The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore

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[6] "They drove so fast [says Wellwood of the ministers of Charles I.],
that it was no wonder that the wheels and chariot broke."--(_Memoirs_
p. 86.)

[7] Among those auxiliaries which the Revolution of 1688 marshalled on the
side of the Throne, the bugbear of Popery has not been the least
convenient and serviceable. Those unskilful tyrants, Charles and James,
instead of profiting by that useful subserviency which has always
distinguished the ministers of our religious establishment, were so
infatuated as to plan the ruin of this best bulwark of their power and
moreover connected their designs upon the Church so undisguisedly with
their attacks upon the Constitution that they identified in the minds of
the people the interests of their religion and their liberties. During
those times therefore "No Popery" was the watchword of freedom and served
to keep the public spirit awake against the invasions of bigotry and
prerogative.

[8] "It is a scandal [said Sir Charles Sedley in William's reign] that a
government so sick at heart as ours is should look so well in the face."

[9] The senate still continued, during the reign of Tiberius, to manage
all the business of the public: the money was then and long after coined
by their authority, and every other public affair received their sanction.

[10] There is something very touching in what Tacitus tells us of the
hopes that revived in a few patriot bosoms, when the death of Augustus was
near approaching, and the fond expectation with which they already began
"_bona libertatis incassum disserere_."

[11] Andrew Marvell, the honest opposer of the court during the reign of
Charles the Second, and the last member of parliament who, according to
the ancient mode, took wages from his constituents. The Commons have,
since then, much changed their pay-masters.

[12] According to Xenophon, the chief circumstance which recommended these
creatures to the service of Eastern princes was the ignominious station
they held in society, and the probability of their being, upon this
account, more devoted to the will and caprice of a master, from whose
notice alone they derived consideration, and in whose favor they might
seek refuge from the general contempt of mankind.

[13] Among the many measures, which, since the Revolution, have
contributed to increase the influence of the Throne, and to feed up this
"Aaron's serpent" of the constitution to its present healthy and
respectable magnitude, there have been few more nutritive than the Scotch
and Irish Unions.

INTOLERANCE,

A SATIRE.

"This clamor which pretends to be raised for the safety of religion
has almost worn put the very appearance of it, and rendered us not
only the most divided but the most immoral people upon the face of the
earth."

ADDISON, _Freeholder_, No. 37.

Start not, my friend, nor think the Muse will stain
Her classic fingers with the dust profane
Of Bulls, Decrees and all those thundering scrolls
Which took such freedom once with royal souls,[1]
When heaven was yet the pope's exclusive trade,
And kings were _damned_ as fast as now they're _made_,
No, no--let Duigenan search the papal chair
For fragrant treasures long forgotten there;
And, as the witch of sunless Lapland thinks
That little swarthy gnomes delight in stinks,
Let sallow Perceval snuff up the gale
Which wizard Duigenan's gathered sweets exhale.
Enough for me whose heart has learned to scorn
Bigots alike in Rome or England born,
Who loathe the venom whence-soe'er it springs,
From popes or lawyers,[2] pastrycooks or kings,--
Enough for me to laugh and weep by turns,
As mirth provokes or indignation burns,
As Canning Vapors or as France succeeds,
As Hawkesbury proses, or as Ireland bleeds!

And thou, my friend, if, in these headlong days,
When bigot Zeal her drunken antics plays
So near a precipice, that men the while
Look breathless on and shudder while they smile--
If in such fearful days thou'lt dare to look
To hapless Ireland, to this rankling nook
Which Heaven hath freed from poisonous things in vain,
While Gifford's tongue and Musgrave's pen remain--
If thou hast yet no golden blinkers got
To shade thine eyes from this devoted spot,
Whose wrongs tho' blazoned o'er the world they be,
Placemen alone are privileged _not_ to see--
Oh! turn awhile, and tho' the shamrock wreathes
My homely harp, yet shall the song it breathes
Of Ireland's slavery and of Ireland's woes
Live when the memory of her tyrant foes
Shall but exist, all future knaves to warn,
Embalmed in hate and canonized by scorn.
When Castlereagh in sleep still more profound
Than his own opiate tongue now deals around,
Shall wait the impeachment of that awful day
Which even _his_ practised hand can't bribe away.

