#poetry How often have the people said: "What's power?" Who reigns soon is dethroned? each fleeting hour Has onward borne, as in a fevered dream, Such quick reverses, like a judge supreme— Austere but just, they contemplate the end To which the current of events must tend. Self-confidence has taught them to forbear, And in the vastness of their strength, they spare. Armed with impunity, for _one in vain_ Resists a _nation_, they let others reign. Their battles are not bloody and they spare To others all their own dominions fair. All honors and all dignities they _spare_, Their trophies are but laurels and the crown Of peace and plenty for abounding years. '_To spare_' does here, indeed, as a poet would say, _Double-duty_ perform. It is a noun and a verb, and makes good rhyme. The thought is this : _Posterity_, which by the figure 'Prolepsis' Has got the start of you, and bids fair to reach the breach of future days before you do, itself is '_Age_ in its cradle' and so just beginning to talk its baby-language, and to creep about. And being in this dependent state you ought kindly to take care of _it_. And did any man ever do a whit to help the _posterity_ of the barbarous Albanians and Egyptians, or was they deign'd to be anywise _tender of posterity in distant ages_, or have any solicitude upon Lady Masham's account for her ancient deity, Jupiter? No, no, my children; it is only introduced here at last for a worse purpose than even such like ridicularities, which is to furnish out them a specious pretence for further melancholy and pestiferous rates towards their own Post Posterities. I could do a deal of the same kind, in the way which the keeping of a certain Book methodically has furnished me with; if, through the continual irregularities I have been liable to, and at last absolutely to an incapacity to write what I knew, I did not now find myself under a necessity of relinquishing that method. However, to go on.