ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK. Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow. -Prodigies enumerated.-Sicilian earthquakes. -Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin.-God the agent in them.-The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved.-Our own late miscarriages accounted for.-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontaine-Bleau.— But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advertiser of engraved sermons.-Petit-maitre parson.-The good preacher.-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved.-Apostrophe to popular applause.Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated with.-Sum of the whole matter.-Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity—Their folly and extravagance.-The mischiefs of profusion.-Profusion itself, with all it's consequent evils, ascribed, as to it's principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities. THE TASK. BOOK II. THE TIME-PIECE. O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd, Of wrong and outrage, with which Earth is fill'd. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man; the nat❜ral bond Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax, He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour'd like his own; and having pow'r T'enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause I had much rather be myself the slave, And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no slaves at home-Then why abroad? And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave, Sure there is need of social intercourse, Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, Between the nations in a world, that seems To toll the deathbell of it's own decease, And by the voice of all it's elements To preach the gen'ral doom*. When were the winds Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? * Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica. August 18, 1783. Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd, Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' old To what no few have felt, there should be peace, Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now Lie scatter'd, where the shapely column stood. Her palaces are dust. In all her streets The voice of singing and the sprightly chord * Alluding to the fog, that covered both Europe and Asia during the whole summer of 1783. |