THE LONDON MAGAZINE:

Danics

Or, GENTLEMAN's Monthly Intelligencer.

For JANUARY, 1775.

With the following Embellishment, viz.

A NEW and moft CURIOUS MAP of the RIVER THAMES, from its Source or Rife near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, to its Termination in the British Channel. Delineated from modern Surveys, and most beautifully engraved.

LONDON, printed for R. BALDWIN, at No. 47, in Pater-nofter-Row. Of whom may be had complete Sets, from the Year 1732 to the prefent Time, ready and stitched, or any single Volume to complete Sets.

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HORNSBY and PEARCE, Stock Brokers, No. 19, Pope's-Head Alley, Chornhill, London.

THE

LONDON MAGAZINE,

FOR JANUARY, 1775.

For the LONDON MAGAZINE.

HARLEQUIN,
I N, No. XIX.

Parents bave flinty bearts, and children must be wretched. SHAKESPEARE.

MADE but three skips and a round turn from Pater-nofter-row into Oxfordshire. I paufed a moment in Woodstock, and then dropped down the chimney of an old fox-hunter, not many miles from thence. I took the old finner unawares, before he had got off his boots, in a fit of paternal reflection for the first time in his life. Thus he mufed. "I have been cruel, I have been unnatural-I perfecuted Tom violently against truth, and the law of nature-I killed Dick - and my daughter, fhe is an idiot- I am a wretch, and death hurries on me before I can make reparation for my Conduct." Racked with the torment of reflection, and the perturbation of confcience, he started with the horror of his deeds, and hastily rung the bell for the fervant to take off his boots. "Ah (fays I) Master Hardheart, there will come an hour, when death will pull off your boots, and lay you up in the gloomy bed, with an eternal good night." Thefe words from an invi

fible agent threw the flinty father into agonies, and for a week, I am fince informed, he has repented, and means to restore his children to his favour, and their natural right of fituation.

Now for his hiftory, which is not a blank.

He has been the father of feven children, to whom he has only behaved like one in the begetting them; for, from the moment of their births, his hatred increased as they advanced in years; when fit to go abroad, he forced them from him into the world, without that neceffary help which every youth requires to bear him over the billows of misfortune, and the viciffitudes of life. One was hurried into the army, and died in the service, poffeffed of thofe happy qualities, which conftitute a fenfible and polite gentleman, and a gallant foldier. The other explored the remoteft wilds of India, where he was unhappily fhipwrecked, and stripped of every rupee, which indefatigable industry had collected. Ruined as a mercantile feaman, he implored the affiftance of a parent in vain, and unable to pursue

A 2

Harlequin on the Qualifications

purfute his occupation for want of money, he was reduced to every diftrefs in life. Nature, who had been very bountiful in her gifts to Thomas, as well in perfon and conftitution, as mental abilities, now ftirred fome dormant feeds, that might have for ever lain buried and feared under a clofe covering of profeffional pitch and tar, and gave his genius a fillip to fupport him in his exigencies.

It is a truth, beyond any controverfial contradiction, that neceflity, in every state of life, is the mother of active invention, and stimulates every man of genius from the manual mechanic to the heaven inspired poet. It fets the engraver and the painter to work, and from each it produces the finest touches of art: it makes the poet's eye glance from heaven to earth, in an inchanted phrenzy, and brings forth thofe very excellencies, which ftamp poetry in the mind of man, to be a language nearest allied to gods and godlike ideas. The first bleffing which the deity of nature can bestow upon the mind of man, is poetry. To whomsoever the celeftial flath is directed, the man is a favorite of the skies; and is fuperlatively diftinguished from the rest of his fellow creatures. The poet is elevated above the common drofs of humanity, and bears on his noble front, the immediate and visible ftamp of heaven : he is given as an improver to his brethren, or a fcourge to the fons of vice; he is ordained the protector of innocence, and the lath of premeditated, fullen, wicked dullness he is formed to convince mankind of the power of the gods, and the promised bleffings of futurity; to raise mortals to the skies, or bring the angels down. Poets are the embaffadors of heaven, divine infpired meffengers; to teach virtue to mortality, and paint the ugliness of monftrous vice; to re prefent the virtues of the good, to perpetuate the deeds of honour, to elevate or debafe kings and heroes, and to hand down from generation to generation the great, the evil, the god like, or the diabolical acts of men; to encourage virtue in her thorny path, and hock motley vice on beds of gilded down. Whim, intereft, prejudice, paffion or pride, may make prifts, but heaven alone makes bards.

Poeta nafcitur, non fit.

Jan.

