“Be wise to-day; ’tis madness to defer;
      Next day the fatal precedent will plead;
      Thus on, till wisdom is push’d out of life. 
      Procrastination is the thief of time;
      Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
      And to the mercies of a moment leaves
      The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

        Of man’s miraculous mistakes, this bears
      The palm, “That all men are about to live,”
      For ever on the brink of being born. 
      All pay themselves the compliment to think
      They, one day, shall not drivel; and their pride
      On this reversion takes up ready praise;
      At least, their own; their future selves applauds;
      How excellent that life they ne’er will lead! 
      Time lodg’d in their own hands is Folly’s vails: 
      That lodg’d in Fate’s, to Wisdom they consign;
      The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone. 
      ’Tis not in Folly, not to scorn a fool;
      And scarce in human Wisdom to do more. 
      All Promise is poor dilatory man,
      And that through every stage.  When young, indeed,
      In full content we, sometimes, nobly rest,
      Un-anxious for ourselves; and only wish,
      As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. 
      At thirty man suspects himself a fool;
      Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
      At fifty chides his infamous delay,
      Pushes his prudent purpose to Resolve;
      In all the magnanimity of thought
      Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

        And why?  Because he thinks himself immortal. 
      All men think all men mortal, but themselves;
      Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate
      Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;
      But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,
      Soon close; where past the shaft, no trace is found. 
      As from the wing no scar the sky retains;
      The parted wave no furrow from the keel;
      So dies in human hearts the thought of death. 
      Ev’n with the tender tear which nature sheds
      O’er those we love, we drop it in their grave.”

His Universal Passion is a keen and powerful satire; but the effort takes from the effect, and oppresses attention by perpetual and violent demands upon it.  His tragedy of the Revenge is monkish and scholastic.  Zanga is a vulgar caricature of Iago.  The finest lines in it are the burst of triumph at the end, when his revenge is completed: 

      “Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep,
      Let Afric on her hundred thrones rejoice,” &c.