the face of his new acquisition; and were forced "_with
fainting steps_," to go in search of "_torrid tracts_" and "_distant
climes_."

This fact alone might be sufficient to establish the seat of the poem;
but there cannot remain a doubt in any unprejudiced mind, when the
following are added; viz. that the character of the village-preacher,
the above-named Henry, (the brother of the poet,) is copied from nature.
He is described exactly as he lived; and his "modest mansion" as it
existed. Burn, the name of the village-master, and the site of his
school-house, and _Catherine Giraghty_, a lonely widow;

The wretched matron forced in age for bread
To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread;

(and to this day the brook and ditches, near the spot where her cabin
stood, abound with cresses) still remain in the memory of the
inhabitants, and _Catherine's_ children live in the neighbourhood. The
pool, the busy mill, the house where "_nut-brown draughts inspired_,"
are still visited as the poetic scene; and the "_hawthorn-bush_" growing
in an open space in front of the house, which I knew to have three
trunks, is now reduced to one; the other two having been cut, from time
to time, by persons carrying away pieces of it to be made into toys, &c.
in honour of the bard, and of the celebrity of his poem. All these
contribute to the same proof; and the "_decent church_," which I
attended for upwards of eighteen years, and which "_tops the
neighbouring hill_," is exactly described as seen from Lissoy, the
residence of the preacher.

I should have observed, that Elizabeth Delap, who was a parishioner of
mine, and died at the age of about ninety, often told me she was the
first who put a book into Goldsmith's hand; by which she meant, that she
taught him his letters: she was allied to him, and kept a little school.

The Hermit is a pleasing little tale, told with that simplicity which
appears so easy, and is in fact so difficult, to be obtained. It was
imitated in the Ballad of a Friar of Orders Grey, in Percy's Reliques of
English Poetry.

His Traveller was, it is said, pronounced by Mr. Fox to be one of the
finest pieces in the English language. Perhaps this sentence was
delivered by that great man with some qualification, which was either
forgotten or omitted by the reporter of it; otherwise such praise was
surely disproportioned to its object.

In this poem, he professes to compare the good and evil which fall to