1. 275. copper lace. 'St. Martin's lace,' for which, in Strype's day, Blowbladder St. was famous. Cf. the actress's 'copper tail' in Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 60.

1. 281. To men of other minds, &c. Prior compares with the description that follows a passage in vol. i. p. 276 of Animated Nature, 1774 :-'But we need scarce mention these, when we find that the whole kingdom of Holland seems to be a conquest upon the sea, and in a manner rescued from its bosom. The surface of the earth, in this country, is below the level of the bed of the sea; and I remember, upon approaching the coast, to have looked down upon it from the sea, as into a valley.'

1. 284. Where the broad ocean leans against the land. Cf. Dryden in Annus Mirabilis, 1666, st. clxiv. 1. 654 :

And view the ocean leaning on the sky.

1. 286. the tall rampire's, i. e. rampart's (Old French, rempart, rempar). Cf. Timon of Athens, Act v. Sc. 4:-' Our rampir'd gates.'

1. 299. bosom reign in the first edition was 'breast obtain.'

1. 306. Even liberty itself is barter'd here. Slavery,' says Mitford, was permitted in Holland; children were sold by their parents for a certain number of years.'

1. 309. A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves. Goldsmith uses this very line as prose in Letter xxxiv of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 147.

1. 310. dishonourable graves. Julius Caesar, Act i. Sc. 2.

1. 313. Heavens! how unlike, &c. Prior compares a passage from a manuscript Introduction to the History of the Seven Years' War:- How unlike the brave peasants their ancestors, who spread terror into either India, and always declared themselves the allies of those who drew the sword in defence of freedom '.' 1. 320. famed Hydaspes, i. e. the fabulosus Hydaspes of Horace, Bk. i. Ode xxii, and the Medus Hydaspes of Virgil, Georg. iv. 211, of which so many stories were told. It is now known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its name. 1. 327. Pride in their port, &c. In the first edition these two lines were inverted.

'J. W. M. Gibbs (Works, v. 9) discovered that parts of this History, hitherto supposed to have been written in 1761, were published in the Literary Magazine, 1757-8.

1. 343. Here by the bonds of nature feebly held. In the first edition

See, though by circling deeps together held.

1. 349. Nature's ties was social bonds in the first edition.

1. 358. Where kings have toil'd, and poets wrote for fame. In the first edition this line read :

And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame.

1. 361. Yet think not, &c. In the things I have hitherto written I have neither allured the vanity of the great by flattery, nor satisfied the malignity of the vulgar by scandal, but I have endeavoured to get an honest reputation by liberal pursuits.' (Preface to English History.) [Mitford.]

1. 363. Ye powers of truth, &c. The first version has :— Perish the wish; for, inly satisfy'd,

Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.

Mr. Forster thinks (Life, 1871, i. 375) that Goldsmith altered this (i. e. 'ragged pride') because, like the omitted 'Haud inexpertus loquor' of the Enquiry, it involved an undignified admission.

11. 365-80 are not in the first edition.

1. 382. Contracting regal power to stretch their own. 'It is the interest of the great, therefore, to diminish kingly power as much as possible; because whatever they take from it is naturally restored to themselves; and all they have to do in a state, is to undermine the single tyrant, by which they resume their primaeval authority.' (Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 202, ch. xix.)

1. 383. When I behold, &c. Prior compares a passage in Letter xlix of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 218, where the Roman senators are spoken of as still flattering the people with a shew of freedom, while themselves only were free.'

1. 386. Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. Prior notes a corresponding utterance in The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 206, ch. xix :—'What they may then expect, may be seen by turning our eyes to Holland, Genoa, or Venice, where the laws govern the poor, and the rich govern the law.'

1. 392. I fly from petty tyrants to the throne. Cf. Dr. Primrose, ut supra, p. 201 :-'The generality of mankind also are of my

way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.' Cf. also Churchill, The Farewell, 11. 363-4 and 36970:

Let not a Mob of Tyrants seize the helm, Nor titled upstarts league to rob the realm Let us, some comfort in our griefs to bring, Be slaves to one, and be that one a King. 11. 393-4. Goldsmith's first thought was—

Yes, my lov'd brother, cursed be that hour

When first ambition toil'd for foreign power,—

an entirely different couplet to that in the text, and certainly more logical. (Dobell's Prospect of Society, 1902, pp. xi, 2, and Notes, v, vi). Mr. Dobell plausibly suggests that this Tory substitution is due to Johnson.

1. 397. Have we not seen, &c. These lines contain the first idea of the subsequent poem of The Deserted Village (q. v.).

