The Poetical Works of Percival Stockdale :: :: University of Virginia Library

------ Casia, atque aliis intexens suavibus herbis,
Mollia luteola pingit vaccinia caltha.
Et vos, O Lauri, carpam; et Te, proxima, myrte;
Sic positæ quoniam suaves miscetis odores.
Virgil. Eclog. II. ver. 49.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD CAMDEN.

1777.

Once more, Elysian isle,
Receive me with thy vernal smile;
Nor to a grateful muse
Thy powerful aid refuse:
Propitious to the poet's mind,
Thy striking scenes impart;
His fancy warm, improve his art;
Who from the anxious follies of mankind,
Who from the selfish, and the splendid throng,
Harrassed with trifles, joys to flee
To sacred solitude, and thee,
To wake his long-neglected song;

By pleasing melancholy rapt, delights to rove,
On thy bright verdure, through some twilight grove;
There to recall the mighty dead,
Who greatly thought, or greatly bled;
To see, through fancy's magic eye,
Lycurgus plan, and Cato die;
There, in poetic luxury to grieve;
To melt in strong imagined woe;
The sympathetic sigh to heave;
Till, as the sweet enchantment steals,
It nobly triumphs, and he feels
Enthusiastic tears for struggling virtue flow.

And oft the bard's elastic mind
To lighter images inclined;
In concord with Anacreon's measure,
Courts the jovial gods of pleasure;
For livelier aid invokes the tuneful maids;
And feels a modern Cyprus in thy shades.
Then ideas fair, and gay
Chace the rapid hours away;
Then, created by the muse,
A festal groupe the poet views;

Of dance, of song, of love, the powers,
Their sprightly revels hold amid thy bowers:
Bacchus, and his train are there;
Rosy Cupids, light as air,
Meet his warm, enamoured eye,
Scattering odours as they fly.
He hears the flute's relaxing sound;
A purple glory spreads around:
The graces, and the Cyprian queen
Advance and dignify the scene;
The graces model beauty's pride,
Their lustre to her charms apply,
Direct the lightning of her eye,
Wave her celestial robe, and o'er her steps preside.
Through all his frame he feels her soft controul;
Each motion charms the sight; each look pervades the soul.

Since, then, alike the grave, and gay,
The moral, and the sportive lay
I cultivate in thee, my favourite isle,
And all my pungent woes beguile;

Oh! let thy rural genius deign
Again to animate my strain;
Enlarge my judgment, guide my fire,
For with no mean ambition I aspire
O'er a fair sister-isle thy beauties to diffuse:
To consecrate thy humble name,
And rank it, in poetic fame,
With Cooper's-Hill, with Windsor, with Vaucluse;
From rigorous time to vindicate my theme;
To give, by my descriptive page,
Congenial minds, through every age,
In thee to trace the bold, romantic shore;
From the steep mountain to explore
The charms of the contiguous vale,
Where blooms the pastoral scene; where breathes the pastoral tale;
Where nature knows not art's alloy,
The vale of peace, and unembittered joy:
To bid thy flowers perennial blow,
Thy trees with never-fading verdure grow,
In silver strains thy soft Medina flow,
Winding, and clear, and smooth, as Arno's hallowed stream.

Oh! Knighton, where the sight pursues
Rich, various, and majestic views;
Oft, when the early lark ascends the skies,
Let me from life's oblivion rise,
And to thy land-mark's height repair,
To breathe its down's elastic air;
With eye poetic to survey
The glories of the new-born day;
Where scenes of nature, works of art,
Expand the mind, and move the heart;
Where, on the soul, the beautiful, and grand
Impress the ocean, and the land;
Here, an extended vale of sweets
The senses, and the fancy greets;
There, at Spithead, with canvass furled,
Britannia's floating castles ride,
The spirit strong that armed their pride,
That sent their thunder, oft, round an affrighted world.

When thus, by prospect, and by thought,
My mind to harmony is wrought;
Already conscious of the rising strain,
The path to Knighton I regain.
My progress is arrested near the vane;

For there I view, below, the mansion, and the trees,
Not yet saluted by the gentlest breeze;
And there I take my favourite stand,
Their solemn graces to command.
'Tis silence, all; and all around
I feel the force of rural ground.
But, hark! the distant voice of Chanticleer,
With note protracted soothes my ear;
And hark, I hear attentive Tray
The flock directing on their way.
While yet no human triflers, vain, and rude,
On thoughts contemplative intrude;
No noise, nor tinsel of the day;
The mansion says, or seems to say;
(The mansion, is a fabric old,
Ivy, and yew it's walls infold;
A grove, in high, and verdant pride,
Extends a winding length on either side;
The nod majestic of the groves
Their mansion's oracle approves.)

