The relative reputations of Oliver Goldsmith and George Crabbe have long troubled me; I worry about such things.<\/p>\n
Goldsmith is best-known for The Deserted Village<\/span><\/a> (1780), which still appears in many standard English literature textbooks, like the one I had in high school. Crabbe is scarcely known at all. Goldsmith slaughters him in a Googlefight<\/a> by a three to one margin, although to be fair Goldsmith, unlike Crabbe, has some fame outside of his poetry for his plays and his one novel, The Vicar of Wakefield<\/span>, which are better than the poetry, and for being a butt of Samuel Johnson’s jokes, which are excellent.<\/p>\n The Deserted Village<\/span> mourns the death of the English village, somewhat prematurely, in a manner befitting someone who spent most of his adult life in London coffeehouses<\/a>:<\/p>\n And all the village train, from labour free, Etcetry etcetry. You notice nothing because there is nothing to notice. Another dozen lines of this and we are informed that “all these charms have fled,” along with the villagers themselves. It does not occur to Goldsmith that the villagers may have fled because they thought that they would find a better, or at least less miserable, life in the city, which the mortality rates of the time bear out. Instead the usual villains, trade and wealth, are called to account:<\/p>\n But times are alter’d; trade’s unfeeling train This poem irked Crabbe to no end, though not because of its foolish economics: why people left the village for the city concerns Crabbe not at all. What concerns him is Goldsmith’s sentimental picture of English rural life, which Crabbe, who grew up in the country and spent considerable time as a village parson, knew very well. In his reply, The Village<\/span> (1783), he paints a rather different picture:<\/p>\n Where are the swains, who, daily labour done, It is obvious whom to believe, but more than that, Crabbe’s verse is superior in every detail. His couplets are firm where Goldsmith’s are flabby. He eschews, except to mock, the clich\u00c3\u00a9s of the period, where Goldsmith indulges in them. “Swains” and “gambols” and “shades” that were already tired by the time Milton used them in Lycidas<\/span> a century and a half before. There is nothing else especially rural about Goldsmith’s details; he seems to be viewing his subject from an immense distance, as, in fact, he is. <\/p>\n The Deserted Village<\/span> lives, briefly, when he forgets that he is supposed to be apotheosizing the villagers and begins to satirize them instead. Thirty dull lines on the virtues of the minister, and then this:<\/p>\n The village all declared how much he knew; I know bloggers like that. I may even be<\/em> one. Goldsmith’s characterization of the “parlour splendours” of the “village statesmen” is also very sharp: <\/p>\n While broken teacups, wisely kept for show, These are the best lines in The Deserted Village<\/span>. It is a poor harvest from a 400-line poem that has been in the canon for more than two centuries.<\/p>\n Crabbe’s village minister, on the other hand, is unforgettable:<\/p>\n And doth not he, the pious man, appear, His village doctor is better still, or worse:<\/p>\n Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat, Crabbe is at his best in natural description. He was a sort of amateur botanist, who annoyed his wife by bringing home mosses and lichens and spreading them around the bedroom. Goldsmith’s description is all “mossy” this and “shady” that; here is Crabbe’s:<\/p>\n From thence a length of burning sand appears, “Sickly” in particular, with its double meaning, is a master-stroke. You will not find more accurate nature poetry than this in any English poet save Hardy — not in Wordsworth, who interested himself in nature only as a prop for his jejune philosophy, and certainly not in Goldsmith. <\/p>\n Crabbe also provides a clue to Goldsmith’s continuing popularity, and to his own neglect:<\/p>\n From this chief cause these idle praises spring, I couldn’t say it any better myself. So I won’t try.<\/p>\n (Update:<\/b> Several solecisms corrected. I was drunk when I wrote this.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The relative reputations of Oliver Goldsmith and George Crabbe have long troubled me; I worry about such things. Goldsmith is best-known for The Deserted Village (1780), which still appears in many standard English literature textbooks, like the one I had in high school. Crabbe is scarcely known at all. Goldsmith slaughters him in a Googlefight […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-2-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godofthemachine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLed up their sports beneath the spreading tree;
\nWhile many a pastime circled in the shade,
\nThe young contending as the old survey’d;
\nAnd many a gambol frolick’d o’er the ground,
\nAnd sleights of art and feats of strength went round;
\nAnd still, as each repeated pleasure tir’d,
\nSucceeding sports the mirthful band inspir’d;
\nThe dancing pair that simply sought renown
\nBy holding out to tire each other down:
\nThe swain mistrustless of his smutted face,
\nWhile secret laughter titter’d round the place;
\nThe bashful virgin’s sidelong looks of love,
\nThe matron’s glance that would those looks reprove…<\/span><\/p>\n
\nUsurp the land and dispossess the swain;
\nAlong the lawn, where scatter’d hamlets rose,
\nUnwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,
\nAnd every want to opulence allied,
\nAnd every pang that folly pays to pride.
