This outrageous language, which has been encouraged and kept alive by every art, has already done incredible mischief. For a long time, even amidst the desolations of war and the insults of hostile laws daily accumulated on 50 one another, the American leaders seem to have had the greatest difficulty in bringing up their people to a declaration of total independence. But the court gazette accom plished what the abettors of independence had attempted in vain. When that disingenuous compilation, and strange 55 medley of railing and flattery, was adduced as a proof of the united sentiments of the people of Great Britain, there was a great change throughout all America. The tide of popular affection, which had still set towards the parent country, begun immediately to turn, and to flow with great 60 rapidity in a contrary course. Far from concealing these wild declarations of enmity, the author of the celebrated pamphlet, which prepared the minds of the people for independence, insists largely on the multitude and the spirit of these addresses; and he draws an argument from them, 65 which (if the fact was as he supposes) must be irresistible. For I never knew a writer on the theory of government so partial to authority as not to allow, that the hostile mind of the rulers to their people did fully justify a change of government; nor can any reason whatever be given, why one 70 people should voluntarily yield any degree of preëminence to another, but on a supposition of great affection and benevolence towards them. Unfortunately your rulers, trusting to other things, took no notice of this great principle of connexion. From the beginning of this affair, they have done 75 all they could to alienate your minds from your own kindred; and if they could excite hatred enough in one of the parties towards the other, they seemed to be of opinion that they had gone half the way towards reconciling the quarrel. Tribute to the Memory of his Son (From Letter to a Noble Lord) Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in 5 which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His 10 Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. HE would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting 15 reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have re-purchased the bounty of the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature; and had no 20 enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied. But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has 25 ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours, I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the 30 earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he 35 submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. 40 I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are 45 at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who 50 should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent. 55 WILLIAM COLLINS Ode (Written in the beginning of the year 1746) How sleep the brave who sink to rest 5 10 5 10 15 By fairy hands their knell is rung, To dwell a weeping hermit there! Ode to Evening If ought of oaten stop, or pastoral song, May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Thy springs and dying gales, O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun O'erhang his wavy bed: Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat, His small but sullen horn, As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum: Now teach me, maid composed, To breathe some softened strain, Whose numbers, stealing through thy darkening vale May not unseemly with its stillness suit, As, musing slow, I hail 20 Thy genial loved return! For when thy folding-star arising shows His paly circlet, at his warning lamp The fragrant Hours, and elves Who slept in flowers the day, And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, The pensive Pleasures sweet, Prepare thy shadowy car. 25 Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallowed pile Reflect its last cool gleam. But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, That from the mountain's side Views wilds, and swelling floods, And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires, The gradual dusky veil. 'While Spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont, 30 335 40 While sallow Autumn fills thy lap with leaves; 45 Or Winter, yelling through the troublous air, So long, sure-found beneath the sylvan shed, Shall Fancy, Friendship, Science, rose-lipped Health, And hymn thy favorite name! |