Such as, of late, an Oglethorpe has formed,
And, crowding round, the charmed Savannah sees.
Horrid with want and misery, no more

Our streets the tender passenger afflict.

Nor shivering age, nor sickness without friend
Or home or bed to bear his burning load,
Nor agonizing infant, that ne'er earned

Its guiltless pangs, I see! The stores profuse
Which British bounty has to these assigned
No more the sacrilegious riot swell

Of cannibal devourers! right applied,

No starving wretch the land of freedom stains-
If poor, employment finds; if old, demands,
If sick, if maimed, his miserable due;

650

And will, if young, repay the fondest care.
Sweet sets the sun of stormy life; and sweet 660
The morning shines, in mercy's dews arrayed.
Lo how they rise! these families of heaven!
That, chief, (but why, ye bigots! why so late ?)
Where blooms and warbles glad a rising age;
What smiles of praise! And, while their song ascends,
The listening seraph lays his lute aside.

'Hark! the gay muses raise a nobler strain, With active nature, warm impassioned truth, Engaging fable, lucid order, notes

Of various string, and heart-felt image filled.
Behold! I see the dread delightful school
Of tempered passions and of polished life
Restored behold! the well dissembled scene
Calls from embellished eyes the lovely tear,
Or lights up mirth in modest cheeks again.
Lo! vanished monster-land. Lo! driven away
Those that Apollo's sacred walks profane—
Their wild creation scattered, where a world
Unknown to nature, Chaos more confused,

670

O'er the brute scene its ouran-outangs pours;

Detested forms! that, on the mind impressed, 681
Corrupt, confound, and barbarize an age.
'Behold! all thine again the sister-arts,
Thy graces they, knit in harmonious dance.
Nursed by the treasure from a nation drained
Their works to purchase, they to nobler rouse
Their untamed genius, their unfettered thought;
Of pompous tyrants and of dreaming monks
The gaudy tools and prisoners no more.

'Lo! numerous domes a Burlington confess- 690
For kings and senates fit; the palace see!
The temple breathing a religious awe;
Even framed with elegance the plain retreat,
The private dwelling. Certain in his aim,
Taste, never idly working, saves expense.

'See! sylvan scenes, where art alone pretends To dress her mistress and disclose her charmsSuch as a Pope in miniature has shown, A Bathurst o'er the widening forest spreads, And such as form a Richmond, Chiswick, Stowe.

701

'August around what public works I see!
Lo! stately streets, lo! squares that court the breeze;
In spite of those to whom pertains the care
Ingulfing more than founded Roman ways,
Lo! rayed from cities o'er the brightened land,
Connecting sea to sea, the solid road.

Lo! the proud arch (no vile exactor's stand)
With easy sweep bestrides the chasing flood.
See! long canals, and deepened rivers join
Each part with each, and with the circling main
The whole enlivened isle. Lo! ports expand, 711
Free as the winds and waves, their sheltering arms.
Lo streaming comfort o'er the troubled deep,
On every pointed coast the lighthouse towers;

And, by the broad imperious mole repelled,
Hark! how the baffled storm indignant roars.'

As thick to view these varied wonders rose, Shook all my soul with transport, unassured The Vision broke; and on my waking eye Rushed the still ruins of dejected Rome.

NOTES TO LIBERTY

་

720

The poem was the result of Thomson's tour on the Continent, taken, in 1730-31, in company with young Charles Talbot. It may have been suggested by Addison's Letter from Italy. Thomson intended it to be, and even regarded it as, his greatest work. But it was unpopular from the first, and it has remained unread since Johnson gave up the attempt. That critic had hardly begun to read it when he laid it aside, because he did not think Liberty to be in need of either praise or defence; and for that reason he hazarded neither commendation nor censure. He noticed, however, that the public laid it on a high shelf to harbour spiders and to gather dust'. Yet the fact remains that Liberty, though on the whole tedious, contains learning, eloquence, imagination, and rises at times to altitudes of true poetic vision, more especially in the fourth and fifth parts. Thomson would doubtless have done better if he had kept to his original plan of presenting a poetical landscape of various countries, mixed with moral observations on their government '-much as Goldsmith afterwards did in The Traveller. Nature was his theme rather than the history of civilization.

Liberty was published in separate parts in 1735 and 1736. Of Part I, 3,000 copies were printed; of Parts II and III, 2,000; and of Parts IV and V, only 1,000-a gradual reduction which shows the comparative and unexpected failure of the work with the reading public.

