DRAWN BY RICHARD WESTALL R.A.ENGRAVED BY CHARLES ROLLS:

PUBLISHED BY JOHN SHARPE, LONDON.

MARCH 25.1825.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIMEPIECE.

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.-Our 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-maître parson.-The good preacher.-Picture 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.

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd, My soul is sick, with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage, with which Earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

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

That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not colour'd like his own; and having power
To' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as a lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes, that Mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps, when she sees inflicted on a beast.
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 slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

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

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's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. 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 social intercourse,
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 slip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?"
Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above,
Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,

Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the' old
And crazy Earth has had her shaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her usual rest.
Is it a time to wrangle when the props

* Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica.
+ August 18, 1783.

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