ttempt at
rearrangement." In fact, he had hit upon the right solution, and only
failed to follow up the clue.

His find, too, remains a valuable one; for so far as it goes we can
collate it with the first edition of _The Traveller_, and exactly discover
the emendations made by Johnson, or by Goldsmith after discussion with
Johnson. Boswell tells us that the Doctor "in the year 1783, at my
request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are
only line 420, 'To stop too faithful, and too faint to go,' and the
concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one. . . . He added,
'These are all of which I can be sure.'" We cannot test his claim to the
concluding lines, for the correspondent passage is missing from Mr.
Dobell's fragment; but Johnson's word would be good enough without the
internal evidence of the verses to back it. "To stop too faithful, and
too faint to go," is his improvement, and an undeniable one, upon
Goldsmith's "And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go." I have not been
at pains to examine all the revised lines, but they are numerous, and
generally (to my thinking) betray Johnson's hand. Also they are almost
consistently improvements. There is one alteration, however,--
unmistakably due to Johnson,--which some of us will join with Mr. Dobell
in regretting. Johnson, as a fine, full-blooded Jingo, naturally showed
some restiveness at the lines--

"Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour
When first ambition toil'd for foreign power,"

And induced Goldsmith to substitute--

"Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour
When first ambition struck at regal power,"

Which may or may not be more creditable in sentiment, but is certainly
quite irrelevant in its context, which happens to be a denunciation of the
greed for gold and foreign conquest. It is, in that context, all but
meaningless, and must have irritated and puzzled many readers of a poem
otherwise clearly and continuously argued. In future editions of _The
Traveller_, Goldsmith's original couplet should be restored; and I urge
this (let the Tory reader be assured) not from any ill-will towards our
old friend the Divine Right of Kings, but solely in the sacred name of
Logic.

Such be the bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be
worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by
which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as