Forced fruits to tear from their unnative soil?
Or, storing every harvest in thy ports,
To plough the dreadful, all-producing wave?"
Here paused the Goddess. By the pause assured,
In trembling accents thus I moved my prayer:
"O first and most benevolent of powers!
Come from eternal splendours, here on earth,
Against despotic pride, and rage, and lust,
To shield mankind; to raise them to assert
The native rights and honour of their race :
Teach me, thy lowest subject, but in zeal
Yielding to none, the progress of thy reign,
And with a strain from thee enrich the Muse.
As thee alone she serves, her patron thou
And great inspirer be! Then will she joy,
Through narrow life her lot and private shade.
And when her venal voice she barters vile,
Or to thy open or thy secret foes,
May ne'er those sacred raptures touch her more,
By slavish hearts unfelt! and may her song
Sink in oblivion with the nameless crew,
Vermin of state! to thy o'erflowing light
That owe their being, yet betray thy cause."
Then, condescending kind, the heavenly Power
Return'd: "What here, suggested by the scene,
I slight unfold, record and sing at home,
In that blest isle, where (so we spirits move)
With one quick effort of my will I am.
There Truth unlicensed walks, and dares accost
Even kings themselves, the monarchs of the free!
Fix'd on my rock, there an indulgent race
O'er Britons wield the sceptre of their choice:
And there, to finish what his sires began,
A prince behold, for me who burns sincere,
Even with a subject's zeal. He my great work
Will, parent-like, sustain; and added give
The touch the Graces and the Muses owe.
For Britain's glory swells his panting breast;
And ancient arts he emulous revolves:
His pride, to let the smiling heart abroad,
Through clouds of pomp, that but conceal the man;
To please, his pleasure; bounty, his delight;
And all the soul of Titus dwells in him."
Hail, glorious theme! But how, alas! shall verse,
From the crude stores of mortal language drawn,
How, faint and tedious, sing what, piercing deep,
The Goddess flash'd at once upon my soul?
For, clear precision all, the tongue of gods
Is harmony itself; to every ear
Familiar known, like light to every eye.
Meantime disclosing ages, as she spoke,
In long succession pour'd their empires forth;
Scene after scene, the human drama spread;
And still th' embodied picture rose to sight.
O thou to whom the Muses owe their flame;
Who bidd'st beneath the pole Parnassus rise,
And Hippocrenè flow; with thy bold ease,
The striking force, the lightning of thy thought,
And thy strong phrase, that rolls profound and clear,
O gracious Goddess! re-inspire my song;
While I, to nobler than poetic fame
Aspiring, thy commands to Britons bear.
Liberty traced from the pastoral ages, and the first uniting of neighbouring families into civil government. The several establishments of Liberty, in Egypt, Persia, Phoenicia, Palestine, slightly touched upon, down to her great establishment in Greece. Geographical description of Greece. Sparta and Athens, the two principal states of Greece, described. Influence of Liberty over all the Grecian states, with regard to their Government, their Politeness, their Virtues, their Arts and Sciences. The vast superiority it gave them, in point of force and bravery, over the Persians, exemplified by the action of Thermopylæ, the battle of Marathon, and the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Its full exertion and most beautiful effects in Athens. Liberty the source of free philosophy. The various schools which took their rise from Socrates. Enumeration of Fine Arts: Eloquence, Poetry, Music, Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture; the effects of Liberty in Greece, and brought to their utmost perfection there. Transition to the modern state of Greece. Why Liberty declined, and was at last entirely lost, among the Greeks. Concluding Reflection.
THUS spoke the Goddess of the fearless eye,
And, at her voice, renew'd, the Vision rose :
First, in the dawn of time, with eastern swains,
In woods, and tents, and cottages, I lived;
While on from plain to plain they led their flocks,
In search of clearer spring and fresher field.
These, as increasing families disclosed
The tender state, I taught an equal sway.
Few were offences, properties, and laws.
Beneath the rural portal, palm-o'erspread,
The father-senate met. There Justice dealt,
With Reason then and Equity the same,
Free as the common air, her prompt decree;
Nor yet had stain'd her sword with subject's blood.
The simpler arts were all their simple wants
Had urged to light. But instant, these supplied,
Another set of fonder wants arose,
And other arts with them of finer aim ;
Till, from refining want to want impell'd,
The mind by thinking push'd her latent powers,
And life began to glow, and arts to shine.
"At first, on brutes alone the rustic war
Launch'd the rude spear; swift, as he glared along,
On the grim lion, or the robber-wolf.
For then young sportive Life was void of toil,
Demanding little, and with little pleased :
But when to manhood grown, and endless joys,
Led on by equal toils, the bosom fired,
Lewd, lazy Rapine broke primeval peace,
And, hid in caves and idle forests drear,
From the lone pilgrim and the wandering swain,
Seized what he durst not earn. Then brother's blood
First, horrid, smoked on the polluted skies.
Awful in justice, then the burning youth,
Led by their temper'd sires, on lawless men,
The last worst monsters of the shaggy wood,
Turn'd the keen arrow and the sharpen'd spear.
Then war grew glorious. Heroes then arose,
Who, scorning coward self, for others lived,
Toil'd for their ease, and for their safety bled.
West with the living day to Greece I came :
Earth smiled beneath my beam: the Muse before
Sonorous flew, that low till then in woods
Had tuned the reed, and sigh'd the shepherd's pain;
But now, to sing heroic deeds, she swell'd
A nobler note, and bade the banquet burn.
"For Greece my sons of Egypt I forsook :
A boastful race, that in the vain abyss
Of fabling ages loved to lose their source,
And, with their river, traced it from the skies.
While there my laws alone despotic reign'd,
And king, as well as people, proud obey'd,
I taught them science, virtue, wisdom, arts;
By poets, sages, legislators sought;
The school of polish'd life and human-kind.
But when mysterious Superstition came,
And, with her Civil Sister1 leagued, involved
In studied darkness the desponding mind,
Then tyrant Power the righteous scourge unloosed:
For yielded reason speaks the soul a slave.
Instead of useful works, like Nature's, great,
Enormous, cruel wonders crush'd the land ;
And round a tyrant's tomb,2 who none deserved,
For one vile carcass perish'd countless lives.
Then the great Dragon, couch'd amid his floods,
Swell'd his fierce heart, and cried- This flood is mine,
"Tis I that bid it flow.' But, undeceived,
His frenzy soon the proud blasphemer felt ;
Felt that, without my fertilizing power,
Suns lost their force, and Niles o'erflow'd in vain.
Nought could retard me: nor the frugal state
Of rising Persia, sober in extreme,
Beyond the pitch of man, and thence reversed
Into luxurious waste: nor yet the ports
Of old Phoenicia, first for letters famed,
That paint the voice, and silent speak to sight,
Of arts prime source and guardian; by fair stars
First tempted out into the lonely deep;
1 Civil Sister:' civil tyranny.
2 Tyrant's tomb:' the pyramids.
''Dragon:' the tyrants of Egypt; see Ezekiel xxix.
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