[And, ‘Madam,’ quoth he.] Mr. Lobban again quotes Swift’s Grand Question Debated:—
And ‘Madam,’ says he, ‘if such dinners you give
You’ll ne’er want for parsons as long as you live.’
These slight resemblances, coupled with the more obvious likeness of the ‘Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff’ of Retaliation (ll. 145–6) to the Noueds and Bluturks and Omurs and stuff’ (also pointed out by Mr. Lobban) are interesting, because they show plainly that Goldsmith remembered the works of Swift far better than The New Bath Guide, which has sometimes been supposed to have set the tune to the Haunch and Retaliation.
[‘may this bit be my poison.’] The gentleman in She Stoops to Conquer, Act i, who is ‘obligated to dance a bear.’ Uses the same asseveration. Cf. also Squire Thornhill’s somewhat similar formula in chap. vii of The Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, i. 59.
[‘The tripe,’ quoth the Jew, etc.] The first version reads—
‘Your Tripe!’ quoth the Jew, ‘if the truth I may speak,
I could eat of this Tripe seven days in the week.’
[Re-echoed,] i.e. ‘returned’ in the first edition.
[thot.] This, probably by a printer’s error, is altered to ‘that’ in the second version. But the first reading is the more in keeping, besides being a better rhyme.
[Wak’d Priam.] Cf. 2 Henry IV, Act I, Sc. 1:—
Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless,
So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone,
Drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night.
And would have told him half his Troy was burnt.