“Although my blooming ground is low,
Even from that ground a bard should know,

That as this hallowed house, at first was given
To spirits who conversed with heaven,
None yet admittance here should find
But beings of exalted mind.
Or they whose gentle natures could not bear
Society's inclement air;
Who, vice deserting, but to virtue true,
Have bid a faithless world adieu.
Or they who have a right to claim
A sacred, but a prostituted name,
That such a god-like habit comprehends!
The few sincere, and ardent Friends,
Whose lives, nor interest, nor low pleasure blends,
But noble means, exerted still for noble ends:
Or poets blessed with rich, expanded views,
With souls impassioned by the muse;
Or they, whose generous bosoms prove
All the divine romance of love.”

The charms of Shanklin, now their picture claim;
Shanklin, a rude, and unrecorded name,
Asserts it's title to poetic fame.
Here nature, spurning art's controul,
Surprises, and absorbs the soul;

Here soars the poet, all, impassioned mind,
And leaves his earthly clog behind.
Then let the form, and pressure of the place
With style unlaboured my description grace;
It's free, wild beauties let the bard rehearse,
With native strength, in corresponding verse:
Let it's own genius his attempt inspire
With negligent, with rapid fire;
Draw forth expression bold, the raptures of the lyre.

Here, on old ocean's brink,
Oh! be it oft my bliss to think;
And let my vigorous, my aspiring thought
To genuine poetry be wrought.
Let me from fair, and from majestic scenes,
Catch all, their form, their hue, their disposition, means.
Let the muse bear me o'er the main;
And let me Neptune's region find
Expressive of the poet's mind,
As active, and as large as his domain.
To gain more images, I'll draw
My contemplation from the deep;
Turn to the shore's abrupt, and towering steep,
That rears it's head aloft, and strikes with pleasing awe.

But lo! the rugged cliffs between,
Steals on my view a mild, contrasted scene;
A blooming valley to my memory brings
All that my long-neglected Ovid sings,
In his harmonious, and descriptive page,
Of times of better gold, of the primæval age.

The labours, here, of needy art
Nor hurt the eye, nor wound the heart;
Nor nature's liberty restrain,
Nor mark the bondage of the swain.
Spontaneous, here, the hawthorn grows,
And with profusion yields it's fragrant rose.
No modern axe, with unrelenting wound,
Has yet polluted this innoxious ground.
Old beeches, here, exclude meridian day,
And through the vale repeat the shepherd's lay;
For Tityrus, wide their verdure spread,
And canopy his careless head.
No Melibæus, in Sicilian strains,
Of Mars's crimson car,
Of the destructive rage of civil war,
Of merciless prætorian bands,
Let loose on cultivated lands,
Of his invaded fields; of tyrants yet complains.

Congenial scenes to fancy's eye succeed,
The waving field, the flowery mead;
And while her mimic objects rise,
Their imagery to realize,
The neighbouring beauties to explore,
I quit the grandeur of the shore;
Ascend the precipice, with winding way,
And meet the sun's declining ray.
O'er him his clouds fantastic spread,
Hues of ethereal glory shed,
Sable, and violet, and red;
Veil his insufferable blaze of light;
Attract, and fix, and charm the steddy sight;
Mild, yet august, he gilds the summer's eve,
The beauteous landscape loth to leave;
Night's leaden sway the rosy god regrets,
And hesitates, and lingers, while he sets.

The browzing flock, along the verdant slope,
Nor pained by fear, nor lured by hope,
Unconscious of the murdering knife,
Enjoy the blessings of immediate life.
Inbosomed in a deep, and solemn shade,
Nor needing Brown's expensive aid.

The peaceful cottage, hoary grown with age,
Instructs us better than the moral page,
And woos mistaken foppery, to be sage;
Enforces each important theme,
Dissolves the gay, luxurious dream;
Warns us the villa's tawdry show
Allures us to disease, and woe:
Subdues irregular desires,
And kindles in the breast its purer fires;
Of grandeur's pomp corrects the childish awe;
Warns us there's but one flowery way,
Whate'er the sons of dissipation say;
The way the wise have ever trod;
'Tis nature; and it terminates in God;—
Our legislator, this; and that, his easy law.

