ination_.

"Now here, now there, the roving _fancy_ flies,
Till some lov'd object strikes her wand'ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.

"_Imagination!_ who can sing thy force,
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental opticks rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul.
----&c. &c."

* * * * *

Such is the poetry which we produce as a proof of our assertions. How
far it has succeeded, the reader may by this time have determined in his
own mind. We shall therefore only beg leave to accompany it with this
observation, that if the authoress _was designed for slavery_, (as
the argument must confess) the greater part of the inhabitants of
Britain must lose their claim to freedom.

To this poetry we shall only add, as a farther proof of their abilities,
the Prose compositions of Ignatius Sancho, who received some little
education. His letters are too well known, to make any extract, or
indeed any farther mention of him, necessary. If other examples of
African genius should be required, suffice it to say, that they can be
produced in abundance; and that if we were allowed to enumerate
instances of African gratitude, patience, fidelity, honour, as so many
instances of good sense, and a sound understanding, we fear that
thousands of the enlightened Europeans would have occasion to blush.

But an objection will be made here, that the two persons whom we have
particularized by name, are prodigies, and that if we were to live for
many years, we should scarcely meet with two other Africans of the same
description. But we reply, that considering their situation as before
described, two persons, above mediocrity in the literary way, are as
many as can be expected within a certain period of years; and farther,
that if these are prodigies, they are only such prodigies as every day
would produce, if they had the same opportunities of acquiring knowledge
as other people, and the same expectations in life to excite their
genius. This has been constantly and solemnly asserted by the pious
Benezet[071], whom we have mentioned before, as having