Yes, my dear friend, wert thou but near me now,
To see how Spring lights up on Erin's brow
Smiles that shine out unconquerably fair
Even thro' the blood-marks left by Camden there,--[3]
Couldst thou but see what verdure paints the sod
Which none but tyrants and their slaves have trod,
And didst thou know the spirit, kind and brave,
That warms the soul of each insulted slave,
Who tired with struggling sinks beneath his lot
And seems by all but watchful France forgot--[4]
Thy heart would burn--yes, even thy Pittite heart
Would burn to think that such a blooming part
Of the world's garden, rich in nature's charms
And filled with social souls and vigorous arms,
Should be the victim of that canting crew,
So smooth, so godly,--yet so devilish too;
Who, armed at once with prayer-books and with whips,
Blood on their hands and Scripture on their lips,
Tyrants by creed and tortures by text,
Make _this_ life hell in honor of the _next_!
Your Redesdales, Percevals,--great, glorious Heaven,
If I'm presumptuous, be my tongue forgiven,
When here I swear by my soul's hope of rest,
I'd rather have been born ere man was blest
With the pure dawn of Revelation's light,
Yes,--rather plunge me back in Pagan night,
And take my chance with Socrates for bliss,[5]
Than be the Christian of a faith like this,
Which builds on heavenly cant its earthly sway
And in a convert mourns to lose a prey;
Which, grasping human hearts with double hold,--
Like Danaee's lover mixing god and gold,[6]--
Corrupts both state and church and makes an oath
The knave and atheist's passport into both;
Which, while it dooms dissenting souls to know
Nor bliss above nor liberty below,
Adds the slave's suffering to the sinner's fear,
And lest he 'scape hereafter racks him here!
But no--far other faith, far milder beams
Of heavenly justice warm the Christian's dreams;
_His_ creed is writ on Mercy's page above,
By the pure hands of all-atoning Love;
_He_ weeps to see abused Religion twine
Round Tyranny's coarse brow her wreath divine;
And _he_, while round him sects and nations raise
To the one God their varying notes of praise,
Blesses each voice, whate'er its tone may be,
That serves to swell the general harmony.[7]

Such was the spirit, gently, grandly bright,
That filled, oh Fox! thy peaceful soul with light;
While free and spacious as that ambient air
Which folds our planet in its circling care,
The mighty sphere of thy transparent mind
Embraced the world, and breathed for all mankind.
Last of the great, farewell!--yet _not_ the last--
Tho' Britain's sunshine hour with thee be past,
Ierne still one ray of glory gives
And feels but half thy loss while Grattan lives.

[1] The king-deposing doctrine, notwithstanding its many mischievous
absurdities, was of no little service to the cause of political liberty,
by inculcating the right of resistance to tyrants and asserting the will
of the people to be the only true fountain of power.

[2] When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy between the
Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that "he had been bred a lawyer,
and had therefore nothing to do with divinity." It were to be wished that
some of our English pettifoggers knew their own fit element as well as
Pope Innocent X.

[3] Not the Camden who speaks thus of Ireland:--"To wind up all, whether
we regard the fruitfulness of the soil, the advantage of the sea, with so
many commodious havens, or the natives themselves, who are warlike,
ingenious, handsome, and well-complexioned, soft-skinned and very nimble,
by reason of the pliantness of their muscles, this Island is in many
respects so happy, that Giraldus might very well say, 'Nature had regarded
with more favorable eyes than ordinary this Kingdom of Zephyr.'"

[4] The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has held forth, will, I
fear, produce no other effect than that of determining the British
government to persist, from the very spirit of opposition, in their own
old system of intolerance and injustice: just as the Siamese blacken their
teeth, "because," as they say, "the devil has white ones."

[5] In a singular work, written by one Franciscus Collius, "upon the Souls
of the Pagans," the author discusses, with much coolness and erudition,
all the probable chances of salvation upon which a heathen philosopher
might calculate. Consigning to perdition without much difficulty Plato,
Socrates, etc., the only sage at whose fate he seems to hesitate is
Pythagoras, in consideration of his golden thigh, and the many miracles
which he performed. But having balanced a little his claims and finding
reason to father all these miracles on the devil, he at length, in the
twenty-fifth chapter, decides upon damning him also.

[6] Mr. Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790), thus
condemns the intermixture of religion with the political constitution of a
state:--"What purpose [he asks] can it serve, except the baleful purpose
of communicating and receiving contamination? Under such an alliance
corruption must alight upon the one, and slavery overwhelm the other."

