“Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with confidence: because we can proceed with intelligence. Whereas in Lot reformations, in what men more zealous than considerate, call making clear work, the whole is generally so crude, so harsh, so indigested; mixed with so much imprudence and so much injustice; so contrary to the whole course of human nature and human institutions, that the very people who are most eager for it, are among the first to grow disgusted at what they have done. Then some part of the abdicated grievance is recalled from its exile in order to become a corrective of the correction. Then the abuse assumes all the credit and popularity of a Reform. The very Idea of purity and disinterestedness in Politics falls into disrepute, and is considered as a vision of hot and inexperienced men; and thus disorders become incurable, not by the virulence of their own quality, but by the unapt and violent nature of the remedies. “Burke's Speech” on presenting to the House of Commons (on the 11th of February, 1780.) a plan for the better security of the independence of parliament.
Conscious that I am about to deliver my sentiments on a subject of the utmost delicacy, I have selected the general motto to all my political lucubrations from an Authority equally respected by both parties. I have taken it from an Orator, whose eloquence enables Englishmen to repeat the names of Demosthenes and Cicero without humiliation; from a Statesman, who has left to our Language a bequest of Glory unrivalled and all our own, in the keen-eyed yet far-sighted genius, with which he has made the profoundest general principles of political wisdom, and even the recondite laws of human passions, hear upon particular messures and passing events. While of the Harangues of Pitt, Fox, and their elder compeers on the most important occurrences, we retain a tew unsatisfactory fragments alone, the very Flies and Weeds of Burke shine to us through the purest amber, imperishably enshrined, and valuable from the precious material of their embalment. I have extracted the passage from that Burke whose latter exertions have rendered his works venerable as oracular voices from the sepulchre of a Patriarch, to the Upholders of the Government and Society in their existing state and order; but from a Speech delivered by him while he was the most beloved, the proudest name with the more anxious Friends of Liberty; while he was the Darling of those, who believing mankind to have been improved are desirous to give to forms of government a similar progression.
From the same anxiety I have been led to introduce my opinions on this most hazardous subject by a preface of a somewhat personal character. And though the title of my address is general, yet, I own, I direct myself more particularly to those among my readers, who from various printed and unprinted calumnies* have judged most unfavourably of my political tenets; and to those, whose favour 1 hiave chanced to win in consequence of a similar, though not equal, mistake. To both I affirm, that the opinions and arguments, I am about to detail, have been the settled convictions of my mind for the last ten or twelve years, with some brief intervals of fluctuation, and those only in lesser points, and known only to the Companions of my Fire-side. From both and from all my readers I solicit a gracious attention to the following explanations: first, on the cougruity of the following numbers with the general Plan and Object of “The Friend;” and secondly, on the charge of arrogance or presumption which may be adduced against the Author for the freedom, with which in these numbers and in others that will follow on other subjects, he presumes to dissent from men of established reputation, or even to doubt of the justice with which the public Laurel-crown, as symbolical of the first Class of Genius and Intellect, has been awarded to Sundry writers since the Revolution, and permitted to wither around the brows of our elder Benefactors, from Hooker to Sir P. Sidney, and from Sir P. Sidney to Jeremy Taylor and Stillingfleet.
