[ 9^ ] 



The great praife of all our author's compofitions ferious or 

 comic, in profe or verfe, is that every thing appears eafy, fimple 

 and natural — without any afFedation, and with little appearance 

 of effort or labour. This feems extraordinary as to his poems, 

 when we are told his particular mode of compofition. " He ufed," 

 fays one of his biographers, " firft to fketch out a part of his 

 " defign in profe, after which he fat down carefully to verfify 

 " what he had written, to corred it and to add ideas better fuited 

 " perhaps to the fubjed." From his view of his materials ante- 

 cedent to their final and eftablifhed arrangement we might ex- 

 ped a judicious general method, and fuch we adually find; 

 but we might alfo exped that his mode ftiould leave behind 

 it traces of labour and artifice — the advantages of accuracy and 

 the fliffnefs of fludy. His works on the contrary exhibit no 

 marks of art — his verfe feems to contain his firft thoughts in 

 his firft expreffions. The reafon of this we may perhaps find 

 in the author's charader. His vanity had fo ftrong an attach- 

 mept to #hat he had once written that his poems in all pro- 

 bability differ but little either in fubftance or in order from 

 their profaic elements. It is true Goldfmith's later editions alter 

 many paffages in his earlier ones, but the reludance with which 

 he had parted with his former has ufually made his corrections 

 in the latter incomplete, and has left the correded paflages at 

 laft but a fort of tiffue between what they were and what ihey 



ought to be. 



^ Or 



