[Where the broad ocean leans against the land.] Cf. Dryden in Annus Mirabilis, 1666, st. clxiv. l. 654:—
And view the ocean leaning on the sky.
[the tall rampire’s,] i.e. rampart’s (Old French, rempart, rempar). Cf. Timon of Athens, Act v. Sc. 4:—‘Our rampir’d gates.’
[bosom reign] in the first edition was ‘breast obtain.’
[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.’
[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.
[dishonourable graves.] Julius Caesar, Act i. Sc. 2.
[Heavens! how unlike, etc.] 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.’*
* 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.
[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 stores were told. It is now known as the Jhilum, one of the five rivers which give the Punjaub its name.