First then, as to the consistency of the subject of the following Essay with the proposed Plan of my work, let something be allowed to honest personal motives, a justifiable solicitude to stand well with my Contemporaries in those points, in which I have remained unreproached by my own conscience. Des aliquid famæ. A Reason of far greater importance is derived from the well-grounded Complaint of sober minds, concerning the mode by which political opinions of greatest hazard have been, of late years, so often propagated. This evil cannot be described in more just and lively language than in the words of Paley (p. 395 of the quarto edition of his Moral and Political Philosophy) which, though by him applied to Infidelity, hold equally ot the turbulent errors of polirical Heresy. They are “served up in every shape, that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination; in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem: in interspersed and broken hints; remote and oblique surmises; in books of Travels, of Philosophy, of Natural History; in a word, in any form, rather than the right one, that of a professed and regular disquisition.” Now in claiming for “The Friend” a fair chance of unsuspected admission into the families of Christian Believers and quiet Subjects, I cannot but deem it incumbent on me to accompany my introduction with a full and fair statement of my own political system: not that any considerable portion of my Essays will be devoted 10 politics in any shape, for rarely shall I recur to them except as far as they may happen to be involved in some point of private morality; but that the Encouragers of this Work nmy possess grounds of assurance, that no tenets of a different tendency from these, I am preparing to state, will be met in it. I would fain hope, that even those persons whose political opinions I may run counter to, will not be displeased at seeing the possible objections to their creed calmly set forth by one, who equally with themselves considers the love of true Liberty, as a part both of Religion and Morality, as a necessary condition of their general predominance, and ministring to the same blessed Purposes. The developement of my religious persuasions relatively to Religion in its great Essentials, will occupy a following number, in which (and throughout these Essays) my aim will be, seldom indeed to enter the Temple of Revelation (much less of positive Institution) but to lead my Readers to its' Threslihold, and to remove the prejudices with which the august edifice may have been contemplated from ill-chosen and unfriendly points of view.
But independently of this motive, T deem the subject of Politics, so treated as I intend to treat it, strictly congruous with my general Plan. For it was and is my prime object to refer men in all their actions, opinions, and even enjoyments to an appropriate Rule, and to aid them with all the means I possess, by the knowledge of the facts on which such Rule grounds itself. The rules of political prudence do indeed depend on local and temporary circumstances in a much greater degree than those of Morality or even those of Taste. Still however the circumstances being known, the deductions obey the same law, and must be referred to the same arbiter. In a late summary reperusal of our more celebrated periodical Essays, by the contemporaries of Addison and those of Johnson, it appeared to me that the objects of the Writers were, either to lead the reader from gross enjoyments and boisterous amusements, by gradually familiarizing them with more quiet and refined pleasures; or to make the habits of domestic life and public demeanour more consistent with decorum and good sense, by laughing away the lesser follies, and freaks of self-vexation; or to arm the yet virtuous mind with horror of the direr crimes and vices, by exemplifying their origin, progress, and results, in affecting Tales and true or fictitious biography: or where (as in the Rambler) it is intended to strike a yet deeper note, to support the cause of Religion and Morality by eloquent declamation and dogmatic precept, such as may with propriety be addressed to those, who require to be awakened rather than convinced, whose conduct is incongruous with their own sober convictions; in short, to practical not speculative Heretics. Revered for ever be the names of these great and good men! Immortal be their Fame; and may Love and Honour and Docility of Heart in their readers, constitute its' essentials! Not without cruel injustice should I be accused or suspected of a wish to underrate their merits, because in journeying toward the same end I have chosen a different road. Not wantonly however have I ventured even on this variation. I have decided on it in consequence of all the Observations which I have made on my fellow-creatures, since I have been able to observe in calmness on the present age, and to compare its' phenomena with the best indications, we possess, of the character of the ages before us.
