CHAP, x.] THE TRA VELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT.
politics, he abhorred; and that their worthless abettors, to 1764.
whose exposure his works are so incessantly devoted, have S&zv
not carried him into oblivion with themselves, argues some-
thing for the sound morality and permanent truth expressed
in his manly verse. By these the new poet was to profit;
as much as by the faults which perished with the satirist,
and left the lesson of avoidance to his successors. In the
interval since Pope's and Thomson's death, since Collins's
faint sweet song, since the silence of Young, of Akenside,
and of Gray, no such easy, familiar, and vigorous verse as
Churchill's, had dwelt in the public ear. The less likely was
it now to turn away, impatient or intolerant of the Traveller.
Johnson pronounced it a poem to which it would not
be easy to find anything equal, since the death of Pope.
Though covering but the space of twenty years,* this was
praise worth coveting, and was honestly deserved. The
elaborate care and skill of the verse, the exquisite choice
and selectness of the diction, at once recalled to others, as
to Johnson, the master so lately absolute in the realms of
verse; and with these there was a rich harmony of tone,
a softness and simplicity of touch, a happy and playful
tenderness, which belonged peculiarly to the later poet.
With a less pointed and practised force of understanding
than in Pope, and in some respects less subtle and refined,
the appeal to the heart in Goldsmith is more gentle, direct,
and pure. The predominant impression of the Traveller is of
its naturalness and facility; and then is felt the surpassing
charm with which its every-day genial fancies invest high
thoughts of human happiness. The serene graces of its
style, and the mellow flow of its verse, take us captive,
before we feel the enchantment of its lovely images of various
* Pope died in 1744.