t well expect any return. It
will be remembered that it was to this brother Henry that Goldsmith,
ten years before, had sent the first sketch of the poem; and now the
wanderer,

"Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow."

declares how his heart untravelled

"Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain."

The very first line of the poem strikes a key-note--there is in it a
pathetic thrill of distance, and regret, and longing; and it has the
soft musical sound that pervades the whole composition. It is
exceedingly interesting to note, as has already been mentioned, how
Goldsmith altered and altered these lines until he had got them full
of gentle vowel sounds. Where, indeed, in the English language could
one find more graceful melody than this?--

"The naked negro, panting at the line,
Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,
Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,
And thanks his gods for all the good they gave."

It has been observed also that Goldsmith was the first to introduce
into English poetry sonorous American--or rather Indian--names, as
when he writes in this poem,

"Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound,"

--and if it be charged against him that he ought to have known the
proper accentuation of Niagara, it may be mentioned as a set-off that
Sir Walter Scott, in dealing with his own country, mis-accentuated
"Glenaladale," to say nothing of his having made of Roseneath an
island. Another characteristic of the _Traveller_ is the extraordinary
choiceness and conciseness of the diction, which, instead of
suggesting pedantry or affectation, betrays on the contrary nothing
but a delightful ease and grace.

The English people are very fond of good English; and thus it is that
couplets from the _Traveller_ and the _Deserted Village_ have come
into the common stock of our language, and that sometimes not so much
on account of the ideas they convey, as through their singular
precision of epithet and musical sound. It is enough to make the
angels weep, to find such a couplet as this--

"Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes,"

murdered in several editions of Goldsmith's works by the substitution
of the commonplace "breathes" for "breasts"--and that, after Johnson
had drawn particular attention to the line by quotin