My time since earliest manhood has been pretty equally divided between deep retirement (with little other society than that of one family, and my Library) and the occupations and intercourse of (comparatively at least) public life both abroad and in the British Metropolis. But in fact the deepest retirement, in which a well-educated Englishman of active feelings, and no misanthrope, can live at present, supposes few of the disadvantages and negations, which a similar place of residence would have involved, a century past. Independent of the essential knowledge to be derived from books, children, housemates, and neighbours, however few or humble; yet Newspapers; their Advertisements, their Reports of the Speeches in Parliament, in Law-courts, and in Public Meetings; Reviews, Magazines, Obituaries; and (as affording occasional commentaries on all these (the frequency of Travelling, and the variety of character and object in the Travellers; and more than all, the diffusion of opinions, the uniformity of Behaviour and Appearance, and the telegraphic Spread and beacon-like Rapidity of Fashion in things external and internal; have combined to diminish, and often to render evanescent, the distinctions between the enlightened Inhabitants of the great city, and the scattered hamlet. From all the facts however, that have occurred as subjects of reflection within the sphere of my experience, be they few or numerous, I have fully persuaded my own mind, that formerly Men were worse than their Principles, but that at present the Principles are worse than the Men. For the former half of the proposition I might among a thousand other more serious and unpleasant proofs appeal even to the Spectators and Tatlers. It would not be easy perhaps to detect in them any great corruption or debasement of the main foundations of Truth and Goodness, yet a man—I will not say of delicate mind and pure morals but — of common good manners, who means to read an essay, which he has opened upon at hazard in these Volumes, to a mixed company, will find it necessary to take a previous survey of its contents. If stronger illustration be required, I would refer to one of Shadwell's Comedies in connection with its Dedication to the Dutch- ess of Newcastle, encouraged, as he says, by the high delight with which her Grace had listened to the Author's private recitation of the Manuscript in her Closet. A writer of the present Day, who should dare address such a composition to a virtuous Matron of high rank, would secure general infamy, and run no small risk of Bridewell and the Pillory. Why need I add the plays and poems of Dryden contrasted with his serious prefaces and declarations of his own religious and moral opinions ? why the little success, except among the heroes and heroines of fashionable Life. of the two or three living Writers of prurient Love-odes (if I may be forgiven for thus profaning the word, Love) and Novels at once terrific and libidinous. These Gentlemen erred both in place and time, and have understood the temper of their age and country as ill as the precepts of that Bible, which, notwithstanding the atrocious Blasphemies of one of them, the great majority of their countrymen peruse with safety to their morals, if not improvement.
The truth of the latter half of the proposition in its' favourable part, is evidenced by the general anxiety on the subject of Education, the solicitous attention paid to several late works on its' general principles, and the unexampled Sale of the very numerous large and small volumes published for the use of Parents and Instructors, and for the children given or intrusted to their Charge. The first ten or twelve leaves of our old Almanac Books, and the copper-plates of old Ladies' Magazines and similar publications, will afford in the fashions and head-dresses of our Grandmothers, contrasted with the present simple ornaments of women in general, a less important but not less striking elucidation of my meaning. The wide diffusion of moral information, in no slight degree owing to the volumes of our popular Essayists, has undoubtedly been on the whole beneficent. But above all, the recent events, (say rather, tremendous explosions) the thunder and earthquakes and deluge of the political world, have forced habits of greater thoughtfuluess on the minds of men: particularly in our own Island, where the instruction has been acquired without the stupifying influences of terror or actual calamity. We have been compelled to acknowledge (what our Fathers would have perhaps called it want of liberality to assert) the close connection between private libertinism and national subversion. To those familiar with the state of morals and the ordinary subjects of after-dinner conversation, at least among the young men, in Oxford and Cambridge only twenty or twenty five years back, I might with pleasure point out, in support of my thesis, the present state of our two Universities, which has rather superseded, than been produced by, any additional vigilence or austerity of discipline.
The unwelcome remainder of the proposition, the “feet of iron and clay,” the unsteadiness, or falsehood or abasement of the Principles, which are taught and received by the existing generation, it is the chief purpose and general business of “The Friend” to examine, to evince and, (as far as my own forces extend, increased by the contingents which, I flatter myself, will be occasionally furnished by abler patrons of the same Cause,) to remedy or alleviate. That my efforts will effect little, I am fully conscious ; but by no means admit, that little is to be effected. The squire of low degree may announce the approach of puissant Knight; yea, the Giant may even condescend to lift up the feeble Dwarf and permit it to blow the Horn of Defiance on his Shoulders.
