The docks and weeds of which the foregrounds in Jamaica are composed, are the most rich and beautiful productions of the kind I have ever seen; and the banks of the rivers are fringed with every growth that a painter would wish to introduce into this agreeable part of landscape; and those borders which Claude Lorrain, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa, took apparently so much pleasure and pains to enrich, are there excelled by the hand of Nature alone: nor do I conceive it possible for any artist to invent, by a sedulous collection of the most choice and beautiful parts of her productions, more enchanting scenes than can be observed in the dells and vallies, and on the margins of the rivers, in that beautiful and romantic country.
The cascades, the torrents, the rivers, and the rills, are enchantingly picturesque in their different features, and exchange the sublimity or repose of their scenes, according to the variations of the seasons, or the turmoils of the elements; and these variations, I should conceive, few climates afford in competition with that I have ventured to describe. The colours of Loutherbourg are better calculated for the expression of such varieties than those, I should imagine, of any modern artist; and he might there meet with several falls, the surrounding scenery of which might eclipse the boasted waters of Schaffhausen, the brilliancy of Pisvâche, and the gloom of Terni.
From the rocks, in general, but from those in particular that help to form the Bay of Bluefields, may be made the most rich and beautiful studies; and indeed it is hardly possible to describe the variety and softness of their tints, the boldness of their masses, the projection of their shades, the various and picturesque accompaniments of trees that rise and spread from, of shrubs that partially hide, of bushes that creep over, or plants and weeds that luxuriantly adorn, their broken basements; and which basements are worn into caverns, or hollows, by the irritation of the tides, which leave, as a recompence for the intrusions they have made, a deposit of beautiful and various dyes; of such dyes as the most celebrated artist might be proud to imitate, and the imitation of which would require the eye of judgment and execution not to disgrace.
* * *
As I have before noticed the tinted beauties of the rocks of Bluefield, I shall now suppose myself to be seated upon the most elevated part of this romantic hill, and looking down upon all the beauties of the scene below.
The hill upon this road, a little beyond the watering‐place (which is supplied with one of the most brilliant and limpid streams of which imagination can possibly form a just idea, and which in point of keeping is hardly inferior to the boasted quality of that of the Thames), is very particularly and strikingly romantic; and the precipices towards the sea are painfully tremendous, as in some places the road is extremely narrow; and there are but few intervening shrubs to give the eye a confidence, and to break the giddy distance of the depth below.
As you look back upon the country through which you had lately passed; the solemn woods and the painted rocks, over which is seen to wander an infinite variety of creeping shrubs; and the winding road, the sinking hills, the level plains, the dotted town, and spiral masts; the swelling bay and sandy shores, and the distant mountains softened in the horizon – all together form an amphitheatre of beauty and extent that is seldom examined, and little known; and which puts me much in mind, in some particular and different parts, of one of those large and magnificent pictures of Claude Lorrain.
* * *
There are but few images in nature that are more congenial to the contemplative man, who delights in the silence and solemnity of that hour when all passions of the mind, excepting sorrow, appear to be asleep, than a solitary walk amidst the bamboo‐canes, when the moon‐beam darts partially here and there amidst their shadows, when the dew‐drops glitter on the leaves, and not a sound is heard, save the plaintive whispers of the plantain and banana trees that wave with drowsy murmur around the watchman’s hut, and seem to invite with gentle blandishment to social conversation or repose.
I have frequently dwelt upon these seeming retreats of innocent retirement, and upon the situations of their inhabitants, oblivious of the world, its contentions and disappointments, its suspenses and its cares, until I could almost fancy that, instead of the hovel of a slave, I was reflecting upon the habitation of a hermit.
IIB12 Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) On revolution, slavery and the Wedgwood medallion
The elevated language of Erasmus Darwin’s Augustan verse has been left beached by a modern sensibility rooted in Romanticism. Nonetheless, at the time his efforts marked an attempt to modernize poetry and have it address pressing contemporary issues, both technological and social. The present short selection links the two. Darwin has just been praising Benjamin Franklin for his work on electricity and Josiah Wedgwood for his establishment of the Etruria ceramic works at Stoke‐on‐Trent. He moves on to an invocation of the spirit of the French Revolution. Pursuing his theme of freedom, he then turns to a denunciation of Catholic Spain for its colonization and enslavement of South America and begs ‘Britannia’ to take a different course with the Atlantic slave trade. His reference in the closing lines is to the Wedgwood anti‐slavery medallion, in which a kneeling African figure in chains is surrounded by the legend ‘Am I not a man and a brother’. This medallion, after the model of an antique cameo, was first produced in 1787 for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Although subsequently criticized for its paternalism, the Wedgwood medallion made a significant contribution to the anti‐slavery movement in late eighteenth‐century Britain. The extract is taken from The Botanic Garden, Part I The Economy of Vegetation, London, 1791, pp. 92–3 and 95–6 (lines 377–94 and 413–30).
‘Long had the Giant‐form on GALLIA’s plains
Inglorious slept, unconscious of his chains;
Round his large limbs were wound a thousand strings
By the weak hands of Confessors and Kings;
O’er his closed eyes a triple veil was bound,
And steely rivets lock’d him to the ground;
While stern Bastile with iron cage inthralls
His folded limbs, and hems in marble walls.
− Touch’d by the patriot‐flame, he rent amazed
The flimsy bonds, and round and round him gazed;
Starts up from earth, above the admiring throng
Lifts his Colossal form, and towers along;
High o’er his foes his hundred arms He rears,
Plowshares his swords, and pruning hooks his spears;
Calls to the Good and Brave with voice, that rolls
Like Heaven’s own thunder round the echoing poles;
Gives to the winds his banner broad unfurl’d,
And gathers in its shade the living world!
* * *
‘Heavens! on my sight what sanguine colours blaze!
Spain’s deathless shame! the crimes of modern days!
When Avarice, shrouded in Religion’s robe,
Sail’d to the West, and slaughter’d half the globe;
While Superstition, stalking by his side,
Mock’d the loud groans, and lap’d the bloody tide;
For sacred truths announced her frenzied dreams,
And turn’d to night the sun’s meridian beams. –
Hear,