Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 3.djvu/299

Rh, as I am confident was never once imagined by any writer upon government, from Plato to Mr. Locke. Give me leave to transcribe his first paragraph. "I never saw an unruly crowd of people cool by degrees into temper, but it gave me an idea of the original of power, and the nature of civil institutions. One particular man has usually in those cases, from the dignity of his appearance, or other qualities known or imagined by the multitude, been received into sudden favour and authority; the occasion of their difference has been represented to him and the matter referred to his decision."

I have known a poet, who never was out of England, introduce a fact by way of simile, which could probably no where happen nearer than in the plains of Libya; and begin with, "So have I seen." Such a fiction I suppose may be justified by poetical licence; yet Virgil is much more modest. This paragraph of Mr. Steele's, which he sets down as an observation of his own, is a miserable mangled translation of six verses out of that famous poet, who speaks after this manner: "As when a sedition arises in a great multitude, &c. then if they see a wise great man, &c." Virgil, who lived but a little after the ruin of the Roman republick, where seditions often happened, and the force of oratory was great among the people, made use of a simile, which Mr. Steele turns into a fact, after such a manner as if he had seen it a hundred times; and builds upon it a system of the origin of government. When the vulgar here in England assemble in a riotous manner, (which is not very frequent of late years) the prince takes a much more effectual way than that of sending orators to appease them: but Mr. Steele imagines Rh