The man who is fo highly favoured by the hand of heaven, to be infpired with a ray of genius poetic, is fo far bleffed above his fellow creatures, as his genius is lifted up above the humbleft dullness. The poet folded up within himself can mufe away the hours of life in a perpetual bleffed incantation, improving and cherishing his own mind, while he informs and ravishes him that reads. He contemplates the various works of nature, and darts with an electrical velocity from pole to pole-he talks with all men, enjoys all nature, poffefles an elyfium of his own, and creates his own haram-he blends his nature with all the effence of creation, and doubly poffeffeth the works of the Deity-he ravishes the beauties of the earth with a glorious, furpaffing, and fubftantial rapture, and peculiar to himfelf, fublimates the fcene again, in tenfold ideal tranfport - he is at once the only thing mortal, that comes in comparison and competition with any thing divine and immortal.

Bards and priests of old, were felected in their mature years from the community, according to their ability.

Zoroafter was one of the first philofophers in the early dawn of learning, who, by a most comprehenfive mind, rose perfect in ethicks and philofophy, taught the ufe of aftronomy to the ignorant, and informed them of the beauties of nature, and the moral improvement of the liberal arts and fciences. He led the young Perfian heroes from the academic grove, inftructed in the arts of obeying and ruling, and infpired them with the glorious love of truth and virtue. The Druids of this ifle, though unenlightened by the facred page of Scripture, and the melody of heavenly fong, were the flowers of the race of men at that very barbarous period; but, alas! as we have become improved, we have become vitiated; our students are promifcuoufly fent to our colleges to fill the honourable function of the priesthood, without ever confidering whether they have hearts and powers equal to the divine function; by which means blockheads and and profligates make their way to the pulpit, whom nature

had

1775

Of good Poets and Clergymen.

had better calculated for the plough or the fea. But money and the intereft of a parent are only confidered, which reduces the dignity of the priesthood to the contempt it is now held in every ftripling chaplain with a fpruce round faufage head of hair, pricks up his ears at the chiming of the bells, and thinks with Whittington, that they chink-for lord mayor of Lambeth. The feminaries of learning ought to be stocked with the very flower of our youth, and then the chancellor and profeffors fhould annually felect from each college, fuch men, whofe genius, morals, and abilities entitle them to the honour of the priesthood, and fuch as were not found capable, fhould be introduced to fuch profeffions as their talents fitted them to do juftice to, either in law, phyfic, &c. But now, as families have benefices in their gifts, in the cradle they pronounce mafter Jackey a priest, and by connexion and intereft does this unqualified thing rife by gradation till he fills the See of Lambeth,when he had made a better member of the Coterie or Savoir Viure.

Now to return to the unfortunate fon of Squire Hard heart. Nature en dowed him with an excellent under ftanding and great genius, which the illiterate blockheads about him call madness. Every man of wit and fancy hath been more or lefs accufed of madness by the dunces of his acquaintance; it is the only apology

the dull fools can make for themselves,
when they breathlefs lag behind in
the race of fame and erudition: and
Dryden hath confirmed the idea into
a maxim, by saying.
"Great wits to madness nearly are al-
ly'd,
[vide."
And thin partitions do the bounds di-
So Tom is faid to be mad, because
his understanding is as much above
the people of the country where he
refides, as the light of the fun is to
that of the moon. But misfortunes
and diftreffes which perfecuted him
from an unnatural parent, have dri-
ven a noble mind to the very rack
and torment of despair. Griefs and
injuries will fo violently befiege the
human mind, as to even invert the very
first principle of nature, and disturb
that understanding of the brain, which
fhe meant to be lulled in harmonious
tranquillity. Children are rarely with-
out faults, but should not parents re-
collect and reflect, that they were
children too,and even committed those
very errors, for which they vehe-
mently perfecute their progeny ? It
becomes children to be obedient and
grateful, and it behoveth parents to
be confiderate, humane, and forgiving.
More fons are ruined by the neglects
and unnatural conducts of their pa-
rents, than by their own innate fol-
lies: youth is an ofier, and may be
bent in infancy to any form but if it
is fufferedto grow to maturity, crooked,
no art can make it ftraight: the axe
alone can obliterate its deformity.

'Tis education forms the tender mind;
And as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

:

This is obferved by the celebrated Andrew Marvell—" In his Essay on Creeds and Councils, &c."

For the LONDON MAGAZINE.

O! what is man, his excellence and firength, When in an hour of trial and desertion, Reafon, his nobleft power, may be fuborn'd To plead the caufe of vile affaffination! ROTESTANT Diffenting Minifters

revered as the bulwark of both civil and religious liberty. But how are the mighty fallen! Who could have fuppofed that the caufe of religious liberty fhould be forfaken, and even wounded, by its profeffed votaries? Or, that the common principle of liberty fhould not fo much as be understood by the moft enlightened, in what is boafted to be the moft

luminous of all ages? But fo it is; and as many Diffenting Minifters in the country are fubfcribers to your valuable Magazine, pray favour them with the following notorious proofs.

A committee of fifteen perfons was nominated, at a meeting of the general body of London Diffenting Minifters, March 4, 1772, to apply to Parliament for the taking off the fubfcription required of them and their bre

thren