l. 429. -----
"How small, of all," etc. Johnson wrote these
concluding ten lines with the exception of the penultimate
couplet. They and line 420 were all--he told Boswell--of which
he could be sure (Birkbeck Hill's 'Boswell, ut supra'). Like
Goldsmith, he sometimes worked his prose ideas into his verse.
The first couplet is apparently a reminiscence of a passage in
his own 'Rasselas', 1759, ii. 112, where the astronomer speaks
of 'the task of a king...who has the care only of a few
millions, to whom he cannot do much good or harm.' (Grant's
'Johnson', 1887, p. 89.) 'I would not give half a guinea to live
under one form of government rather than another,' he told that
'vile Whig,' Sir Adam Fergusson, in 1772. 'It is of no moment to
the happiness of an individual' (Birkbeck Hill's 'Boswell',
1887, ii. 170).
l. 435. -----
"The lifted axe". Mitford here recalls Blackmore's
Some the sharp axe, and some the painful wheel.
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