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Of the poets who were his contempories Goldfmith does not 

 fpeak in favourable terms. The fliort and common place cri- 

 ticifms which were purchafed from him at the extravagant 

 price of two hundred pounds for two volumes of his Beauties 

 of Englifh Poetry reprefent Thomfon as verbofe and afFeded, 

 and Shenftone's ballads as poflTeffing neither harmony nor fim- 

 plicity. His Hermit is introduced in the Vicar of Wakefield 

 as a contraft to the Englifh poetry of the prefent day, which, 

 he fays, " is nothing but a combination of luxuriant images 

 " without plot or conne6tion — a firing of epithets that im- 

 " prove the found without carrying on the fenfe :" and the 

 preface to the Traveller complains of " criticifms of late in 

 " favour of blank verfe and Pindaric odes, chorufTes, anapefls 

 " and iambics, alliterative care and happy negligence," and talks 

 of the poet of the day as " a half-witted thing who wants 

 " to be thought a bold man having loft the charadler of a 

 " wife one — of his tawdry lampoons being called fatires, his 

 " turbulence faid to be force and his frenzy fire." Thcfe 

 attacks on Shcnftone, Mafon and Churchill were not all called 

 for by the occafion : Goldfmith's fubjecfls and his manner pre- 

 cluded any comparifon with the two latter, and if any part 

 of his writings might bear refemblance to any of thofe 

 of Shenftone or Mafon he fhould have confidered that there 

 was room on the higher grounds of ParnafTus for more 

 than one poet of the fame clafs. But the man who could be 

 difpleafed at hearing the praifes of his friend mufl have 



deemed 



