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, Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd, Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. 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 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 Of all your empire; that where Britain's pow'r 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? * Alluding to the calamities at 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 *Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783. |