[More skilled.] ‘More bent’ in the first edition.
[The long remember’d beggar.] ‘The same persons,’ says Prior, commenting upon this passage, ‘are seen for a series of years to traverse the same tract of country at certain intervals, intrude into every house which is not defended by the usual outworks of wealth, a gate and a porter’s lodge, exact their portion of the food of the family, and even find an occasional resting-place for the night, or from severe weather, in the chimney-corner of respectable farmers.’ (Life, 1837, ii. 269.) Cf. Scott on the Scottish mendicants in the ‘Advertisement’ to The Antiquary, 1816, and Leland’s Hist. of Ireland, 1773, i. 35.
[The broken soldier.] The disbanded soldier let loose upon the country at the conclusion of the ‘Seven Years’ War’ was a familiar figure at this period. Bewick, in his Memoir (‘Memorial Edition’), 1887, pp. 44–5, describes some of these ancient campaigners with their battered old uniforms and their endless stories of Minden and Quebec; and a picture of two of them by T. S. Good of Berwick belonged to the late Mr. Locker Lampson. Edie Ochiltree (Antiquary)—it may be remembered—had fought at Fontenoy.
[Allur’d to brighter worlds.] Cf. Tickell on Addison—‘Saints who taught and led the way to Heaven.’
[And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.] Prior compares the opening lines of Dryden’s Britannia Rediviva:—
Our vows are heard betimes, and heaven takes care
To grant, before we can conclude the prayer;
Preventing angels met it half the way,
And sent us back to praise, who came to pray.
[As some tall cliff,] etc. Lucan, Statius, and Claudian have been supposed to have helped Goldsmith to this fine and deservedly popular simile. But, considering his obvious familiarity with French literature, and the rarity of his ‘obligations to the ancients,’ it is not unlikely that, as suggested by a writer in the Academy for Oct. 30, 1886, his source of suggestion is to be found in the following passage of an Ode addressed by Chapelain (1595–1674) to Richelieu:—
Dans un paisible mouvement
Tu t’élèves au firmament,
Et laisses contre toi murmurer cette terre;
Ainsi le haut Olympe, à son pied sablonneux,
Laisse fumer la foudre et gronder le tonnerre,
Et garde son sommet tranquille et lumineux.
Or another French model—indicated by Mr. Forster (Life, 1871, ii. 115–16) by the late Lord Lytton—may have been these lines from a poem by the Abbé de Chaulieu (1639–1720):—
Au milieu cependant de ces peines cruelles
De notre triste hiver, compagnes trop fidèles,
Je suis tranquille et gai. Quel bien plus précieux
Puis-je espérer jamais de la bonté des dieux!
Tel qu’un rocher dont la tête,
Égalant le Mont Athos,
Voit à ses pieds la tempête
Troubler le calme des flots,
La mer autour bruit et gronde;
Malgré ses emotions,
Sur son front élevé règne une paix profonde,
Que tant d’agitations
Et que ses fureurs de l’onde
Respectent à l’égal du nid des alcyons.