MAN AS HE IS, to place in all men’s view,
Yet none with rancour, none with scorn pursue:
Nor be it ever of my Portraits told -
“Here the strong lines of malice we behold.”
---------------------
This let me hope, that when in public view
I bring my Pictures, men may feel them true:
“This is a likeness,” may they all declare,
“And I have seen him, but I know not where:”
For I should mourn the mischief I had done,
If as the likeness all would fix on one.
---------------------
Man’s Vice and Crime I combat as I can,
But to his GOD and conscience leave the Man;
I search (a Quixote!) all the land about,
To find its Giants and Enchanters out, -
(The Giant-Folly, the Enchanter-Vice,
Whom doubtless I shall vanquish in a trice;) -
But is there man whom I would injure? - No!
I am to him a fellow, not a foe, -
A fellow-sinner, who must rather dread
The bolt, than hurl it at another’s head.
No! let the guiltless, if there such be found,
Launch forth the spear, and deal the deadly wound.
How can I so the cause of Virtue aid,
Who am myself attainted and afraid?
Yet as I can, I point the powers of rhyme,
And, sparing criminals, attack the crime.
Footnotes:
Note: Indentation
and punctuation as original.
The wants
and mortifications of a poor clergyman are the subjects of one portion
of this Letter; and he being represented as a stranger in the Borough,
it may be necessary to make some apology for his appearance in the Poem.
Previous to a late meeting of a literary society, whose benevolent purpose
is well known to the public, I was induced by a friend to compose a
few verses, in which, with the general commendation of the design, should
be introduced a hint that the bounty might be farther extended; these
verses, a gentleman did me the honour to recite at the meeting, and
they were printed as an extract from the Poem, to which, in fact, they
may be called an appendage.
The account
of Coddrington occurs in “The Mirrour for Magistrates.”
He suffered in the reign of Richard III.
If I have
in this letter praised the good-humour of a man confessedly too inattentive
to business, and if, in another
(AMUSEMENTS), I have written somewhat sarcastically of “the brick-floored
parlour which the butcher lets,” be credit given to me, that,
in the one case, I had no intention to apologise for idleness, nor any
design in the other to treat with contempt the resources of the poor.
The good-humour is considered as the consolation of disappointment;
and the room is so mentioned because the lodger is vain. Most
of my readers will perceive this: but I shall be sorry if by any I am
supposed to make pleas for the vices of men, or treat their wants or
infirmities with derision or with disdain.
The Letter
on Itinerant Players will to some appear too harshly written, their
profligacy exaggerated, and their distresses magnified; but though the
respectability of a part of these people may give us a more favourable
view of the whole body; though some actors be sober, and some managers
prudent; still there is vice and misery left more than sufficient to
justify my description. But, if I could find only one woman who
(passing forty years on many stages and sustaining many principal characters)
laments in her unrespected old age, that there was no workhouse to which
she could legally sue for admission; if I could produce only one female,
seduced upon the boards, and starved in her lodging, compelled by her
poverty to sing, and by her sufferings to weep, without any prospect
but misery, or any consolation but death; if I could exhibit only one
youth who sought refuge from parental authority in the licentious freedom
of a wandering company; yet, with three such examples, I should feel
myself justified in the account I have given: - but such characters
and sufferings are common, and there are few of these societies which
could not show members of this description. To some, indeed, the
life has its satisfactions: they never expected to be free from labour,
and their present kind they think is light: they have no delicate ideas
of shame, and therefore duns and hisses give them no other pain than
what arises from the fear of not being trusted, joined with the apprehension
that they may have nothing to subsist upon except their credit.
For the Alms-house
itself, its Governors, and Inhabitants, I have not much to offer in
favour of the subject or of the character. One of these, Sir Denys
Brand, may be considered as too highly placed for an author, who seldom
ventures above middle life, to delineate; and, indeed, I had some idea
of reserving him for another occasion, where he might have appeared
with those in his own rank: but then it is most uncertain whether he
would ever appear, and he has been so many years prepared for the public,
whenever opportunity might offer that I have at length given him place,
and though with his inferiors, yet as a ruler over them.
Benbow may
be thought too low and despicable to be admitted here; but he is a borough-character,
and however disgusting in some respects a picture may be, it will please
some, and be tolerated by many, if it can boast that one merit of being
a faithful likeness.
The characters
of the Hospital Directors were written many years since and, so far
as I was capable of judging, are drawn with fidelity. I mention
this circumstance that, if any reader should find a difference in the
versification or expression, he will be thus enabled to account for
it.
The Poor
are here almost of necessity introduced, for they must be considered,
in every place, as a large and interesting portion of its inhabitants.
I am aware of the great difficulty of acquiring just notions on the
maintenance and management of this class of our fellow subjects, and
I forbear to express any opinion of the various modes which have been
discussed or adopted: of one method only I venture to give my sentiments,
- that of collecting the poor of a hundred into one building.
This admission of a vast number of persons, of all ages and both sexes,
of very different inclinations, habits, and capacities, into a society,
must, at a first view I conceive, be looked upon as a cause of both
vice and misery; nor does anything which I have heard or read invalidate
the opinion: happily, the method is not a prevailing one, as these houses
are, I believe, still confined to that part of the kingdom where they
originated.
John Bunyan,
in one of the many productions of his zeal, has ventured to make public
this extraordinary sentiment, which the frigid piety of our Clerk so
readily adopted.
