Another piece
with the title of 'The Fair Thief' was revived in July, 1893, by an
anonymous writer in the 'Daily Chronicle', as being possibly by
Goldsmith, to whom it was assigned in an eighteenth-century anthology
(1789-80). Its discoverer, however, subsequently found it given in
Walpole's 'Noble Authors' (Park's edition, 1806) to Charles Wyndham,
Earl of Egremont. It has no great merit; and may safely be neglected as
an important addition to Goldsmith's 'Works', already burdened with much
which that critical author would never have reprinted.
APPENDIX E
GOLDSMITH ON POETRY UNDER ANNE AND
GEORGE THE FIRST.
In Letter xvi, vol. ii. pp.139-41, of 'An History of England in a Series
of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son', 1764, Goldsmith gives the
following short account of the state of poetry in the first quarter of
the Eighteenth Century.
'But, of all the other arts, poetry in this age was carried to the
greatest perfection. The language, for some ages, had been improving,
but now it seemed entirely divested of its roughness and barbarity.
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