16. Hath time and space. Because Great Britain in itself is a small country.
17-26. If the time should ever come when any body of men should band themselves together to persecute those who do not agree with them, and when a man may not “speak the thing he will,” then, no matter how powerful or wealthy Britain may become, I will leave this country.
23-4. Note the metaphor in these two lines. Though the country should be overflowing with wealth from all its various sources—its mines, its fisheries, etc.
28. Read line 4.
Published in 1764.
Goldsmith dedicated The Traveller to his brother Henry, who was a country curate in Lissoy, a village in Ireland. The substance of the poem is briefly summed up by Macaulay as follows:—
“No philosophical poem, ancient or modern, has a plan so noble and at the same time so simple. An English wanderer, seated on a crag among the Alps, near the point where three great countries meet, looks down on the boundless prospect, reviews his long pilgrimage, recalls the variety of scenery, of climate, of government, of religion, of national character, which he has observed, and comes to the conclusion, just or unjust, that our happiness depends little on political institutions, and much on the temper and regulation of the mind.”
1. Remote, etc. These adjectives modify I in line 7.