79-80. given tradition.

Find that each good by Art or Nature given,

To these or those, but makes the balance even;
Find that the bliss of all is much the same,

And patriotic boasting reason's shame.

even: not an exact rhyme, but legitimatized by

84. Idra Idria is a mountain town in the Austrian province of Carniola. Goldsmith refers to its famous quicksilver mines in his Animated Nature, where he uses the spelling Idra. Though the region is sterile, yet the mines afford the peasants a living. — Arno: a river in Tuscany, an especially fertile region of Italy. Pisa and Florence are on the Arno. Lines 83 and 84 do not occur in the first edition.

85. The first edition read:

And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown.

86. custom: use, habit.

87. The contrast is between art and nature, human skill as against natural fertility.

88. commerce: the first edition had splendours.

90. either: used here of five blessings instead of two.

91-92. These lines are omitted in the first and in some later editions. The idea presented in 11. 91 ff. is prominent in The Deserted Village. 98. peculiar pain: pain peculiar to itself.

99. try view in the first edition. The meaning here is "examine." 100. prospect: the poet's vantage point is an Alpine height.

101. my proper: my own personal cares, as against those of mankind. 106-164. Dr. Frederick Tupper has pointed out that Goldsmith may have been influenced in this passage by Addison's Letter from Italy (1701).

105. Apennine: the plural is more customary. The Apennines is the general name for the great mountain ranges of Italy, which fall into several groups.

109. between: adverb.

112. were the present tense would be more natural.

118. vernal lives: lives as short as spring. Vernal was a stock adjective in the eighteenth century.

121. gelid cool; another favorite eighteenth-century adjective, Cf. "gelid cistern," "gelid founts," "gelid sighs," etc., in Thomson and other poets.

122. To winnow fragrance: to waft or diffuse it.

125. florid: flowery.

127. manners: customs or habits.

129. An Englishman's judgment. The passage seems more striking for its antithesis than for its historic truth.-zealous: has reference to religion.

134. commerce: in the fifteenth century the Italian cities Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa were commercial leaders of Europe. The dying out of Italian commerce was due to the rise of Spanish and Portuguese maritime enterprise.

142. unmanned: without inhabitants.

143. skill: knowledge.

144. plethoric: now often accented initially. The use of this medical word is due probably to Goldsmith's preparation as a physician. Cf. the passage from The Citizen of the World, quoted in note on The Deserted Village, 1. 392. Cf. also The Deserted Village, 11. 389–394.

147. long-fallen: the reference is to Roman greatness and prosperity. The inhabitants have given up their high aspirations.

150. pasteboard triumph: in the fourth chapter of the Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning, Goldsmith tells of the fondness of the Italians for processions and cavalcades.

...

151-152. love. grove another inexact rhyme, in accepted traditional usage.

153-154. Goldsmith's biographer Forster tells the following anecdote concerning the composition of these lines: Sir Joshua Reynolds went out to call on Goldsmith, he says, not having seen him for some time, and, no one answering at his door, he opened it without announcement and walked in. His friend was at his desk with hand uplifted, and a look directed to another part of the room, where a little dog sat with difficulty on his haunches, looking imploringly at its teacher, whose rebuke for toppling over he had evidently just received. Reynolds advanced and looked past Goldsmith's shoulder at the writing on his desk. It seemed to be some portions of a poem, and, looking more closely, he was able to read a couplet which had been that instant written. The ink of the second line was wet.

By sports like these are all their cares beguiled;

The sports of children satisfy the child."

Lines 154 and 155 suffered several changes in early editions. 159. domes: palaces. Cæsars: Roman emperors.

163. pile edifice.

165–174. Contrast with the eighteenth-century attitude toward mountain scenery reflected here that of early nineteenth-century poets like Wordsworth and Byron.

170. the soldier and his sword: the Swiss were in demand as mercenary soldiers from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, especially in Italy and France. In Hamlet the king's guard are called Switzers. 173. zephyr: a mild west wind.

176. Redress: compensate for, make amends for. - deal: distribute. 182. vegetable meal: meat was seldom had by the poorer classes. 184. By narrowing his wants he fits himself for his country. 186. Breasts the keen air: a favorite verb in the eighteenth century. A few early editors mistakenly substituted the commonplace breathes. 187. patient angle: the epithet patient is transferred from the angler to his rod. — finny deep: water containing finned creatures.

190. savage: savage wild beast, a bear or wolf.

191. sped: performed, carried through with success.

