Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub
[blocks in formation]

And shook the assailants from the inverted While rival realms with blood unsated wage

wrecks.
-Then cried the Sage, with grand effects elate,
And proud to save the Syracusian state;
While crowds exulting shout their noisy mirth,
'Give where to stand, and I will move the
earth.'

So Savery guided his explosive steam
In iron cells to raise the balanced beam; 250
The Giant-form its ponderous mass uprears,
Descending nods and seems to shake the spheres.

"Led by Volition on the banks of Nile Where bloom'd the waving flax on Delta's isle, Pleased Isis taught the fibrous stems to bind, And part with hammers from the adhesive rind;

With locks of flax to deck the distaff-pole,
And whirl with graceful bend the dancing spole,
In level lines the length of woof to spread, 259
And dart the shuttle through the parting thread.
So Arkwright taught from Cotton-pods to
cull,

And stretch in lines the vegetable wool;
With teeth of steel its fibre-knots unfurl'd,
And with the silver tissue clothed the world.

Mark'd the figured sand, 1. 242. The ancient orators seem to have spoken disrespectfully of the mechanic philosophers. Cicero mentioning Archimedes, calls him Homunculus e pulvere et radio, alluding to the custom of drawing problems on the sand with a staff.

So Savery guided, 1. 249. Captain Savery first applied the pressure of the atmosphere to raise water in consequence of a vacuum previously produced by the condensation of steam, though the Marquis of Worceser had before proposed to use for this purpose the expansive power of steam. See Botanic Garden, Part I. "Canto I. 1. 253, Note.

The waving flax, 1. 254. Flax is said to have been first discovered on the banks of the Nile, and Isis to have been the inventress of spinning and weaving.

So Arkwright taught, 1 261. See Botanic Garden, Part II. Canto II. 1. 87, Note.

281

Wide-wasting war with fell demoniac rage;
In every clime while army army meets,
And oceans groan beneath contending fleets;
Oh save, oh save, in this eventful hour
The tree of knowledge from the axe of power;
With fostering peace the suffering nations bless,
And guard the freedom of the immortal Press!
So shall your deathless fame from age to age
Survive recorded in the historic page;
And future bards with voice inspired prolong
Your sacred names immortalized in song.

290

"Thy power Association next affords
Ideal trains annex'd to volant words,
Conveys to listening ears the thought superb,
And gives to Language her expressive verb;
Which in one changeful sound suggests the fact
At once to be, to suffer, or to act;

The discovery

The immortal Press, 1. 270. of the art of printing has had so great influence on human affairs, that from thence may be dated a new æra in the history of mankind. As by the diffusion of general knowledge, both of the arts of taste and of useful sciences, the public mind has become improved to so great a degree, that though new impositions have been perpetually produced, the arts of detecting them have improved with greater rapidity. Hence since the introduction of printing, superstition has been much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy, astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have vanished from all classes of society; though some are still so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors; by this general diffusion of knowledge, if the liberty of the press be preserved, mankind will not be liable in this part of the world to sink into such abject slavery as exists at this day in China.

Her expressive verb, 1. 294. The verb, or the word, has been so called from its being the most expressive term in all languages; as it suggests the ideas of existence, action or suffering, and of time. See the Note on Canto III. 1. 371, of this work.

And marks on rapid wing o'er every clime
The viewless flight of evanescent Time.

"Call'd by thy voice contiguous thoughts em-
brace

299

"Thy magic touch imagined forms supplies From colour'd light, the language of the eyes; On Memory's page departed hours inscribes, Sweet scenes of youth, and Pleasure's vanish'd tribes. 322

In endless streams arranged by Time or Place; By thee Antinous leads the dance sublime
The Muse historic hence in every age
Gives to the world her interesting page;

While in bright landscape from her moving pen
Rise the fine tints of manners and of men.

On wavy step, and moves in measured time;
Charm'd round the Youth successive Graces
throng,

And Ease conducts him, as he moves along;
Unbreathing crowds the floating form admire,

"Call'd by thy voice Resemblance next de- And Vestal bosoms feel forbidden fire.

scribes

Her sister-thoughts in lucid trains or tribes;
Whence pleased Imagination oft combines
By loose analogies her fair designs;
Each winning grace of polish'd wit bestows
To deck the Nymphs of Poetry and Prose. 310

"Last, at thy potent nod, Effect and Cause
Walk hand in hand accordant to thy laws;
Rise at Volition's call, in groups combined,
Amuse, delight, instruct, and serve Mankind;
Bid raised in air the ponderous structure stand,
Or pour obedient rivers through the land;
With cars unnumber'd crowd the living streets,
Or people oceans with triumphant fleets.

