CHAP. x.l THE TEA TELLER AND WHAT FOLLOWED IT.
which now stands 420th in the poem; and, omitting the last 1764.
couplet but one, the eight concluding lines. The couplet so jEuifi
grafted on his Mend's insertion by Goldsmith himself, is
worth all that Johnson added; though its historical allusion
was somewhat obscure.
" The lifted axe, the agonising wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Barmen's bed of steel."
Who was Luke, and what was his iron crown? is a question
Tom Davies tells us he had often to answer; being a great
resource in difficulties of that kind. " The Doctor referred
" me," he says, in a letter to the reverend Mr. Granger, who
was compiling his Biographical History and wished to be
exact, " to a book called Geographic Curieuse, for an expla-
" nation .of Luke's iron crown." The explanation, besides
being in itself incorrect, did not mend matters much.
" Luke " had been taken simply for the euphony of the line.
He was one of two brothers who had headed a revolt against
the Hungarian nobles, at the opening of the sixteenth
century; but, though both were tortured, the special horror
of the red-hot crown was inflicted upon George.* " Doctor
" Goldsmith says," adds Davies, " he meant by Damien's
* In a note to this passage in my former edition, I explained that this GSographie
Curieuse, -which appeared to have been Goldsmith's authority, was nevertheless
itself incorrect in the family name of the brothers, •which it reports to have been
Zeck. They were George and Luke, as stated, and George underwent the punish-
ment of the "iron crown;" but the family name was Dosa. For this I referred
to the BiagrapMe Universette, xi. 604. The origin of the mistake is curious,
and has since been explained to me by the courtesy of a correspondent who
writes from America. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races
of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which descriptive addition follows their
names in the German biographical authorities; and this, through abridgment, and
misapprehension, in subsequent books came at last to be substituted for the family
name. In the next edition of his admirable text of Goldsmith's poems (the best
now existing), Mr. Bolton Comey will, I hope, restore the original verse, which he
appears too hastily to have altered on a somewhat needless as well as tasteless sug-
gestion of Mr. Prior (ii. 38), that to substitute "Zeck for Luke would render the
"line historically correct"!