Is nothing at all; ’tis the poor wounded stranger,
And the poorer the more I shall succour distress.
This may be rough morality, but it is of better quality than the following selfish sample in Watts:
Lord, I ascribe it to thy grace,
And not to chance, as others do,
That I was born of Christian race,
And not a heathen or a Jew.
While Dibdin’s Tom or Jack is for ever seeing, after his fashion, a merciful Providence, Watts’s model child can discern only one armed with terrors and tortures. Isaac had no idea of one of Charley’s ‘sweet little cherubs’ sitting aloft watchful to preserve; the Nonconformist’s feverish eye beheld only a demon:—
’Tis dangerous to provoke a god!
His power and vengeance none can tell: