(1) As for politics, I think poets are _tories_ by nature, supposing
them to be by nature poets. The love of an individual person or family,
that has worn a crown for many successions, is an inclination greatly
adapted to the fanciful tribe. On the other hand, mathematicians,
abstract reasoners of no manner of attachment to persons, at least
to the visible part of them, but prodigiously devoted to the ideas
of virtue, liberty, and so forth, are generally _whigs._ It happens
agreeably enough to this maxim, that the whigs are friends to that wise,
plodding, unpoetical people, the Dutch.'--_Shenstone's Letters,_ p. 105.
(2) To give the modern reader _un petit apercu_ of the tone of literary
conversation about five or six and twenty years ago, I remember being
present in a large party composed of men, women, and children, in which
two persons of remarkable candour and ingenuity were labouring (as hard
as if they had been paid for it) to prove that all prayer was a mode of
dictating to the Almighty, and an arrogant assumption of superiority. A
gentleman present said, with great simplicity and _naivete,_ that there
was one prayer which did not strike him as coming exactly under
this description, and being asked what that was made answer, 'The
Samaritan's--"Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner!"' This appeal by no
means settled the sceptical dogmatism of the two disputants, and soon
after the proposer of the objection went away; on which one of them
observed with great marks of satisfaction and triumph--'I am afraid we
have shocked that gentleman's prejudices.' This did not appear to me at
that time quite the thing and this happened in the year 1794.--Twice has
the iron entered my soul. Twice have the dastard, vaunting, venal Crew
gone over it: once as they went forth, conquering and to conquer,
with reason by their side, glittering like a falchion, trampling on
prejudices and marching fearlessly on in the work of regeneration;
once again when they returned with retrograde steps, like Cacus's oxen
dragged backward by the heels, to the den of Legitimacy, 'rout on rout,
confusion worse confounded,' with places and pensions and the _Quarterly
Review_ dangling from their pockets, and shouting, 'Deliverance for
mankind,' for 'the worst, the second fall of man.' Yet I have endured
all this marching and countermarching of poets, philosophers, and
politicians over my head as well as I could, like 'the camomile that
thrives, the more 'tis trod upon.' By Heavens, I think, I'll endure it
no longer!
(3) _Troja fuit._
(4) _Mr. Canning's Speech at the Liverpool Dinner, given in celebration
of his Re-election,_ March 18, 1820. Fourth edition, revised and
corrected.