No More Learning

I have made no attempt
to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present
governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument. I would only
awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true
virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral
and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in
the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto,
which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a
succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of
individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of
mankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and
uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the
senses; its impatience at 'all the oppressions which are done under
the sun;' its tendency to awaken public hope, and to enlighten and
improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that
tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and
degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the
bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the
religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the
tranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration
and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of
hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but
kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of
the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by
foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the
victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate
despotism,--civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter
extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the
advocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure
earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of
ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the
series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And, if the lofty
passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story
shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst
for excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs to no
meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness
for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the
business of the Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the
enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid
presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration
and his reward.

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes
of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is
gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that
whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless
inheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had
been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting
themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some
of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not
have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and
thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all
its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its
deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears
the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are
past. Methinks, those who now live have survived an age of despair.

The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations
of a general state of feeling among civilised mankind produced by a
defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and
the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The
year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important
crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that
event extended to every bosom.
The most generous and amiable natures
were those which participated the most extensively in these
sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was
impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect
prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims
to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the
slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous
rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the
demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in
France, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised
world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under
the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which
one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can
he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become
liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence
of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute
perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and
long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of
men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience
teaches now. But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of
French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the
solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the
unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and
tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally
ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared
to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes.
Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age
in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously
finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This
influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness
of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics (I ought to except sir
W. Drummond's "Academical Questions"; a volume of very acute and
powerful metaphysical criticism. ), and inquiries into moral and
political science, have become little else than vain attempts to
revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those of Mr. Malthus
(It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that
Mr.