Page:The English humourists of the eighteenth century. A series of lectures, delivered in England, Scotland, and the United States of America (IA englishhumourist00thacrich).pdf/194

 first piece, however), there is a peculiar, hinted, pathetic sweetness and melody, It charms and melts you. It's indefinable, but it exists; and is the property of John Gay's and Oliver Goldsmith's best verse, as fragrance is of a violet, or freshness of a rose.

Let me read a piece from one of his letters, which is so famous that most people here are no doubt familiar with it, but so delightful that it is always pleasant to hear:—

"I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt's, which he lent me. It overlooks a common hayfield, where, under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers—as constant as ever were found in romance—beneath a spreading bush. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man, about five and twenty; Sarah, a brave woman of eighteen, John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pails. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole neighbourhood, for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had obtained her parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field-flowers, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last of July), a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out