"Looking recently over a parcel of pamphlets which I had purchased, I came upon some loose leaves which were headed _A Prospect of Society_. The title struck me as familiar, and I had only to read a few lines to recognise them as belonging to [Goldsmith's] _The Traveller_. But the opening lines of my fragment are not the opening lines of the poem as it was published; in fact, the first two lines of _A Prospect of Society_ are lines 353-4 in the first edition of _The Traveller_. . . . A further examination of the fragment which I had discovered showed that it is not what is usually understood as a 'proof' of _The Traveller_, but rather the material, as yet formless and unarranged, out of which it was to be finally evolved." Now--line for corresponding line--the text discovered by Mr. Dobell often differs, and sometimes considerably, from that of the first edition of _The Traveller_, and these variations are highly interesting, and make Mr. Dobell's 'find' a valuable one. But on studying the newly discovered version I very soon found myself differing from Mr. Dobell's opinion that we had here the formless, unarranged material out of which Goldsmith built an exquisitely articulated poem.[1] And, doubting this, I had to doubt what Mr. Dobell deduced from it--that "it was in the manner in which a poem, remarkable for excellence of form and unity of design, was created out of a number of verses which were at first crudely conceived and loosely connected that Goldsmith's genius was most triumphantly displayed." For scarcely had I lit a pipe and fallen to work on _A Prospect of Society_ before it became evident to me (1) that the lines were not "unarranged," but disarranged; and (2) that whatever the reason of this disarray, Goldsmith's brain was not responsible; that the disorder was too insane to be accepted either as an order in which he could have written the poem, or as one in which he could have wittingly allowed it to circulate among his friends, unless he desired them to believe him mad. Take, for instance, this collocation:-- "Heavens! how unlike their Belgic sires of old! Rough, poor, content, ungovernably bold; Where shading elms beside the margin grew, And freshen'd from the waves the zephyr blew." Or this:-- "To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign, We turn, where France displays her bright domain. Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire? No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display, But Winter lingering chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly sooths the mountain's breast, But meteors glare and frowning storms invest."