Principles therefore, their subordination, their connection, and their application, in all the divisions of our duties and of our pleasures—this is my Chapter of Contents. May I not hope for a candid interpretation of my motive, if I again recur to the possible apprehension, on the part of my readers, that The Friend
“O'erlaid with Black, staid Wisdom's Hue”
with eye fixed in abstruse research and brow of perpetual Wrinkle is to frown away the light-hearted Graces, and “unreproved Pleasures”; or invite his Guests to a dinner of herbs in a Hermit's Cell? if I affirm, that my Plan does not in itself exclude either impassioned style or interesting Narrative, Tale, or Allegory, or Anecdote; and that the defect will originate in my Abilities not in my Wishes or Efforts, If I fail to bring forward,
“due at my hour prepar'd
For dinner savory fruits, of taste to please
True appetite—————————————————————
In order, so contriv'd as not to mix
Tastes, not well join'd inelegant; but bring
Taste after Taste upheld with kindliest Change.”
Par. Lost. v.
I have said in my first Number, that my very system compels me to make every fair appeal to the feelings, the Imagination, and even the Fancy. If these are to be withheld from the service of Truth, Virtue, and Happiness, to what purpose were they given? in whose service are they retained? I have indeed considered the disproportion of human Passions to their ordinary Objects among the strongest internal evidences of our future destination, and the attempt to restore them to their rightful Claimants, the most imperious Duty and the noblest Task of Genius. The verbal enunciation of this Master Truth could scarcely be uew to me at any period of my Life since earliest Youth; but I well remember the particular time, when the words first became more than words to me, when they incorporated with a living conviction, and took their place among the realities of my Being. On some wide Common or open Heath, peopled with Ant-hills, during some one of the grey cloudy days of late Autumn, many of my Readers may have noticed the effect of a sudden and momentary flash of Sunshine on all the countless little animals within his view, aware too that theself-same influence was darted co-instantaneously over all their swarming cities as far as his eye could reach; may have observed, with what a kindly force the Uieain stirs and quickens them all! and will have experienced no unpleasurable shock of Feeling in seeing myriads of myriads of living and sentient Beings united at the same moment in one gay sensation, one joyous activity ! But aweful indeed is the same appearance in a multitude of rational Beings, our fellow-men, in whom too the effect is produced not so much by the external occasion as from the active quality of their own thoughts. I had walked from Gottingen in the year 1799, to witness the arrival of the Queen of Prussia, on her visit to the Baron Von Hartzberg's Seat, five miles from the University. The spacious Outer Court of the Palace was crowded with men and women, a sea of Heads, with a number of children rising out of it from their Father's shoulders. After a Buz of two hours' expectation, the avant-courier rode at full speed into the Court. At the loud cracks of his long whip and the trampling of his horses' hoofs, the universal Shock and Thrill of Emotion—I have not language to convey it—expressed as it was in such manifold looks, gestures, and attitudes, yet with one and the same feeling in the eyes of all! Recovering from the first inevitable contagion of Sympathy, I involuntarily exclaimed, though in a language to myself alone intelligible, “O Man ! ever nobler than thy circumstances ! Spread but the mist of obscure feeling over any form, and even a woman incapable of blessing or of injury to thee, shall be welcomed with an intensity of emotion adequate to the reception of the Redeemer of the World!”
It has ever been my opinion, that an excessive solicitude to avoid the use of our first personal pronoun more often has its' source in conscious selfishness than in true self-oblivion. A quiet observer of human Follies may often amuse or sadden his thoughts by detecting the perpetual feeling of purest Egotism through a long masquerade of Tu-isms and Ille-isms. Yet I can with strictest truth assure my Readers that with a pleasure combined with a sense of weariness I see the nigh approach of that point of my labours, in which I can convey my opinions and the workings of my heart without reminding the Reader obtrusively of myself. But the frequency, with which I have spoken in my own person, recals my apprehensions to the second danger, which it was my hope to guard against; the probable charge of Arrogance, or presumption both for daring to dissent from the opinions of great Authorities and, in my following numbers perhaps, from the general opinion concerning the true value of certain Authorities deemed great. The word, Presumption, I appropriate to the internal feeling, and Arrogance to the way and manner of outward by expressing ourselves.