1. 411. Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around. The Oswego is a river which runs between Lakes Oneida and Ontario. In the Threnodia Augustalis, 1772, Goldsmith writes:

Oswego's dreary shores shall be my grave.

The 'desarts of Oswego' were familiar to the eighteenth-century reader in connexion with General Braddock's ill-fated expedition of 1755, an account of which Goldsmith had just given in An History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, 1764, ii. 202–4.

1. 416. marks with murderous aim. In the first edition 'takes a deadly aim.'

1. 419. pensive exile. This, in the version mentioned in the next note, was' famish'd exile.'

1. 420. To stop too fearful, and too faint to go. This line, upon Boswell's authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith's original ran :

And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.

(Dobell's Prospect of Society, 1902, p. 3).

1. 429. How small, of all, &c. Johnson wrote these concluding

ten lines with the exception of the penultimate couplet. They and line 420 were all-he told Boswell-of which he could be sure (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, ut supra). Like Goldsmith, he sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse. The first couplet is apparently a reminiscence of a passage in his own Rasselas, 1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks of the task of a king. . . who has the care only of a few millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm.' (Grant's Johnson, 1887, p. 89.) 'I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another,' he told that 'vile Whig,' Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. 'It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual' (Birkbeck Hill's Boswell, 1887, ii. 170). 1. 435. The lifted axe. Mitford here recalls Blackmore's

Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel. The 'lifted axe' he also traces to Young and Blackmore, with both of whom Goldsmith seems to have been familiar; but it is surely not necessary to assume that he borrowed from either in this instance.

Such

1. 436. Luke's iron crown. George and Luke Dosa, or Doscha, headed a rebellion in Hungary in 1513. The former was proclaimed king by the peasants; and, in consequence suffered, among other things, the torture of the red-hot iron crown. a punishment took place at Bordeaux when Montaigne was seventeen (Morley's Florio's Montaigne, 1886, p. xvi). Much ink has been shed over Goldsmith's lapse of 'Luke' for George. In the book which he cited as his authority, the family name of the brothers was given as Zeck,-hence Bolton Corney, in his edition of the Poetical Works, 1845, p. 36, corrected the line toZeck's iron crown, &c.,

an alteration which has been adopted by other editors. (See also Forster's Life, 1871, i. 370.)

Damiens' bed of steel. Robert-François Damiens, 1714-57. Goldsmith writes Damien's.' In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1757, vol. xxvii. pp. 87 and 151, where there is an account of this poor half-witted wretch's torture and execution for attempting to assassinate Louis XV, the name is thus spelled, as also in other contemporary records and caricatures. The following passage explains the 'bed of steel':-' Being con

ducted to the Conciergerie, an iron bed, which likewise served for a chair, was prepared for him, and to this he was fastened with chains. The torture was again applied, and a physician ordered to attend to see what degree of pain he could support,' &c. (Smollett's History of England, 1823, bk. iii, ch. 7, § xxv.) Goldsmith's own explanation-according to Tom Davies, the bookseller-was that he meant the rack. But Davies may have misunderstood him, or Goldsmith himself may have forgotten the facts. (See Forster's Life, 1871, i. 370.) At pp. 57-78 of the Monthly Review for July, 1757 (upon which Goldsmith was at this date employed), is a summary, 'from our Correspondent at Paris,' of the official record of the Damiens' Trial, 4 vols. 12mo.; and his deed and tragedy make a graphic chapter in the remarkable Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, by George Augustus Sala, 1863, iii. pp. 154-180.

1. 438. In the first edition of The Traveller there are only 416 lines.

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.

After having been for some time announced as in preparation, The Deserted Village made its first appearance on May 26, 17701. It was received with great enthusiasm. In June a second, third, and fourth edition followed, and in August a fifth was published. The text here given is that of the fourth edition, which was considerably revised. Johnson, we are told, thought The Deserted Village inferior to The Traveller; but 'time,' to use Mr. Forster's words, 'has not confirmed that judgment.' Its germ is perhaps to be found in Il. 397-402 of the earlier poem.

1 In the American Bookman for February, 1901, pp. 563-7, Mr. Luther S. Livingston gives an account (with facsimile title-pages) of three octavo (or rather duodecimo) editions all dated 1770; and ostensibly printed for 'W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head, in Catherinestreet, Strand.' He rightly describes their existence as a bibliographical puzzle.' They afford no important variations; are not mentioned by the early editors; and are certainly not in the form in which the poem was first advertised and reviewed, as this was a quarto. But they are naturally of interest to the collector; and the late Colonel Francis Grant, a good Goldsmith scholar, described one of them in the Athenaeum for June 20, 1896 (No. 3582).