CANTO III.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
267
Those oracles which set the world in flame,[1]
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more:
Did he not this for France? which lay before
Bowed to the inborn tyranny of years?[2]
Broken and trembling to the yoke she bore,
Till by the voice of him and his compeers,
Roused up to too much wrath which follows o'ergrown fears?
LXXXII.
They made themselves a fearful monument!
The wreck of old opinions—things which grew,[3]
Breathed from the birth of Time: the veil they rent,
- ↑ [Rousseau published his Discourses on the influence of the sciences, on manners, and on inequality (Sur l'Origine ... de l'Inégalité parmi les Hommes) in 1750 and 1753; Émile, ou, de l'Éducation, and Du Contrat Social in 1762.]
- ↑ ["What Rousseau's Discourse [Sur l'Origine de l'Inégalité, etc.] meant ... is not that all men are born equal. He never says this.... His position is that the artificial differences, springing from the conditions of the social union, do not coincide with the differences in capacity springing from original constitution; that the tendency of the social union as now organized is to deepen the artificial inequalities, and make the gulf between those endowed with privileges and wealth, and those not so endowed, ever wider and wider.... It was ... [the influence of Rousseau ... and those whom he inspired] which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution:"—Rousseau, 1888, i. 181, 182.]
- ↑
——thoughts which grew
Born with the birth of Time——.—[MS.] - ↑
——even let me view
But good alas——.—[MS.]
