On the other hand, Goldsmith may have gone no further than Young’s Complaint: Night the Second, 1742, p. 42, where, as Mitford points out, occur these lines:—
As some tall Tow’r, or lofty Mountain’s Brow,
Detains the Sun, Illustrious from its Height,
While rising Vapours, and descending Shades,
With Damps, and Darkness drown the Spatious Vale:
Undampt by Doubt, Undarken’d by Despair,
Philander, thus, augustly rears his Head.
Prior also (Life, 1837, ii. 252) prints a passage from Animated Nature, 1774, i. 145, derived from Ulloa, which perhaps served as the raw material of the simile.
[Full well they laugh’d,] etc. Steele, in Spectator, No. 49 (for April 26, 1711) has a somewhat similar thought:—‘Eubulus has so great an Authority in his little Diurnal Audience, that when he shakes his Head at any Piece of publick News, they all of them appear dejected; and, on the contrary, go home to their Dinners with a good Stomach and chearful Aspect, when Eubulus seems to intimate that Things go well.’
[Yet he was kind,] etc. For the rhyme of ‘fault’ and ‘aught’ in this couplet Prior cites the precedent of Pope:—
Before his sacred name flies ev’ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
(Essay on Criticism, l. 422). He might also have cited Waller, who elides the ‘l’:—
Were we but less indulgent to our fau’ts,
And patience had to cultivate our thoughts.
Goldsmith uses a like rhyme in Edwin and Angelina, Stanza xxxv:—
But mine the sorrow, mine the fault,
And well my life shall pay;
I’ll seek the solitude he sought,
And stretch me where he lay.