Short of lunacy, no intellectual process would account for that sort of thing, whereas a poem more pellucidly logical than _The Traveller_ does not exist in English. So, having lit another pipe, I took a pencil and began some simple counting, with this result:-- The first 42 lines of _The Prospect_ correspond with lines 353-400 of _The Traveller_. The next 42 with lines 311-352. The next 34 with lines 277-310. The next 36 with lines 241-276. The next 36 with lines 205-240. The next 36 with lines 169-204. The next 38 with lines 131-168. The next 28 with lines 103-130. And the remaining fragment of 18 lines with lines 73-92. In other words, _The Prospect_ is merely an early draft of _The Traveller_ printed backwards in fairly regular sections. But how can this have happened? The explanation is at once simple and ridiculous. As Goldsmith finished writing out each page of his poem for press, he laid it aside on top of the pages preceding; and, when all was done, he forgot to sort back his pages in reverse order. That is all. Given a good stolid compositor with no thought beyond doing his duty with the manuscript as it reached him, you have what Mr. Dobell has recovered-- an immortal poem printed wrong-end-foremost page by page. I call the result delightful, and (when you come to think of it) the blunder just so natural to Goldsmith as to be almost postulable. Upon this simple explanation we have to abandon the hypothesis that Goldsmith patiently built a fine poem out of a congeries of fine passages pitchforked together at haphazard--a splendid rubbish heap; and Mr. Dobell's find is seen to be an imperfect set of duplicate proofs--fellow, no doubt, to that set which Goldsmith, mildly objurgating his own or the printer's carelessness, sliced up with the scissors and rearranged before submitting it to Johnson's friendly revision. The pleasantest part of the story (for me) has yet to come. We all know how easy it is to turn obstinate and defend a pet theory with acrimony. Mr. Dobell did nothing of the sort. Although his enthusiasm had committed him to no little expense in publishing _The Prospect_, with a preface elaborating his theory, he did a thing which was worth a hundred discoveries. He sat down, convinced himself that my explanation was the right one, and promptly committed himself to further expense in bringing out a new edition with the friendliest acknowledgment. So do men behave who are at once generous of temper and anxious for the truth. He himself had been close upon the explanation. In his preface he had actually guessed that the "author's manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into confusion and was then printed without any attempt at rearrangement." In fact, he had hit upon the right solution, and only failed to follow up the clue.