OF lOLIVES GOLDSMITH. 



21 



made as to their extinction. Doubtless the lines which we 

 have pointed out, as containing a mixture of truth and error, 

 mixed up in strange confusion, are correct in so far tliat, 

 when once the peasantry is destroyed, it cannot again be 

 supplied ; but there is not much fear of that event taking 

 place in our own happy country. 



Nor is our poet more fortunate as he proceeds : — 



*' A time there was, ere England's griefs began, 

 When every rood of ground maintained its man." 



With poetic licence, we are informed that there was once a 

 time when happiness prevailed, and when the evils of 

 humanity were unknown ; — a golden age, when pain and 

 misery were not the torments of the human race, which 

 experience too bitterly assures us they now are. The ancient 

 poets held the same notion : they all lived in degenerate days, 

 and have, in consequence, looked back upon a period which 

 history assures us never existed, which they have employed 

 their art to describe with elegance, and which they have 

 clothed with the attributes of tranquillity and abundance. 

 The Greek and Latin Poets mixed up with this period of 

 primeval bliss, the Mythology which they dignified with the 

 beauty of their verse, and the glimpses of truth encompassed 

 with error which had been traditionally handed down from 

 generation to generation. The English Poet does not carry 

 his imagination so far back, but refers to a time when Eng- 

 land had not experienced those griefs which have in later 

 days, according to poetic accounts, rendered her but a 

 melancholy ruin of what she formerly was. 



If we seek for this time of happiness and bliss, we shall 

 have some difficulty in finding it. We cannot expect to 

 discover it among the inhabitants of Britain, when Caesar 

 found them painted as much for warmth as ornament ; nor 

 among their immediate successors, subdued by the Roman 

 arms. Nor does it appear amidst the turbulent invasions of 