In it's fine frenzy moves the poet's eye,
Creates new forms 'twixt earth and sky;
Celestial forms, which rise not at the call
Of the great vulgar, or the small.
He sees Hygeia, rosy queen,
With agile flight, and lively mien,
The fair antagonist of grisly Death
Diffuse her aromatic breath;

Impregnate all the circumambient air,
The cottages, and woods, each dryad's care;
Skim o'er the hamlet, and inhale
Her own essential sweets in every gale.
Of aspect soft, tranquillity he sees
Recumbent on the dying breeze:
The placid goddess, on her downy wings,
Her zephyrs bland, her soothing odours brings:
O'er the calm landscape gently floats,
Listening to Philomela's notes.
There, how the peasants are supremely blest,
By solitude, by silence is expressed;
Their sprightly health, by day; by night, their balmy rest.

Harrassed with public life, with generous care,
With all the toil that patriots bear,
Wilkes, by philosophy inspired,
To Shanklin, from applauding crowds retired;
To cherish thoughts exalted, and refined,
To meditate the weal of human kind,
To soothe an attic, and a spartan mind.
There, while, at eve, along the grove he trod;
Sent by Britannia's tutelary god,

Ghosts who inspire to conquer, or to die,
In Roman armour, passed before his eye.
The pensive Cassius, there, with smile severe,
Bade him, the patriot's course undaunted steer.
Next, the humaner Brutus came,
The first, of liberty's illustrious band,
The deathful weapon in his better hand!
It caught Diana's candid ray,
And flashed with momentary day;
For thrice he shook the sword, and thrice approved his flame.

He made the Briton all his own;
Gave him his soul's determined tone;
Our freedom only with his life to yield:
O'er the whole figure of the godlike shade
All the last Roman was displayed;
His arms, his port, his aspect were the same
That met the giant-form at famed Philippi's field .

Say, whither shall the muse next point her flight,
Since landscapes all around allure the sight?
Shall she to lofty Carisbrook urge her wing,
An awful Pharos to each British king?
Where from the mouldering fort she may command
A fair expanse of ocean, and of land.
Or shall she bend her course to Under-way,
A fertile shore for the descriptive lay?
Where sea, and ether's border bound the eye;
On land, where nature's rampart threats the sky:

And where, these noble views between,
The humble cottage beautifies the scene;
The spot surrounding it arrayed
With brilliant flowers, with spreading shade,
And herbage of a lively green.
Let not self-love, my muse, thy powers beguile;
Think not to paint each prospect of this isle;
Presume not from thy limits to depart;
Nature, exhaustless in her stores,
Through heaven, through air, through ocean, and the land,
With a profuse, yet a judicious hand,
Infinite elegance, and grandeur pours,
That mock the poet's fire, that mock the poet's art.

Thrice fortunate, thrice happy isles!
For most in them propitious beauty smiles.
It's fame in Grecian isles the world shall know
As long as Grecian numbers flow.
We feel, in England, all it's powerful sway;
It's generous dictates active to obey.
There every noble deed the sex inspire;
'Tis theirs to animate the soldier's fire,
And wake to extasy the poet's lyre.

And Vectis, too, may boast her numerous fair;
Mild are the charms of her Trohair;
Who can behold, and not admire
Her Lee's vivacity, and fire!
While in my being memory holds a place,
Can I forget what elegance, what grace
In the Delgarnos are combined
With inoffensive wit, with dignity of mind!
If hospitality deserves it's fame;
If poets feel the force of beauty's claim;
Oh! may the muse give splendour to my line,
And bid the name of Worseley shine!
To Christian, too, my gratitude must pay
The tribute of its ardent lay.
The winning beauties of her frame
Her soul's auguster charms proclaim.
Nature, in her, and culture blend
The gay companion, and the zealous friend,
With all the sacred virtues of the wife;
Bright ornament of private, and of publick life !

In this fair island, in a summer's eve
Our common pleasures oft I leave;

And hold my unpremeditated way,
Till night has moved through half her sway:
O'er down, through vale, through grove I stray;
Where Philomela tunes her plaintive lay;
And where to heighten contemplation's hour,
From ancient wall, or gothic tower,
Responsive owls their dirge prolong;
And though their voice is not the ton;
Though fops of taste abhor their song;
Yet he whom nature strongly charms,
Whom true poetic genius warms,
With all the beautiful and grand,
Which then adorn the sky, the sea, the land,
Would rather hear their note of woe
Than all the tricks the Linleys know.
The sweets of solitude completely to display;
To give them philosophick day,
In her full orb , the conscious moon
Arrives at her nocturnal noon;

The moon, whose oracle, through every age,
Inspires the poet, and instructs the sage.
Objects like these were meant, in Heaven's high plan,
As it relates to sublunary man,
To bid us leave low cares, and joys behind;
By them collected, and composed the mind,
By them concentered, with more strength it flows
Through the rich, various, ample fields that fancy shows.

While thus the fair nocturnal queen
Sheds her soft rays on each romantic scene,
Improved, compleated by her orb serene;
While her warm pupil fancy leads
O'er hills, o'er rivulets, o'er meads:
While her attentive student reads
A nervous eloquence in all he sees,
And feels a muse in every breeze,
A spire salutes his sight, that gleams athwart the trees.
The prospect of the venerable fane
Corrects the bard's luxuriant strain;
The sallies of imagination breaks,
And reason from her flowery vision wakes;

Spread it's grave influence all around,
And consecrates Arcadian ground;
Gives a severer majesty to night,
And throws a pleasing horrour o'er the silver light.

Religion lends her salutary aid,
Impressed more strongly by the silvan shade,
Impressed more strongly by the lunar beam,
Propitious ever to the hallowed theme.
She bids him recollect the time,
When he'll despise the trifle, rhyme;
Call to his mind that awful hour,
When nought will cheer his soul but her celestial power.
When he must bid his last adieu
To every rich, and varied view;
No more must haunt Idalian groves,
To meet the graces, and the loves;
Pervade no more, with the quick lightning's glance,
Creation's infinite expanse;
The vernal earth, the star be-spangled sky;
When death shall draw his veil before the poet's eye:

But soon the strong memento fades,
Urged by the temple, through the shades.
For though the sun enlightens idle play,
In which we fritter time away;
Though gilded trifles waste the day;
Even in the calm, and solemn reign of night,
Meteors, and glow-worms mock the sight:
Still virtue's guards insidious foes annoy,
Some gaudy vapour, some delusive joy:
Still we forget the proper thoughts of man,
How life must end, why life began.
Though reason's oracles unfold
Our mad rapacity for gold;
Our airy tenure of a name,
And break the glittering bubble, fame;
Yet the delirium soon returns,
Again the moral fever burns;
Intent on selfish, on luxuriant views,
The miser hoards his wealth; the poet woos his muse.

Then in his bosom bright ideas teem;
Each tender, each exalted theme:
Not the gay follies of the present age,
Nor past barbarity his thoughts engage.

Not to Cornellys' dome his fancy flies,
Where the fell sorceress her dread magic plies.
Breaks friendly, breaks connubial ties;
Untainted honour turns to foul disgrace;
And changes, by her instantaneous wand,
To monstrous shapes the nobles of our land;
Impious transformer of the human race!

Nor doth he muse on sacerdotal gloom;
On abject prayers at the proud Becket's tomb;
On Britain once enslaved by papal Rome:
On the black empire of the priestly tribe,
Who paradise preclude, or open, for a bribe,
Who substitute, for generous deeds,
Unnatural penance, puerile beads,
And blind belief in doating creeds:
Who darken reason's heaven-descended ray,
Usurp fair virtue's rightful sway,
Her golden sceptre of benign command;
And wield an iron rod, with a relentless hand.

To him on brighter scenes intent,
The azure sky, the shade, the moon are lent;

On scenes congenial with the mind;
Endeared by nature to mankind.
Borne by the muse in these excursive hours,
He flies to myrtle and to laurel bowers;
He feels the lover's joys, the lover's woes;
For every sentimental critick knows,
That if the charms of an imaginary dame
Inspire his genius with fictitious flame;
Or, from a real fascinating eye,
If the decisive lightnings fly,
That kindle hope, or wake severest care;
Raise him to bliss, or sink him to despair;—
The sentimental critick knows,
The soul exalted above prose,
That every genuine poet's lyre,
Is most responsive still to Cupid's fire;
That then it plays it's most emphatick part,
So strongly vibrates with its master's heart,
That he, unconscious of the rules of art,
Nor effort, nor elaborate order knows;
But all, spontaneous, just, and strong, and ardent flows.

Well-pleased, in fancy he surveys,
With fancy's mimick tint pourtrays

The fate elysian of the swain,
Who, stranger to his nymph's disdain,
Feels the true zest of Cupid's reign,
His lasting joys enhanced by momentary pain.
Oh! energy of bliss! transporting days!
Superiour far to my aspiring lays!
The fair-one rules with magic sway!
And what strange miracles her spell obey!
His path of life is decked with flowers;
Rapid, and rosy are his hours;
With spirit flushed, he knows no fears:
Knows none but rapture's, and compassion's tears;
For generous love expands the mind,
And bids it glow for all the human kind.
He shines with graces not his own;
His voice assumes a soft, harmonious tone;
Envious the men, and charmed, the fair,
Remark his easy, lively, gallant air:
For happy in himself, his manners tend
Others to please, and to befriend.
Conscious of his unrivalled state,
Whom can he dread; whom can he hate?
Nay, with romantick soul, he pities all,

Whome'er it is his chance to see,
Who are not in her heart enthroned, as he,
Imaginary monarch of this earthly ball!

But when of gold the ruthless power,
And the grim priest, in a tremendous hour,
To woe devoting beauty's prime,
Pander to legal prostitution's crime,
The passion of two hearts defeat,
Which long in unison have beat;
Say, can the most pathetic strain
Describe the lover's agonizing pain?
Solace, from business, pleasure, or the muse,
By love absorbed, his thoughts refuse;
He wastes, in gloom domestic, balmy days;
There, on his drooping soul the poison preys;
There, he's intent his misery to deplore;
To think departed objects, o'er.
He sees the dress, each ornament she wore,
When last with rapture he beheld the fair,
Then of his bliss the cause; but now of his despair.
He sees how gracefully she walked;
Hears with what sense, and harmony she talked;

He hears each word that formed her last adieu;
Feels what expression marked her lingering view.
External signs, while thus he thinks, imply
What strong emotions agitate his breast,
How exquisitely he's distressed:—
He stops;—now moves a quick, now tardy pace;
The rose of youth has left his pallid face;
Abruptly fixed, or voluble, his haggard eye.

Stranger to rest, he'll often roam
(Where can the wounded lover find a home?)
Alas! the fatal dart
Still rankles in his heart!
In the full town, or solitary grove,
Objects that gained high lustre from his love,
Gave ten-fold pleasure to the happy swain,
With fate capricious now conspire,
With hostile gloom reproach his hopeless fire,
And mock intolerable pain.
Dusky, to him, and vapid is the rose,
How fragrant, and how bright soe'er it blows.

In him the senses are all dead;
Their animating friend is fled;
The soul's impression they no longer share;
His soul is hovering round his distant fair.
In ardent thought when he hath passed the night;
Just when the dawn restores her sober light,
Sleep seals his eyes, and a delusive dream,
With flowery prospect, brings his constant theme.
In some soft region like Cythera's isle,
He hears the nymph converse; he sees her smile;
While vernal glories decorate the ground;
While myrtle bowers their odour shed around,
And amorous musick breathes a tender sound.
More soothing is her voice:—but lo! he wakes;—
What barbarous dæmon this fair vision breaks!—
While the gay forms of airy fiction fly,
And real objects wound his eye,
The sun invades him with obtrusive ray,
And his benighted soul o'erwhelms with day.
Long hath he sickened at the light,
And courted, long, the hospitable night.
For when inveloped in her friendly shade,
And on the couch, remote from every witness laid;
He vainly there anticipates relief;

There the fond sigh, unnoticed he can heave;
Give scope to all the luxury of grief,
Unchecked by a tormenting world he longs to leave.

Next, under Phœbe's placid light,
As love another object bright,
A favourite object he pursues;
Fair freedom, next, his genius woos:
And let him hope, the critick, here,
Howe'er acute, howe'er severe,
His just connexion will commend;
For still she's love's inseparable friend.
Where has the goddess found a safe retreat;
Or in what country claims her publick seat?
Her sway no more degenerate Europe shows;
Not where the Thames, nor where the Texel flows;
Nor where Geneva's lake, near Alpine snows,
A scene magnificent compleats
Of nature's grandeur, and her sweets.
For freedom, there, is but an empty name;
A senate, there, impassive to the fame
Of their incorruptible son;
Unmoved by all the laurels he had won,

Of tyranny the most illustrious foe,
Exiled a modern Brutus in Rousseau;
While virtue's hoary pest, Voltaire,
They suffer still to taint their air.
He flies, in fancy, to a distant strand;
Flies to America for British land .
Freedom her votaries there inspires,
And bids them emulate their sires:
They hear her voice, they catch her flame,
It shoots, it thrills through every frame;
And nobly prodigal of breath,
They march undaunted forth to liberty, or death.

Him, by his own sagacious view,
Who all the human privileges knew;
And first to freedom's standard flew,
Hamden he sees, majestick form!
Presiding o'er the civil storm:
Stern Sydney's manes, too, is there,
Their triumphs, their distress to share:
And Russel, shade of amiable renown,
Impassive to a ruthless tyrant's frown,
Reluctant gives his high command,
And animates the patriot-band;
The steel decisive bids them draw;
Bids them assert the generous plan,
The universal cause of man,
Impartial policy, and unobstructed law.

Russel, and Sydney while I sing,
While in their eulogy my numbers flow;
The muse, with jealous, with indignant wing,
Stoops to her quarry, their abandoned foe;
To lasting infamy consigns
Dalrymple, in vindictive lines.
Could thy polluted art their glory stain,
Portentous to a tyrant's reign?

No:—from the putrid marsh, and lake,
As vapours pestilential shroud,
Awhile, the splendid god of day;
And as we soon behold him break
Forth from the black, sulphureous cloud,
And shine with more effulgent ray:—
So they, the prodigies of Charles's age,
Illumine our historic page
With brighter life, with more illustrious death,
Fresh-beaming from the vapour of Dalrymple's breath.

While thus he ranges unconfined,
And glory fires his ardent mind;
While primitive enjoyments are forgot;
The simple objects of the rural vale
Suggest their interesting tale;
The smoak that issues from a neighbouring cot
Reminds him of the peasant's happy lot;
And by the bleating sheep, from their adjacent fold,
With stronger energy the rustic tale is told.

The chaste, the philosophick muse,
Enamoured of these humble views,

Invites him to the sage's favourite home;
Whence that her votary ne'er may wish to roam,
She paints the scenes of public life,
Their tumult, their anxiety, their strife;
Describes the pangs of an illustrious fate;
Tells him, ambition's palm to gain,
To vice exposes, and to pain;
'Tis safety, to be good; 'tis danger, to be great.
She paints the realms of rosy health,
Who dwells not with the pallid lords of wealth;
Who dwells not with the literary train,
Of erudition's toil, of lucubration, vain:
She paints the pure and lasting joys,
Which care, with haggard aspect, ne'er annoys:
Tells him, if genuine bliss he means to know,
He must not soar too high, nor sink too low;
Nor court the gorgeous throne, nor seek the dreary cell;—
With nature, peace, and truth, she bids the wanderer dwell.

I here viewed Mr. Wilkes, in his publick character; as a conspicuous patron, and defender of British freedom. I cannot now recapitulate all his successful exertions for the rights of Englishmen; I shall only mention one, his prosecution of the king's ministers for their Turkish infliction on his domestic securities, by a general warrant; and to this constitutional act, I add the glorious and independent decision of Lord Chief Justice Pratt, for their abolition. Mr. Wilkes's intrepid and persevering opposition to the power of a court, will greatly contribute to make his name interesting to posterity. Whenever any defender of a character high in publick life, can find nothing splendid and magnanimous in it, he lays a particular stress on his private virtues, which have very little connexion with the prosperity of the state, and which it is the duty of every good christian to possess, and to practise. My passage in favor of Mr. Wilkes, is, if I may be allowed to judge of any thing that I have written, luminous, and strong; but I have always highly dissapproved the assassination of Julius Cæsar. 1809.

Where all these fair ladies may be now, I know not. 1809.

The conscious moon, through every distant age,
Hath held a lamp to wisdom. ------
Night-Thoughts.

When I wrote this, she gave masquerades in Soho-square. 1809.

------ Hæret lateri lethalis arundo.
Virgil.

I drew this political, and martial prospect of America, at the commencement of our civil war on that continent. My opinion of an individual, or of a state, is not hastily formed; therefore it is not changed, or influenced by superficial observation, or false narrative. I have by no means inferred from some trivial, and temporary advantages gained by Government on the other side of the Atlantick, nor from the servile ostentation of private correspondence, and report; nor from the pompous tale of the Gazette, that the Americans are divided in their councils; that they want arms, ammunition, courage, and the necessaries of life; or that any of the regal officers deserve the name of generals: therefore I do not yet apprehend the subjugation of our colonies.