new philosophy is stolen from Gulliver's Travels, and that the republic of horses was

the archetype of your perfect men.* .* But come, that we may part in good humour, I will treat you with a sentiment, which I derive from a dear friend of Swift. "We are for a just partition of the world, for every man hath a right to enjoy life. We retrench the superfluities of mankind. The world is avaricious, and we hate avarice. A covetous fellow, like a jackdaw, steals what he was never made to enjoy, for the sake of hiding it. These are the robbers of mankind, for money was made for the free-hearted and ge nerous: and where is the injury of taking from another, what he has not the heart to make use of ?" What is What is your opinion of this?

Neodidactus.

It is admirably expressed, in the true spirit of our philosophy, and of impartial justice. Indeed our master has said some

See the Voyage to the Houynhms.

302

DIALOGUE IN THE SHADES.

thing very like it.* Pray, in what divine work is this great truth to be found?

Lucian.

In the Beggar's Opera; it expresses the sentiments of a gang of highwaymen, an institution which approaches nearer to your idea of perfect society, than any other with which I am acquainted.

Enquiry, vol. i. p. 208, and vol. ii. p. 444,

KNASTER;

AN ELEGY.

WRITTEN IN 1791.

The following elegy was originally written, to rally a particular friend on his attachment to German tobacco, and German literature. It is well known to the learned, that the tobacco chiefly smoked by philosophers in Germany, is denominated Knaster; but it may be necessary to apprise the reader, that when this poem was compcsed, the fragrant weed was sold in covers, marked as low-priced tea, for the purpose of evading the excise laws. The subject did not appear considerable enough to excite the sympathy of the public, till I found that Professor KOTZEBUE had founded the distress of a serious comedy on a similar incident. In his Indians in England,* he represents an amiable Baronet, overwhelmed with affliction, from the want of a pot of porter, and a pipe of tobacco. Convinced of my error, by the approbation with which his work has been received, I have ventured to draw my elegy from the heap of my papers, and to produce it, with some slight alterations, and with the suppression of all personal allusions.

+ See "The German Miscellany," by Mr. Thompson.

305

KNASTER.

Deep in a den, conceal'd from Phoebus' beams, Where neighb'ring IRWELL leads his sable streams,

Where misty dye-rooms fragrant scents bestow,
And fires more fierce than love for ever glow,
Damætas sate; his drooping head, opprest
By heavy care, hung sullen on his breast:
His idle pipe was thrown neglected by,
His books were tumbled, and his curls awry.
Beneath, the furnace sigh'd in thicker smoke,
Each loom return'd his groans with double stroke;
In mournful heaps around his fossils lay,

And each sad crystal shot a watry ray.

'Ah! what,' he cry'd, 'avails an honour'd place,
Or what the praise of learning's hectic race!
In vain, to boast my well-instructed eyes,
I dip in buckets, or in baskets rise;

Now plung'd, like Hob, to sprawl in dirty wells,
Now bent, with demon-forms, in murky cells,
Or where columnar salt enchants the soul,
Or starry roofs enrich the northern hole.

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