“Sweet was the sound when oft, at evening’s close, Up yonder hill the village murmur rose; There as I passed with careless steps and slow, The mingling notes came soften’d from below: The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school; The watch-dog’s voice, that bayed the whispering wind; And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind; _These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And fill’d each pause the nightingale had made_.” Have not our readers already felt how much better the description would have been if the last couplet had been omitted? This nightingale takes us by surprise. We thought we were listening to the sounds of the distant village, and find that we have been attending to the song of the nightingale, and that these had only filled up the pauses of her song. What had been the chief and prominent subject is suddenly reduced to this subordinate part. But, what is more to the purpose, the description becomes unfaithful, and ceases to reflect a real experience, when this nightingale is introduced. If that shy bird were heard singing while the milkmaid and the schoolboy were still audible, there would be no pleasing, but a very displeasing effect produced by the mingling of sounds of so very different a nature. They would by no means harmonise. We should listen with pleasure to the milkmaid and to the distant schoolboy, (he must be very distant,) and we should listen with pleasure to the nightingale, but with very little pleasure to all these at once. Goldsmith was a genuine lover of nature; but nevertheless he had not quite escaped that taste of the day which often led to the sacrifice of the truthfulness of a picture to what was deemed the perfection of the verse. He too can sometimes desert the _sense_ for the _sound_. And this word _sound_ reminds us of rather an amusing instance where he introduces some geographical names for no earthly reason except the array of sonorous syllables they present. “Farewell,” he exclaims to poetry,— “Farewell, and oh! where’er thy voice be tried, _On Torno’s cliffs, or Pambamarca’s side_.” Had we been in Captain Chamier’s place at the club, and wished to puzzle our friend Goldsmith, we should have asked him why he sent the muse to Pambamarca? and where, indeed, Pambamarca lay? We suspect that Goldsmith must have answered, that he knew nothing about it, except that it was a great way off, and sounded very majestically. There is one instance where the poet has introduced a reminiscence from Ireland, which we do not recollect to have seen noticed. In the inimitable description of the village schoolmaster, he says,—