Cingentem viridi tempora pampino.
[171]. [This clever parody has reference to the attempt made by the Duke of Northumberland to evade payment of Pitt’s Income-tax. To mitigate the severity of the pressure on persons with large families, a deduction of ten per cent. was allowed to persons who had above a certain number of children. Among others the Duke was not ashamed to avail himself of this clause.—Ed.]
[172]. [See Note at p. [84] in “A Bit of an Ode to Mr. Fox,” line 18.—Ed.]
[173]. [Sir Hugh Smithson married Lady Eliz. Seymour, great-granddaughter of Joceline, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, who was the last of the male Percies. He was created Duke of Northumberland in 1766. The hero of this Ballad was his son, who died in 1817.—Ed.]
[174]. The ceremony of invocation (in didactic poems especially) is in some measure analogous to the custom of drinking toasts; the corporeal representatives of which are always supposed to be absent, and unconscious of the irrigation bestowed upon their names. Hence it is, that our Author addresses himself to the natives of an island who are not likely to hear, and who, if they did, would not understand him.
[175]. His Majesty’s ship Endeavour.
[176]. In justice to our Author we must observe, that there is a delicacy in this picture, which the words, in their common acceptation, do not convey. The amours of an English shepherd would probably be preparatory to marriage (which is contrary to our Author’s principles), or they might disgust us by the vulgarity of their object. But in Otaheite, where the place of a shepherd is a perfect sinecure (there being no sheep on the island), the mind of the reader is not offended by any disagreeable allusion.
[177]. Laws made by parliaments or kings.
[178]. Customs voted or imposed by ditto, not the customs here alluded to.
[179]. M. Bailly and other astronomers have observed, that in consequence of the varying obliquity of the Ecliptic, the climates of the circumpolar and tropical climates may, in process of time, be materially changed. Perhaps it is not very likely that even by these means Britain may ever become a small island in the South Seas. But this is not the meaning of the verse—the similarity here proposed relates to manners, not to local situation.