The Life
of Ellen Orford, though sufficiently burdened with error and misfortune,
has in it little besides which resembles those of the unhappy men in
the preceding Letters, and is still more unlike that of Grimes, in a
subsequent one. There is in this character cheerfulness and resignation,
a more uniform piety, and an immovable trust in the aid of religion.
This, with the light texture of the introductory part, will, I hope,
take off from that idea of sameness which the repetition of crimes and
distresses is likely to create.
It has
been a subject of greater vexation to me than such trifle ought to be,
that I could not, without destroying all appearance of arrangement,
separate these melancholy narratives, and place the fallen Clerk in
Office at a greater distance from the Clerk of the Parish, especially
as they resembled each other in several particulars; both being tempted,
seduced, and wretched. Yet there are, I conceive, considerable
marks of distinction: their guilt is of different kind; nor would either
have committed the offence of the other. The Clerk of the Parish
could break the commandment, but he could not have been induced to have
disowned an article of that creed for which he had so bravely contended,
and on which he fully relied; and the upright mind of the Clerk in Office
would have secured him from being guilty of wrong and robbery, though
his weak and vacillating intellect could not preserve him from infidelity
and profaneness. Their melancholy is nearly alike, but not its
consequences. Jachin retained hia belief, and though he hated
life, he could never be induced to quit it voluntarily; but Abel was
driven to terminate his misery in a way which the unfixedness of his
religious opinions rather accelerated than retarded. I am, therefore,
not without hope, that the more observant of my readers will perceive
many marks of discrimination in these characters.
The character
of Grimes, his obduracy and apparent want of feeling, his gloomy kind
of misanthropy, the progress of his madness, and the horrors of his
imagination, I must leave to the judgment and observation of my readers.
The mind here exhibited is one untouched by pity, unstung by remorse,
and uncorrected by shame; yet is this hardihood of temper and spirit
broken by want, disease, solitude, and disappointment: and he becomes
the victim of a distempered and horror-stricken fancy. It is evident,
therefore, that no feeble vision, no half-visible ghost, not the momentary
glance of an unbodied being, nor the half-audible voice of an invisible
one, would be created by the continual workings of distress on a mind
so depraved and flinty. The ruffian of Mr Scott (Marmion) has
a mind of this nature; he has no shame or remorse, but the corrosion
of hopeless want, the wasting of unabating disease, and the gloom of
unvaried solitude, will have their effect on every nature and the harder
that nature is, and the longer time required to work upon it, so much
the more strong and indelible is the impression. This is all the
reason I am able to give, why a man of feeling so dull should yet become
insane, and why the visions of his distempered brain should be of so
horrible a nature.
That a
Letter on Prisons should follow the narratives of such characters as
Keene and Grimes is unfortunate, but not to be easily avoided.
I confess it is not pleasant to be detained so long by subiects so repulsive
to the feelings of many as the sufferings of mankind; but, though I
assuredly would have altered this arrangement, had I been able to have
done it by substituting a better, yet am I not of opinion that my verses,
or, indeed, the verses of any other person,
can so represent the evils and distresses of life as to make any material
impression on the mind, and much less any of injurious nature.
Alas! sufferings real, evident, continually before us, have not effects
very serious or lasting, even in the minds of the more reflecting and
compassionate; nor, indeed, does it seem right that the pain caused
by sympathy should serve for more than a stimulus to benevolence.
If then the strength and solidity of truth placed before our eyes have
effect so feeble and transitory, I need not be very apprehensive that
my representations of Poor-houses and Prisons, of wants and sufferings,
however faithfully taken, will excite any feelings which can be seriously
lamented. It has always been held as a salutary exercise of the
mind to contemplate the evils and miseries of our nature: I am not therefore
without hope that even this gloomy subject of Imprisonment, and more
especially the Dream of the Condemned Highwayman, will excite in some
minds that mingled pity and abhorrence which, while it is not
unpleasant to the feelings, is useful in its operation. It ties
and binds us to all mankind by sensations common to us all, and in some
degree connects us, without degradation, even to the most miserable
and guilty of our fellow-men.
Our concluding
subject is Education; and some attempt is made to describe its various
seminaries, from that of the poor widow who pronounces the alphabet
for infants, to seats whence the light of learning is shed abroad on
the world. If, in this Letter, I describe the lives of literary
men as embittered by much evil; if they be often disappointed, and sometimes
unfitted for the world they improve; let it be considered that they
are described as men who possess that great pleasure, the exercise of
their own talents, and the delight which flows from their own exertions:
they have joy in their pursuits, and glory in their acquirements of
knowledge. Their victory over difficulties affords the most rational
cause of triumph, and the attainment of new ideas leads to incalculable
riches, such as gratify the glorious avarice of aspiring and comprehensive
minds. Here, then, I place the reward of Learning. Our Universities
produce men of the first scholastic attainments, who are heirs to large
possessions, or descendants from noble families. Now, to those
so favoured, talents and acquirements are unquestionably means of arriving
at the most elevated and important situations; but these must be the
lot of a few: in general, the diligence, acuteness, and perseverance
of a youth at the University, have no other reward than some college
honours and emoluments, which they desire to exchange, many of them,
for very moderate incomes in the obscurity of some distant village;
so that, in stating the reward of an ardent and powerful mind to consist
principally (I might have said entirely) in its own views, efforts,
and excursions, I place it upon a
sure foundation, though not one so elevated as the more ambitious aspire
to. It is surely some encouragement to a studious man to reflect
that, if he be disappointed, he cannot be without gratification; and
that, if he gets but a very humble portion of what the world can give,
he has a continual fruition of unwearying enjoyment, of which it has
not power to deprive him.