Chapter V: Introduction: Nov. 20, 1797 (4)

Thy sophist veil, dread goddess, wear,
Falsehood insidiously impart;
Thy philosophic train, be there,
To taint the mind, corrupt the heart;
The gen’rous virtues of our isle,
Teach us to hate and to revile;
Our glorious Charter’s faults to scan,
Time-sanction’d truths despise, and preach THY RIGHTS OF MAN.
AN ENGLISH JACOBIN.

[The original poem, of which the above is an imitation, is
subjoined:—

HYMN TO ADVERSITY.

BY THOMAS GRAY.

Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
Thou tamer of the human breast,
Whose iron scourge, and torturing hour,
The bad affright, afflict the best!
Bound in thy adamantine chain,
The proud are taught to taste of pain,
And purple tyrants vainly groan,
With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.

When first thy sire to send on earth
Virtue, his darling child, designed,
To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
And bade thee form her infant mind,
Stern, rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
With patience many a year she bore:
What sorrow was, thou bad’st her know,
And from her own she learnt to melt at others’ woe.

Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
Self-pleasing Folly’s idle brood,
Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
And leave us leisure to be good.
Light they disperse, and with them go
The summer friend, the flattering foe;
By vain prosperity received,
To her they vow their truth, and are again believed.

Wisdom, in sable garb arrayed,
Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
And Melancholy, silent maid,
With leaden eye that loves the ground,
Still on thy solemn steps attend:
Warm Charity, the general friend,
With Justice, to herself severe,
And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.

O, gently on thy suppliant’s head,
Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
Nor circled with the vengeful band
(As by the impious thou art seen),
With thundering voice, and threatening mien,
With screaming Horror’s funeral cry,
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.

Thy form benign, O goddess! wear,
Thy milder influence impart,
Thy philosophic train be there,
To soften not to wound my heart.
The generous spark extinct revive;
Teach me to love and to forgive;
Exact my own defects to scan,
What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.—ED.]

No. XXI.

April 2, 1798.

We promised in our Sixteenth Number, that though we should not proceed regularly with the publication of the Didactic Poem, the PROGRESS OF MAN,—a work which, indeed, both from its bulk, and from the erudite nature of the subject, would hardly suit with the purposes of a Weekly Paper,—we should, nevertheless, give from time to time such extracts from it as we thought were likely to be useful to our readers, and as were in any degree connected with the topics or events of the times.

The following extract is from the 23rd Canto of this admirable and instructive Poem;—in which the author (whom, by a series of accidents, which we have neither the space, nor indeed the liberty, to enumerate at present, we have discovered to be MR. HIGGINS, of _St. Mary Axe_) describes the vicious refinement of what is called civilized society, in respect to marriage; contends with infinite spirit and philosophy against the factitious sacredness and indissolubility of that institution; and paints in glowing colours the happiness and utility (in a moral as well as political view) of an arrangement of an opposite sort, such as prevails in countries which are yet under the influence of pure and unsophisticated nature.

In illustration of his principles upon this subject, the author alludes to a popular production of the German Drama, the title of which is the “REFORMED HOUSEKEEPER” [_The Stranger_], which he expresses a hope of seeing transfused into the language of this country.

THE PROGRESS OF MAN.