As no man can rightfully be condemned without reference to some definite Law, by the knowledge of which he might have avoided the given fault, it is necessary so to define the constituent qualities and conditions of arrogance, that a reason m,ay be assignable why we pronounce one man guilty and acquit another. For merely to call a person arrogant or most arrogant, can convict no one of the vice except perhaps the accuser. I was once present, when a young man who had left his Books and a Glass of Water to join a convivial party, each of whom had nearly finished his second bottle, was pronounced very drunk by the whole party—“he looked so strange and pale!” the predominant Vice often betrays itself to an Observer, when it has deluded the Criminal's own consciousness, by his proneness on all occasions to suspect or accuse others of it. Now Arrogance, and Presumption, like all other moral qualities, must be shewn by some act or conduct: and this too an act that implies, if not an immediate concurrence of the Will, yet some faulty constitution of the Moral Habits. For all criminality supposes its' essentials to have been within the power of the Agent. Either therefore the facts adduced do of themselves convey the whole proof of the charge, and the question rests on the truth or accuracy with which they have been stated; or they acquire their character from the circumstances. I have looked into a ponderous Review of the corpuscular philosophy by a Sicilian Jesuit, in which the acrimonious Father frequently expresses his doubt, whether he should pronounce Boyle and Newton more impious than presumptuous, or more presumptuous than impious. They had both attacked the reigning opinions on most important subjects, opinions sanctioned by the greatest names of antiquity, and by the general suffrage of their learned Contemporaries or immediate Predecessors. Locke was assailed with a full cry for his presumption in having deserted the philosophical system at that time generally received by the Universities of Europe: and of late years Dr. Priestly bestowed the epithets of arrogant and insolent on Reid, Beattie, &c. for presuming to arraign certain opinions of Mr. Locke, himself repaid in kind by many of his own Countrymen for his theological Novelties, it will scarcely be affirmed, that these accusations were all of them just, or that any of them were fit or courteous. Must we therefore say, thai in order to avow doubt or disbelief of a popular persuasion without arrogance, it is required that the dissentient should know himself to possess the genius, and foreknow that he should acquire the reputation of Locke, Newton, Boyle, or even of a Reid or a Beattie? But as this knowledge and prescience are impossible in the strict sense of the words, and could mean no more than a strong inward conviction, it is manifest that such a Rule, if it were universally established, would encourage the presumptuous, and condemn modest and humble minds alone to silence. And as this silence could not acquit the Individual's own mind of presumption unless it were accompanied by conscious acquiescence. Modesty itself must become an inert quality, which even in private society never displays its charms more unequivocally than in its' mode of reconciling itself with sincerity and intellectual courage.
We must seek then elsewhere for the true marks, by which presumption or arrogance may be detected, and on which the charge may be grounded with little hazard of mistake or injustice. And as I confine my present observations to literature, I deem such criteria neither difficult to determine or to apply. The first mark, as it appears to me, is a frequent bare assertion of opinions not generally received, without condescending to prefix or annex the facts and reasons on which such opinions were formed; especially if this absence of logical courtesy is supplied by contemptuous or abusive treatment of such as happen to doubt of or oppose the decisive ipse dixi. But to assert, however nakedly, that a passage in a lewd Novel describing the sacred Writings as more likely to pollute the young and innocent mind than a Romance notorious for its indecency—to assert, I say, that such a passage argues equal impudence and ignorance in its' Author, at the time of writing and publishing it—this is not arrogance; although to a vast majority of the decent part of our Countrymen it would be superfluous as a Truism, if it were exclusively an Author's business to convey or revive knowledge, and not sometime his duty to awaken the indignation of his Reader by the expression of his own.
