A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroy'd, can never be supplied."
In this passage the fourth line, which I have given in italics, is traced by D'Israeli, in Curiosities of Literature, under the head of "Imitations and Similarities," to the French poet, De Caux, who, comparing the world to his hour-glass, says—
——"C'est une verre qui luit,
Qu'un souffle peut détruire, et qu'un souffle a produit."
The turn given to the thought in the French has suggested to D'Israeli an emendation of the passage in Goldsmith. He proposes that the word "unmakes" should be substituted for "can make." The line would then read—
"A breath unmakes them, as a breath has made."
This emendation seems to me to be alike ingenious and well-founded. The line itself is but the corollary of the one that precedes it; and in order to make the sense complete, it should contain antithetical expressions to correspond with "flourish" and "fade." Now, between "can make" and "made" there is nothing antithetical; but between "made" and "unmakes" there is.
In support of this view, I may quote one or two parallel passages, in which the antithesis is preserved. The first is a quatrain commemorating the devastating effects of an earthquake in the valley of Lucerne in 1808: