Out on the craft!--I'd rather be
One of those hinds that round me tread,
With just enough of sense to see
The noonday sun that's o'er his head,
Than thus with high-built genius curst,
That hath no heart for its foundation,
Be all at once that's brightest, worst,
Sublimest, meanest in creation!
CORRUPTION,
AND
INTOLERANCE.
TWO POEMS.
ADDRESSED TO AN ENGLISHMAN BY AN IRISHMAN.
PREFACE.
The practice which has been lately introduced into literature, of writing
very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a rather happy
invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to
account; and as horses too heavy for the saddle may yet serve well enough
to draw lumber, so Poems of this kind make excellent beasts of burden and
will bear notes though they may not bear reading. Besides, the comments in
such cases are so little under the necessity of paying any servile
deference to the text, that they may even adopt that Socratic, "_quod
supra nos nihil ad nos."_
In the first of the two following Poems, I have ventured to speak of the
Revolution of 1688, in language which has sometimes been employed by Tory
writers and which is therefore neither very new nor popular. But however
an Englishman might be reproached with ingratitude for depreciating the
merits and results of a measure which he is taught to regard as the source
of his liberties--however ungrateful it might appear in Alderman Birch to
question for a moment the purity of that glorious era to which he is
indebted for the seasoning of so many orations--yet an Irishman who has
none of these obligations to acknowledge, to whose country the Revolution
brought nothing but injury and insult, and who recollects that the book of
Molyneux was burned by order of William's Whig Parliament for daring to
extend to unfortunate Ireland those principles on which the Revolution was
professedly founded--an Irishman _may_ be allowed to criticise freely the
measures of that period without exposing himself either to the imputation
of ingratitude or to the suspicion of being influenced by any Popish
remains of Jacobitism.
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