\nThose gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom,
\nThose calm desires that ask’d but little room,
\nThose healthful sports that grac’d the peaceful scene,
\nLiv’d in each look, and brighten’d all the green,–
\nThese, far departing, seek a kinder shore,
\nAnd rural mirth and manners are no more.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWith rural games play’d down the setting sun;
\nWho struck with matchless force the bounding ball,
\nOr made the pond’rous quoit obliquely fall;…
\nWhere now are these? Beneath yon cliff they stand,
\nTo show the freighten pinnace where to land,
\nTo load the ready steed with guilty haste,
\nTo fly in terror o’er the pathless waste,
\nOr, when detected, in their straggling course,
\nTo foil their foes by cunning or by force;
\nOr, yielding part (which equal knaves demand),
\nTo gain a lawless passport through the land.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n‘Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;
\nLands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
\nAnd e’en the story ran that he could gauge.
\nIn arguing too, the parson own’d his skill,
\nFor e’en though vanquished, he could argue still;
\nWhile words of learned length and thundering sound
\nAmazed the gazing rustics rang’d around;
\nAnd still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
\nThat one small head could carry all he knew.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nRang’d o’er the chimney, glisten’d in a row.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nHe, “passing rich with forty pounds a year?” [the quote is from Goldsmith]
\nAh! no; a shepherd of a different stock,
\nAnd far unlike him, feeds this little flock:
\nA jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday’s task
\nAs much as God or man can fairly ask;
\nThe rest he gives to loves and labours light,
\nTo fields the morning, and to feasts the night;
\nNone better skill’d the noisy pack to guide,
\nTo urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide,
\nA sportsman keen, he shoots through half the day,
\nAnd, skill’d at whist, devotes the night to play.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAll pride and business, bustle and conceit;
\nWith looks unaltered by these scenes of wo,
\nWith speed that, entering, speaks his haste to go,
\nHe bids the gazing throng around him fly,
\nAnd carries fate and physic in his eye:
\nA potent quack, long versed in human ills,
\nWho first insults the victim whom he kills;
\nWhose murd’rous hand a drowsy Bench protect,
\nAnd whose most tender mercy is neglect.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nWhere the thin harvest waves its wither’d ears;
\nRank weeds, that every art and care defy,
\nReign o’er the land, and rob the blighted rye;
\nThere thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
\nAnd to the ragged infant threaten war;
\nThere poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil,
\nThere the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil;
\nHardy and high, above the slender sheaf,
\nThe slimy mallow waves her silky leaf,
\nO’er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade,
\nAnd clasping tares cling round the sickly blade. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nThat themes so easy few forbear to sing;
\nFor no deep thought the trifling subjects ask;
\nTo sing of shepherds is an easy task;
\nThe happy youth assumes the common strain,
\nA nymph his mistress, and himself a swain;
\nWith no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer,
\nBut all, to look like her, is painted fair.<\/span><\/p>\n