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.-Qur own late miscarriages 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 sermons.-Petit-maitre parson.-The good preacher.-Pictures 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 its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline 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 pained,
My foul is fick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is fevered as the flax,

That falls afunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and having power

To 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 interpofed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and deftroys; And, worse than all, and moft to be deplored As human nature's broadeft, fouleft blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With ftripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart Weeps, when fhe fees inflicted on a beaft. Then what is man? And what man, seeing 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 fleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth, That finews bought and fold have ever earned. No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Juft eftimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the flave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no flaves at home-Then why abroad? And they themselves once ferried over the wave, That parts us, are emancipate and loofed.

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 is noble, and befpeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the bleffing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein

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

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

To preach the general doom*. When were the winds
Let flip with fuch a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves fo haughtily overleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors + from above,
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,
Have kindled beacons in the fkies; and the old
And crazy earth has had her fhaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her ufual reft.

Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica.

+ Auguft 18, 1783.

Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the clofe of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;
Still they are frowning fignals, 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 exposed 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 fcattered, where the shapely column ftood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry, and dance, and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause;

While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone.

How does the earth receive him?-With what figns

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