"Jam jam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
Optima nee dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent;"
and Horace, _Epod._ ii. 39:
"Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet
Domum atque dulces liberos
* * * * * * *
Sacrum vetustis exstruat lignis focum
Lassi sub adventum viri," etc.
Mitford quotes Thomson, _Winter_, 311:
"In vain for him the officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence."
Wakefield cites _The Idler_, 103: "There are few things, not purely
evil, of which we can say without some emotion of uneasiness, _this
is the last_."
22. _Ply her evening care_. Mitford says, "To _ply a care_ is an
expression that is not proper to our language, and was probably
formed for the rhyme _share_." Hales remarks: "This is probably the
kind of phrase which led Wordsworth to pronounce the language of the
_Elegy_ unintelligible. Compare his own
'And she I cherished _turned her wheel_
Beside an English fire.'"
23. _No children run_, etc. Hales quotes Burns, _Cotter's Saturday
Night_, 21:
"Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through
To meet their Dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee."
24. Among Mitford's MS. variations we find "coming kiss." Wakefield
compares Virgil, _Geo._ ii. 523:
"Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;"
and Mitford adds from Dryden,
"Whose little arms about thy legs are cast,
And climbing for a kiss prevent their mother's haste."
Cf. Thomson, _Liberty_, iii. 171:
"His little children climbing for a kiss."