A second species of this unamiable qualify, which has been often distinguished by the name of Warburtonian arrogance, betrays itself, not as in the former, by proud or petulant omission of proof or argument, but by the habit of ascribing weakness of intellect or want of taste and sensibility, or hardness of heart, or corruption of moral principle, to all who deny the truth of the doctrine, or the sufficiency of evidence, or the fairness of the reasoning adduced in its' support. This is indeed not essentially different from the first, but assumes a separate character from its' accompaniments: for though both the doctrine and its proofs may have been legitimately supplied by tlic understanding, yet the bitterness of personal crimination will resolve itself into naked assertion, and we are authorized by experience, and entitled on the principle of self-defence and by the law of fair Retaliation in attributing it to a vicious temper arrogant from angry passions, or irritable from arrogance. This learned arrogance admits of many gradations, and is palliated or aggravated, accordingly as the point in dispute has been more or less controverted, as the reasoning bears a greater or smaller proportion to the virulence of the personal detraction, and as the Person or or Parties, who are the Objects of it, are more or less respected, more or less worthy of respect*.
* Had the Author of the Divine Legation of Moses more skilfully appropriated his coarse eloquence of Abuse, his customary assurances of the Ideotcy, both in head and heart, of all his opponents; if he had employed those vigorous arguments of his own vehement Humour in the defence of Truth, acknowledged and reverenced by learned men in generator had confined them to the names of Chubb, Woolston, and other precursors of Mr. Thomas Payne, we would perhaps still characterize his mode of controversy by its' rude violence; but not so often have heard his name used even by those who have never read his writings, as a nroverbial expression of learned Arrogance. But when a novel and doubtful Hypothesis of his own formation was the Citadel to be defended, and his mephetic hand-granados were thrown with the fury of lawless despotism at the fair reputation of a Sykes and a Lardner, we not only confirm the verdict of hit independent contemporaries, but cease to wonder, that arrogance should render men an object of contempt in many, and of aversion in all instances, when it was capable of hurrying a Christian Teacher of equal Talents and Learning into a slanderous vulgarity, which escapes our disgust only when we see the writer's own reputation the sole victim. But throughout his great work, and the pamphlets in which he supported it, he always seems to write, as if he had deemed it a duty of decorum to publish his fancies on the Mosaic Law as the Law itself was delivered “in thunders and lightnings” and had applied to his own Book instead of the sacred mount the menace—There shall not a hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through.
Lastly, it must be admitted as a just imputation of presumption when an Individual obtrudes on the public eye with all the high pretensions of originality, opinions and observations, in regard to which he must plead wilful
Ignorance in order to be acquited of dishonest Plagiarism. On the same seat must the writer be placed, who in a disquisition on any important subject proves, by his falsehoods of Omission or positive Error, that he has neglected to possess himself of the previous knowledge and needful information, which such acquirements as could alone authorize him to commence a public Instructor, and the Industry which that character makeshisindispensible duty, could not fail of procuring for him. If in addition to this unfitness which every man possesses the means of ascertaining, his aim should be to unsettle a general belief closely connected with public and private quiet; and if his language and manner be avowedly calculated for the illiterate (and perhaps licentious) part of his Countrymen; disgusting as his presumption must appear, it is yet lost or evanescent in the close neighbourhood of his Guilt. That Hobbes translated Homer in English Verse and published his Translation, furnishes no positive evidence of his Self-conceit, though it implies a great lack of Self-knowledge and of acquaintance with the nature of Poetry. A strong wish often imposes itself on the mind for an actual power: the mistake is favoured by the innocent pleasure derived from the exercise of versification, perhaps by the approbation of Intimates; and the Candidate asks from more impartial Readers that sentence, which Nature has not enabled him to anticipate. But when the Philosopher of Malmesbury waged war with Wallis and the fundamental Truths of pure Geometry, every instance of his gross ignorance and utter misconception of the very elements of the Science he proposed to confute, furnished an unanswerable fact in proof of his high presumption; and the confident and insulting language of the attack leaves the judicious reader in as little doubt of his gross arrogance- An illiterate mechanic who mistaking some disturbance of his nerves for a miraculous call, proceeds alone to convert a tribe of Savages, whose language he can have no natural means of acquiring, may have been misled by impulses very different from those of high Self-opinion; but the illiterate Perpetrator of “the Age of Reason,” must have had his very Conscience stupified by the habitual intoxication of presumptuous arrogance, and his common-sense over-clouded by the vapours from his Heart.
As long therefore as I obtrude no unsupported assertions on my Readers; and as long as I state my opinions and the evidence which induced or compelled me to adopt them, with calmness and that diffidence in myself, which is by no means in compatible with a firm belief in thejust- ness of the opinions themselves; while I attack no man's private life from any cause, and detract from no man's honors in his public character, from the truth of his doctrines, or the merits of his compositions, without detailing all my reasons and resting the result solely on the arguments adduced; while I moreover explain fully the motives of duty, which influenced me in resolving to institute such investigation; while I confine all asperity of censure, and all expressions of contempt, to gross violations of Truth, Honor, arid Decency, to the base Corrupter and the detected Slanderer; while I write on no subject, which I have not studied with my best attention, on no subject which my education and acquirements have incapacitated me from properly understanding; and above all while I approve myself, alike in praise and in blame, in close reasoning and in impassioned declamation, a steady Friend to the two best and surest Friends of all men, Truth and Honesty; I will not fear an accusation of either Presumption or Arrogance from the Good and the Wise, I shall pity it from the Weak, and despise it from the Wicked.
Note to line 16, page 18.
To cite one instance among many: while I was in Germany for the purpose of finishing my education, whither I was enabled to go by the munificence of my two honoured Patrons, whose names mnst not be profaned on such an occasion; and from which I returned before the proposed time, literally (I know not whether a Husband and Father ought to be ashamed of it) literally home-sick; one of the writers, concerned in the collection, inserted a note in the “Beauties of the Anti-jacobin,” which after having informed the Public that I had been dishonoured at Cambridge for preaching Deism (about the time, when I was deemed a perfect Bigot by the reigning Philosophers and their proselytes for my youthful ardor in defence of Christianity) concludes with these words: “Since this time he (i. e. S. T. Coleridge) has left his native Country, commenced Citizen of the World, left his poor Children fatherless and his Wife destitute. Ex his disce his friends—“but I dare not desecrate their names. Suffice it to say, what may be said with severest truth, that it is absolutely impossible to select from the whole empire two men more exemplary in their domestic characters (both remarkably, and the one most awefully so) than the men, whose names were here printed at full length. Can it be wondered at, that some good men were not especially friendly to a Party, which encouraged and openly rewarded the Authors of such atrocious calumnies ! (“Qualis es, nescio; sed per quales agis, scio et doleo.”) Since this time, the envenomed weapon has been turned against themselves by one of their own agents. And it behoves those to consider, who bring forward the Gougers of slander to attack their real or imagined Enemies, that Savages are capricious in proportion as they are unprincipled : and when they have none else to attack, will turn round and assail their Employers. For Attack is their vital Element: extract the venomous Sting, and the animal dies.
Again, will any man, who loves his Children and his Country, be slow to pardon me, if not in the spirit of vanity but of natural self-defence against yearly and monthly attacks on the very vitals of my character as an honest man and a loyal Subject, I prove the utter falsity of the charges by the only public means in my power, a citation from the last work published by me, in the close of the year 1798, and anterior to all the calumnies published to my dishonour. No one lias charged me with seditious acts or conversation: if I have attempted to do harm, by my works must it have been effected. By my works therefore must I be judged: if indeed one obscure volume of juvenile poems, and one slight verse pamphlet of twenty pages, can without irony, be entitled works.) The poem was written during the first alarm of Invasion, and left in the Press on my leaving my country for Germany. So few copies were printed, and of these so few sold, that to the great majority of my readers they will be any thing rather than a citation from a known publication—but my heart bears me witness, that I am aiming wholly at the moral confidence of my Readers in my principles, as a man, not at their praises of me, as a Poet; to which character, in its' higher sense, I have already resigned all pretensions.
