more eminent
writers; but as he was, perhaps, not fully acquainted with the whole
extent of his own design, and was writing to obtain a supply of wants
too pressing to admit of long or accurate inquiries, he passes
negligently over many publick works, which, even in his own opinion,
deserved to be more elaborately treated.

But, though he may sometimes disappoint his reader by transient touches
upon these subjects, which have often been considered, and, therefore,
naturally raise expectations, he must be allowed amply to compensate his
omissions, by expatiating, in the conclusion of his work, upon a kind of
beneficence not yet celebrated by any eminent poet, though it now
appears more susceptible of embellishments, more adapted to exalt the
ideas, and affect the passions, than many of those which have hitherto
been thought most worthy of the ornaments of verse. The settlement of
colonies in uninhabited countries, the establishment of those in
security, whose misfortunes have made their own country no longer
pleasing or safe, the acquisition of property without injury to any, the
appropriation of the waste and luxuriant bounties of nature, and the
enjoyment of those gifts which heaven has scattered upon regions
uncultivated and unoccupied, cannot be considered without giving rise to
a great number of pleasing ideas, and bewildering the imagination in
delightful prospects; and, therefore, whatever speculations they may
produce in those who have confined themselves to political studies,
naturally fixed the attention, and excited the applause, of a poet. The
politician, when he considers men driven into other countries for
shelter, and obliged to retire to forests and deserts, and pass their
lives, and fix their posterity, in the remotest corners of the world, to
avoid those hardships which they suffer or fear in their native place,
may very properly inquire, why the legislature does not provide a remedy
for these miseries, rather than encourage an escape from them. He may
conclude that the flight of every honest man is a loss to the community;
that those who are unhappy without guilt ought to be relieved; and the
life, which is overburdened by accidental calamities, set at ease by the
care of the publick; and that those, who have by misconduct forfeited
their claim to favour, ought rather to be made useful to the society
which they have injured, than driven from it. But the poet is employed
in a more pleasing undertaking