Macmillan's Reading Books. Book V

John Stuart Mill · en
"No, never from this hour to part,
         We'll live and love so true,
       The sigh that rends thy constant heart
         Shall break thy Edwin's too."
                                        GOLDSMITH.

[Notes: _Oliver Goldsmith_, poet and novelist. The friend and
contemporary of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. Born 1728, died 1774.

This poem is introduced into 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' and Goldsmith
there says of it, "It is at least free from the false taste of loading
the lines with epithets;" or as he puts it more fully "a string of
epithets that improve the sound without carrying on the sense."

"_Immeasurably spread_" = spread to an immeasurable length.

_No flocks that range the valleys free_. "Free" may be joined either
with flocks or with valley.

Note the position of the negative, "No flocks that range," &c. = I do
not condemn the flocks that range.

_Guiltless feast_. Because it does not involve the death of a
fellow-creature.

 _Scrip_. A purse or wallet; a word of Teutonic origin.
Distinguish from scrip, a writing or certificate, from the Latin word
_scribo_, I write.

_Far in a wilderness obscure_. Obscure goes with mansion, not with
wilderness.

_And gaily pressed_ (him to eat).

_With answering care_, i.e., with sympathetic care.

 _A charm that lulls to sleep_. Charm is here in its proper
sense: that of a thing pleasing to the fancy is derivative.

_A shade that follows wealth or fame_. A shade = a ghost or phantom.

_Swift mantling_, &c. Spreading quickly over, like a cloak or mantle.

_Where heaven and you reside_ = where you, whose only thoughts are of
Heaven, reside.

_Whom love has taught to stray_. This use of the word "taught" for
"made" or "forced," is taken from a Latin idiom, as in Virgil, "He
_teaches_ the woods to ring with the name of Amaryllis." It is stronger
than "made" or "forced," and implies, as here, that she had forgotten
all but the wandering life that is now hers.

_He had but only me_. But or only is redundant.

_To emulate his mind_ = to be equal to his mind in purity.

_Their constancy was mine_. This verse has often been accused of
violating sense; but, however artificial the expression may be, neither
the sense is obscure, nor the way of expressing it inaccurate. It
is evidently only another way of saying "in the little they had of
constancy they resembled me as they resembled him in their charms."]

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DR. ARNOLD.