[7]
Such was the spirit, gently, grandly bright,
That filled, oh Fox! thy peaceful soul with light;
While free and spacious as that ambient air
Which folds our planet in its circling care,
The mighty sphere of thy transparent mind
Embraced the world, and breathed for all mankind.
Last of the great, farewell!--yet _not_ the last--
Tho' Britain's sunshine hour with thee be past,
Ierne still one ray of glory gives
And feels but half thy loss while Grattan lives.
[1] The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous
absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty,
by inculcating the right of resistance to tyrants and asserting the will
of the people to be the only true fountain of power.
[2] When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy between the
Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that "he had been bred a lawyer,
and had therefore nothing to do with divinity." It were to be wished that
some of our English pettifoggers knew their own fit element as well as
Pope Innocent X.
[3] Not the Camden who speaks thus of Ireland:--"To wind up all, whether
we regard the fruitfulness of the soil, the advantage of the sea, with so
many commodious havens, or the natives themselves, who are warlike,
ingenious, handsome, and well-complexioned, soft-skinned and very nimble,
by reason of the pliantness of their muscles, this Island is in many
respects so happy, that Giraldus might very well say, 'Nature had regarded
with more favorable eyes than ordinary this Kingdom of Zephyr.
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