OLIYEE GOLDSMITH'S LIFE AND TIMES. [BOOK m.
1765. apparently little cared for, on the dusty shelves of Mr.
Jit. 37. Francis Newbery.
Another piece of writing which belongs to this period, and
which did not find its way to the public till the appearance
of the novel, to whose pages (with the title of the Hermit) it
had been transferred, was the ballad of Edwin and Angelina.
It was suggested, as I have said, in the course of the ballad-
discussions with Percy in. preparation of the Reliques; and
was written before the Traveller appeared. "Without
" informing any of us," says Hawkins, again referring to the
club, " he wrote and addressed to the Countess, afterwards
" Duchess of Northumberland, one of the first poems of the
" lyric kind that our language has to boast of." * A charm-
ing poem undoubtedly it is, if not quite this; delightful for
its simple and mingled flow of incident and imagery, for the
pathetic softness and sweetness of its tone, and for its easy,
artless grace. He had taken pains with it, and he set more
than common store by it himself; so that when, some two
years hence, his old enemy Kenrick, taking advantage of its
appearance in the novel, assumed the character of "Detector"
in the public prints, denounced it as a plagiarism from the
Reliques, and entreated the public to compare the insipidity
of Doctor Goldsmith's negus with the genuine flavour of Mr.
Percy's champagne, he thought it worth while, even against
that assailant, to defend his own originality.f The poem he
does not scruple to hint at a weakness of his own. "I found that no genius in
" another could please me. . . I could neither read nor write with satisfaction ; for
" excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade."
* Life of Johnson, 420. Mr. Mitford (in the anecdotes appended to Ms Life,
chcxvii) quotes Hawkins for another statement, which I do not find in his
biography, to the effect that this beautiful poem was saved from destruction by
Dr. Chapman of Sudbury, for that, soon after he wrote it, Goldsmith showed it to
the Doctor, and was by him. with difficulty dissuaded from throwing it into the fire.
t Another attempt was made, more than twenty years after Goldsmith's death
(in an unsuccessful periodical called TJie Quiz), to prove this poem a plagiary from