F. On such vile food Satire can never thrive. P. She cannot starve, if there was only Clive.

The House of Commons rejected the motion, and resolved 'that Lord Clive had rendered great and meritorious services to his country."

Such was the issue of this disgraceful persecution. If, indeed, the minister had made his attack upon those men, whose names are recorded only in the register of a people's sufferings; upon those men who, under the pretence of customary presents, extorted from wretches, who had nothing but their subsistence to give, two thousand a year for their footman, two thousand a year for their toilet, two thousand five hundred a year for the expenses of their table;* upon men who, under the pretence of keeping the banks of rivers in repair, harassed the people by exactions, that had neither rule or limit; upon men who, under pretence of a traffic in salt, seized the necessaries of life, and established a trade the currents of which were stained with blood; upon men, who aggravated the horrors even of pestilence and famine; and when half the inhabitants were swept away, insisted that the living should pay the taxes of the dead, he would then have acted as the guardian of his country's honour, and as the friend of human kind.

Lord Clive's charities were extensive; and the present he made of £70,000 as a provision for the invalids in the company's service, was one of the noblest donations ever made by a private individual. He stood high in the esteem of the great Earl of Chatham, who used to say, that he looked upon him as a heaven-born general, as one who, though not bred a soldier, was glowing with a noble ardour for the glory of his country, and inspired with a genius superior to imaginary dangers, who had dared to defy all opposition, and had triumphed over an enemy, the standards of whose hosts outnumbered his whole army.

* Examinations at the bar of the House of Commons, and Beports of the Committee of Secrecy, 1772, 1773.

THE TIMES.

If the times were really as depraved when the poet wrote au he represents them to have been, we should have cause to rejoice in the ameliorated condition of our countrymen at this period. But we are persuaded that Englishmen never merited the general execration, so nervously bestowed upon them in this poem. A depraved few have occasionally imported from abroad, crimes, at the mention of which, every good man must shudder; but neither rank nor fortune have been able to shield them from the indignation and abhorrence of all ranks of people, and shunned even by common villains they sink into the grave, martyrs to tortures more severe than the offended laws of their country could inflict.

As some such wretches, however, still exist, and unfortunately in the higher classes of society, we could not think ourselves justified in omitting, as we at one time intended to have done, the whole of this poem, the effect of which is weakened by the general nature of the charge. To stigmatize a whole nation for the crimes of a few individuals, is an attempt as unjust as it is futile, and the satirist defeats his own aim, by the indiscriminate extension of his rage.

Upon such a subject we have however thought proper to abstain from illustrating the obscurities that occur in this poem; the circulation of unauthenticated rumours, however well founded, could not authorize our further mention of them, and we should deem ourselves inexcusable were we, in an attempt to gratify the curiosity of our readers, to fix an indelible stain upon the memory of persons, who have either been the innocent victims of the most injurious calumny, or if guilty, have appeared before that tribunal, the just judg ments of which, neither wealth nor influence can evade.

In the course of our author's other poems, we have not scrupled the elucidation of such passages as relate to transactions of publicity either in the political or literary world; on these

subjects most readers have already formed their own opinions, and must indulge us in the expression of ours; they are fair subjects of investigation, and unconscious of a wilful perversion of facts, we have not hesitated in corroborating or correcting our author's statements respecting public characters and events; if we are guilty of incorrectness or misrepresentation, every reader is competent to our correction, and by our credulity we shall incur only our own condemnation and disgrace. In private life it is otherwise; there we may circulate slanders which most will be willing to believe, and few can contradict; under these circumstances, we have abstained, as much as possible, from entering into the detail of the scandalous chronicle of the day with reference to the atrocities adverted to in this poem, applying our elucidations only to the ordinary subjects of it.

The second and eighth satires of Juvenal particularly breathe the boldest language of invective and indignation against the atrocious profligacy of the times in which he lived. The supposed degeneracy of modern ages may afford a fruitful source of pathetic declamation; but the pages of civilized European history will confirm the assertion that at no period has mankind been so deeply immersed in all the disgusting varieties of the most avowed sensuality, as from the bright era of the Augustan age, down to the general diffusion of Christianity early in the fourth century.

O pater urbis !

Unde nefas tantum Latiis pastoribus? unde
Hæc tetigit, Gradive tuos urtica nepotes?

Traditur ecce viro clarus genere; atque opibus vir:
Nec galeam quassas, nec terram cuspide pulsas,
Nec quæreris patri? Vade ergo, et cede severi
Jugeribus campi, quem negligis.

JUVENAL.

THE TIMES.

THE time hath been, a boyish, blushing time,
When modesty was scarcely held a crime;
When the most wicked had some touch of grace,
And trembled to meet Virtue face to face:
When those, who, in the cause of Sin grown grey,
Had served her without grudging, day by day,
Were yet so weak an awkward shame to feel,
And strove that glorious service to conceal:
We, better bred, and than our sires more wise,
Such paltry narrowness of soul despise:
To virtue every mean pretence disclaim,
Lay bare our crimes, and glory in our shame.
Time was, ere Temperance had fled the realm,
Ere Luxury sat guttling at the helm

From meal to meal, without one moment's space
Reserved for business, or allow'd for grace;
Ere vanity had so far conquer'd sense
To make us all wild rivals in expense,
To make one fool strive to outvie another,
And every coxcomb dress against his brother;
Ere banish'd industry had left our shores,
And labour was by pride kick'd out of doors;
Ere idleness prevail'd sole queen in courts,
Or only yielded to a rage for sports;

10

Ere each weak mind was with externals caught, And dissipation held the place of thought;

24

Ere gambling lords in vice so far were gone
To cog the die, and bid the sun look on ;
Ere a great nation, not less just than free,
Was made a beggar by economy;

Ere rugged honesty was out of vogue;

Ere fashion stamp'd her sanction on the rogue; Time was, that men had conscience that they made

Scruples to owe what never could be paid.
Was one then found, however high his name,
So far above his fellows damn'd to shame,
Who dared abuse and falsify his trust,

Who, being great, yet dared to be unjust,
Shunn'd like a plague, or but at distance view'd,
He walk'd the crowded streets in solitude,
Nor could his rank, and station in the land

Bribe one mean knave to take him by the hand.
Such rigid maxims (O, might such revive
To keep expiring honesty alive)

40

Made rogues, all other hopes of fame denied,
Not just through principle, be just through pride.
Our times, more polish'd, wear a different face,

80 As the cant word of the Pelham administration had been candour, so that of Lord Bute's was economy. At the opening of the first session after the peace, his majesty in his speech strenuously advised his Parliament 'to lay the foundation of that economy, which we owe to ourselves and our posterity, and which can alone relieve this nation from the heavy burdens brought upon it by the necessities of this long and expensive war." How little this intimation was attended to the progressive increase of the national debt sufficiently attests.