[Thus as her faults each day were known.] First version: ‘Each day, the more her faults,’ etc.
[Now, to perplex.] The first version has ‘Thus.’ But the alteration in line 61 made a change necessary.
[paste.] First version ‘pastes.’
[condemn’d to hack,] i.e. to hackney, to plod.
[A NEW SIMILE.]
The New Simile first appears in Essays: By Mr. Goldsmith, 1765, pp. 234–6, where it forms Essay xxvii. In the second edition of 1766 it occupies pp. 246–8 and forms Essay xix. The text here followed is that of the second edition, which varies slightly from the first. In both cases the poem is followed by the enigmatical initials ‘*J. B.,’ which, however, as suggested by Gibbs, may simply stand for ‘Jack Bookworm’ of The Double Transformation. (See p. 204.)
[Long had I sought in vain to find.] The text of 1765 reads—
‘I long had rack’d my brains to find.’
[Tooke’s Pantheon.] Andrew Tooke (1673–1732) was first usher and then Master at the Charterhouse. In the latter capacity he succeeded Thomas Walker, the master of Addison and Steele. His Pantheon, a revised translation from the Latin of the Jesuit, Francis Pomey, was a popular school-book of mythology, with copper-plates.
[Wings upon either side—mark that.] The petasus of Mercury, like his sandals (l. 24), is winged.