Hired to Depress: A Digital Scholarly Edition of William Blake's Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses

Some Account ciii


cherished and enforced by those turbulent
and unruly spirits among us, whom no King
could govern , nor no GOD could please ;58 and
long before that book was written, frequent-
ly avowed his contempt of those ** Adam-
wits," who set at nought the accumulated
wisdom of ages, and on all occasions are
desirous of beginning the world anew. He
did not live to see the accomplishment of al-
most every one of the predictions of the pro-
phetick and philosophical work alluded to %
happily for himself he did not live to partici-
 
58 How justly may we apply the immediately follow-
ing lines of the same great Poet, to those demagogues
among us, who since the era above mentioned, have not
only on all occasions gratuitously pleaded the cause of the
enemies of their country with the zeal of fee’d advocates,
but by every other mode incessantly endeavoured to
debase and assimilate this free and happy country to the
model of the ferocious and enslaved Republick of France !

" These Adam-wits, too fortunately free, 
" Began to dream they wanted liberty ; 
" And when no rule, no precedent was found
" Of men, by laws less circumscribed and bound,
" They led their wild desires to woods and caves,
" And thought that all but savages were slaves."
 

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