addison’s lines, of which Goldsmith translated the first fourteen only, are printed from his corrected MS. at p. 4 of Some Portions of Essays contributed to the Spectator by Mr. Joseph Addison [by the late J. Dykes Campbell], 1864.
[THE HAUNCH OF VENISON.]
It is supposed that this poem was written early in 1771, although it was not printed until 1776, when it was published by G. Kearsly and J. Ridley under the title of The Haunch of Venison, a Poetical Epistle to the Lord Clare. By the late Dr. Goldsmith. With a Head of the Author, Drawn by Henry Bunbury, Esq; and Etched by [James] Bretherton. A second edition, the text of which is here followed, appeared in the same year ‘With considerable Additions and Corrections, Taken from the Author’s last Transcript.’ The Lord Clare to whom the verses are addressed was Robert Nugent, of Carlanstown, Westmeath, M.P. for St. Mawes in 1741–54. In 1766 he was created Viscount Clare; in 1776 Earl Nugent. In his youth he had himself been an easy if not very original versifier; and there are several of his performances in the second volume of Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands, 4th ed., 1755. One of the Epistles, beginning ‘Clarinda, dearly lov’d, attend The Counsels of a faithful friend,’ seems to have betrayed Goldsmith into the blunder of confusing it, in the Poems for Young Ladies. 1767, p. 114, with Lyttelton’s better-known Advice to a Lady (‘The counsels of a friend, Belinda, hear’), also in Dodsley’s miscellany; while another piece, an Ode to William Pultney, Esq., contains a stanza so good that Gibbon worked it into his character of Brutus:—