191-198. For other domestic scenes of this type, which was somewhat staple in the eighteenth century, see the sixth stanza of the Elegy, and The Cotter's Saturday Night.

197. haply: perhaps.

214. redrest: supplied.

215. science knowledge.

216. supplies: satisfies, or gratifies, its desire.

217. Unknown: they do not know how.

221. level: monotonous, unvaried.

228. morals: manners.

234. cowering: crouching, brooding.

243-254. These passages have strong autobiographical interest. Most editors compare with them Goldsmith's paragraph concerning his wanderings, in Chapter XX of The Vicar of Wakefield, quoted in the Introduction, p. xvi.

244. pipe: flute. Goldsmith was a skillful flute player. Loire: the largest of the French rivers. Loire and choir are not now exact rhymes. 249. village villagers.

253. gestic: gesticulating is the modern word. Gestic lore means the art of dancing.

256. idly busy: the rhetorical name for such a paradoxical phrase is oxymoron. So humbler pride, 1. 36. For a striking example cf. Tennyson's line in The Idylls of the King:

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

265-266. This couplet refers to the French.

273. tawdry has an interesting etymology. See the dictionary. 276. frieze coarse woolen cloth.

277. cheer fare, allowance of food.

283. Methinks: it seems to me.

286. rampire: archaic for rampart or dike. Dikes and ramparts have reclaimed a large part of Holland, below the sea level, from inundation. 289. Spreads its long arms: in the first edition this began:

That spreads its arms.

297. around: adverb. — wave-subjected: below the sea level, and needing to guard against the inroads of the sea.

305. An unfavorable and somewhat prejudiced picture of the Dutch follows.

306. The allusion in "liberty itself" is not clear.

309. This same judgment occurs in A Citizen of the World. "A nation once famous for setting the world an example of freedom is now become a land of tyrants and a den of thieves."

311. bent: stooping to yoke.

313. Belgic sires: Belgic ancestors of the dwellers in Holland, the ancient Belgæ. In Goldsmith's day Belgium was not an independent state, and Belgic did not mean the same as now. The real ancestors of the Dutch are, however, Batavian and Friesic rather than Belgic.

317. genius guiding or presiding spirit; feminine because associated with muse.

318. Much the same praise of Britain is to be found in The Citizen of the World, Letter CXIV.

319. lawns: glades.— Arcadian: originally used of Arcadia in southern Greece; since Vergil and the Renaissance, a generalized term, the ideal pastoral region of poets and romance writers.

320. Hydaspes: a river in India, a tributary of the Indus, the modern name of which is Jhelum. The epithet famed is imitated from the fabulosus of Horace, Odes, I, xxii, 8.

327. port: bearing. Lines 327 and 328 are in inverted order in the first edition.

330. By forms unfashioned: not formal; unconventional.

332. imagined right: right which they imagine to be theirs; what they think their rights.

335. Freedom: apostrophes to Freedom were frequent in the eighteenth century, attendant on the political views and movements of the

time. This was the period of Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death."

Goldsmith here points out that Freedom has its disadvantages as well as its blessings. It is especially cherished, he thinks, in England as over against foreign nations.

341. lordlings: acting as though little lords. Lines 341 and 342 are not in the first edition, and the four lines, 341 to 344, read:

See, though by circling deeps together held,

Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd.

345. Ferments: political upheavals. Political feeling ran very high in Goldsmith's day. A passage in The Citizen of the World presents the idea in this line in similar language. — imprisoned: hemmed in by law.

347. the general system: the state, or society as a whole.

351. Fictitious bonds: factitious or artificial, as opposed to those of nature. Wealth and law have undue dominance as against talent and merit.

357. noble stems: noble families.

358. wrote: old past participle for written.

362. flatter kings, or court the great: this Goldsmith himself did not do. He was independent, like Johnson, and both dedicated their works to friends, not to patrons.

362-380. Two lines occupy the place of these seventeen in the first edition:

Perish the wish, for, inly satisfy'd,

Above their pomps I hold my ragged pride.

365. Freedom: another apostrophe. Cf. note on 1. 335.

370. to secure: in order to secure them.

382-392. Goldsmith distrusted republics. His political sympathies were with royalty and he was a believer in the sovereign power of the king.

386. Cf. The Vicar of Wakefield, 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."

388. The reference is to those who acquire vast wealth by unscrupulous means in India and return to purchase the votes of boroughs in England. A sentence from Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings is often cited to illustrate this passage, "The business of a servant of the company was simply to wring out of the natives a hundred or