PART I, line 1 O my lamented Talbot. Charles Richard Talbot, only son of the Solicitor-General. On the recommendation of Dr. Rundle, Thomson had been selected as young Talbot's travelling tutor on the Continent, in 1730-31. They visited Italy together. In September, 1733, young Talbot died, and Thomson here laments his early death. He was a few years afterwards

to lament the death of the father, Lord Chancellor Talbot, in 'Memorial Verses', which are placed among the Miscellaneous Poems.

I. 83 the two sires. L. J. Brutus and Virginius.-T.

I. 242 Via Sacra.-T.

I. 247, 248 M. Angelo Buonaroti, Palladio, and Raphael D'Urbino-the three great modern masters in sculpture, architecture, and painting.-T.

I. 273 Yon wild retreat. Tusculum is reckoned to have stood at a place now called Grotta Ferrata, a convent of monks.-T.

I. 276 the ship-forsaken bay. The Bay of Mola (anciently Formiae) into which Homer brings Ulysses and his companions. Near Formiae Cicero had a villa.-T.

I. 288 Campagna Felice, adjoining to Capua.—T.

I. 290 The coast of Baiae, which was formerly adorned with the works mentioned in the following lines; and where, amidst many magnificent ruins, those of a temple erected to Venus are still to be seen.-T.

I. 303 All along this coast the ancient Romans had their winter retreats; and several populous cities stood.-T.

PART II, line 57 Civil Tyranny.-T.

II. 63 The Pyramids.-T.

II. 65 The Tyrants of Egypt.-T.

II. 138 A mountain near Athens.-T.

II. 142 Two rivers between which Athens was situated.-T. II. 157 The Areopagus, or Supreme Court of Judicature, which Solon reformed and improved: and the council of Four Hundred, by him instituted. In this council all affairs of state were deliberated, before they came to be voted in the assembly of the people.-T.

II. 174 Pisa, or Olympia, the city where the Olympic games were celebrated.-T.

II. 180 The Straits of Thermopylae.-T.

II. 197 Xenophon.-T.

II. 222 Socrates.-T.

II. 272 Homer.-T.

II. 323 When Demetrius besieged Rhodes, and could have reduced the city by setting fire to that quarter of it where stood the house of the celebrated Protogenes, he chose rather to raise the siege than hazard the burning of a famous picture called Jasylus, the masterpiece of that painter.-T.

II. 442 So the Kings of Persia were called by the Greeks.-T. II. 453 The peace made by Antalcidas, the Lacedemonian ad

miral, with the Persians; by which the Lacedemonians abandoned all the Greeks established in the lesser Asia, to the dominion of the King of Persia.-T.

II. 459 Athens had been dismantled by the Lacedemonians, at the end of the first Peloponnesian war, and was at this time restored by Conon to its former splendour.-T.

II. 470 The Peloponnesian war.-T.

II. 478 Pelopidas and Epaminondas.-T.

II. 480 The battle of Cheronaea, in which Philip of Macedon utterly defeated the Greeks.-T.

PART III, line 7 The last struggles of liberty in Greece.-T.
III. 15 Lacinium, a promontory in Calabria.-T.

III. 32 Pythagoras.-T.

III. 34 Samos, over which then reigned the tyrant Polycrates. -T.

III. 37 The southern parts of Italy and Sicily, so called because of the Grecian colonies there settled.-T.

III. 38 His scholars were enjoined silence for five years.-T. III. 57 The four cardinal virtues.-T.

III. 244 Rha, the ancient name of the Volga.-T.

III. 245 The Caspian Sea.-T.

III. 264 The King of Macedonia.-T.

III. 286 The Isthmian games were celebrated at Corinth.-T. III. 369 Carthage.-T.

III. 390 Tib. Gracchus.-T.

III. 465 Publius Servilius Rullus, tribune of the people, proposed an Agrarian Law, in appearance very advantageous for the people, but destructive of their liberty and which was defeated by the eloquence of Cicero in his speech against Rullus. -T.

III. 489 the dark third.

Tiberius.-T.

III. 496 Thrasea Paetus, put to death by Nero. Tacitus introduces the account he gives of his death, thus :-' After having inhumanly slaughtered so many illustrious men, he (Nero) burned at last with a desire of cutting off virtue itself in the person of Thrasea,' &c.-T.

III. 505 Antoninus Pius, and his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, afterwards called Antoninus Philosophus.-T.

III. 511 Constantine's arch, to build which that of Trajan was destroyed, sculpture having been then almost entirely lost.-T.

III. 515 The ancient Sarmatia contained a vast tract of country running all along the north of Europe and Asia.-T.

III. 527, 528 See Winter, 809 seqq.