[7] Both Bayle and Locke would have treated the subject of Toleration in a
manner much more worthy of themselves and of the cause if they had written
in an age less distracted by religious prejudices.

THE SCEPTIC,

A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE.

PREFACE.

The Sceptical Philosophy of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented
than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an
irrational excess;--but we must not believe with Beattie all the
absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the
doctrines of the school, as explained by Sextus Empiricus, are far more
suited to the wants and infirmities of human reason as well as more
conducive to the mild virtues of humility and patience, than any of those
systems of philosophy which preceded the introduction of Christianity. The
Sceptics may be said to have held a middle path between the Dogmatists and
Academicians; the former of whom boasted that they had attained the truth
while the latter denied that any attainable truth existed. The Sceptics
however, without either asserting or denying its existence, professed to
be modestly and anxiously in search of it; or, as St. Augustine expresses
it, in his liberal tract against the Manichaeans, "_nemo nostrum dicat jam
se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quoeramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur_."
From this habit of impartial investigation and the necessity which it
imposed upon them of studying not only every system of philosophy but
every art and science which professed to lay its basis in truth, they
necessarily took a wider range of erudition and were far more travelled in
the regions of philosophy than those whom conviction or bigotry had
domesticated in any particular system. It required all the learning of
dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learning; and the Sceptics may be
said to resemble in this respect that ancient incendiary who stole from
the altar the fire with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage over
all the other sects is allowed to them even by Lipsius, whose treatise on
the miracles of the Virgo Hallensis will sufficiently save him from all
suspicion of scepticism. "_labore, ingenio, memoria_," he says, "_supra
omnes pene philosophos fuisse.--quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere
debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit nonne orationes
varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas (ut
videbatur) sententias evertendas?" etc.--"Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic."
Dissert_. 4.

Between the scepticism of the ancients and the moderns the great
difference is that the former doubted for the purpose of investigating, as
may be exemplified by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, while the
latter investigate for the purpose of doubting, as may be seen through
most of the philosophical works of Hume. Indeed the Pyrrhonism of latter
days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, but, it must be
confessed, more dangerous in its tendency. The happiness of a Christian
depends so essentially upon his belief, that it is but natural he should
feel alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it should steal by degrees into
that region from which he is most interested in excluding it, and poison
at last the very spring of his consolation and hope. Still however the
abuses of doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from indulging
mildly and rationally in its use; and there is nothing surely more
consistent with the meek spirit of Christianity than that humble
scepticism which professes not to extend its distrust beyond the circle of
human pursuits and the pretensions of human knowledge. A follower of this
school may be among the readiest to admit the claims of a superintending
Intelligence upon his faith and adoration: it is only to the wisdom of
this weak world that he refuses or at least delays his assent;--it is only
in passing through the shadow of earth that his mind undergoes the eclipse
of scepticism. No follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly against
the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians; and there are passages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of
Scripture, which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human reason
originates. Even the Sceptics of antiquity refrained carefully from the
mysteries of theology, and in entering the temples of religion laid aside
their philosophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus declares the acquiescence
of his sect in the general belief of a divine and foreknowing Power:--In
short it appears to me that this rational and well-regulated scepticism is
the only daughter of the Schools that can safely be selected as a handmaid
for Piety. He who distrusts the light of reason will be the first to
follow a more luminous guide; and if with an ardent love for truth he has
sought her in vain through the ways of this life, he will but turn with
the more hope to that better world where all is simple, true and
everlasting: for there is no parallax at the zenith;--it is only near our
troubled horizon that objects deceive us into vague and erroneous
calculations.

THE SCEPTIC

As the gay tint that decks the vernal rose[1]
Not in the flower but in our vision glows;
As the ripe flavor of Falernian tides
Not in the wine but in our taste resides;
So when with heartfelt tribute we declare
That Marco's honest and that Susan's fair,
'Tis in our minds and not in Susan's eyes
Or Marco's life the worth or beauty lies:
For she in flat-nosed China would appear
As plain a thing as Lady Anne is here;
And one light joke at rich Loretto's dome
Would rank good Marco with the damned at Rome.

There's no deformity so vile, so base,
That 'tis not somewhere thought a charm, a grace;
No foul reproach that may not steal a beam
From other suns to bleach it to esteem.
Ask who is wise?--you'll find the self-same man
A sage in France, a madman in Japan;
And _here_ some head beneath a mitre swells,
Which _there_ had tingled to a cap and bells:
Nay, there may yet some monstrous region be,
Unknown to Cook and from Napoleon free,
Where Castlereagh would for a patriot pass
And mouthing Musgrave scarce be deemed an ass!