Call'd by thy voice, 1. 299. The numerous trains of associated ideas are divided by Mr. Hume into three classes, which he has termed contiguity, causation, and resemblance. Nor should we wonder to find them thus connected together, since it is the business of our lives to dispose them into these three classes; and we become valuable to ourselves and our friends as we succeed in it. Those who have combined an extensive class of ideas by the contiguity of time or place, are men learned in the history of mankind, and of the sciences they have cultivated. Those who have connected a great class of ideas of reremblances, possess the source of the ornaments of poetry and oratory, and of all rational analogy. While those who have connected great classes of ideas of causation, are furnished with the powers of producing effects. These are the

men of active wisdom who lead armies to victory, and kingdoms to prosperity; or discoyer and improve the sciences which meliorate and adorn the condition of humanity.

Polish'd wit bestows, 1. 309. Mr. Locke defines wit to consist of an assemblage of ideas, brought together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy. To which Mr. Addison adds, that these must occasion surprise as well as delight; Spectator, Vol. I. No. LXII. See Note on Canto III. 1. 145. and Additional Note, VII. 3. Perhaps wit in the extended use of the word may mean to express all kinds of fine writing, as the word Taste is applied to all agreeable visible objects, and thus wit may mean descriptive sublimity, beauty, the pathetic, or ridiculous, but when used in the confined sense, as by Mr. Locke and Mr. Addison as above, it may probably be better defined a combination of ideas with agreeable novelty, as this may be effected by opposition as well as by resemblance.

[blocks in formation]

The goaded fibre, 1. 339. Old age consists in the inaptitude to motion from the inirritability of the system, and the consequent want of fibrous contraction. See Additional Note VII.

Ten thousand seeds, 1. 349. The fertility of plants in respect to seeds is often remarkable; from one root in one summer the seeds of zea, maize, amount to 2000; of inula, elecampane, to 3000; of helianthus, sunflower, to 4000; of papaver, poppy, 32,000; of nicotiana, tobacco, to 40,320; to this must be added the perennial roots, and the buds. Buds, which are so many herbs, in one tree, the trunk of which does not exceed a span in thickness, frequently amount to 10,000. Lin. Phil. Bot. 86.

The countless Aphides, 1. 351. The aphises, pucerons, or vine-fretters, are hatched from an egg in the early spring, and are all called females, as they produce a living offspring about once in a fortnight to the ninth generation, which are also all of them females; then males are also produced, and by their intercourse the females

Swarm on each leaf with eggs or embryons big,

And pendent nations tenant every twig. Amorous with double sex, the snail and worm, Scoop'd in the soil, their cradling caverns form;

[ocr errors]

Heap their white eggs, secure from frost and floods, [broods. And crowd their nurseries with uncounted Ere yet with wavy tail the tadpole swims, Breathes with new lungs, or tries his nascent 360

limbs ;

"So human progenies, if unrestrain❜d, By climate friended, and by food sustain'd, 370 O'er seas and soils, prolific hordes! would spread Erelong, and deluge their terraqueous bed; But war, and pestilence, disease, and dearth, Sweep the superfluous myriads from the earth. Thus while new forms reviving tribes acquire Each passing moment, as the old expire; Like insects swarming in the noontide bower, Rise into being, and exist an hour;

The births and deaths contend with equal strife, And every pore of Nature teems with Life;

Her countless shoals the amphibious frog for- Which buds or breathes from Indus to the

sakes,

And living islands float upon the lakes.

The migrant herring steers her myriad bands From seas of ice to visit warmer strands; Unfathom'd depths and climes unknown explores,

And covers with her spawn unmeasured shores. -All these, increasing by successive birth, Would each o'erpeople ocean, air, and earth.

become oviparous, and deposit their eggs on the branches, or in the bark, to be hatched in the ensuing spring.

