the share of those different nations whose lot he contemplates. His
design at setting out is to shew that, whether we consider the blessings
to be derived from art or from nature, we shall discover "an equal
portion dealt to all mankind." And the conclusion which he draws at the
end of the poem would be perfectly just, if these premises were allowed
him.

In every government though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find:
With secret course, which no loud streams annoy.
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.
The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,
To men remote from power but rarely known,
Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own.

That it matters little or nothing to the happiness of men whether they
are governed well or ill, whether they live under fixed and known laws,
or at the will of an arbitrary tyrant, is a paradox, the fallacy of
which is happily too apparent to need any refutation. Nor is his
inference warranted by those particular observations which he makes for
the purpose of establishing it. When of Italy he tells us, "that sensual
bliss is all this nation knows," how is Italy to be compared either with
itself when it was prompted by those "noble aims," of which he speaks,
or with that country where he sees

The lords of human kind pass by,
Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
By forms unfashion'd, fresh from nature's hand,
Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
True to imagined right, above controul;
While e'en the peasant learns these rights to scan,
And learns to venerate himself as man?

That good is every where balanced by some evil, none will deny. But that
no effort of human courage or prudence can make one scale preponderate
over the other, and that a decree of fate has fixed them in eternal
equipoise, is an opinion which, if it were seriously entertained, must
bind men to a tame and spiritless acquiescence in whatever disadvantages
or inconveniences they may chance to find themselves involved, and leave
to them the exercise of no other public virtue than that of a blind
submission.

His poetry is happily better than his argument. He discriminates with
much skill the manners of the several countries