The Works of the English Poets; With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical Volume 67 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1781 edition. Excerpt: ... guilt ought to be relieved; and the life, which is overburthened by accidental calamities, set at ease by the care of the public; and that those, who have by misconduct forfeited their claim to favour, ought rather to be made useful to the society which they have injured, than be driven 3 from from it. But the poet is employed in a more pleasing undertaking than that of proposing laws, which, however just or expedient, will-never be made, or endeavouring to reduce to rational schemes of government societies which were formed by chance, and are conducted by the private passions of those who preside in them. He guides the unhappy fugitive from vant and persecution, to plenty, quiet, and security, and seats him in scenes of peaceful solitude, and undisturbed repose. Savage has not forgotten, amidst the pleasing sentiments which this prospect of retirement suggested to him, to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of invading countries because they are fruitful; of extending navigation only to propagate vice, and of visiting distant lands only to lay them waste. He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power. His description of the various miseries which force men to seek for refuge in distant countries, affords another instance of hie prosiciency in the important and extensive study of human life; and the tenderness with which he recounts them, another proof of his humanity and benevolence. It It is observable, that the close of this poem discovers a change which experience...