——————“Spare us yet awhile!
Father and God, O spare us yet awhile.
O let not English Women speed their flight
Fainting beneath the burthen of their Babes,
Of the sweet Infants, who but yesterday
Smiled at the bosom! Husbands, Brothers, all
Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
Which grew up with you round the same fire-side,
And all who ever heard the Sabbath Bells
Without the Infidels' scorn; make yourselves strong,
Stand forth, be men, repel an impious race,
Impious and false, a light yet cruel race
That laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
With deeds of murder ! and still promising
Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
FoisoR Life's amities and cheat the heart
Of Faith and quiet Hope and all that soothes
And all that lifts the spirit ! Stand ye forth,
Render them back upon th' insulted ocean
And let them float as idly on its waves
As the vile sea-weed, which the mountain blast
Sweeps from our Shores ! And O ! may we return
Not in a drunken triumph, but with awe,
Repentant of the wrongs, with which we stung
So fierce a race to Frenzy.
I have told,
O men of England! Brothers! I have told
Most bitter Truths but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factitious or mistimed:
For never can true Courage dwell with them
Who playing tricks with Conscience dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion. Some, belike,
Restless in enmity, have thought all change
Involv'd in change of constituted power,
As if a Government were but a Robe
On which our Vice and Wretchedness were sewn
Like fancy-points and fringes, with the Robe
Pull'd off at pleasure . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . others, meantime,
Dote with a mad Idolatry! and all
Who will not fall before their Images
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their Country! Such have I been deem'd.
But O! dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!
Needs must thou be a name most dear and holy
To me a Son, a Brother, and a Friend,
A Husband, and a Parent, who revere
All Bonds of natural Love, and find them all
Within the circle of thy rocks shores!
O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
How should'st thou be aught else but dear and holy
To me, who from thy seas and rocky shores,
Thy quiet fields, thy streams and wooded Hills
Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
All adoration of the God in nature,
All lovely and all honorable things,
Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
The joy and greatness of its' future Being!
There lives nor Form nor Feeling in my Soul
Unborrowed from my Country. O divine
And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole
And most magnificent Temple, in the which
I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs
Loving the God, who made me.
Fears of Solitude, a Poem.
Most unaffected has been my wonder, from what causes a man who has published nothing with his name but a single forgoten volume of verses, thirteen years ago, and a poem of two hundred lines a few years after, of which (to use the words of a witty writer) I made the Public my Confidant and it kept the secret, should have excited such long and implacable malignity. And anonymously I have only contributed the foil of three or four small poems to the volume of a superior mind, and sent a few Essays to a Newspaper in defence of all that is dear, or abhorrence of what must be most detestable, to good men and genuine Englishmen. With the exception of one solitary sonnet, which in what mood written, and by what accident published, personal delicacy forbids me to explain, which was rejected indignantly from the second Edition of my Poems, and re-inserted in the third in my absence and without my consent or knowledge, I may safely defy my worst enemy to shew, in any of my few writings, the least bias to Irreligion, Immorality, or Jacobinism: unless in the latter word, be implied sentiments which have been avowed by men who without recantation, direct or indirect, have been honored with the highest responsible offices of Government.
This is the first time that I have attempted to counteract the wanton calumnies of unknown and unprovoked persecutors. Living in deep retirement, I have only become acquainted with the greater part years after they had been published and individually forgotten. But the general effect remained: and if my Readers knew the cruel hindrances, which they have opposed to me, in the bringing about the present undertaking, I have honorably erred in my notions of human nature, if I should not be more than forgiven: especially if the number of attacks on myself and on one still more and more deservedly dear to me, should be more than equal to the number of the lines, in which I have, for the first time, been tempted to defend myself.
Penrith: printed and published by J. Brown; and sold by Messrs. Longman and Co. Paternoster Row; and Clement, 201, Strand, London.
Online typesetting and general maintainance by Sean B. Palmer.