The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-02-24

ST. HARY'5 ACADEMY. :
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Thoughts About an English Classi

Thoughts About an English Classic.
All students Of literature recognize
the great gulf between the poetry of
! today and that written a hundred years
ago. So great IS the difference and-fOr
instance-such difficulty does the stu
/ dent of Browning encounter, that some
readers go to the length of regarding
his name as synonym for Obscurity.
Francis Thompson leases us with OBJ
solete words and polysyllabics coined
from the Latin, while by many critics
Swinburne is charged with something
bordering on sickly sentimentality.
In its pastoral sweetness and simple
ity, how different from such verse is
that poem of more than a century ago,
GOldsmith's Deserted Village This
is the work which electrified the liter
airy club to which Goldsmith belonged,
and made Johnson, Burke and Garrick
revise their opinions of its author. And
no wonder, for it has a grace and charm
peculiarly its own.
Sweet Auburn Of the poem, the lit
erary world has long accepted as a pen
picture of the poets native village, for
which he had the tenderest memories.
Perhaps the poet idealized it some
what, for painting it in its summer
beauty as he does, it appeals TO US with
a winning sweetness.
The village folk we learn were simple
in their manner and content with their
lot though cast in the lowly paths of
life. SO perfect are the descriptions
that we can imagine ourselves now on
the village green, disporting with the
youths and maidens or outside the win
dow of the inn listening to the words
Of wisdom which fan from the lips of
the philosophers and statesmen of the
hamlet, hearing now and then the clink
nj OLE fai n inc No 10
and joining in the laugh that rewarded
the simple jest
The village preacher is drawn with
master touch. He appears as an ideal
being. yet possessing enough of the
purely human qualities to make him
generally loved. He consoled the sor-
Towful. comforted the last moments of
the dying and regarded the welfare of
his pariShionerS as his own. But best
of all, he was loved by the little chill
dren who would cluster about him when
he appeared on the village common
clasping his hands and catching the
skirts of his coat.
Then there is the pen portrait of the
schoolmaster, companion picture to
that of the preacher. A genial. though
Crusty old man was he sitting at his
desk before a gathering of boys who
had learned all his moods and foibles:
who knew when to be absorbed in their
books and when to indulge in boyish
trick
Goldsmith happily hits off one feature
of his make UP by the couplet:
And words of learned length and thun-
dering sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged
around"
But there is something more in the
poem besides mere description; it is the
philosophy underlying it; when a ma
ton yields itself to luxury the charac-
ter Of its people degenerate and it
gradually falls to decay
In comparing the Deserted Village"
and the Vicar Of Wakefield" we see
that Goldsmith was variable in his
moods, for in one he INDUCES his siv
hunor while in the other he suffers
only a CLEAN to appear, and that raw
of fun plays over the picture of the
SchoolmaSter.
The style of the Deserted Village" is
simple and artless, and one might saw
the music Of its rhyming couplets is
like the jingle Of sweet bells.
AS there is a certain pensive sadness
which comes with the twilight of a |