The onfet, and irregular. At length
One eminent above the reft, for ftrength,
For ftratagem, or courage, or for all,
Was chofen leader : him they ferv'd in war,
And him in peace, for fake of warlike deeds.
Rev'renc'd no lefs. Who could with him compare?
Or who fo worthy to controul themselves
As he whose prowess had fubdu'd their foes?
Thus war affording field for the display
Of virtue, made one chief, whom times of peace;
Which have their exigencies too, and call
For skill in government, at length made king.
King was a name too proud for man to wear
With modefty and meeknefs; and the crown,
So dazzling in their eyes who fet it on,
Was fure t' intoxicate the brows it bound.
It is the abject property of most,
That being parcel of the common mass,
And destitute of means to raise themselves,
They fink and fettle lower than they need.
They know not what it is to feel within,
A comprehenfive faculty, that grafps
Great purposes with ease, that turns and wields,
Almoft without an effort, plans too vast
For their conception, which they cannot move.
Confcious of impotence, they foon grow drunk
With gazing, when they see an able man
Step forth to notice; and befotted thus,
Build him a pedeftal, and say, Stand there,
And be our admiration and our praise.
They roll themfelves before him in the duft,
Then moft deferving in their own account
When moft extravagant in his applause,
As if exalting him they rais'd themselves.
Thus by degrees, felf-cheated of their found
And fober judgment, that he is but man,
They demi-deify and fume him fo,
That in due feafon he forgets it too.
Inflated and aftrut with felf-conceit,
He gulps the windy diet, and ere long,
Adopting their mistake, profoundly thinks
The world was made in vain, if not for him.
Thenceforth they are his cattle: drudges, born
To bear his burdens; drawing in his gears
And fweating in his fervice, his caprice
Becomes the foul that animates them all.
He deems a thousand, or ten thousand lives,
Spent in the purchase of renown for him,
An eafy reck'ning, and they think the fame.
Thus kings were first invented, and thus kings
Were burnish'd into heroes, and became
The arbiters of this terraqueous fwamp,
Storks among frogs, that have but croak'd and died.
Strange, that fuch folly as lifts bloated man
To eminence fit only for a god,
Should ever drivel out of human lips,
Ev'n in the cradled weakness of the world!
Still stranger much, that when at length mankind
Had reach'd the finewy firmness of their youth,
And could difcriminate and argue well
On fubjects more myfterious, they were yet
Babes in the cause of freedom, and fhould fear
And quake before the gods themselves had made.
But above measure strange, that neither proof
Of fad experience, nor examples fet
By fome whose patriot virtue has prevail'd,
Can even now, when they are grown mature
In wisdom, and with philofophic deeps
Familiar, ferve t' emancipate the rest!
Such dupes are men to custom, and fo prone
To rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead
A courfe of long obfervance for its use,
That even fervitude, the worst of ills,
Because deliver'd down from fire to fon,
Is kept and guarded as a facred thing.
But is it fit, or can it bear the shock
Of rational difcuffion, that a man,
Compounded and made up like other men
Of elements tumultuous, in whom luft
And folly in as ample measure meet
As in the bofoms of the flaves he rules,
Should be a defpot abfolute, and boast
Himself the only freeman of his land?
Should, when he pleases, and on whom he will
Wage war, with any or with no pretence
Of provocation giv'n or wrong
And force the beggarly laft doit, by means
That his own humour dictates, from the clutch
Of poverty, that thus he may procure
His thousands, weary of penurious life,
A splendid opportunity to die?
Say ye, who (with lefs prudence than of old
Jotham afcrib'd to his affembled trees
In politic convention) put your trust
I' th' fhadow of a bramble, and reclin'd
In fancied peace beneath his dang'rous branch,
Rejoice in him, and celebrate his sway,
Where find ye paffive fortitude? Whence fprings
Your felf-denying zeal, that holds it good
To stroke the prickly grievance, and to hang
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