(pp. 84-5).
THE SCHOOL-HOUSE.
This cottage is situated, as the poem describes it, by the road-side,
just where it forms a sharp angle by branching out from the village
eastward: at this point a south-west view was taken (p. 85).
Newell's book was reissued in 1820; but no alterations were made in the
foregoing descriptions which, it must be borne in mind, refer to 1806-9.
His enthusiastic identifications will no doubt be taken by the reader
with the needful grain of salt. Goldsmith probably remembered the
hawthorn bush, the church upon the hill, the watercress gatherer, and
some other familiar objects of the 'seats of his youth.' But distance
added charm to the regretful retrospect; and in the details his fancy
played freely with his memories. It would be unwise, for example, to
infer -- as Mr. Hogan did -- the decorations of the 'Three Pidgeons' at
Lissoy from the account of the inn in the poem.* Some twelve years
before its publication, when he was living miserably in Green Arbour
Court, Goldsmith had submitted to his brother Henry a sample of a
heroi-comic poem describing a Grub Street writer in bed in 'a paltry
ale-house.
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