This double mode of reproduction, so exactly resembling the buds and seeds of trees, accounts for the wonderful increase of this insect, which, according to Dr. Richardson, consists of ten generations, and of fifty at an average in each generation; so that the sum of fifty multiplied by fifty, and that product again multiplied by fifty-nine times, would give the product of one egg only in countless millions; to which must be added the innumerable eggs laid by the tenth generation for the renovation of their progeny in the ensuing spring.

The honey'd sap, 1. 352. The aphis punctures with its fine proboscis the sap-vessels of vegetables without any visible wound, and thus drinks the sap-juice, or vegetable chyle, as it ascends. Hence on the twigs of trees they stand with their heads downwards, as I have observed, to acquire this ascending sap-juice with greater facility. The honey-dew on the upper surface of leaves is evacuated by these insects, as they hang on the underside of the leaves above; when they take too much of this saccharine juice during the vernal or midsummer sap-flow of most vegetables; the black powder on leaves is also their excrement at other times. The vegetable world seems to have escaped total destruction from this insect by the number of flies, which in their larva state prey upon them; and by the ichneumon fly, which deposits its eggs in them. Some vegetables put forth stiff bristles with points round their young shoots, as the moss-rose, apparently to prevent the depredation of these insects, so injurious to them by robbing them of their chyle or nourishment.

The tadpole swims, 1. 359. The progress of a tadpole from a fish to a quadruped by his gradually putting forth his limbs, and at length leaving the water, and breathing the dry air, is a subject of great curiosity, as it resembles so much the incipient state of all other quadrupeds, and men, who are aquatic animals in the uterus, and become aerial ones at their birth.

Poles,

381 And Earth's vast surface kindles, as it rolls!

[blocks in formation]

IVhich buds or breathes, 1. 381. Organic bodies, besides the carbon, hydrogen, azote, and the oxygen and heat, which are combined with them, require to be also immersed in loose heat and loose oxygen to preserve their mutable existence; and hence life only exists on or near the surface of the earth. See Botanic Garden, Part I. Canto IV. 1. 419. L'organization, le sentiment, le movement spontané, la vie, n'existent qu'à la surface de la terre, et dans les lieux exposés à la lumiére. Traité de Chimie par M. Lavoisier, Tom. I. p. 202.

Born to new life, 1. 387. From the innumerable births of the larger insects, and the spontaneous productions of the microscopic ones, every part of organic matter from the recrements of dead vegetable or animal bodies, on or near the surface of the earth, becomes again presently reanimated; which by increasing the number and quantity of living organizations, though many of them exist but for a short time, adds to the sum total of terrestrial happiness.

[blocks in formation]

420

"So erst the Sage with scientific truth In Grecian temples taught the attentive youth ; With ceaseless change how restless atoms pass From life to life, a transmigrating mass; How the same organs, which to day compose The poisonous henbane, or the fragrant rose, May with to morrow's sun new forms compile,

Frown in the Hero, in the Beauty smile. Whence drew the enlightened Sage the moral plan,

That man should ever be the friend of man;
Should eye with tenderness all living forms,
His brother-emmets, and his sister-worms.

Thus sainted Paul, 1. 403. The doctrine of St. Paul teaches the resurrection of the body in an incorruptible and glorified state, with consciousness of its previous existence; he therefore justly exults over the sting of death, and the victory of the grave.

And lights the dawn, 1. 410. The sum total of the happiness of organized nature is probably increased rather than diminished, when one large old animal dies, and is converted into many thousand young ones; which are produced or supported with their numerous progeny by the same organic matter. Linneus asserts, that three of the flies, called musca vomitoria, will consume the body of a dead horse, as soon as a lion can. Syst. Nat.

So when Arabia's bird, 1. 411. The story of the Phoenix rising from its own ashes with a star upon its head seems to have been an hieroglyphic emblem of the destruction and resuscitation of all things. See Botan. Garden, Part I. Canto IV. 1. 389.

So erst the Sage, 1. 417. It is probable, that the perpetual transmigration of matter from one body to another, of all vegetables and animals, during their lives, as well as after their deaths, was observed by Pythagoras; which he afterwards applied to the soul, or spirit of animation, and taught, that it passed from one animal to another as a punishment for evil deeds, though without consciousness of its previous existence; and from this doctrine he inculcated a system of morality and benevolence, as all creatures thus became related to each other.

