In the 'Threnodia Augustalis', 1772, Goldsmith writes:--
Oswego's dreary shores shall be my grave.
The 'desarts of Oswego' were familiar to the eighteenth-century
reader in connexion with General Braddock's ill-fated expedition
of 1755, an account of which Goldsmith had just given in 'An
History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to
his Son', 1764, ii. 202-4.
l. 416. -----
"marks with murderous aim". In the first edition
'takes a deadly aim.'
l. 419. -----
"pensive exile". This, in the version mentioned in the
next note, was 'famish'd exile.'
l. 420. -----
"To stop too fearful, and too faint to go". This line,
upon Boswell's authority, is claimed for Johnson (Birkbeck
Hill's 'Boswell', 1887, ii. 6). Goldsmith's original ran:--
And faintly fainter, fainter seems to go.
(Dobell's 'Prospect of Society', 1902, p. 3).
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