Her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, kept a copy of these rules in the servants’ hall at Windsor Castle.
[the royal game of goose.] The ‘Royal and Entertaining Game of the Goose’ is described at length in Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, bk. iv, ch. 2 (xxv). It may be briefly defined as a game of compartments with different titles through which the player progresses according to the numbers he throws with the dice. At every fourth or fifth compartment is depicted a goose, and if the player’s cast falls upon one of these, he moves forward double the number of his throw.
[While broken tea-cups.] Cf. the Description of an Author’s Bedchamber, p. 48, l. 18:—
And five crack’d teacups dress’d the chimney board.
Mr. Hogan, who repaired or rebuilt the ale-house at Lissoy, did not forget, besides restoring the ‘Royal Game of Goose’ and the ‘Twelve Good Rules,’ to add the broken teacups, ‘which for better security in the frail tenure of an Irish publican, or the doubtful decorum of his guests, were embedded in the mortar.’ (Prior, Life, 1837, ii. 265.)
[Shall kiss the cup.] Cf. Scott’s Lochinvar:—
The bride kissed the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff’d off the wine and he threw down the cup.
Cf. also The History of Miss Stanton (British Magazine, July, 1760).—‘The earthen mug went round. Miss touched the cup, the stranger pledged the parson,’ etc.
[Between a splendid and a happy land.] Prior compares The Citizen of the World, 1762, i. 98:—‘Too much commerce may injure a nation as well as too little; and . . . there is a wide difference between a conquering and a flourishing empire.’
[To see profusion that he must not share.] Cf. Animated Nature, iv. p. 43:—‘He only guards those luxuries he is not fated to share.’ [Mitford.]