‘Bons habitans de ce Village,
Prêtez l’oreille un moment,’ &c.
Each stanza ends:—
‘Et le bon Dieu vous benira.’
He adds: ‘One of the pleasantest remembrances of France is, having heard this sung to a Barrel-organ, and chorus’d by the Hearers (who had bought the Song-books) one fine Evening on the Paris Boulevards, June: 1830.’
[34a] Haydon entered these verses in his Diary for May, 1846: ‘The struggle is severe, for myself I care not, but for her so dear to me I feel. It presses on her mind, and in a moment of pain, she wrote the following simple bit of feeling to Frederick, who is in South America, on Board The Grecian.’ There are seven stanzas in the original, but FitzGerald has omitted in his transcript the third and fourth and slightly altered one or two of the lines. He called them ‘A poor Mother’s Verses.’
[34b] See ‘Letters,’ ii. 280.
[37] Burns, quoted from memory as usual. See Globe Edition, p. 214; ed. Cunningham, iv. 293.
[38] Greville Sartoris was killed by a fall from his horse, not in the hunting-field, 23 Oct. 1873.
[39] ‘Rage’ in the original. See Tales of the Hall, Book XII. Sir Owen Dale.
[40] Quoting from Peacock’s ‘Headlong Hall’:—