Excerpt from Three Poems: I. Eleusinia, or the Soul's Progress, II. Nimrod, the First Tyrant, III. Sibylla Anglica

In order to paint the vicious and selfish passions which naturally instigate and abet the social crime to tyranny, I have chosen to refer my subject to that man, who (we are told) began to be a mighty one in the earth. Some apology for the choice of such a subject may perhaps be thought due to my countrymen, in whose happy experience this crime seems to be obsolete: therefore I would venture to suggest that the same passions still exist in every grade of society, though in none perhaps have they a more feeble existence than in the highest. But if this can be truly said of our favoured country, where the Sovereign is the foremost to obey the laws, which the people in their cumulative wisdom enact, yet we must remember that this blest condition does not obtain universally among the nations of the world, neither has it nourished here immemorially.

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