Prior compares Letter iii of The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 5:—‘The farther I travel I feel the pain of separation with stronger force, those ties that bind me to my native country, and you, are still unbroken. By every remove, I only drag a greater length of chain.’ But, as Mitford points out, Cibber has a similar thought in his Comical Lovers, 1707, Act v:—‘When I am with Florimel, it [my heart] is still your prisoner, it only draws a longer chain after it.’ And earlier still in Dryden’s ‘All for Love’, 1678, Act ii, Sc. 1:—
My life on’t, he still drags a chain along,
That needs must clog his flight.
[with simple plenty crown’d.] In the first edition this read ‘where mirth and peace abound.’
[the luxury of doing good.] Prior compares Garth’s Claremont, 1715, where he speaks of the Druids:—
Hard was their Lodging, homely was their Food,
For all their Luxury was doing Good.
[my prime of life.] He was seven-and-twenty when he landed at Dover in February, 1756.
[That, like the circle bounding, etc.] Cf. Vicar of Wakefield, 1766, ii. 160–1 (ch. x):—‘Death, the only friend of the wretched, for a little while mocks the weary traveller with the view, and like his horizon, still flies before him.’ [Prior.]
[And find no spot of all the world my own.] Prior compares his namesake’s lines In the Beginning of [Jacques] Robbe’s Geography, 1700:—
My destin’d Miles I shall have gone,
By THAMES or MAESE, by PO or RHONE,
And found no Foot of Earth my own.
[above the storm’s career.] Cf. 1. 190 of The Deserted Village.