"List not to reason (Epicurus cries),
"But trust the senses, _there_ conviction lies:"[2]--
Alas! _they_ judge not by a purer light,
Nor keep their fountains more untinged and bright:
Habit so mars them that the Russian swain
Will sigh for train-oil while he sips Champagne;
And health so rules them, that a fever's heat
Would make even Sheridan think water sweet.

Just as the mind the erring sense[3] believes,
The erring mind in turn the sense deceives;
And cold disgust can find but wrinkles there,
Where passion fancies all that's smooth and fair.
P * * * *, who sees, upon his pillow laid,
A face for which ten thousand pounds were paid,
Can tell how quick before a jury flies
The spell that mockt the warm seducer's eyes.

Self is the medium thro' which Judgment's ray
Can seldom pass without being turned astray.
The smith of Ephesus[4] thought Dian's shrine,
By which his craft most throve, the most divine;
And even the _true_ faith seems not half so true,
When linkt with _one_ good living as with _two_.
Had Wolcot first been pensioned by the throne,
Kings would have suffered by his praise alone;
And Paine perhaps, for something snug _per ann_.,
Had laught like Wellesley at all Rights of Man.

But 'tis not only individual minds,--
Whole nations too the same delusion blinds.
Thus England, hot from Denmark's smoking meads,
Turns up her eyes at Gallia's guilty deeds;
Thus, self-pleased still, the same dishonoring chain
She binds in Ireland she would break in Spain;
While praised at distance, but at home forbid,
Rebels in Cork are patriots at Madrid.

If Grotius be thy guide, shut, shut the book,--
In force alone for Laws of Nations look.
Let shipless Danes and whining Yankees dwell
On naval rights, with Grotius and Vattel.
While Cobbet's pirate code alone appears
Sound moral sense to England and Algiers.

Woe to the Sceptic in these party days
Who wafts to neither shrine his puffs of praise!
For him no pension pours its annual fruits,
No fertile sinecure spontaneous shoots;
Not _his_ the meed that crowned Don Hookham's rhyme,
Nor sees he e'er in dreams of future time
Those shadowy forms of sleek reversions rise,
So dear to Scotchmen's second-sighted eyes.
Yet who that looks to History's damning leaf,
Where Whig and Tory, thief opposed to thief,
On either side in lofty shame are seen,[5]
While Freedom's form lies crucified between--
Who, Burdett, who such rival rogues can see,
But flies from _both_ to Honesty and thee?

If weary of the world's bewildering maze,[6]
Hopeless of finding thro' its weedy ways
One flower of truth, the busy crowd we shun,
And to the shades of tranquil learning run,
How many a doubt pursues! how oft we sigh
When histories charm to think that histories lie!
That all are grave romances, at the best,
And Musgrave's but more clumsy than the rest.
By Tory Hume's seductive page beguiled,
We fancy Charles was just and Strafford mild;[7]
And Fox himself with party pencil draws
Monmouth a hero, "for the good old cause!"

Then rights are wrongs and victories are defeats,
As French or English pride the tale repeats;
And when they tell Corunna's story o'er,
They'll disagree in all but honoring Moore:
Nay, future pens to flatter future courts
May cite perhaps the Park-guns' gay reports,
To prove that England triumphs on the morn
Which found her Junot's jest and Europe's scorn.

In science too--how many a system, raised
Like Neva's icy domes, awhile hath blazed
With lights of fancy and with forms of pride,
Then, melting, mingled with the oblivious tide!
_Now_ Earth usurps the centre of the sky,
_Now_ Newton puts the paltry planet by;
_Now_ whims revive beneath Descartes's[8] pen,
Which _now_, assailed by Locke's, expire again.
And when perhaps in pride of chemic powers,
We think the keys of Nature's kingdom ours,
Some Davy's magic touch the dream unsettles,
And turns at once our alkalis to metals.
Or should we roam in metaphysic maze
Thro' fair-built theories of former days,
Some Drummond from the north, more ably skilled,
Like other Goths, to ruin than to build,
Tramples triumphant thro' our fanes o'erthrown,
Nor leaves one grace, one glory of its own.

