The passage is defaced by an atrociously bad simile:-- Again--the band of commerce was design'd, To associate all the branches of mankind, And if a boundless plenty be the robe, Trade is the golden girdle of the globe.
Wise to promote whatever end he means, God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes, Each climate needs what other climes produce, And offers something to the general use; No land but listens to the common call, And in return receives supply from all.
This genial intercourse and mutual aid Cheers what were else an universal shade, Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den, And softens human rock-work into men.
Now and then, however, in reading _The Task_, we come across a dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philanthropy, surprises and offends the reader's palate, like the taste of garlic in our butter.
An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism of a mild kind--such is the philosophy of _The Task_, and such the ideal embodied in the portrait of the happy man with which it concludes.

Whatever may be said of the religious asceticism, the Epicurism required a corrective to redeem it from selfishness and guard it against self-deceit.

This solitary was serving humanity in the best way he could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical passage he suggests, but by his literary work; he had need also to remember that humanity was serving him.

The newspaper through which he looks out so complacently into the great "Babel," has been printed in the great Babel itself, and brought by the poor postman, with his "spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks," to the recluse sitting comfortably by his fireside.

The "fragrant lymph" poured by "the fair" for their companion in his cosy seclusion, has been brought over the sea by the trader, who must encounter the moral dangers of a trader's life, as well as the perils of the stormy wave.