PRISON ECLOGUE,

First re-published in the London Porcupine, on the 1st of November, 1800.

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One of our files of papers, lately received from America, has brought us the following poem, entitled, A PRISON ECLOGUE," to which we think it necessary to prefix a short explanatory preface.

Most of our readers will remember, that Thomas Cooper, of Manchester, was, while in England, a most malicious enemy of his King and country; and that, after having made a sort of reconnoitring trip to America, he wrote a book on Emigration, in which he highly extolled the Government of the New Land of Promise. He returned to America again in the year 1795, and settled in the neighbourhood of Doctor Priestley, at Northumberland, a small town in the state of Pennsylvania. These two disinterested patriots made divers efforts to get into place. At first they proceeded by hints, which became broader and broader, till at last, impatient for a participation in the republican loaves and fishes, Cooper made a direct application to President Adams, backed by the recommendation of his friend Priestley.

The request was refused, and from that moment the Doctor and his brother emigrant availed themselves of every convenient opportunity of indulging their enmity against Mr. Adams. The season, for open opposition to the Federal Government was for a long time inauspicious. The summer of 1799 warmed the dormant faction into life. In Pennsylvania, McKean, the avowed friend of Jefferson

ferson, and the devoted tool of France, became a candidate for the important office of Governor. To him, therefore, who had in his state ten times as many offices in his gift as the President, the emigrated philosophers looked with confidence for that profit and importance which they had in vain solicited from the Federal Government; and that they might not be destitute of a ground for their pretensions, they zealously, ably, and efficaciously supported his cause in the canvass which preceded the election.

During this canvass, this six months of disputation, of intrigues, of reciprocal calumny, of anxiety, of hope, of fear, and of hatred, Cooper, who is possessed of talents that would do honour to a better cause, voluntarily became the editor of a newspaper in his neighbourhood; during which editorship he published, in his own name, a number of essays, which did infinite injury to the federal party. One of those essays was made the ground of a criminal prosecution on the part of the President, under the Sedition Law of that republican country; and poor Cooper was, for a writing much less libellous than almost every number of each of our opposition prints, sentenced to pay a fine of four hundred dollars, and to be imprisoned six months among the felons in the philanthropic prison of Philadelphia, in which enviable situation the poet brings his friend Priestley to visit him.

With this previous information, the reader will enter with more advantage on the perusal of the poem, which comes from the classical pen of Mr. Dennie, a native of New England, and a writer, whose various productions are very deservedly the boast of the new world.

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VOL. XII.

I

PRISON PRISON ECLOGUE.

PRIESTLEY and COOPER.

Priestley.

AT ease reclining on thy truckle bed,
Bolts at thy door, and brandy in thy head, (a)
Thou, Cooper, may'st the imprisoned muses court,
If to a prison muses deign resort. (b)
1, wretched wight! have left my native plains,
The smoky workshops and the swarthy swains, (c)
Where joining chemic with religion's hate,
I try'd to decompose the Church and State;
Spurning the bounds to diffrent studies fixt,
Poison with preaching fearlessly I mixt;
Sedition into Deism's service prest-
(The treason gave dull controversy zest).
But thou, secure in this sequestered seat, (d)
The hungry felon's desperate retreat,
May'st give thy pent-up spleen its utmost scoре;
(A convict-what hast thou to do with hope?)
Dip thy advent'rous pen in ranker gall,
Lash Lawyers, Judges, Jurymen and all;
Make them e'en here the press's freedom feel,
And give poor Nicholson another meal.*

Cooper.

(e) O gentle Doctor, were my sceptic mind
To heav'n or heav'nly thoughts at all inclin'd,
Some god has deign'd (almost I could believe)
This precious leisure to my prayers to give, (f)

(a) Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi. (b) Musam meditaris avena.

(c) Nos

dulcia linquimus arva;

Nos patriam fugimus; (d) tu Tityre,

(e) O Melibæa. (f) Deus nobis hæc otra fecit.