Oh! Learning, whatsoe'er thy pomp and boast,
_Un_lettered minds have taught and charmed men most.
The rude, unread Columbus was our guide
To worlds, which learned Lactantius had denied;
And one wild Shakespeare following Nature's lights
Is worth whole planets filled with Stagyrites.

See grave Theology, when once she strays
From Revelation's path, what tricks she plays;
What various heavens,--all fit for bards to sing,--
Have churchmen dreamed, from Papias,[9] down to King![10]
While hell itself, in India naught but smoke[11]
In Spain's a furnace and in France--a joke.

Hail! modest Ignorance, thou goal and prize,
Thou last, best knowledge of the simply wise!
Hail! humble Doubt, when error's waves are past,
How sweet to reach thy sheltered port at last,
And there by changing skies nor lured nor awed.
Smile at the battling winds that roar abroad.
_There_ gentle Charity who knows how frail
The bark of Virtue, even in summer's gale,
Sits by the nightly fire whose beacon glows
For all who wander, whether friends or foes.
_There_ Faith retires and keeps her white sail furled,
Till called to spread it for a better world;
While Patience watching on the weedy shore,
And mutely waiting till the storm be o'er,
Oft turns to Hope who still directs her eye
To some blue spot just breaking in the sky!

Such are the mild, the blest associates given
To him who doubts,--and trusts in naught but Heaven!

[1] "The particular bulk, number, figure, and motion of the parts of fire
or snow are really in them, whether any one perceives them or not, and
therefore they may be called real qualities because they really exist in
those bodies; but light, heat, whiteness or coldness are no more really in
them than sickness or pain is in manna. Take away the sensation of them;
let not the eye see light or colors, nor the ears hear sounds; let the
palate not taste nor the nose smell, and all colors, tastes, odors and
sounds, as they are such particular ideas, vanish and
cease."--_Locke_, book ii. chap 8.

[2] This was the creed also of those modern Epicureans, whom Ninon de
l'Enclos collected around her in the Rue des Tournelles, and whose object
seems to have been to decry the faculty of reason, as tending only to
embarrass our wholesome use of pleasures, without enabling us, in any
degree, to avoid their abuse. Madame des Houlieres, the fair pupil of Des
Barreaux in the arts of poetry and gallantry, has devoted most of her
verses to this laudable purpose, and is even such a determined foe to
reason, that, in one of her pastorals, she congratulates her sheep on the
want of it.

[3] Socrates and Plato were the grand sources of ancient scepticism.
According to Cicero ("_de Orator_," lib. iii.), they supplied Arcesilas
with the doctrines of the Middle Academy; and how closely these resembled
the tenets of the Sceptics, may be seen even in Sextus Empiricus (lib. i.
cap. 33), who with all his distinctions can scarcely prove any difference.
It appears strange that Epicurus should have been a dogmatist; and his
natural temper would most probably have led him to the repose of
scepticism had not the Stoics by their violent opposition to his doctrines
compelled him to be as obstinate as themselves.

[4] _Acts_, chap. xix. "For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith,
which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the
craftsmen."

[5] "Those two thieves," says Ralph," between whom the nation is
crucified."--"_Use and Abuse of Parliaments_."

[6] The agitation of the ship is one of the chief difficulties which
impede the discovery of the longitude at sea; and the tumult and hurry of
life are equally unfavorable to that calm level of mind which is necessary
to an inquirer after truth.

[7] He defends Stafford's conduct as "innocent and even laudable." In the
same spirit, speaking of the arbitary sentences of the Star Chamber, he
says,--"The severity of the Star Chamber, which was generally ascribed to
Laud's passionate disposition, was perhaps in itself somewhat blamable."

[8] Descartes, who is considered as the parent of modern scepticism, says,
that there is nothing in the whole range of philosophy which does not
admit of two opposite opinions, and which is not involved in doubt and
uncertainty. Gassendi is likewise to be added to the list of modern
Sceptics, and Wedderkopff, has denounced Erasmus also as a follower of
Pyrrho, for his opinions upon the Trinity, and some other subjects. To
these if we add the names of Bayle, Malebranche, Dryden, Locke, etc., I
think there is no one who need be ashamed of insulting in such company.

[9] Papias lived about the time of the apostles, and is supposed to have
given birth to the heresy of the Chiliastae, whose heaven was by no means
of a spiritual nature, but rather an anticipation of the Prophet of Hera's
elysium.

[10] King, in his "Morsels of Criticisms," vol. i., supposes the sun to be
the receptacle of blessed spirits.