[Here to return—and die at home at last.] Forster compares a passage in The Citizen of the World, 1762, ii. 153:—‘There is something so seducing in that spot in which we first had existence, that nothing but it can please; whatever vicissitudes we experience in life, however we toil, or wheresoever we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for tranquillity, we long to die in that spot which gave us birth, and in that pleasing expectation opiate every calamity.’ The poet Waller too—he adds—wished to die ‘like the stag where he was roused.’ (Life, 1871, ii. 202.)
South View from Goldsmith’s Mount
(R.H. Newell)
[How happy he.] ‘How blest is he’ in the first edition.
[And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly.] Mitford compares The Bee for October 13, 1759, p. 56:—‘By struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the conflict. The only method to come off victorious, is by running away.’
[surly porter.] Mr. J. M. Lobban compares the Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 123:—‘I never see a nobleman’s door half opened that some surly porter or footman does not stand full in the breach.’ (Select Poems of Goldsmith, 1900, p. 98.)
[Bends.] ‘Sinks’ in the first edition. unperceived decay. Cf. Johnson, Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749, l. 292:—
An age that melts with unperceiv’d decay,
And glides in modest innocence away;
and Irene, Act ii, Sc. 7:—