Namque erit ille mibi semper Deus.

-Ille meas errare boves, ut cernis, et ipsum

Ludere, quæ vellem, calamo permisit agresti.

* Alluding to a paper called The Daily Repast, published int

the Philadelphia prison.

That,

:

My god he shall be, oft to him shall flow
This black libation, for to him I owe
That, as you see, my flocks securely roam,
Nor simple dream of wand'ring far from home;
To him, that armed with this envenom'd quill,
I can blaspheme, or libel, as I will.

Priestley.

(g) I envy not thy happiness, I own:
I wonder inore that thou art here alone.
Sedition stalks so boldly through the State,
Lampoons distract, and libels irritate.
Adjourn'd the Senate, braving see Duane
Sneaks into town, and heads his Greens again;
The ribald Callender can hardly meet
A prison's shelter (for the wretch must eat)
And I, who've still for persecution pray'd,
* Attack in vain the idol I had made,
My younglings see, with unavailing rage, (b)
Hope of my stock, and solace of my age,
Unheeded meet the stupid peasant's eye,
Abortive fall, 'midst woods and wilds to die.
(i) A beast (I now remember) had of old
In accents harsh and piercing, thus foretold.
Well I remember now his boding croak,
And quills erect, which bristled as he spoke,†
(k) But give me, dearest friend, this god to know.

Cooper.

(1) I thought (ah! simpleton for thinking so)
I thought this seat of mild fraternal love,
Where all in just equality should move,

(g) Non tamen invideo : miror magis.

(b) Spem gregis, ab! silice in nucâ connixa reliquit. (i) Sæpe malum boc nobis, si meas non læva fuisset

De cælo tactas memini predicere quercus

(Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix)

(k) Sed tamen, iste Deus qui sit, da, Tityre, nobis.

(1) Urbem, quam dicunt Romam-putavi

Stultus, ego buic nostræ similem

Sic canibus catulos similes

Noram

* Alluding to Dr. Priestley's attack on the federal constitu tion, in his Letters to the inhabitants of Northumberland,

which fell almost still born.

† Porcupine.

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Was

Was like the city* where our artful song
So often led the giddy multitude along.
Thus tygers' whelps I knew were like their sire,
Thus ruthless Jacobins (their borrowed fire
Still nourish'd from the Gallic parent flame)
Were blood-stained murderers, every where the same.

Priestley.

But what to Philadelphia turned thy flight?

Cooper.

(m) Sweet liberty, "that goddess heavenly bright;"
Late though she cast on me a side-long glance,
Such as inflames her madd'ning sons in France.
She came, and me her fondest vot'ry found,
When the bleach'd cotton ceas'd to clothe my ground:†
When flimsy projects had devour'd my pelf,
And left me nought to care but for herself.
(n) By poverty, by disappointment stung,
(Such causes loose the noisy patriot's tongue)
(0) Hither I came, and first beheld the sage,
His locks by wisdom whiten'd and by age.
A place! I cried, and own'd a present God;
(p) A place! he echo'd with a gracious nod.
See yon white wall, yon grated windows see.
The fittest place for such philosophy!

(g) Tend for six moons the flocks that wait thee there;
Creatures of thine, they merit all thy care.

Priestley.

(r) Thrice happy man! then thou at length hast found
A resting place for thee an ample bound.
What though the walls are bare, though noisome smells
Assail thy nostrils from surrounding cells.

(m) Libertas, quæ sera tamen respexit inertem.

(n) -Nec tam presentes alibi cognoscere divos. (o) Hic illum vidi

(p) Hic mibi responsum primus dedit ille petenti; (9) Pascite, ut ante, boves

(r) Fortunate senex !

Non insueta graves tentabunt pabula fætas. * Manchester.

† Cooper, while at Manchester, invented a mode of BLEACHING COTTON by the help of INFLAMMABLE AIR. He burnt the cottons, became a bankrupt, turned patriot, and emigrated to America. A very natural progress towards perfectability,

No