ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK.

Reflections fuggefted by the conclufion of the former book.-Peace among the nations recommended, on the ground of their common fellowship in forrow, -Prodigies enumerated.-Sicilian earthquakes.Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by fin.

-God the agent in them.-The philofophy that ftops at fecondary caufes reproved.-Our own late mifcarriages accounted for.-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau.-But the pulpit, not Satire, the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advertiser of engraved fermons.—Petitmaitre parfon. The good preacher.-Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.-Story-tellers and jefters in the pulpit reproved.—Apostrophe to popular applaufe.-Retailers of ancient philofophy expoftulated with.-Sum of the whole matter.—Effects of facerdotal mifmanagement on the laity.-Their folly and extravagance.-The mifchiefs of profufion.Profufion itself, with all its confequent evils, af cribed, as to its principal caufe, to the want of dif cipline in the universities.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

OH for a lodge in fome vaft wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of fhade,
Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or fuccessful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My foul is fick, with ev'ry day's report

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 fever'd as the flax

That falls afunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colour'd like his own; and, having pow'r

T'enforce the wrong, for fuch a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands interfected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interpos'd
Make enemies of nations, who had else,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and moft to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadeft, fouleft blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his fweat
With ftripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when the fees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man, feeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
I would not have a flave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That finews bought and fold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Juft eftimation priz'd above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no flaves at home.-Then why abroad?

And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the bleffing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through ev'ry vein

Of all your empire; that where Britain's pow'r
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

Sure there is need of focial intercourse, Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, Between the nations, in a world that feems To toll the death-bell of its own decease, And by the voice of all its elements

To preach the gen'ral doom*. When were the winds

Let flip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves fo haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors + from above,

* Alluding to the calamities at Jamaica.

† August 18, 1783.

Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,

Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' old
And crazy earth has had her shaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet feem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demauds
A longer refpite, unaccomplish'd yet;
Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breaft who smites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that, where all deserve
And ftand expos'd by common peccancy

To what no few have felt, there should be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie fcatter'd where the fhapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the sprightly chord

*Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.