[blocks in formation]

The marble mountain, 1. 431. From the increased knowledge in Geology during the present century, owing to the greater attention of philosophers to the situations of the different materials, which compose the strata of the earth, as well as to their chemical properties, it seems clearly to appear, that the nucleus of the globe beneath the ocean consisted of granite; and that on this the great beds of limestone were formed from the shells of marine animals during the innumerable primeval ages of the world; and that whatever strata lie on these beds of limestone, or on the granite, where the limestone does not cover it, were formed after the elevation of islands and continents above the surface of the sea by the recrements of vegetables and of terrestrial animals. See on this subject Botanic Garden, Part I. Additional Note XXIV.

Are mighty monuments, 1. 450. The reader is referred to a few pages on this subject in Phytologia, Sect. XIX. 7. 1. where the felicity of organic life is considered more at large; but it is probable that the most certain way to estimate the happiness and misery of organic beings; as it depends on the actions of the organs of sense, which constitute ideas; or of the muscular fibres which perform locomotion; would be to consider those actions, as they are produced or excited by the four sensorial powers of irritation, sensation, volition, and association. A small volume on this subject by some ingenious writer, might not only amuse, as an object of curiosity; but by showing the world the immediate sources of their pains and pleasures might teach the means to avoid the one, and to procure the other, and thus contribute both ways to increase the sum total of organic happi

ness.

[blocks in formation]

Seen through their wiry harps, below, above,

Charm'd with her words the Muse astonish'd With sweet responsive symphony of sound. stands, The Nymphs enraptured clasp their velvet Nods the fair brow, the twinkling fingers

hands;

Applausive thunder from the fane recoils,
And holy echoes peal along the aisles;

O'er Nature's shrine celestial lustres glow,
And lambent glories circle round her brow.

move;

Soft-warbling flutes the ruby lip commands,
And cymbals ring with high uplifted hands.

To Chaos next the notes melodious pass,
How suns exploded from the kindling mass, 490

IV. Now sinks the golden sun,-the vesper Waved o'er the vast inane their tresses bright,
And charm'd young Nature's opening eyes with

song

470

Demands the tribute of Urania's tongue;
Onward she steps, her fair associates calls
From leaf-wove avenues, and vaulted halls.
Fair virgin trains in bright procession move,
Trail their long robes, and whiten all the
grove;

light.

Next from each sun how spheres reluctant

burst,

And second planets issued from the first.
And then to Earth descends the moral strain,
How isles, emerging from the shoreless
main,

With sparkling streams and fruitful groves
began,

And form'd a Paradise for mortal man.

Sublimer notes record Celestial Love,
And high rewards in brighter climes above; 500
How Virtue's beams with mental charm
engage

Youth's raptured eye, and warm the frost of
age,

gloom,

How Life increasing, 1. 453. Not only the vast calcareous provinces, which form so great a part of the terraqueous globe, and also whatever rests upon them, as clay, marl, sand, and coal, were formed from the fluid elements of heat, oxygen, azote, and hydrogen along with carbon, phosphorus, and perhaps a few other substances, which the science of chemistry has not yet decomposed; and gave the pleasure of life to the animals and vegetables, which formed them; and thus constitute monuments of the past happiness of those organized beings. But Gild with soft lustre Death's tremendous as those remains of former life are not again totally decomposed, or converted into their original elements, they supply more copious food to the succession of new animal or vegetable beings on their surface; which consists of materials convertible into nutriment with less labour or activity of the digestive powers; and hence the quantity or number of organized bodies, and their improvement in size, as well as their happiness, has been continually increasing, along The blood-stain'd tyrant from his tottering with the solid parts of the globe; and will probably continue to increase, till the whole terraqueous sphere, and all that inhabit it shall dissolve by a general conflagration, and be again

reduced to their elements.

Thus all the suns, and the planets, which circle round them, may again sink into one central chaos; and may again by explosions produce a new world; which in process of time may resemble the present one, and at length again undergo the same catastrophe! these great events may be the result of the immutable laws impressed on matter by the Great Cause of Causes, Parent of Parents, Ens Entium!

And light the dreary chambers of the tomb.
How fell Remorse shall strike with venom'd

dart,

Though mail'd in adamant, the guilty heart;
Fierce furies drag to pains and realms un-

known

[blocks in formation]
« ПредишнаНапред »