Note 98 — CANTO III. MANIFESTO.

In wilds where science ne’er was thought on.

That is, in the United States of America, among Indians and Yankees. You will find, gentlemen, much to the purpose relative to the state of science, where Perkinism originated, in the Monthly Magazine, of January, 1803, under the title of “Animadversions on the present state of literature and taste in the United States, communicated by an English gentleman lately returned from America.” This gentleman gives information that the Americans are wretchedly “behind-hand in science with the Britains.” Indeed, those transatlantic younkers ought, in half a century, to have established universities and other seminaries of learning, at least as old and respectable as those of Oxford and Cambridge, and which should have graduated as many students and produced as many great men. As to the parsimonious spirit of Americans in encouraging science (which this gentleman animadverts upon with laudable indignation) it ought truly to be exclaimed against by us Englishmen, for the weighty reason following: Great Britain, “from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary” (as judge Blackstone says) hath starved some of her first poets; such for instance as Butler, Otway, Chatterton, Dryden, Savage, &c. &c. &c. &c. consequently (according to the same author) she ought to enjoy the exclusive “customary privilege” of inflicting the horrors of starvation on the sons of the muses: but it must be granted, for the honor of British munificence, that the scientific Herschel, in the decline of life, as a reward for immortalizing his present majesty, by inscribing Georgium Sidus in the great folio of the heavens, is allowed the enormous pension of 80l. per annum!!

This instance of liberality, in rewarding merit, has caused me to suspend my animadversions relative to patronage afforded men of real science in Great Britain, till I can discover whether it be the absolute determination of my countrymen to starve doctor Caustic.