human
Can you continue this poem for me?
  ----Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.--HORAT.
schoolfellow of the poet.
Written by Mr. POPE.
The second edition, 8vo.
Written in the year 1709. With the Commentary and Notes of
In the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which
unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe that the
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll
violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:
While many a merry tale, and many a song,
Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long;
The rough road then, returning in a round,
Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main;
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
diffidence. Dryden, in his Epistle to Roscommon, says,
Yet modestly he does his work survey,
And calls a finished poem an essay;
commentary, that the Essay was "the work of an author who had not
Criticism." In the first version it is asserted that the poem was
Soft were my numbers; who could take offence
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answered,--I was not in debt.
Here we learn that Dennis thought meanly of Pope's Pastorals. The
Pope lashed Dennis for an intemperance of manner which could be
madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love, you will be soon
I never answered; I was not in debt.
If wrong I smiled; if right I kissed the rod.
Peace is my dear delight,--not Fleury's more,
But touch me, and no minister so sore.
unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope.
sincere, when they concurred in condemning his obscurity, turgid
disentangling the weed from the fear of snapping the flower." The
In poets as true genius is but rare.
'Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
ourselves which demanded to be embodied in written words. The
originality, which was our glory, appeared a vice to Pope. The
An exclusive partisan of classical poetry, Pope did not the less
And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose,
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
But when t'examine ev'ry part he came.
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.--lines 3, 4.
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.--l. 28, 29.
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.--l. 209, 10.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.--l. 324, 5.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.--l. 364, 5.
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense.--l. 386, 7.
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.--l. 566, 7.
For the worst avarice is that of sense.--l. 578, 9.
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.--l. 608, 9.
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense.--l. 653, 4.
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.--lines 52, 3.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.--l. 60, 1.
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.--l. 233, 4.
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.--l. 237, 8.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.--l. 259, 60.
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.--l. 291, 2.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.--l. 301, 2.
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.--l. 428, 9.
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit.--l. 448, 9.
Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.--l. 538, 9.
Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.--l. 651, 2.
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.--l. 657, 8.
increase--care, war--join, shine--disapproved, beloved--take,
speak--fool, dull--satires, dedicators--read, head--speaks,
makes--extreme, phlegm--find, joined--joined, mind--revive,
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always _so_;
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us _so_.
False eloqu[=e]nce like th[=e] prismatic glass,
Atones not f[=o]r that envy which it brings;
That i[=n] proud dullness joins with quality;
That not alone what t[=o] your sense is due;
As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.
thought De Quincey refers to the character of Addison:
Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?
Who but must weep if Atticus were he?
Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires
_True genius kindles_, and fair fame aspires.
capable of a double construction; absolute contradictions are not
Know God and Nature only are the same;
In man the judgment shoots at flying game.
painstaking poet than Pope. His works were slowly elaborated, and
Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic--1. Candour, ver.
freedom of advice, ver. 578--2. When one's counsel is to be
restrained, ver. 584--Character of an incorrigible poet, ver.
critic, ver. 629--The history of criticism, and characters of the
'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
Some few in that, but numbers err in this,
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;
Both must alike from heav'n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely, who have written well.
Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?
Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind:
Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light,
The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right;
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced,   }
Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,  }
So by false learning is good sense defaced:  }
Some are bewildered in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.
If Maevius scribble in Apollo's spite,
There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets passed,
Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle,
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:
To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts.
Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his sev'ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides;
Works without show, and without pomp presides:
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects remains.
Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed;
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;
The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodised;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.
Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,
She drew from them what they derived from heav'n,
The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,
To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:
But following wits from that intention strayed,
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid;
Against the poets their own arms they turned,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned.
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors' bills to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled so much as they;
Some dryly plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made;
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.
You then whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each ancient's proper character;
His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.
Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t' outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,
And but from nature's fountain scorned to draw:
But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design:       }
And rules as strict his laboured work confine, }
As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line. }
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.
Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there's a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each                  }
Are nameless graces which no methods teach, }
And which a master hand alone can reach.         }
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end,)
Some lucky licence answer to the full
Th' intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgment, gains
The heart, and all its end at once attains.
In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes,  }
Which out of nature's common order rise,      }
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.     }
But though the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compelled by need;
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.
I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His pow'rs in equal rank, and fair array,
But with th' occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.
Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring;
Hear, in all tongues consenting Paeans ring!
In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined,
And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found!
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ:
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,
We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts;
'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,
(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!)
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th' admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular.
Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
In ev'ry work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors, must the less commit:
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some trifles is a praise.
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.
Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;
Made him observe the subject, and the plot,
The manners, passions, unities, what not,
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.
"What! leave the combat out!" exclaims the knight;
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.
"Not so, by heav'n!" he answers in a rage,
"Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage."
So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain.
"Then build a new, or act it in a plain."
Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts,
As most in manners, by a love to parts.
Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature, and the living grace,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.
Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,--the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,  }
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon,   }
It gilds all objects, but it alters none. }
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable:
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed:
For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort,
As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,             }
These sparks with awkward vanity display          }
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;           }
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
But most by numbers judge a poet's song,
And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong:
In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,     }
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,  }
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.  }
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees:"
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep:"
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,
Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world's victor stood subdued by sound!
The pow'r of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleased too little or too much.
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense:
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.
Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which, from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days:
Regard not then if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.
Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town:
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent.
Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd, the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with quality,
A constant critic at the great man's board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learn'd by being singular;
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.
Some praise at morning what they blame at night;
But always think the last opinion right.
A muse by these is like a mistress used,
This hour she's idolised, the next abused;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread;
Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read;
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain,
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane.
If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe,
Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.
Some valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind:
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;
But sense survived when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:
Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;
But like a shadow, proves the substance true:
For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known
Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,
And 'tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has designed
Some bright idea of the master's mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his command,
And ready nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!
Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,
Atones not for that envy which it brings.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,
But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,
That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ?
The owner's wife, that other men enjoy;
Then most our trouble still when most admired,
And still the more we give, the more required;
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,
Sure some to vex, but never all to please;
'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,
By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!
If wit so much from ign'rance undergo,
Ah let not learning too commence its foe!
Of old, those met rewards who could excel,
And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:
Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,
Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.
Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,
Employ their pains to spurn some others down;
And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways,
Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise!
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the critic let the man be lost.
Good-nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.
But if in noble minds some dregs remain
Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;
Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,
Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.
No pardon vile obscenity should find,
Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;
But dulness with obscenity must prove
As shameful sure as impotence in love.
In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,
Sprung the rank weed, and thrived with large increase:
When love was all an easy monarch's care;
Seldom at council, never in a war:
Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit;
The fair sat panting at a courtier's play,
And not a mask went unimproved away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,
And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;
Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,
And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there!
Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies,
And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!
Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,
Will needs mistake an author into vice;
All seems infected that th' infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
Learn then what morals critics ought to show,
For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.
'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,
That not alone what to your sense is due
All may allow, but seek your friendship too.
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last.
'Tis not enough your counsel still be true;
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;
That only makes superior sense beloved.
For the worst avarice is that of sense.
With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust,
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.
Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;
Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.
'Twere well might critics still this freedom take,
But Appius reddens at each word you speak,
And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,
Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;
Such, without wit, are poets when they please,
As without learning they can take degrees.
Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires,
And flattery to fulsome dedicators,
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er.
'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,
And charitably let the dull be vain:
Your silence there is better than your spite,
For who can rail so long as they can write?
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.
Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true,
There are as mad, abandoned critics too.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales.
With him most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend,
Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard:
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,         }
It still looks home, and short excursions makes; }
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,         }
And never shocked, and never turned aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.
But where's the man, who counsel can bestow,
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;
Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;
Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe;
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?
Such once were critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;
He steered securely, and discovered far,
Led by the light of the Maeonian star.
Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty,
Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense;
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey
The truest notions in the easiest way.
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judged with coolness, though he sung with fire;
His precepts teach but what his works inspire.
Our critics take a contrary extreme,
They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.
See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine,
And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!
Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,
The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.
In grave Quintilian's copious work, we find
The justest rules, and clearest method joined:
Thus useful arms in magazines we place,
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,
But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,
Still fit for use, and ready at command.
Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:
Whose own example strengthens all his laws;
And is himself that great sublime he draws.
Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,
Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.
Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;
And arts still followed where her eagles flew;
From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom,
And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.
With tyranny, then superstition joined,
As that the body, this enslaved the mind;
Much was believed, but little understood,
And to be dull was construed to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun.
At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.
But see! each muse, in Leo's golden days,
Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,
Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head.
Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.
Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!
But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.
Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,
But critic-learning flourished most in France;
The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys;
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presumed, and better knew,
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restored wit's fundamental laws.
Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell
"Nature's chief master-piece is writing well."
Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,
With manners gen'rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev'ry author's merit, but his own.
Such late was Walsh, the muse's judge and friend,
Who justly knew to blame or to commend:
To failings mild, but zealous for desert;
The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,
This praise at least a grateful muse may give:
The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,
Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries;
Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,
The learn'd reflect on what before they knew:
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;
Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.
Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
_i. e._ with taste, or genius.
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
that point where sense and dulness meet.
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
judiciously restrained. This only happens when nature is exactly
wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
directions of judgment.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,
These drew from them what they derived from heav'n,
so that both are to be well studied.
Ver. 92. _Hear how learn'd Greece, &c._] He speaks of the ancient
The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
For, as ignorance, when joined with humility, produces stupid
His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page:
Religion, country, genius of his age;
Ver. 146. _If, where the rules, &c._] The first sort our author
Ver. 152. _Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, &c._] He
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Hail, bards triumphant! &c.
erudition than taste, as appears from the happy similitude of an
ill-nourished body, where the same words which express the cause,
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find,
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind.
therefore advises to call in still more helps:
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.
to one loved folly sacrifice.
Ver. 285.        _Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas, &c._]
Some to conceit alone, &c.,
He next describes true wit, from ver. 296 to 305,
True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c.
Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
Ver. 408. _Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own_,] A second
prostitution.
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.
Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last,
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, &c.
Ah! let not learning, &c.
traced the Muses upward to their spring,
stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J.
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence;
But you with pleasure own your errors past;
And make each day a critique on the last.
knowledge, out of a false delicacy, and for fear of being thought
Ver. 584. _'Twere well might critics, &c._] The poet having thus
_The poet_--still runs on in a raging vein, &c. ver. 606, &c.
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monk finished what the Goth begun.
When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of
Ver. 28. _In search of wit, these lose their common sense_,] This
Ver. 32.    _All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would lie upon the laughing side._]
Ver. 56.    _Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away._]
There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it.
Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use.
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
From whence we conclude that the Reverend Mr. Upton was much more
And all its end at once attains.
Ver. 209. _Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense._]
Ver. 235. _Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind_;]
disposition both of matter and style, because the avoiding these
Ver. 248. _The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!_] The
The whole at once is bold, and regular.
excellent purpose.
Ver. 285. _Thus critics, &c._] In these two lines the poet finely
Ver. 297. _True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c._] This
Ver. 364. _'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense._]
dissonance. To remedy this abuse therefore, our poet, by the
introductory line, would insinuate, that harmony is always to be
The sound is still a comment to the sense.
They are both well expressed, although so differently; for Lord
ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.
To teach the world with reason to admire.
Erasmus, he says,
In moderation placing all my glory,
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos,
Sed juvat hoc praecibus me tribuisse tuis.
Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT. 1712. 8vo.
Written by Mr. POPE.
----A tonso est hoc nomen adepta capillo.--OVID.
felicity of invention displayed in adopting, and most artfully
Loose to the wind, whose airy garments flew,
Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew,
Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes:
That tread the ooze of the salt deep,
Or run upon the sharp wind of the north,
Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam
Viribus.--BOWLES.
Lock, he urged Lintot the bookseller to persuade Dennis to
criticise Addison's Cato. Dennis published his Remarks, and Pope
ignorant probably of its parentage, he let Dennis know that he
repudiated and condemned it. The worst was to come. More than
parentage,--addressing his subjects, says,
Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear;
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons hear.
acquainted:
And all about her neck and shoulders flew
A flock of little loves, and sports, and joys,
With nimble wings of gold and purple hue,
Whose shapes seemed not like to terrestrial boys,
But like to angels playing heav'nly toys.
With varying vanities from ev'ry part,
They shift the moving toy-shop of their heart.
That _men_ may say, when we the front-box grace,
"Behold the first in virtue as in face!"
The continuous raillery against female foibles is playful in its
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
Ruffhead repeated the futile objection. "Black omens" announced
To the distempered mind of Dennis the sylphs appeared an absurd
Without any assistance from the contents of the bag the "livid
lightning had flashed from Belinda's eyes," and she had "rent the
affrighted skies should be rent with screams of horror." At the
"heroi-comical" to bring supernatural machinery to bear upon
pretence of their quarrel." Pope erased the epithet "religious,"
and substituting "female sex" for "popish clergy," "ladies" for
influence of good humour, and concludes with the couplet,--
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll!
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
Dennis's pamphlet against the Rape of the Lock consisted of seven
Callimachus are not mentioned by Dennis. He had only condemned a
The Rape of the Lock greatly surpasses in execution the Essay on
Or stain her honour or her new brocade.
Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball.
He first the snuff-box opened then the case.
superlative language of De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Bowles. The
on hill, in dale, forest, or mead,
By paved fountain, or by rushy brook,
Or on the beached margin of the sea,
To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind.
impressive passions. What he said of manners and passions was
Parthenon," he said, "is more poetical than the rock on which it
Your most obedient, humble servant,
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing--This verse to Caryll, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel
A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
In tasks so bold, can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms, dwells such mighty rage?
Sol through white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day:
Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake:
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground,
And the pressed watch returned a silver sound.
Belinda still her downy pillow pressed,
Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest:
'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed
The morning dream that hovered o'er her head,
A youth more glitt'ring than a birth-night beau,
(That ev'n in slumber caused her cheek to glow)
Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay,
And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say.
"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care
Of thousand bright inhabitants of air!
If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought,
Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught;
Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen,
The silver token, and the circled green,
Or virgins visited by angel-pow'rs
With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs;
Hear and believe! thy own importance know,
Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.
Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed,
To maids alone and children are revealed.
What though no credit doubting wits may give?
The fair and innocent shall still believe.
Know then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly,
The light militia of the lower sky:
These, though unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring.
Think what an equipage thou hast in air,
And view with scorn two pages and a chair.
As now your own, our beings were of old,
And once inclosed in woman's beauteous mould;
Thence, by a soft transition, we repair
From earthly vehicles to these of air.
Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled,
That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.
Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive,
And love of ombre, after death survive.
For when the fair in all their pride expire,
To their first elements, their souls retire:
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame
Mount up, and take a salamander's name.
Soft yielding minds to water glide away,
And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea.
The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome,
In search of mischief still on earth to roam.
The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair,
And sport and flutter in the fields of air.
"Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste
Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced:
For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.
What guards the purity of melting maids,
In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,
Safe from the treach'rous friend, the daring spark,
The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,
When kind occasion prompts their warm desires,
When music softens, and when dancing fires?
'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know,
Though honour is the word with men below.
"Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,
For life predestined to the gnomes' embrace.
These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,
When offers are disdained, and love denied:
Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain,
While peers and dukes, and all their sweeping train,
And garters, stars, and coronets appear,
And in soft sounds 'Your Grace' salutes their ear.
'Tis these that early taint the female soul,
Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll,
Teach infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,
And little hearts to flutter at a beau.
"Oft, when the world imagine women stray,
The sylphs through mystic mazes guide their way,
Through all the giddy circle they pursue,
And old impertinence expel by new.
What tender maid but must a victim fall
To one man's treat, but for another's ball?
When Florio speaks, what virgin could withstand,
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?
With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart;
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.
This erring mortals levity may call;
Oh blind to truth! the sylphs contrive it all.
"Of these am I, who thy protection claim,
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.
Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air,
In the clear mirror of thy ruling star
I saw, alas! some dread event impend,
Ere to the main this morning sun descend.
But heaven reveals not what, or how, or where:
Warned by the sylph, oh pious maid, beware!
This to disclose is all thy guardian can:
Beware of all, but most beware of man!"
He said; when Shock, who thought she slept too long,
Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue;
'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true,
Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux;
Wounds, charms, and ardours, were no sooner read,
But all the vision vanished from thy head.
And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed,
Each silver vase in mystic order laid.
First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores,
With head uncovered, the cosmetic pow'rs.
A heav'nly image in the glass appears,
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears;
Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side,
Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride.
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here
The various off'rings of the world appear;
From each she nicely culls with curious toil,
And decks the goddess with the glitt'ring spoil.
This casket India's glowing gems unlocks,
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box.
The tortoise here and elephant unite,
Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white.
Here files of pins extend their shining rows,
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billets-doux.
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes
The busy sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
And Betty's praised for labours not her own.
Not with more glories, in th' ethereal plain,
The sun first rises o'er the purpled main,
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.
Fair nymphs, and well-dressed youths around her shone,
But ev'ry eye was fixed on her alone.
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore,
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those;
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide;
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck,
With shining ringlets, the smooth iv'ry neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Th' advent'rous baron the bright locks admired;
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.
Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
For when success a lover's toil attends,
Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.
For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored
Propitious heav'n, and ev'ry pow'r adored,
But chiefly Love--to Love an altar built,
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves,
And all the trophies of his former loves;
With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre,
And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire.
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:
The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r,
The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air.
But now secure the painted vessel glides,
The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides:
While melting music steals upon the sky,
And softened sounds along the waters die;
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play,
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
All but the sylph--with careful thoughts oppressed,
Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast.
He summons straight his denizens of air;
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair:
Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe,
That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath.
Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold,
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold;
Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight,
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light.
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew,
Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew,
Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies,
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes;
While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings,
Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings.
Amid the circle, on the gilded mast,
Superior by the head, was Ariel placed;
His purple pinions opening to the sun,
He raised his azure wand, and thus begun.
"Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear!
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear!
Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned
By laws eternal to th' aerial kind.
Some in the fields of purest ether play,
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day.
Some guide the course of wand'ring orbs on high,
Or roll the planets through the boundless sky.
Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light
Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night,
Or suck the mists in grosser air below,
Or dip their pinions in the painted bow,
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main,
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain.
Others on earth o'er human race preside,
Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide:
Of these the chief the care of nations own,
And guard with arms divine the British throne.
"Our humbler province is to tend the fair,
Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care;
To save the powder from too rude a gale,
Nor let th' imprisoned essences exhale;
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs;
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in show'rs
A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs,
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs;
Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow,
To change a flounce, or add a furbelow.
"This day, black omens threat the brightest fair
That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care;
Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight;
But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night.
Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law,
Or some frail china jar receive a flaw;
Or stain her honour, or her new brocade;
Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade;
Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball;
Or whether heav'n has doomed that Shock must fall.
Haste then, ye spirits! to your charge repair:
The flutt'ring fan be Zephyretta's care;
The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign;
And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine;
Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav'rite lock;
Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.
"To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note,
We trust th' important charge, the petticoat:
Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to fail,
Though stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale;
Form a strong line about the silver bound,
And guard the wide circumference around.
"Whatever spirit, careless of his charge,
His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large,
Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins,
Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins;
Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie,
Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye:
Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain,
While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain;
Or alum styptics with contracting pow'r
Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flow'r:
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel
The giddy motion of the whirling mill,
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow,
And tremble at the sea that froths below!"
He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend:
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend;
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair;
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear;
With beating hearts the dire event they wait,
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate.
Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flow'rs,
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great ANNA! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk th' instructive hours they passed,
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last;
One speaks the glory of the British Queen,
And one describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine;
The merchant from th' Exchange returns in peace,
And the long labours of the toilet cease.
Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites,
Burns to encounter two advent'rous knights,
At ombre singly to decide their doom;
And swells her breast with conquests yet to come.
Straight the three bands prepare in arms to join,
Each band the number of the sacred nine.
Soon as she spreads her hand, th' aerial guard
Descend, and sit on each important card:
First Ariel perched upon a Matadore,
Then each according to the rank they bore;
For sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient race,
Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place.
Behold, four kings, in majesty revered,
With hoary whisky and a forky beard;
And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow'r,
Th' expressive emblem of their softer pow'r;
Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty band;
Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand;
And parti-coloured troops, a shining train,
Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain.
The skilful nymph reviews her force with care:
Now move to war her sable Matadores,
In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors.
Spadillio first, unconquerable lord!
Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board.
As many more Manillio forced to yield,
And marched a victor from the verdant field.
Him Basto followed, but his fate more hard
Gained but one trump and one plebeian card.
With his broad sabre next, a chief in years,
Puts forth one manly leg, to sight revealed,
The rest, his many-coloured robe concealed.
The rebel knave, who dares his prince engage,
Proves the just victim of his royal rage.
Ev'n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o'erthrew,
And mowed down armies in the fights of loo,
Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid,
Thus far both armies to Belinda yield;
Now to the baron fate inclines the field.
His warlike Amazon her host invades,
The club's black tyrant first her victim died,
Spite of his haughty mien, and barb'rous pride:
What boots the regal circle on his head,
His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread;
That long behind he trails his pompous robe,
And of all monarchs only grasps the globe?
The baron now his diamonds pours apace!
Th' embroidered king who shows but half his face,
And his refulgent queen, with pow'rs combined,
Of broken troops, an easy conquest find.
Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder seen,
With throngs promiscuous strew the level green.
Thus when dispersed a routed army runs,
Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons,
With like confusion different nations fly,
Of various habit, and of various dye;
The pierced battalions disunited fall,
In heaps on heaps; one fate o'erwhelms them all.
The knave of diamonds tries his wily arts,
And wins (oh shameful chance!) the queen of hearts.
At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook,
A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look;
She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill,
Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille.
And now (as oft in some distempered state)
On one nice trick depends the gen'ral fate:
An ace of hearts steps forth: the king unseen
Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive queen:
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace,
And falls like thunder on the prostrate ace.
The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky;
The walls, the woods, and long canals reply.
Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate.
Sudden these honours shall be snatched away,
And cursed for ever this victorious day.
For lo! the board with cups and spoons is crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;
The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide:
At once they gratify their scent and taste,
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Straight hover round the fair her airy band;
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned,
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed,
Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee (which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly pays for Nisus' injured hair!
But when to mischief mortals bend their will,
How soon they find fit instruments of ill!
Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
A two-edged weapon from her shining case:
So ladies in romance assist their knight,
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight.
He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.
Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair,
A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair;
And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear;
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near.
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought
The close recesses of the virgin's thought:
As on the nosegay in her breast reclined,
He watched th' ideas rising in her mind,
Sudden he viewed in spite of all her art,
An earthly lover lurking at her heart.
Amazed, confused, he found his pow'r expired,
Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired.
The peer now spreads the glitt'ring forfex wide,
T' inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide.
Ev'n then, before the fatal engine closed,
A wretched sylph too fondly interposed;
Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain,
(But airy substance soon unites again,)
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast,
When husbands, or when lap-dogs breathe their last;
Or when rich china vessels fall'n from high,
In glitt'ring dust, and painted fragments lie!
"Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,"
(The victor cried,) "the glorious prize is mine!
While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,
Or in a coach and six the British fair,
As long as Atalantis shall be read,
Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,
While visits shall be paid on solemn days,
When num'rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,
While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!"
What time would spare, from steel receives its date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate!
Steel could the labour of the gods destroy,
And strike to dust th' imperial tow'rs of Troy;
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel
The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel?
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,
And secret passions laboured in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss,
Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair.
For, that sad moment, when the sylphs withdrew,
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew,
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite,
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repaired to search the gloomy cave of Spleen.
Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome,
And in a vapour reached the dismal dome.
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows,
The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.
Here in a grotto, sheltered close from air,
And screened in shades from day's detested glare,
She sighs for ever on her pensive bed,
Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head.
Two handmaids wait the throne: alike in place,
But diff'ring far in figure and in face.
Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid,
Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed;
With store of pray'rs, for mornings, nights, and noons,
Her hand is filled; her bosom with lampoons.
There Affectation with a sickly mien,
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.
A constant vapour o'er the palace flies;
Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise;
Dreadful, as hermits' dreams in haunted shades,
Or bright, as visions of expiring maids.
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,
Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires:
Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes,
And crystal domes, and angels in machines.
Unnumbered throngs, on ev'ry side are seen,
Of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen.
Here living tea-pots stand, one arm held out,
One bent; the handle this, and that the spout:
A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks;
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pye talks;
Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works,
And maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks.
Safe past the gnome through this fantastic band,
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand.
Then thus addressed the pow'r--"Hail, wayward queen!
Who rule the sex to fifty from fifteen:
Parent of vapours and of female wit,
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit,
On various tempers act by various ways,
Make some take physic, others scribble plays;
Who cause the proud their visits to delay,
And send the godly in a pet to pray;
A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains,
And thousands more in equal mirth maintains.
But oh! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace,
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face,
Like citron-waters matrons' cheeks inflame,
Or change complexions at a losing game;
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads,
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds,
Or caused suspicion when no soul was rude,
Or discomposed the head-dress of a prude,
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease,
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease:
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin,
That single act gives half the world the spleen."
The goddess with a discontented air
Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r.
A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds,
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds;
There she collects the force of female lungs,
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues.
A phial next she fills with fainting fears,
Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears.
The gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away,
Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day.
Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found,
Her eyes dejected, and her hair unbound.
Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent,
And all the furies issued at the vent.
Belinda burns with more than mortal ire,
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire.
"O wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied)
"Was it for this you took such constant care
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound?
For this with tort'ring irons wreathed around?
For this with fillets strained your tender head,
And bravely bore the double loads of lead?
Gods! shall the ravisher display your hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivalled shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heightened by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde-Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all!"
She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane)
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuff-box opened, then the case,
And thus broke out--"My Lord, why, what the devil!
Zounds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil.
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay prithee, pox!
Give her the hair"--he spoke, and rapped his box.
"It grieves me much," replied the peer again,
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain,
But by this lock, this sacred lock I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair;
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipped from the lovely head where late it grew)
That while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear."
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.
But Umbriel, hateful gnome! forbears not so;
He breaks the phial whence the sorrows flow.
Then see! the nymph in beauteous grief appears,
Her eyes half languishing, half drowned in tears;
On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head,
Which, with a sigh, she raised; and thus she said.
"For ever cursed be this detested day,
Which snatched my best, my fav'rite curl away!
Happy! ah ten times happy had I been,
If Hampton-Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to num'rous ills betrayed.
Oh had I rather unadmired remained
In some lone isle, or distant northern land;
Where the gilt chariot never marks the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea!
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam?
O had I stayed, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box fell;
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
A sylph too warned me of the threats of fate,
In mystic visions, now believed too late!
See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares:
These in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck;
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands,
And tempts, once more, thy sacrilegious hands.
Oh hadst thou, cruel! been content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!"
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears,
But Fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain,
"While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.
Then grave Clarissa graceful waved her fan;
Silence ensued, and thus the nymph began.
"Say, why are beauties praised and honoured most,
The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast?
Why decked with all that land and sea afford,
Why angels called, and angel-like adored?
Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaux,
Why bows the side-box from its inmost rows?
How vain are all these glories, all our pains,
Unless good sense preserve what beauty gains:
That men may say, when we the front box grace,
Behold the first in virtue as in face!
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charmed the small-pox, or chased old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewifes' cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use?
To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint,
Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,
Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to grey;
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;
What then remains but well our pow'r to use,
And keep good humour still whate'er we lose?
And trust me, dear! good humour can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued;
Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her prude.
To arms, to arms! the fierce virago cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties, and begin th' attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise,
And base and treble voices strike the skies.
No common weapons in their hands are found,
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.
So when bold Homer makes the gods engage,
And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage;
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms;
And all Olympus rings with loud alarms:
Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around,
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:
Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives way,
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height
Clapped his glad wings, and sate to view the fight.
Propped on their bodkin spears, the sprites survey
The growing combat, or assist the fray.
While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
"O cruel nymph! a living death I bear,"
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
"Those eyes are made so killing"--was his last.
Thus on Maeander's flow'ry margin lies
Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies.
When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown;
She smiled to see the doughty hero slain,
But, at her smile, the beau revived again.
Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
See fierce Belinda on the baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued;
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
The gnomes direct, to ev'ry atom just,
The pungent grains of titillating dust.
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
"Now meet thy fate," incensed Belinda cried,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
(The same, his ancient personage to deck,
Her great great grandsire wore about his neck,
In three seal-rings; which after, melted down,
Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown:
Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew,
The bell she jingled, and the whistle blew;
Then in a bodkin graced her mother's hairs,
Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.)
"Boast not my fall," he cried, "insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low:
Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind;
All that I dread is leaving you behind!
Rather than so, ah let me still survive,
And burn in Cupid's flames--but burn alive."
"Restore the Lock!" she cries; and all around
"Restore the Lock!" the vaulted roofs rebound.
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain.
But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed,
And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost!
The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain,
In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain:
With such a prize no mortal must be blessed,
So heav'n decrees! with heav'n who can contest?
Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere,
Since all things lost on earth are treasured there.
There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases,
And beaus' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases.
There broken vows, and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs,
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.
But trust the muse--she saw it upward rise,
Though marked by none but quick, poetic eyes:
(So Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew,
To Proculus alone confessed in view)
A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright,
The heav'ns bespangling with dishevelled light.
The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies,
And pleased pursue its progress through the skies.
This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey,
And hail with music its propitious ray;
This the bless'd lover shall for Venus take,
And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake;
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes;
And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome.
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
This lock the muse shall consecrate to fame,
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos
Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.--MART.
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty quarrels rise from trivial things,
I sing--This verse to C----l, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If she inspire, and he approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel
A well-bred lord t'assault a gentle belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored,
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord?
And dwells such rage in softest bosoms then,
And lodge such daring souls in little men?
Sol through white curtains did his beams display,
And ope'd those eyes which brighter shine than they,
Shock just had giv'n himself the rousing shake,
And nymphs prepared their chocolate to take;
Thrice the wrought slipper knocked against the ground,
And striking watches the tenth hour resound.
Belinda rose, and midst attending dames,
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames:
A train of well-dressed youths around her shone,
And ev'ry eye was fixed on her alone:
On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those:
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forgive 'em all.
This nymph, to the destruction of mankind,
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind
In equal curls, and well conspired to deck
With shining ringlets her smooth iv'ry neck.
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains,
And mighty hearts are held in slender chains.
With hairy springes we the birds betray,
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey,
Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.
Th' adventurous baron the bright locks admired;
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired.
Resolved to win, he meditates the way,
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray;
For when success a lover's toil attends,
Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends.
For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored
Propitious heav'n, and every pow'r adored,
But chiefly Love--to Love an altar built,
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt.
There lay the sword-knot Sylvia's hands had sewn
With Flavia's busk that oft had wrapped his own:
A fan, a garter, half a pair of gloves,
And all the trophies of his former loves.
With tender billets-doux he lights the pire,
And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire.
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:
The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r,
The rest the winds dispersed in empty air.
Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flow'rs
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs,
There stands a structure of majestic frame,
Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom
Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home;
Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea.
Hither our nymphs and heroes did resort,
To taste awhile the pleasures of a court;
In various talk the cheerful hours they passed,
Of who was bit, or who capotted last;
This speaks the glory of the British queen,
And that describes a charming Indian screen;
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes;
At ev'ry word a reputation dies.
Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat,
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that.
Now when, declining from the noon of day,
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray;
When hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine;
When merchants from th' Exchange return in peace,
And the long labours of the toilet cease,
The board's with cups and spoons, alternate, crowned,
The berries crackle, and the mill turns round;
The silver lamp, and fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide.
At once they gratify their smell and taste,
While frequent cups prolong the rich repast.
Coffee (which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes)
Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Ah cease, rash youth! desist ere 'tis too late,
Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate!
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air,
She dearly pays for Nisus' injured hair!
But when to mischief mortals bend their mind,
How soon fit instruments of ill they find!
Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace
A two-edged weapon from her shining case:
So ladies, in romance, assist their knight,
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight;
He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends
The little engine on his fingers' ends;
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.
He first expands the glitt'ring forfex wide
T' enclose the lock; then joins it, to divide;
One fatal stroke the sacred hair does sever
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever!
The living fires come flashing from her eyes,
And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies.
Not louder shrieks by dames to heav'n are cast,
When husbands die, or lapdogs breathe their last;
Or when rich china vessels, fall'n from high,
In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie!
"Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,"
The victor cried, "the glorious prize is mine!
While fish in streams, or birds delight in air,
Or in a coach and six the British fair,
As long as Atalantis shall be read,
Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed,
While visits shall be paid on solemn days,
When num'rous wax-lights in bright order blaze,
While nymphs take treats, or assignations give,
So long my honour, name, and praise shall live!"
What time would spare, from steel receives its date,
And monuments, like men, submit to fate!
Steel did the labour of the gods destroy,
And strike to dust th' aspiring tow'rs of Troy;
Steel could the works of mortal pride confound,
And hew triumphal arches to the ground.
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs should feel
The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel?
But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,
And secret passions laboured in her breast.
Not youthful kings in battle seized alive,
Not scornful virgins who their charms survive,
Not ardent lover robbed of all his bliss,
Not ancient lady when refused a kiss,
Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die,
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry,
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair,
As thou, sad virgin! for thy ravished hair.
While her racked soul repose and peace requires,
The fierce Thalestris fans the rising fires.
"O wretched maid!" she spread her hands, and cried,
(And Hampton's echoes, "Wretched maid!" replied)
"Was it for this you took such constant care
Combs, bodkins, leads, pomatums to prepare?
For this your locks in paper durance bound?
For this with tort'ring irons wreathed around?
Oh had the youth been but content to seize
Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these!
Gods! shall the ravisher display this hair,
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare!
Honour forbid! at whose unrivalled shrine
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign.
Methinks already I your tears survey,
Already hear the horrid things they say,
Already see you a degraded toast,
And all your honour in a whisper lost!
How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend?
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend!
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize,
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes,
And heightened by the diamond's circling rays,
On that rapacious hand for ever blaze?
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow,
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow;
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall,
Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all!"
She said; then raging to Sir Plume repairs,
And bids her beau demand the precious hairs:
Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain,
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane,
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face,
He first the snuff-box opened, then the case,
And thus broke out--"My lord, why, what the devil!
Zounds! damn the lock! 'fore Gad, you must be civil!
Plague on't! 'tis past a jest--nay, prithee, pox!
Give her the hair."--He spoke, and rapped his box.
"It grieves me much," replied the peer again,
"Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain:
But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear,
(Which never more shall join its parted hair;
Which never more its honours shall renew,
Clipped from the lovely head where once it grew)
That, while my nostrils draw the vital air,
This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear."
He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread
The long-contended honours of her head.
But see! the nymph in sorrow's pomp appears,
Her eyes half-languishing, half drowned in tears;
Now livid pale her cheeks, now glowing red,       }
On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head,       }
Which with a sigh she raised, and thus she said:  }
"For ever cursed be this detested day,
Which snatched my best, my fav'rite curl away;
Happy! ah ten times happy had I been,
If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen!
Yet am not I the first mistaken maid,
By love of courts to num'rous ills betrayed.
O had I rather unadmired remained
In some lone isle, or distant northern land,
Where the gilt chariot never marked the way,
Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea!
There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye,
Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die.
What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam?
O had I stayed, and said my pray'rs at home!
'Twas this the morning omens did foretell,
Thrice from my trembling hand the patchbox fell;
The tott'ring china shook without a wind,
Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind!
See the poor remnants of this slighted hair!
My hands shall rend what ev'n thy own did spare:
This in two sable ringlets taught to break,
Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck;
The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone,
And in its fellow's fate foresees its own;
Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands,
And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands."
She said: the pitying audience melt in tears;
But fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears.
In vain Thalestris with reproach assails,
For who can move when fair Belinda fails?
Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain,
While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain.
"To arms, to arms!" the bold Thalestris cries,
And swift as lightning to the combat flies.
All side in parties, and begin th' attack;
Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack;
Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise,
And bass and treble voices strike the skies;
No common weapons in their hands are found,
Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound.
So when bold Homer makes the gods engage,
And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage,
'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes arms,
And all Olympus rings with loud alarms;
Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around,
Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound:
Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives way,
And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day!
While through the press enraged Thalestris flies,
And scatters death around from both her eyes,
A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.
"O cruel nymph; a living death I bear,"
Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast,
"Those eyes are made so killing"--was his last.
Thus on Maeander's flow'ry margin lies
Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies.
As bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down,
Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown;
She smiled to see the doughty hero slain,
But at her smile the beau revived again.
Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,
Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair;
The doubtful beam long nods from side to side;
At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside.
See fierce Belinda on the baron flies,
With more than usual lightning in her eyes:
Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try,
Who sought no more than on his foe to die.
But this bold lord, with manly strength endued,
She with one finger and a thumb subdued:
Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew,
A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw;
Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows,
And the high dome re-echoes to his nose.
"Now meet thy fate," th' incensed virago cried,
And drew a deadly bodkin from her side.
"Boast not my fall," he said, "insulting foe!
Thou by some other shalt be laid as low;
Nor think to die dejects my lofty mind;
All that I dread is leaving you behind!
Rather than so, ah let me still survive,
And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive."
"Restore the lock!" she cries; and all around
"Restore the lock!" the vaulted roofs rebound.
Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain
Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain.
But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed,
And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost!
The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain,
In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain:
With such a prize no mortal must be blessed,
So heav'n decrees! with heav'n who can contest?
Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere,
Since all that man e'er lost is treasured there.
There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases,
And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases.
There broken vows, and death-bed alms are found,
And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound,
The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs,
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs,
Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea,
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry.
But trust the muse--she saw it upward rise,
Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes:
(Thus Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew,
To Proculus alone confessed in view)
A sudden star, it shot through liquid air,
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair.
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright,
The skies bespangling with dishevelled light.
This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey,     }
As through the moonlight shade they nightly stray,  }
And hail with music its propitious ray;             }
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies,
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes;
And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom
The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome.
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair,
Which adds new glory to the shining sphere!
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast,
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost.
For after all the murders of your eye,
When, after millions slain, yourself shall die;
When those fair suns shall set, as set they must,
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust,
This lock the muse shall consecrate to fame,
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name.
tenderness; nor has Pope produced any poem in which the sense
circumstance Pope alludes in one of his letters.--WARTON.
remarkable that Caryll asks the question in two letters, but Pope
Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs, her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your bless'd abodes,
The glorious fault of angels and of gods!
That once had beauty, _titles_, wealth and fame.
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow;
or perhaps exclaim, as upon another occasion, _Incredulus odi_.
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, &c.
The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more.--ROSCOE.
fictions and blunders. This wretched book-maker has merely turned
In 1806, Bowles promulgated a tradition which contradicts the
The biographers and editors who went about enquiring after the
unfortunate lady had no suspicion that she might be altogether a
commemorated the suicide of the unfortunate lady. It follows that
propping up and perpetuating the petty fraud.
It beckoned him to go away with it
As if it some impartment did desire
To him alone.
A thousand fantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses.
phantoms. Pope's beckoning ghost was not of this class of "dire"
The paragraph, "So peaceful rests," was much admired by the
exercise, skies, and ghosts had faded from his thoughts, and his
What beck'ning ghost, along the moon-light shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!--but why that bleeding bosom gored?
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell,
Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender, or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky,
For those who greatly think, or bravely die?
Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your bless'd abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods:
Thence to their images on earth it flows,
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage:
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres;
Like Eastern kings a lazy state they keep,
And, close confined to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die)
Fate snatched her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow,
And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below;
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good,
Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood!
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of death;
Cold is that breast which warmed the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball,
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall:
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates;
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say,
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way)
"Lo! these were they, whose souls the furies steeled,
"And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield."
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all, whose breast ne'er learned to glow
For others' good, or melt at others' woe.
What can atone, oh ever-injured shade!
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned!
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face?
What though no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be dressed,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow,
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground, now sacred by thy reliques made.
So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame.
How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall like those they sung,
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart,
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!
Written by Mr. POPE.
The second edition, 8vo.
O Abelard ill-fated youth!
Thy fate will justify this truth;
But well I weet, thy cruel wrong
Adorns a nobler poet's song:
Dan Pope, for thy misfortune grieved,
With kind concern and skill has weaved
A silken web, and ne'er shall fade
Its colours; gently has he laid
The mantle o'er thy sad distress,
And Venus shall the texture bless.
He o'er the weeping nun has drawn
Such artful folds of sacred lawn,
That Love, with equal grief and pride,
Shall see the crime he strives to hide,
And softly drawing back the veil,
The god shall to his vot'ries tell
Each conscious tear, each blushing grace
That decked dear Eloisa's face.
composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious hope and
Qui les moeurs feminins savoit
Car tres-tous en soi les avoit.
eternal.--WARTON.
everything exquisite in poetry if I did not except the Epistle to
It lives, it breathes, it speaks what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires;
and as long as the English language remains, it will
Call down tears through every age.
How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
The authenticity of the Latin letters has usually been taken for
I say she never did invent these letters,
This is a man's invention, and his hand.
When the first shock of disgrace was past, the lovers disregarded
produced a treatise on the Trinity, which he asserts solved every
monodramatic poem which turns upon a single conflict of feeling
In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns,
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!--From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.
Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed:
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea lies:
O write it not, my hand--the name appears
Already written--wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not heaven's while Abelard has part;
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages taught to flow in vain.
Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:
Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quenched th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.
Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare;
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.
Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banished lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.
Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
When love approached me under friendship's name;
My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind,
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day;
Guiltless I gazed; heav'n listened while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those, what precept failed to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love:
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see:
Nor envy them that heav'n I lose for thee.
How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove;
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to love?
The jealous god, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires,
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all;
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee.
Oh! happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing and possessed,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss, if bliss on earth there be,
And once the lot of Abelard and me.
Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had opposed the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppressed,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kissed the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale:
Heav'n scarce believed the conquest it surveyed,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the cross my eyes were fixed, but you;
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamoured let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be pressed;
Give all thou canst--and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.
Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r;
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You raised these hallowed walls; the desert smiled,
And Paradise was opened in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors:
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,
Here bribed the rage of ill-requited heav'n:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound),
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,
Where awful arches make a noon-day night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light,
Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brightened all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,
O pious fraud of am'rous charity!
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that, o'er yon rocks reclined,
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain;
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.
Ah wretch! believed the spouse of God in vain,
Confessed within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turned to heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touched, so pierced, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain,--do all things but forget.
But let heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fired;
Not touched, but rapt; not wakened, but inspired!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself--and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot:
Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resigned;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires composed, affections ever even;
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n.
Grace shines around her, with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her, th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.
Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh cursed, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking demons all restraint remove,
And stir within me ev'ry source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake:--no more I hear, no more I view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say:
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise;
Alas, no more!--methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tow'r pale ivy creeps,
And low-browed rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.
Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.
For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long dead calm of fixed repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows;
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,
And mild as op'ning gleams of promised heav'n.
Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.
Nature stands checked; religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold--yet Eloisa loves.
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.
What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,
Thy image steals between my God and me,
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight;
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.
While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!
Oppose thyself to heav'n; dispute my heart:
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the bless'd abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!
No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks, (which yet I view!)
Long loved, adored ideas, all adieu!
Oh grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest:
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest.
See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propped on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watched the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come! (it said, or seemed to say).
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away;
"Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses every fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."
I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs;
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
And smooth my passage to the realms of day:
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly!
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
'Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be loved no more.
Oh death all-eloquent! you only prove
What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.
Then too, when fate shall thy fair fame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drowned,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.
May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved,
"Oh may we never love as these have loved!"
From the full choir when loud hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heav'n,
One human tear shall drop, and be forgiv'n.
And sure if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will sooth my pensive ghost;
He best can paint them who shall feel them most.
Corrected by the Author. London, etc. Folio.
The second Epistle appeared about April, 1733.
London: Printed by W. BOWYER for M. COOPER, at the Globe, in
frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to understand it
embellishments must all be Pope's. These principles it is not my
liberty.
combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the scholar, the
"SIR,--I have just received from Mr. R[obinson] two more of
your letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write
so good an one. I can only say you do him too much honour, and me
glorified. I am sure I like it better than I did before, and so
will every man else. I know I meant just what you explain; but I
did not explain my own meaning so well as you. You understand me
as well as I do myself; but you express me better than I could
express myself. Pray accept the sincerest acknowledgments. I
cannot but wish these letters were put together in one book,
and intend, with your leave, to procure a translation of part, at
step without your consent and opinion, etc."
By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, Pope
Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited him to desire an
thousand pounds.
O! had he pressed his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O! had he mounted on his wing of fire,
Soared when I sink, and sung immortal man.
It must be confessed, unfair as Johnson's criticism is, it is not
virtues." These four cardinal virtues,--justice, temperance,
Epistle 1.--With respect to the Universe.
"     3.--With respect to Society.
"     4.--With respect to Happiness.
An infidel who hated divines and divinity with all his heart, had
Warburton reversed the parts. The "seven or eight sheets," which
conversations" with Pope. This statement Warburton was dishonest
enough to suppress, and deliberately turned a half truth into a
falsehood. The ungarbled expressions of Bolingbroke confirm the
Bolingbroke's hands,"--a dupe who adopted Bolingbroke's insidious
interpretations which the Richardsons put on the Essay on Man.
One of the articles of Bolingbroke's deistical creed is said by
Warburton reports Hooke to have said, that Bolingbroke's "notions
them." The first statement Bolingbroke would have allowed to be
Bolingbroke's views on the moral attributes of the Deity were the
There is more, and conclusive evidence, that Bolingbroke had not
occasionally written," and the whole must already have passed
intelligence they are adapted to the human," and the last line of
philosophical intimate, who frankly avowed his own deism in the
immediately proceeds to show how reason can "rectify" the ruling
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new,
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
The poet and his "guide" agreed in repudiating christianity. They
principles, nor saw to what they naturally tended."
Pope did not intend to proclaim openly to the world the deism he
undecided the question of the immortality of the soul:
_If_ to be perfect in a certain state,
What matter, here or there, or soon or late?
overthrew his meaning."
christian in his system, from man up to seraphim." Caryll was not
Delineated, and there he had seen how inevitably a christian, who
water." He had never intended at any time to risk an attack from
authors," and that the doctrines were "rank atheism." He did
were careful to circulate his asperities, and Pope assisted the
exposure of the Essay on Man.
interpretations which his commentator often fathered upon him, he
Pope would have been glad "to dwell in ambiguities for ever." In
accepting the advocacy of Warburton he was obliged to abandon his
revealing his own unbelief. "I have been a martyr of faction in
had inspired should be wrested to a meaning he disowned, that his
Sans doute qu'a ces mots, des bords de la Tamise,
Quelque abstrait raisonneur, qui ne se plaint de rien,
Dans son flegme anglican repondra, "Tout est bien."
pre-established harmony till I found it in M. Crousaz's book."
Leibnitz took for granted, in their greatest latitude, the power,
Hume's spokesman enforces his view by an instance which was the
Leibnitz divided evil into moral evil or sin, physical evil or
explanation. Either, he said, such visitations are "rational
chastisements," or they are "the mere effects, natural though
arrangements of the Almighty, and overruled his designs. The
There were errors enough in Pope's doctrine without the
The second epistle treats of man "with respect to himself as an
determined to limit his investigations to man.
The amount of knowledge possessed by the horse and ox is not
Man has certain implanted tendencies, physical, intellectual, and
selfishness. The degree of selfishness must be determined by our
coalesce.
There is a second part to Pope's system. He has told us that the
greater. Reason, which lately mixed the passions in their proper
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
thenceforward to grow with our growth, must be permanent and
corrupt." On Pope's theory, to make the tree good is impossible.
religion. "Sloth" supplies us with "philosophy," or the apathetic
scheme." He repeated the criticism in a suppressed passage of the
The contradictions are not at an end. Pride, folly, "even mean
themselves is to enjoin the deaf to hear, and the blind to see.
life." Pope refuses to ascribe our evil passions to the abuse of
friend," which overthrows his theory that the ruling is our only
kindly law," is the "plaything" of the "child," so "beads and
preparation,--the prelude to a holy and happy eternity.
For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best.
importance to religious beliefs:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
superintending Providence. The real intention of the "guide,
philosophy to the infidelity of Bolingbroke.
These considerations are not affected by the question of the
innumerable appearances, and Pope endeavoured to evade them by
contending that happiness is not placed in "externals." "Virtue's
conscience or complete felicity. In the first sense it cannot be
Pope's reason for his opinion is weaker than the opinion itself.
say." Here we have an instance of the failing. His proposition is
He had no sooner resolved happiness into "health, peace, and
competent to the task assigned them than the hope and fear he had
Hitherto Pope has argued that our virtue is the measure of our
assertions,--the first that virtue never brings upon us "ills and
conscience, hated by God because he lacks a thousand a year. He
insufficient to make bad men happy. He comes to the instance of
circumstance that they are "above life's weakness."
important is whether the end we propose to ourselves should be
self-interest or virtue. Pope adopted the selfish system without
happiness, and which binds him by its intrinsic sacredness, and
independent authority. He dares not overrule it by his passing
inclinations, and endures all things rather than be guilty of a
understood the best, and hence we may estimate the extent of his
qualifications for dismissing every previous ethical theory with
principles, he took credit for "steering betwixt the extremes of
De Quincey thought that the "formal exposure of Pope's
right." The remark is but a slight exaggeration of the truth. The
The error of Byron was akin to the misconception of the office of
inherent, prosaic element preponderated, and the Arts of Poetry,
Criticism, Translating Verse, etc. are for the most part dreary
compositions which afford as little delight as instruction.
The man who could discover transcendent poetry in the Essay on
pictures of the Indian and the lamb, which are exceptions to the
worthless.
delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these
effects, may be a task more agreeable.
creatures to man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought,
reflection, reason; that reason alone countervails all the other
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us, since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die,
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;
Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.
What can we reason but from what we know?
Of man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples ev'ry star,
May tell why heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Looked through, or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee?
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade!
Or ask of yonder argent fields above
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove!
Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed
That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises rise in due degree,
Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, though laboured on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.
Then say not man's imperfect, heav'n in fault;
Say rather man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measured to his state and place,
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere,
What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The bless'd to-day is as completely so,
As who began a thousand years ago.
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle marked by heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.
What future bliss he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed.
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way;
Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire;
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanci'st such,
Say, Here he gives too little, there too much!
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere and rush into the skies!
Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels men rebel:
And who but wishes to invert the laws
Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.
Earth for whose use, Pride answers, "'Tis for mine!
For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!"
But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No," 'tis replied, "the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws:
Th' exceptions few; some change since all began;
And what created perfect?"--Why then man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires:
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design,
Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?
Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both to reason right is to submit.
Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen'ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
And little less than angel, would be more!
Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use, all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all:
Nature to these without profusion kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned;
Each seeming want compensated of course,
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:
Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If nature thundered in his op'ning ears,
And stunned him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that heav'n had left him still
The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass;
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,
To that which warbles through the vernal wood!
The spider's touch how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,
Compared, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier!
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and reflection how allied;
What thin partitions sense from thought divide;
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!
Without this just gradation could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
The pow'rs of all subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing. On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:
From nature's chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th' amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,
Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,
Being on being wrecked, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And nature tremble to the throne of God!
All this dread order break--for whom? for thee?
Vile-worm!--O madness! pride! impiety!
Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repined
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains
The great directing Mind of all ordains.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, heav'n bestows on thee.
Submit: in this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear;
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All nature is but art unknown to thee,
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
stronger, and why, ver. 67, &c. Their end the same, ver. 81, &c.
near, yet the things separate and evident: what is the office of
reason, ver. 202 to 216. V. How odious vice in itself, and how we
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old Time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his follow'rs trod;
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule--
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all nature's law,
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And showed a Newton, as we show an ape.
Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?
Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,
Explain his own beginning or his end?
Alas! what wonder! man's superior part
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;
But when his own great work is but begun,
What reason weaves, by passion is undone,
Trace science then, with modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness;
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which served the past, and must the times to come!
necessary.]
Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain;
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,
Each works its end to move or govern all:
And to their proper operation still
Ascribe all good; to their improper, ill.
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroyed.
Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires;
Sedate and quiet, the comparing lies,
Formed but to check, delib'rate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh:
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to reason still attend.
Attention, habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains.
Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,
More studious to divide than to unite;
And grace and virtue, sense and reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of wit.
Wits, just like fools, at war about a name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.
Self-love and reason to one end aspire,
Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire;
But greedy that, its object would devour,
This taste the honey, and not wound the flow'r:
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.
'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all:
But since not ev'ry good we can divide,
And reason bids us for our own provide,
Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair,
List under reason, and deserve her care;
Those, that imparted, court a nobler aim,
Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name.
In lazy apathy let stoics boast
Their virtue fixed; 'tis fixed as in a frost;
Contracted all, retiring to the breast;
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest:
The rising tempest puts in act the soul,
Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale;
Nor God alone in the still calm we find,
He mounts the storms, and walks upon the wind.
Passions, like elements, though born to fight,
Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite:
These, 'tis enough to temper and employ;
But what composes man, can man destroy?
Suffice that reason keep to nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain,
These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes;
And when in act they cease, in prospect rise:
Present to grasp, and future still to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak the organs of the frame;
And hence one master passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death;
The young disease, that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength:
So, cast and mingled with his very frame,
The mind's disease, its ruling passion, came;
Each vital humour which should feed the whole,
Soon flows to this, in body and in soul:
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dang'rous art,
And pours it all upon the peccant part.
Nature its mother, habit is its nurse;
Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse;
Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r;
As heav'n's bless'd beam turns vinegar more sour.
We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway,
In this weak queen some fav'rite still obey;
Ah! if she lend not arms as well as rules,
What can she more than tell us we are fools?
Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend,
A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend!
Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade
The choice we make, or justify it made;
Proud of an easy conquest all along,
She but removes weak passions for the strong.
So when small humours gather to a gout,
The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out.
Yes, nature's road must ever be preferred;
Reason is here no guide, but still a guard;
'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow,
And treat this passion more as friend than foe:
A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,
And sev'ral men impels to sev'ral ends:
Like varying winds, by other passions tossed,
This drives them constant to a certain coast.
Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please,
Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease;
Through life 'tis followed, ev'en at life's expense;
The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence,
The monk's humility, the hero's pride,
All, all alike find reason on their side.
ascertaining our virtue.]
Th' Eternal Art, educing good from ill,
Grafts on this passion our best principle:
'Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed,
Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed;
The dross cements what else were too refined,
And in one int'rest body acts with mind.
As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care,
On savage stocks inserted learn to bear,
The surest virtues thus from passions shoot,
Wild nature's vigour working at the root.
What crops of wit and honesty appear
From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear!
See anger, zeal and fortitude supply;
Ev'n av'rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy;
Lust, through some certain strainers well refined,
Is gentle love, and charms all womankind;
Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave,
Is emulation in the learn'd or brave;
Nor virtue, male or female, can we name,
But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.
Thus nature gives us (let it check our pride)
The virtue nearest to our vice allied;
Reason the bias turns to good from ill,
And Nero reigns a Titus if he will.
The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline,
In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:
The same ambition can destroy or save,
And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.
This light and darkness in our chaos joined,
What shall divide? The god within the mind.
Extremes in nature equal ends produce,
In man they join to some mysterious use;
Though each by turns the other's bound invade,
As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade,
And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice
Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice.
Fools! who from hence into the notion fall,
That vice or virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;
Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.
Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree:
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;
And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;
For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;
But heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole.
That counterworks each folly and caprice;
That disappoints th' effect of ev'ry vice;
That, happy frailties to all ranks applied,
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief:
That virtue's ends from vanity can raise,
Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise;
And build on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.
Heav'n forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common int'rest, or endear the tie.
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign:
Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.
Whate'er the passion,--knowledge, fame, or pelf,--
Not one will change his neighbour with himself.
The learn'd is happy nature to explore,
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n,
The poor contents him with the care of heav'n.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blessed, the poet in his muse.
See some strange comfort ev'ry state attend,
And pride bestowed on all, a common friend:
See some fit passion ev'ry age supply,
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
Behold the child, by nature's kindly law
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite:
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and pray'r-books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.
Mean while opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense by pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is giv'n in vain;
Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See, and confess, one comfort still must rise;
'Tis this, though man's a fool, yet God is wise!
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws."
In all the madness of superfluous health,
The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,
Let this great truth be present night and day:
But most be present if we preach or pray.
Look round our world, behold the chain of love
Combining all below and all above.
See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace.
See matter next with various life endued,
Press to one centre still, the gen'ral good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served, all serving: nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown.
Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heav'n shall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year?
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer;
The hog, that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.
Know, nature's children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch warmed a bear.
While man exclaims, "See all things for my use!"
"See man for mine!" replies a pampered goose:
And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
Grant that the pow'rful still the weak control;
Be man the wit, and tyrant of the whole:
Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?
Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods.
For some his int'rest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride:
All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, till he ends the being, makes it blessed,
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favoured man by touch ethereal slain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er!
To each unthinking being, heav'n, a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end:
To man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too;
The hour concealed, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.
Great standing miracle! that heav'n assigned
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.
individual.]
Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best:
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
And find the means proportion'd to their end.
Say, where full instinct is th' unerring guide,
What pope or council can they need beside?
Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed,
Stays till we call, and then not often near;
But honest instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit,
While still too wide or short is human wit;
Sure by quick nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier reason labours at in vain.
This too serves always, reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.
Who taught the nations of the field and flood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line?
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he framed a whole, the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
So from the first, eternal order ran,
And creature linked to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quick'ning ether keeps,
Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace:
They love themselves a third time in their race.
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismissed to wander earth or air,
There stops the instinct, and there ends the care:
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.
A longer care man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int'rest, and the love;
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat'ral love maintained, habitual those:
The last scarce ripened into perfect man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem'ry and forecast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined,
Still spread the int'rest, and preserved the kind.
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of man.
Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid;
Man walked with beast joint tenant of the shade;
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder clothed him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymned their equal God:
The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed,
Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds;
The fury-passions from that blood began,
And turned on man a fiercer savage, man.
See him from nature rising slow to art!
To copy instinct then was reason's part;
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake--
"Go, from the creatures thy instructions take:
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Here too all forms of social union find,
And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind:
Here subterranean works and cities see;
There towns aerial on the waving tree.
Learn each small people's genius, policies,
The ants' republic, and the realm of bees:
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, though a monarch reign,
Their sep'rate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate.
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle justice in her net of law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;
And for those arts mere instinct could afford,
Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods adored."
Cities were built, societies were made:
Here rose one little state; another near
Grew by like means, and joined through love or fear.
Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend,
And there the streams in purer rills descend?
What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend who came a foe.
Converse and love mankind might strongly draw,
When love was liberty, and nature law.
Thus states were formed: the name of king unknown,
Till common int'rest placed the sway in one.
'Twas virtue only (or in arts or arms,
Diffusing blessings, or averting harms),
The same which in a sire the sons obeyed,
A prince the father of a people made.
King, priest, and parent of his growing state;
On him, their second Providence, they hung,
Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue.
He from the wond'ring furrow called the food,
Taught to command the fire, control the flood,
Draw forth the monsters of th' abyss profound,
Or fetch th' aerial eagle to the ground,
Till drooping, sick'ning, dying they began
Whom they revered as god to mourn as man:
Then, looking up from sire to sire, explored
One great first Father, and that first adored;
Or plain tradition, that this all begun,
Conveyed unbroken faith from sire to son;
The worker from the work distinct was known,
And simple reason never sought but one.
Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light,
Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right;
To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod,
And owned a father when he owned a God.
Love all the faith, and all th' allegiance then,
For nature knew no right divine in men,
No ill could fear in God; and understood
A sov'reign being but a sov'reign good.
True faith, true policy, united ran,
That was but love of God, and this of man.
Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone,
Th' enormous faith of many made for one;
That proud exception to all nature's laws,
T' invert the world, and counterwork its cause?
Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law;
Till superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conqu'rors, slaves of subjects made:
She, midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,
When rocked the mountains, and when groaned the ground,
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To pow'r unseen, and mightier far than they:
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:
Here fixed the dreadful, there the bless'd abodes;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide;
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride.
Then sacred seemed th' ethereal vault no more;
Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore:
Then first the Flamen tasted living food;
Next his grim idol smeared with human blood;
With heav'n's own thunders shook the world below,
And played the god an engine on his foe.
So drives self-love, through just, and through unjust,
To one man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust:
The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause
Of what restrains him, government and laws.
For what one likes, if others like as well,
What serves one will, when many wills rebel?
How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?
His safety must his liberty restrain:
All join to guard what each desires to gain.
Forced into virtue thus by self-defence,
Ev'n kings learned justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursued,
And found the private in the public good.
'Twas then the studious head or gen'rous mind,
Foll'wer of God, or friend of human-kind,
Poet or patriot, rose but to restore
The faith and moral nature gave before;
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new;
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
Taught pow'r's due use to people and to kings;
Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings,
The less, or greater, set so justly true,
That touching one must strike the other too;
Till jarring int'rests of themselves create
Th' according music of a well-mixed state.
Such is the world's great harmony, that springs
From order, union, full consent of things;
Where small and great, where weak and mighty made
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,
And in proportion as it blesses, bless'd;
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best;
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity:
All must be false that thwart this one great end;
And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend.
Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives.
On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun,
So two consistent motions act the soul,
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and nature linked the gen'ral frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.
O Happiness! our being's end and aim,
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name:
That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die;
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double by the fool and wise:
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows!--where grows it not? If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere,
'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where:
'Tis never to be bought, but always free;
And, fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
Ask of the learn'd the way! The learn'd are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some sunk to beasts find pleasure end in pain;
Some swelled to gods confess e'en virtue vain;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Take nature's path, and mad opinion's leave;
All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;
Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;
There needs but thinking right, and meaning well;
And mourn our various portions as we please,
Equal is common sense, and common ease.
Remember, man, "the Universal Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;"
And makes what happiness we justly call,
Subsist, not in the good of one, but all.
There's not a blessing individuals find,
But some way leans and hearkens to the kind;
No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,
No caverned hermit rests self-satisfied:
Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend.
Abstract what others feel, what others think,
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has his share; and who would more obtain,
Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain.
Order is heav'n's first law; and this confessed,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heav'n to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness:
But mutual wants this happiness increase;
All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace.
Condition, circumstance is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king,
In who obtain defence, or who defend,
In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
Heav'n breathes through ev'ry member of the whole
One common blessing, as one common soul.
But fortune's gifts if each alike possessed,
And each were equal, must not all contest?
If then to all men happiness was meant,
God in externals could not place content.
Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy called, unhappy those;
But heav'n's just balance equal will appear,
While those are placed in hope, and these in fear:
Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better, or of worse.
O sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Know, all the good that individuals find,
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind,
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace! O virtue! peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right?
Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all th' advantage prosp'rous vice attains,
'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is to pass for good.
O blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blessed.
But fools the good alone unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all.
See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!
See god-like Turenne prostrate on the dust!
See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!
Was this their virtue, or contempt of life?
Say, was it virtue, more though heav'n ne'er gave,
Lamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave?
Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,
Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire?
Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,
When nature sickened, and each gale was death?
Or why so long (in life if long can be)
Lent heav'n a parent to the poor and me?
What makes all physical or moral ill?
There deviates nature, and here wanders will.
God sends not ill, if rightly understood,
Or partial ill is universal good,
Or change admits, or nature lets it fall
Short, and but rare, till man improved it all.
We just as wisely might of heav'n complain,
That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,
As that the virtuous son is ill at ease
When his lewd father gave the dire disease.
Think we, like some weak prince, th' Eternal Cause,
Prone for his fav'rites to reverse his laws?
Shall burning AEtna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
On air or sea new motions be impressed,
O blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breast?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease if you go by?
Or some old temple nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall?
But still this world, so fitted for the knave,
Contents us not. A better shall we have?
A kingdom of the just then let it be:
But first consider how those just agree.
The good must merit God's peculiar care;
But who, but God, can tell us who they are?
One thinks on Calvin heav'n's own Spirit fell;
Another deems him instrument of hell;
If Calvin feel heav'n's blessing, or its rod,
This cries there is, and that, there is no God.
What shocks one part will edify the rest,
Nor with one system can they all be blessed.
The very best will variously incline,
And what rewards your virtue, punish mine.
Whatever is, is right. This world, 'tis true,
Was made for Caesar, but for Titus too:
And which more bless'd? who chained his country, say,
Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?
"But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed."
What then? Is the reward of virtue bread?
That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil;
The knave deserves it when he tills the soil,
The knave deserves it when he tempts the main,
Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
The good man may be weak, be indolent;
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
But grant him riches, your demand is o'er?
"No--shall the good want health, the good want pow'r?"
Add health, and pow'r, and ev'ry earthly thing:
"Why bounded pow'r? why private? why no king?
Nay, why external for internal giv'n?
Why is not man a god, and earth a heav'n?"
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough while he has more to give:
Immense the pow'r, immense were the demand;
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
What nothing earthly gives or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,
Is virtue's prize. A better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqu'ror's sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.
Weak, foolish man! will heav'n reward us there,
With the same trash mad mortals wish for here?
The boy and man an individual makes,
Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes?
Go, like the Indian, in another life
Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife,
As well as dream such trifles are assigned,
As toys and empires, for a god-like mind:
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing:
How oft by these at sixty are undone
The virtues of a saint at twenty-one!
To whom can riches give repute or trust,
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold,
Esteem and love were never to be sold.
O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human kind,
Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honour lies.
Fortune in men has some small diff'rence made,
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
"What differ more," you cry, "than crown and cowl?"
I'll tell you, friend; a wise man and a fool.
You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,
Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,
Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with strings,
Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race,
In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece:
But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate,
Count me those only who were good and great.
Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood
Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;
Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.
Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies.
"Where but among the heroes and the wise!"
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;
The whole strange purpose of their lives to find,
Or make, an enemy of all mankind!
Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.
No less alike the politic and wise;
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes:
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat,
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
What's fame? a fancied life in others' breath,
A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.
Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown
The same, my lord, if Tully's, or your own.
All that we feel of it begins and ends
In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade
An Eugene living, as a Caesar dead;
Alike, or when or where they shone or shine,
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
Fame but from death a villain's name can save,
As justice tears his body from the grave;
When what t' oblivion better were resigned,
Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.
All fame is foreign, but of true desert;
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas;
And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Caesar with a senate at his heels.
In parts superior what advantage lies?
Tell, for you can, what is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known;
To see all others' faults, and feel our own;
Condemned in bus'ness or in arts to drudge,
Without a second or without a judge:
Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?
All fear, none aid you, and few understand.
Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view
Above life's weakness, and its comforts too.
Bring then these blessings to a strict account;
Make fair deductions; see to what they 'mount:
How much of other each is sure to cost;
How each for other oft is wholly lost;
How inconsistent greater goods with these;
How sometimes life is risked, and always ease.
Think, and if still the things thy envy call,
Say would'st thou be the man to whom they fall?
To sigh for ribbons if thou art so silly,
Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy.
Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life?
Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife.
If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined,
The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind:
Or ravished with the whistling of a name,
See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame!
If all, united, thy ambition call,
From ancient story learn to scorn them all.
There, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great,
See the false scale of happiness complete!
In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay,
How happy those to ruin, these betray!
Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows,
From dirt and sea-weed as proud Venice rose;
In each how guilt and greatness equal ran,
And all that raised the hero sunk the man:
Now Europe's laurel on their brows behold,
But stained with blood, or ill-exchanged for gold:
Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease,
Or infamous for plundered provinces.
O wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame
E'er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame!
What greater bliss attends their close of life?
Some greedy minion, or imperious wife,
The trophied arches, storied halls invade,
And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade.
Alas! not dazzled with their noon-tide ray,
Compute the morn and ev'ning to the day;
The whole amount of that enormous fame,
A tale, that blends their glory with their shame!
Know then this truth, enough for man to know,
"Virtue alone is happiness below."
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blessed in what it takes, and what it gives;
The joy unequalled, if its end it gain,
And if it lose, attended with no pain:
Without satiety, though e'er so blessed,
And but more relished as the more distressed:
The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears,
Less pleasing far than virtue's very tears:
Good, from each object, from each place acquired,
For ever exercised, yet never tired;
Never elated, while one man's oppressed;
Never dejected, while another's blessed;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more virtue is to gain.
hereafter.]
See the sole bliss heav'n could on all bestow!
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know;
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find;
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through nature up to nature's God;
Pursues that chain which links th' immense design,
Joins heav'n and earth, and mortal and divine;
Sees, that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above and some below;
Learns from this union of the rising whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows where faith, law, morals, all began,
All end, in love of God, and love of man.
For him alone hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul;
Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
He sees why nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find;)
Wise is her present: she connects in this
His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss;
At once his own bright prospect to be blessed,
And strongest motive to assist the rest.
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense,
In one close system of benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree,
And height of bliss but height of charity.
God loves from whole to parts: but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race;
Wide and more wide th' o'erflowings of the mind
Take ev'ry creature in, of ev'ry kind;
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blessed,
And heav'n beholds its image in his breast.
Come then, my friend! my genius! come along,
O master of the poet and the song!
And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends,
To man's low passions, or their glorious ends,
Teach me, like thee in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please.
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame;
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose,
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
Shall then this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?
That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;
For wit's false mirror held up nature's light;
Showed erring pride, whatever is, is right;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim;
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.
should not find the "disjecti membra poetae."--BOWLES.
send." The Essay teaches us that the moral law of mankind is
Father of all! in ev'ry age,
In ev'ry clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Thou Great First Cause, least understood!
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that thou art good,
And that myself am blind;
Yet gave me in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill:
And binding nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This teach me more than hell to shun,
That, more than heav'n pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives:
T' enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth's contracted span
The goodness let me bound,
Or think Thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round:
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay:
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find that better way.
Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent.
Teach me to feel another's woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so,
Since quickened by thy breath:
Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go,
Through this day's life or death.
This day be bread and peace my lot:
All else beneath the sun,
Thou know'st if best bestowed or not,
And let thy will be done.
To Thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,
One chorus let all being raise;
All nature's incense rise!
The poet tells us next, line 16, with what design he wrote, viz.
To vindicate the ways of God to man.
Can tell why heav'n has made us as we are.
question, Whether God has placed him wrong?
attributes? Therefore,
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.
He sees, why nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find.
illusion.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.
Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, &c.
Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn.
Then nature deviates; and can man do less?
Of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole?
Own therefore, says he, that
From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.
Ver. 165. _Better for us, &c._] But, secondly, to strengthen the
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.
Contracted all, retiring to the breast:
But health of mind is exercise, not rest.
The gen'ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.
Th' eternal art educes good from all.
What if the foot, &c.
(All nature is but art, unknown to thee,)
nor yet the fortuitous result of Epicurean atoms,
(All chance, direction, which thou canst not see):
reason,--in all other sciences the understanding is unchecked and
Ver. 79. _Attention, &c._] But it would be objected, that if this
Nor God alone in the still calm we find;
He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.
powerful inciters, we should neglect, and sink into a senseless
indolence. Now happiness is the end of our creation; and this
excitement, the means to that end; therefore, these movers, the
A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,
And sev'ral men impels to several ends.
Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please, &c.
See anger, zeal and fortitude supply, &c.
'Tis thus the mercury, &c.
Reason the bias turns to good from ill,
And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will.
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.
This is an error of speculation, which leads men so foolishly to
conclude, that there is neither vice nor virtue.
For, vice or virtue, self directs it still.
Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal,
leads the author to observe,
That heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole.
passions, with regard to the more confined circle of our friends,
individual, even in their illusions; the imaginary happiness they
Opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days, &c.
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is giv'n in vain.
Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.
conclusion of the second
Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine,
maketh the introduction to the third:
Here then we rest: 'The Universal Cause
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.'
elsewhere, that
Each individual seeks a several goal.
On mutual wants built mutual happiness.
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All served, all serving,
that chain of love
Combining all below and all above:
beneficence, by obliging him to provide for the support of other
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake:
"Go, from the creatures thy instructions take, &c.,
And for those arts mere instinct could afford,
Be crowned as monarchs, or as Gods adored."
True faith, true policy united ran;
That was but love of God, and this of man.
Accordingly Mr. Pope, from ver. 244 to 269, together with corrupt
Superstition taught the tyrant awe.
His safety must his liberty restrain;
All join to guard what each desires to gain.
Ver. 283. _'Twas then, the studious head, &c._] The poet hath now
'Twas then, the studious head, or generous mind,
Follow'r of God, or friend of human kind,
Poet or patriot, rose but to restore
The faith and moral, nature gave before; &c.
'Twas then, the studious head, &c.
Ver. 295. _Such is the world's great harmony, &c._] Having thus
Such is the world's great harmony, that springs
From order, union, full consent of things.
Ver. 311. _Man, like the generous vine, &c._] Having thus largely
On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions act the soul;
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and nature linked the general frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.
Oh happiness! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shrine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in from harvests of the field?
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere
'Tis no where to be found, or every where.
Ask of the learn'd the way? The learn'd are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind:
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease;
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
inseparably attended with fear; the want of them with hope; which
Oh sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, oh virtue! peace is all thy own.
One head yet remained to be spoken to, namely, competence. In the
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, oh virtue! peace is all thy own.
Ver. 93. _Oh blind to truth, &c._] Our author having thus largely
Oh blind to truth! and God's whole scheme below, &c.
Say, was it virtue, more though heav'n ne'er gave,
Lamented Digby! sunk thee to the grave?
Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,
Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire?
We just as wisely might of heav'n complain
That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,
As that the righteous son is ill at ease,
When his lewd father gave the dire disease.
Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires, &c.
profligate complainers, from ver. 130 to 149:
But still this world, so fitted for the knave, &c.
This world, 'tis true,
Was made for Caesar, but for Titus too:
And which more bless'd? who chained his country? say!
Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy,
Is virtue's prize,
delusions; though, as he proves in an exact review of the most
Oh fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human-kind,
Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear,
Because he wants a thousand pounds a year!
Honour and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part; there all the honour lies.
What power then has fortune over the man? None at all; for as her
Fortune in men has some small difference made;
One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade.
monopolize that quality) do, after all their bustle, if they want
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.
Ver. 329. _Yet poor with fortune, &c._] The poet then, with some
To look through nature up to nature's God,
For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul;
Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours thy bliss that fills up all the mind.
descends from whole to parts; but that the human must rise from
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
is important. Rochefoucault, Esprit, and their coarse and wordy
Of human nature, wit its worst may write;
We all revere it in our own despite,
selfishness into its very opposite; and therefore teacheth that
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake:
and thus hath vindicated the dignity of human nature, and the
philosophic truth of the christian doctrine.
Ver. 7, 8. _A wild,--Or garden,_] The wild relates to the human
opportunity, on this subject, to exercise their virtue.
Ver. 16. _Vindicate the ways of God to man._] Milton's phrase,
explaining the ways of God; this idea, the word justify precisely
Ver. 19, 20. _Of man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?_]
If plagues and earthquakes break not heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?
Who knows, but he whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind,
Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?
Ver. 35 to 42.] In these lines the poet has joined the beauty of
Ver. 41. _Or ask of yonder, &c._] On these lines M. Voltaire thus
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade;
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.
Such is the world's great harmony, that springs
From order, union, full consent of things:
Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made
Ver. 97. _from home,_] The construction is,--The soul, uneasy and
Il ne desire point cette celeste flamme
Qui des purs Seraphins devore, et nourrit l'ame.
Ver. 150. _Then Nature deviates; &c._] "While comets move in very
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.--Ver. 51.
How does the poet enforce it? If you will believe this critic, in
Jusqu'a l'homme, ce chef, ce roi de l'univers.
So man; who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.
equilibre.
The workman from the work distinct was known?
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul; &c.
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To him, no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Dans un homme ignore sous une humble chaumiere,
Que dans le seraphin, rayonnant de lumiere.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown;
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal:
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.
Man hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest.
Now he tells us it is man's duty to act, not rest, as the stoics
Fixed as in a frost,
Contracted all, retiring to the breast:
But strength of mind is exercise, not rest.
Now hear the translator, who is not for mincing matters:
Seroit-il en naissant au travail condamne?
Aux douceurs du repos seroit-il destine?
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast.
immortality, as the poet himself teaches, when he speaks of the
omnipresence of God:
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part.--Epist. i. 275.
Tantot de son esprit admirant l'excellence,
Il pense qu'il est Dieu, qu'il en a la puissance;
Et tantot gemissant des besoins de son corps,
Il croit que de la brute, il n'a que les ressorts.
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err.
The translator turns this fine and sober thought into the most
outrageous scepticism:
Ce n'est que pour mourir, qu'il est ne, qu'il respire;
Et toute sa raison n'est presque qu'un delire.
Too much knowledge for the sceptic side.
propriety of sentiment.
Des celestes esprits la vive intelligence
Regarde avec pitie notre foible science;
Newton, le grand Newton, que nous admirons tous,
Est peut-etre pour eux, ce qu'un singe est pour nous.
succession which approaches to co-existence, they will not be
relished." What pity is it, that the poet should here confute the
On peut etre a la fois et pompeux et plaisant;
Et je hais un sublime ennuyeux et pesant.
Ver. 37. _Who saw its fires here rise, &c._] Sir Isaac Newton, in
Ver. 48. _Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;_] _i.e._ when
Ver. 49.    _Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;_]
collects the future; and by argumentation, the consequence.
The translator turns it thus:
Dieu lui-meme, Dieu sort de son profond repos.
Ver. 109. _Nor God alone, &c._] These words are only a simple
The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to reason still attend.
character of Cotta:
Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth,
Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth.
What though (the use of barb'rous spits forgot)
His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot?
If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more
Than bramins, saints, and sages did before.
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair,
A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,
And several men impels to several ends;
What makes all physical and moral ill?
There deviates nature, and here wanders will:
Ver. 253.    _Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, &c._]
What partly pleases, totally will shock:
I question much, if Toland would be Locke.
Dans le sein du bonheur, ou de l'adversite.
Vois du sein du Chaos eclater la lumiere,
Chaque atome ebranle courir pour s'embrasser, &c.
insensible parts is as necessary as that quality so equally and
Sort du neant, y rentre, et reparoit au jour.
Ver. 22. _One all-extending, all-preserving soul,_] Which, in the
Ver. 23. _greatest with the least;_] As acting more strongly and
In this 'tis God directs.
innocence, and full of the great ideas of those
Chains of love
Combining all below and all above,
Which to one point, and to one centre bring,
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king;
Subjected these to those, and all to thee.
philosophize himself into an opinion that these animals were mere
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
M. du Resnel has translated the lines thus:
La nature indignee alors se fit entendre;
Va, malheureux mortel, va, lui dit-elle, apprendre;
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare,
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come,
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb, &c.
Ver. 199. _observant men obeyed;_] The epithet is beautiful, as
fatality of contradicting his original, whenever he attempts to
Par ces mots la nature excita l'industrie,
Et de l'homme feroce enchaina la furie.
What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend who came a foe.
impossible that there should be quarrels in it. He had said,
So drives self-love through just and through unjust.
Then, looking up from sire to sire, &c.
This, I am afraid, is but too true a representation of humanity.
Jaloux d'en conserver les traits et la figure,
Leur zele industrieux inventa la peinture.
Leurs neveux, attentifs a ces hommes fameux,
Qui par le droit du sang avoient regne sur eux,
Trouvent-ils dans leur suite un grand, un premier pere,
Leur aveugle respect l'adore et le revere.
describing those men who
To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod,
And owned a father, where they own'd a God!
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, &c.
The ancient pagan gods are here very exactly described. This fact
superstition; for if these phantasms were first raised in the
Amuse th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
Th' according music of a well-mixed state.
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new.
Taught pow'r's due use to people and to kings,
Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings;
The less, or greater, set so justly true,
That touching one must strike the other too;
Till jarring interests of themselves create
Th' according music of a well mixed state.
For nature knew no right divine in men.
For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul:
Till, lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new,
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
mischievous squabble between Waterland and Jackson, on a point
controversy that required another management. Clear sense, severe
once well laughed at, and then, forgotten.
Time. This short history, as insignificant as the subjects of it
Ver. 21, 23.    _Some place the bliss in action,--
Some sunk to beasts, &c._]
calmness of mind, which they call [Greek: Euthymia]; such as the
Ver. 35.    _Remember, man, "the Universal Cause
"Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws:"_]
Une loi generale
Determine toujours la cause principale;
L'ordre, cet inflexible et grand legislateur,
Qui des decrets du ciel est le premier auteur.
Le charme seducteur, dont s'enivrant les sens,
Les plaisirs de l'esprit, encore plus ravissans;
providential care of those whom he led to war, in which he was so
extraordinary dispensations to mankind.
Ver. 142. After ver. 142 in some editions:
Give each a system, all must be at strife;
What different systems for a man and wife!
Zeal, not charity, became the guide,
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride.
They err who count it glorious to subdue
By conquest far and wide, to over-run
Large countries, and in field great battles win,
Great cities by assault. What do these worthies,
But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave
Peaceable nations, neighb'ring or remote,
Made captive, yet deserving freedom more
Than those their conqu'rors; who leave behind
Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove,
And all the flourishing works of peace destroy?
Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods;
Till conqu'ror death discovers them scarce men,
Rolling in brutish vices and deformed,
Violent or shameful death their due reward.--Par. Reg. b. iii.
mischievous.
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
acquirement, can make him happy here. The most plausible rival of
Those painted clouds that beautify our days, &c.
Or ravished with the whistling of a name,_]
Ver. 309.    _Know then this truth, enough for man to know,
"Virtue alone is happiness below."_]
M. du Resnel translates the line thus:
Apprend donc, qu'il n'est point ici bas de bonheur,
Si la vertu no regle et l'esprit et le coeur.
Virtue alone is happiness below:
And so ought a faithful translator to have said after him.
Ev'n while it seems unequal to dispose,
And chequers all the good man's joys with woes,
'Tis but to teach him to support each state,
With patience this, with moderation that;
And raise his base on that one solid joy,
Which conscience gives, and nothing can destroy.
affliction.
companion, which fills his heart with joy, and is the support and
Come then, my friend! my genius! come along;
O master of the poet, and the song!
And while the muse now stoops, and now ascends,
To man's low passions, or their glorious ends.
Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise,
To fall with dignity, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, happily to steer
From grave to gay, from lively to severe;
Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease,
Intent to reason, or polite to please.
Oh! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale?
When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose
Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,
Shall then this verse to future age pretend
Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend?
That urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art,
From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart;
For wit's false mirror held up nature's light.
Shew'd erring pride, whatever is, is right;
That reason, passion, answer one great aim;
That true self-love and social are the same;
That virtue only makes our bliss below;
And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.
Ver. 29.    _If I am right, thy grace impart,--
I am wrong, O teach my heart_]
As the imparting of grace, on the Christian system, is a stronger
 Johnson's Works, ed. Murphy, vol. ii. p. 354.
 Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xviii.
 Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Dunciad, p. 39.
 Dennis's Reflections, p. 29.
 Imitations of Horace, bk. ii. Sat. 1, ver. 75.
 Dennis's Reflections, p. 22.
 Wakefield's Works of Pope, p. 168.
 Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 108.
 Dryden's Virgil, ed. Carey, vol. ii. p. xxxii., lxxxviii.
 Pope's Poetical Works, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 9.
 Poetical Works of Dryden, ed. Robert Bell, vol. i. p. 75.
 Temple of Fame, ver. 505.
 Essay on the Genius of Pope, vol. i. p. 195.
 Works of Edward Young, ed. Doran, vol. ii. p. 578.
 Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets, p. 145.
 De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 142.
 De Quincey's Works, vol. viii. p. 14.
 Pope's Poetical Works, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 7.
 Dryden's Epilogue to All for Love:
This difference grows,
Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in prose.
 An extravagant assertion. Those who can appreciate, are beyond
 Qui scribit artificiose, ab aliis commode scripta facile
 Between ver. 25 and 26 were these lines, since omitted by the
author:
Many are spoiled by that pedantic throng,
Who with great pains teach youth to reason wrong.
Tutors, like virtuosos, oft inclined
By strange transfusion to improve the mind,
Draw off the sense we have, to pour in new;
Which yet, with all their skill, they ne'er could do.--POPE.
For fools are doubly fools endeav'ring to be wise.
 Dryden's Medal:
The wretch turned loyal in his own defence.
Those hate as rivals all that write; and others
But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers.
Dryden's Prologue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada:
They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,
Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.
Though such with reason men of sense abhor;
Fool against fool is barb'rous civil war.
Though Maevius scribble and the city knight, &c.
Who would be poets in Apollo's spite.
 "I am confident," says Dryden in the dedication of his Virgil,
 The diction of this line is coarse, and the construction
defective.--WAKEFIELD.
The omission of "them" after "call" exceeds the bounds of poetic
licence.
 Dryden's Persius, v. 36:
For this a hundred voices I desire
To tell thee what an hundred tongues would tire.
"I have often thought," says the author of the Supplement to the
 This is a palpable imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 38:
Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam
Viribus; et versate diu, quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.--WAKEFIELD.
remarkable for their knowledge.
But when the milder beams of mercy play.--WAKEFIELD.
defective.--WARTON.
 This position seems formed from the well-known maxim of
 Roscommon's Essay:
Truth still is one: Truth is divinely bright;
No cloudy doubts obscure her native light.--WAKEFIELD.
 Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Sir William Soame and
Dryden, canto i.
Love reason then, and let whate'er you write
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light.
 In the early editions,
That art is best which most resembles her,
Which still presides, yet never does appear.
Inspires, and feeds, and animates the whole.--WAKEFIELD.
 So Ovid, exactly, Metam. iv. 287:
causa latet; vis est notissima.--WAKEFIELD.
Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Poetry:
A spirit which inspires the work throughout,
As that of nature moves the world about;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown.
 In all editions before the quarto of 1743, it was,
There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it.
 "Ever are at strife," was the reading till the quarto of 1743.
 We shall destroy the beauty of the passage by introducing a most
Direct us how to back the winged horse,
Favour his flight, and moderate his force.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's preface to Troilus and Cressida: "If the rules be well
 It was "monarchy" until the edition of 1743.
 Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, by Dryden and Soame:
And afar off hold up the glorious prize.--WAKEFIELD.
 Nec enim artibus editis factum est ut argumenta inveniremus, sed
 This seems to have been suggested by a couplet in the Court
How are these blessings thus dispensed and giv'n?
To us from William, and to him from heav'n.
Set up themselves, and drove a sep'rate trade.--WAKEFIELD.
 A feeble line of monosyllables, consisting of ten low
 The prescription of the physician was formerly called his bill.
him who took the doctor's bill,
And swallowed it instead of the pill.
 Soame and Dryden's Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry:
Keep to each man his proper character;
Of countries and of times the humours know;
From diff'rent climates diff'ring customs grow.
 In the first edition,
You may confound, but never criticise,
which was an adaptation of a line from Lord Roscommon:
You may confound, but never can translate.
 The author, after this verse, originally inserted the following,
Zoilus, had these been known, without a name
Had died, and Perrault ne'er been damned to fame;
The sense of sound antiquity had reigned,
And sacred Homer yet been unprophaned.
None e'er had thought his comprehensive mind }
To modern customs, modern rules confined;}
Who for all ages writ, and all mankind.  }
Be his great works, &c.--POPE.
vos exemplaria Graeca
Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna.
Tate and Brady's version of the first psalm:
But makes the perfect law of God
His business and delight;
Devoutly reads therein by day,
And meditates by night.--WAKEFIELD.
And upward follow Fame's immortal spring.--WAKEFIELD.
 Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse:
Consult your author with himself compared.
When first young Maro sung of kings and wars,
Ere warning Phoebus touched his trembling ears.
Cum canerem reges et praelia, Cynthius aurem
Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears.
When first his voice the youthful Maro tried,
Ere Phoebus touched his ear and checked his pride.
And did his work to rules as strict confine.--POPE.
"Arms and the Man," then rung the world around,
And Rome commenced immortal at the sound
 When Pope supposes Virgil to have properly "checked in his bold
As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line,
Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.--DR. AIKIN.
The argument of Pope is sophistical and inconsistent. It is
 Dryden's Aurengzebe:
Mean soul, and dar'st not gloriously offend!--STEEVENS.
 So Soame and Dryden of the Ode, in the Translation of Boileau's
Her generous style at random oft will part,
And by a brave disorder shows her art.
And again:
A generous Muse,
When too much fettered with the rules of art,
May from her stricter bounds and limits part.--WAKEFIELD.
 This allusion is perhaps inaccurate. The shapeless rock, and
hanging precipice do not rise out of nature's common order. These
 Another couplet originally followed here:
But care in poetry must still be had;
It asks discretion ev'n in running mad:
And though, &c.
 "Their" means "their own."--WARTON.
 Dryden in his dedication to the AEneis: "Virgil might make this
 Pope's manuscript supplies two omitted lines:
The boldest strokes of art we may despise,
Viewed in false lights with undiscerning eyes.
 Pope took his imagery from Horace, Ars Poet., 361:
Ut pictura, poesis erit: quae, si propius stes,
Te capiat magis; et quaedam, si longius abstes:
Haec amat obscurum; volet haec sub luce videri.
Each object must be fixed in the due place,
And diff'ring parts have corresponding grace.
 It may be pertinent to subjoin Roscommon's remark on the same
subject:
----Far the greatest part
Of what some call neglect is studied art.
When Virgil seems to trifle in a line,
'Tis but a warning piece which gives the sign,
To wake your fancy and prepare your sight
To reach the noble height of some unusual flight.--WARTON.
 Modeste, et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum
For who, without a qualm, hath ever looked
On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked?
Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded gods,
Make some suspect he snores as well as nods.--WAKEFIELD.
Pope originally wrote in his manuscript,
Nor Homer nods so often as we dream,
which was followed by this couplet:
In sacred writ where difficulties rise,
'Tis safer far to fear than criticise.
 So Roscommon's epilogue to Alexander the Great:
Secured by higher pow'rs exalted stands
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands.--WAKEFIELD.
 The poet here alludes to the four great causes of the ravage
amongst ancient writings. The destruction of the Alexandrine and
cloisters.--WARBURTON.
I like the original verse better--
Destructive war, and all-devouring age,--
as a metaphor much more perspicuous and specific.--WAKEFIELD.
A couplet in Cooper's Hill suggested the couplet of Pope:
Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or time, or fire,
Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire.
 Thus in a poem on the Fear of Death, ascribed to the Duke of
----There rival chiefs combine
To fill the gen'ral chorus of her reign.--WAKEFIELD.
 Cowley on the death of Crashaw:
Hail, bard triumphant.
Magnanimi heroes! nati melioribus annis.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's Religio Laici:
Those giant wits in happier ages born.
From Pope's manuscript it appears that he had originally written:
Hail, happy heroes, born in better days.
In a note he gave the line from Virgil of which his own was a
translation.
 An imitation of Cowley, David. ii. 833:
Round the whole earth his dreaded name shall sound
And reach to worlds that must not yet be found.--WAKEFIELD.
 Oldham's Elegies:
What nature has in bulk to me denied.
 Pope is commonly considered to have laid down the general
 In the early editions,
Fired with the charms fair science does impart.
Nor need we tempt those heights which angels keep.--WAKEFIELD.
 The proper word would have been "beyond."
Our sight less trusting as we see more clear.]
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try,
Filled with ideas of fair Italy,
The traveller beholds with cheerful eyes
The less'ning vales, and seems to tread the skies.--POPE.
 This is, perhaps, the best simile in our language--that in which
All as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass,
Or Atlas' temples crowned with winter's glass,
The airy Caucasus, the Apennine,
Pyrene's cliffs where sun doth never shine,
When he some heaps of hills hath overwent,
Begins to think on rest, his journey spent,
Till mounting some tall mountain he doth find
More heights before him than he left behind.--WARTON.
 Diligenter legendum est ac paene ad scribendi solicitudinem: nec
 The Bible never descends to the mean colloquial preterites of
English.--DE QUINCEY.
 Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dryden and Soame, canto i.:
A frozen style, that neither ebbs or flows,
Instead of pleasing makes us gape and doze.
 Much in the same strain Garth's Dispensary, iv. 24:
So nicely tasteless, so correctly dull.--WAKEFIELD.
 This is an adaptation of a couplet in Dryden's Eleonora:
Nor this part musk, or civet can we call,
Or amber, but a rich result of all.
 An impropriety of the grossest kind is here committed. Grammar
requires "appears."--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's translation of Ovid's Met. book xv.
Greater than whate'er was, or is, or e'er shall be.--HOLT WHITE.
Epilogue to Suckling's Goblins:
Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor ne'er will be.--ISAAC REED.
Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis.
 The incident is taken from the Second Part of Don Quixote, first
 In all editions till the quarto of 1743,
As e'er could D----s of the laws o' th' stage.
 In the manuscript the reply of the knight is continued through
another couplet:
In all besides let Aristotle sway,
But knighthood's sacred, and he must give way.
 This had been the practice of some artists. "Their heroes," says
Yet 'tis not to adorn, and gild each part;
That shows more cost than art.
Rather than all things wit, let none be there.
 Naturam intueamur, hanc sequamur: id facillime accipiunt animi
 Pope's account of wit is undoubtedly erroneous; he depresses it
 Light "sweetly recommended" by shades, is an affected form of
Justly to think, and readily express,
A full conception, and brought forth with ease.
 "Let us," says Mr. Webb, in a passage quoted by Warton,
 "Take upon content" for "take upon trust" was a form of speech
prepossessed and charmed by his action."
 Nothing can be more just, or more ably and eloquently expressed
 Dryden's preface to All for Love: "Expressions are a modest
clothing of our thoughts, as breeches and petticoats are for our
Opus est, ut verba a vetustate repetita neque crebra sint, neque
 See Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour.--POPE.
 If Pope's maxim was universally obeyed no new word could be
Quis populi sermo est? quis enim? nisi carmina molli
Nunc demum numero fluere, ut per laeve severos
Effundat junctura ungues: scit tendere versum
Harsh words, though pertinent, uncouth appear;
None please the fancy who offend the ear.
 "There" is a feeble excrescence to force a rhyme.
 "Low" in contradistinction to lofty. The phrase would now mean
coarse and vulgar words.
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death.
How successfully does this range of little words represent to our
The growing labours of the lengthened way.--WAKEFIELD.
"It is pronounced by Dryden," says Johnson, "that a line of
His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With ev'ry plant, in sign of worship wave.
ye birds,
That singing up to heaven gate ascend,
Bear on your wings and in your notes his praise.
 Atterbury's Preface to Waller's Poems: "He had a fine ear, and
 Hopkins's translation of Ovid's Met., book xi.:
No tame nor savage beast dwells there; no breeze
Shakes the still boughs, or whispers thro' the trees:
Here easy streams with pleasing murmurs creep,
At once inviting and assisting sleep.--WAKEFIELD.
Pope took the idea from Boileau:
Si je louois Philis "en miracles feconde,"
Je trouverois bientot, "a nulle autre seconde;"
Si je voulois vanter un objet "nonpareil,"
Je mettrois a l'instant, "plus beau que le soleil;"
Enfin, parlant toujours d' "astres" et de "merveilles,"
De "chefs-d'oeuvres des cieux," de "beautes sans pareilles."
 Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis, stanza 123:
So glides the trodden serpent on the grass,
And long behind his wounded volume trails.--WAKEFIELD.
 Boileau's Art of Poetry translated by Soame and Dryden:
Those tuneful readers of their own dull rhymes.
 Sufficient justice is not done to Sandys, who did more to polish
 Writers who seem to have composed with the greatest ease have
 Lord Roscommon says:
The sound is still a comment to the sense.--WARBURTON.
Atque ideo si quid geritur molimine magno,
Adde moram et pariter tecum quoque verba laborent
At mora si fuerit damno, properare jubebo, &c. Vida, ib.
 Our poet here endeavours to fasten on Virgil a most insufferable
 The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze
Wakefield says that "the tripping word _labours_, in ver. 371, is
tripping and lyrical lightness."
 See Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music; an Ode by Mr.
 This resembles a line in Hughes's Court of Neptune:
Beholds th' alternate billows all and rise.--WAKEFIELD.
And now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.
 Pope confounds vocal and instrumental with poetical harmony.
 Creech's translation of Horace's Art of Poetry:
men of sense retire,
The boys abuse, and only fools admire.
 In all editions before the quarto of 1743, "Some the French
writers."
 This was directed against Pope's co-religionists, and greatly
 The word "enlights" is, I believe, of our poet's coinage,
analogically formed from "light," as "enlighten" from
 Sir Robert Howard's poem against the Fear of Death:
And neither gives increase, nor brings decay.
 There is very little poetical expression from this line to ver.
 "Joins with quality" for "joins with men of rank" is a vulgar
colloquialism.
In sing-song Durfey, Oldmixon or me,
was the original reading of the manuscript.
 This couplet is succeeded by two more lines in the manuscript:
And while to thoughts refined they make pretence,
Hate all that's common, ev'n to common sense.
 If this couplet is interpreted by the grammatical construction,
 St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. Scotus, who died in 1308,
disputed the doctrines of his predecessor, and their respective
disciples divided for a century the theological world.--CROKER.
 A place where old and second-hand books were sold formerly, near
 Between this and verse 448:
The rhyming clowns that gladded Shakespear's age,
No more with crambo entertain the stage.
Who now in anagrams their patron praise,
Or sing their mistress in acrostic lays?
Ev'n pulpits pleased with merry puns of yore;
Now all are banished to th' Hibernian shore!
Conveyed by Sw----y to his native air.
There, languishing awhile, prolong its breath,
Till like a swan it sings itself to death.]
Thus leaving what was natural and fit,
The current folly proved their ready wit:
And authors thought their reputation safe,
Which lived as long as fools were pleased to laugh.--POPE.
 An additional couplet follows in the manuscript:
To be spoke ill of, may good works befall,
But those are bad of which none speak at all.
 Dryden himself, Virg. Geor. iv. 729:
But she returned no more to bless his longing eyes.--WAKEFIELD.
Into the melting pot when Dryden comes
What horrid stench will rise, what noisome fumes!
How will he shrink when all his lewd allay
And wicked mixture shall be purged away!
When once his boasted heaps are melted down,
A chestful scarce will yield one sterling crown.
Wouldst thou be soon dispatched, and perish whole?
Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milbourne with thy soul.
Pope's line in the first edition was
New Bl----s and new M----s must arise.
Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden:
Let mighty Spenser raise his reverend head,
Cowley and Denham start up from the dead.
 A beautiful and poetical illustration. Pope has the art of
The passage originally stood thus in the manuscript:
Wit, as the sun, such pow'rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours that obscures its rays,
But, like the sun eclipsed, makes only known
The shadowing body's grossness, not its own;
And all those clouds that did at first invade
The rising light, and interposed a shade,
When once transpierced with its prevailing ray
Reflect its glories, and augment the day.
 His instance refuted his position that "bare threescore" was the
The treach'rous colours in few years decay.--POPE.
The next line is from Addison:
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.
Like some fair flow'r that in the spring does rise.--POPE.
 The Duke of Buckingham's Vision:
The dearest care that all my thought employs.
 Thus in the first edition:
The more his trouble as the more admired,
Where wanted scorned, and envied where acquired.
'Tis most our trouble when 'tis most admired,
The more we give, the more is still required.
 In the first edition,
Maintained with pains, but forfeited with ease;
and in the second edition,
The fame with pains we gain, but lose with ease.
 Another couplet follows in the manuscript:
Learning and wit were friends designed by heav'n;
Those arms to guard it, not to wound, were giv'n.
 Dryden's Prologue to the University of Oxford:
Be kind to wit, which but endeavours well,
And, where you judge, presumes not to excel.
aspire to gain renown
By standing up and pulling others down.
 Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden:
Never debase yourself by treach'rous ways
Nor by such abject methods seek for praise.
 In the margin of the manuscript Pope has written the passages of
quid non mortalia pectora cogis
Auri sacra fames?
Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido,
which Dryden translates,
Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move.
 No one has expressed himself upon this subject so pithily as
'tis just
The author blush, there where the reader must.
And duller shoulds't thou be than the fat weed.--BOWLES.
 Wits, says he, in Charles the Second's reign had pensions, when
 "The young lords who had wit in the court of Charles II. were,"
says Dennis, "Villiers Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Mulgrave,
 He must mean in everyday life. There was no use for the "modest
The cancelled couplet was as follows:
Then first the Belgian morals were extolled,
We their religion had, and they our gold.
contained impious doctrines against the Holy Trinity, and other
 In this line he had Kennet in view, who was accused of having
 The published sermons of the reign of William III. do not answer
Lurida praeterea fiunt quaecunque tuentur
Besides, whatever jaundice-eyes do view,
Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too.--Creech.
This notion of the transfusion of the colour to the object from a
everything looked yellow to him in the reign of William III.
 In the first edition,
Speak when you're sure, yet speak with diffidence.
Dennis objected that a man when sure should speak "with a modest
 Warton praises Pope for practising the precept in correcting the
 This picture was taken to himself by John Dennis, a furious old
And though his face be as ill
As theirs, which in old hangings whip Christ, still
He strives to look worse.--WAKEFIELD.
The privilege is now abolished.
 Duke of Buckingham's Essay on Satire,
But who can rail so long as he can sleep?
But t'other day I heard this rhyming fop
Say critics were the whips, and he the top:
For as a top spins best the more you baste her,
So ev'ry lash you give, he writes the faster,
 Dryden's Aurengzebe:
The dregs and droppings of enervate love.--STEEVENS.
It has been suggested that he alludes to Wycherley.--WARTON.
patronage.--BOWLES.
But if incorrigible bards we view,
Know there are mad, &c.
And the alteration turned an unappropriated description into a
authority of Pope alone.
 In allusion to this class of pedants Gray said, "Learning never
 A common slander at that time in prejudice of that deserving
forgotten.--POPE.
 There is an ellipse of "that" after "sacred," and of "it" after
 The propriety of the specification in this proverbial remark is
 Between this and ver. 624--
In vain you shrug and sweat and strive to fly:
These know no manners but in poetry.
They'll stop a hungry chaplain in his grace,
To treat of unities of time and place.--POPE.
 This stroke of satire is literally taken from Boileau:
Gardez-vous d'imiter ce rimeur furieux,
Qui, de ses vains ecrits, lecteur harmonieux,
Aborde en recitant quiconque le salue,
Et poursuit de ses vers les passants dans la rue.
Il n'est temple si saint, des anges respecte,
Qui soit contre sa muse un lieu de surete.
Which lines allude to the impertinence of a French poet called Du
Wrens make prey where eagles dare not perch.
Excursusque breves tentant.
Nor forage far, but short excursions make. Dryden.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Humanly" is improperly put for humanely. The only authorised
sense of the former is belonging to man; of the latter, kindly,
compassionately.--DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL.
 "Love to praise" means "a love of bestowing praise," but, as
 This is followed by two additional lines in the manuscript:
Such did of old poetic laws impart,
And what till then was fury turned to art.
That bold Columbus of the realms of wit,
Whose first discovery's not exceeded yet.
Led by the light of the Maeonian star,
He steered securely, and discovered far.
He, when all nature was subdued before,
Like his great pupil, sighed and longed for more;
Fancy's wild regions yet unvanquished lay,
A boundless empire, and that owned no sway.
Hoist sail, bold writers! search, discover far;
You have a compass for a polar star.--WAKEFIELD.
 After ver. 648, in the first edition, came this couplet:
Not only nature did his laws obey,
But fancy's boundless empire owned his sway.
 The obvious interpretation of this passage would be that poets,
The longest tyranny that ever swayed
Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed
Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite,
And made his torch their universal light.
Had we still paid that homage to a name,
Which only God and nature justly claim,
The western seas had been our utmost bound,
Where poets still might dream the sun was drowned,
And all the stars that shine in southern skies
Had been admired by none but savage eyes.
Each strain a graceful negligence does wear.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Before he goes ten lines further," said Dennis, "he forgets
He judged with spirit as he sung with fire.
 Dennis notices that this couplet is borrowed from Roscommon's
Thus make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
 Dionysius of Halicarnassus.--POPE.
Compare each phrase, examine ev'ry line,
Weigh ev'ry word, and ev'ry thought refine.
criticism.--WARTON.
 In the early editions,
Nor thus alone the curious eye to please,
But to be found, when need requires, with ease.
The Muses sure Longinus did inspire.--POPE.
The taste and sensibility of Longinus were exquisite; but his
He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects law;
And is that nature, which they paint and draw.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Felt" is a flat, insipid word in this place.--WAKEFIELD.
 "The superstition of some ages after the subversion of the Roman
All was believed, but nothing understood.--POPE.
 Between ver. 690 and 691, the author omitted these two:
Vain wits and critics were no more allowed,
When none but saints had licence to be proud.--POPE.
 Here he forms the tenses wrong.--WAKEFIELD.
 The "glory" from his own greatness, the "shame" from the rancour
On Butler, who can think without just rage,
The glory and the scandal of the age.--WAKEFIELD.
 If the restoration of learning consisted in recovering the works
 Genius is here personified, and this person is said by Pope to
 For the expression in the last half of this verse, Wakefield
quotes Addison on sculpture in the letter from Italy,
Or teach their animated rocks to live.
Or various atoms, interfering dance,
Leaped into form.
He like Amphion makes those quarries leap
Into fair figures from a confused heap.
 M. Hieronymus Vida, an excellent Latin poet, who writ an Art of
Poetry in verse. He flourished in the time of Leo X.--POPE.
contradistinction to poets, by any but this ingenious author."
"Mantua, vae miserae, nimium vicina Cremonae." Virg.--WARBURTON.
This application is made in Kennet's edition of Vida.--WARTON.
To say that the birth-place of Vida would be next in fame to the
 This, Warburton says, refers to the sack of Rome by the Duke of
 The "born to serve" is a sarcasm on the readiness with which the
 May I be pardoned for declaring it as my opinion, that Boileau's
Alexandrine lines will admit, the exactness of his method, the
 The comparison fails. The Romans of old subdued the Britons, and
 Essay on Poetry, by the Duke of Buckingham. Our poet is not the
The Tyber now no courtly Gallus sees,
But smiling Thames enjoys his Normanbys;
The muse's friend,
Himself a muse. In Sanadrin's debate
True to his prince, but not a slave of state.
Our author was more happy; he was honoured very young with his
The Duke of Buckingham, in his Essay, has followed the method of
Boileau, in discoursing on the various species of poetry in their
Such learn'd and modest, not more great than good,
With manners gen'rous as his noble blood,
E'er saints impatient snatched him to the sky,
Roscommon was, and such is Normanby.
 Rochester's Poems:
to her was known
Every one's fault or merit but her own.--CUNNINGHAM.
Such late was Walsh--nor can'st thou, Muse, offend,
Next these to name the Muse's judge and friend;
Who free from envious censure, partial praise,
Showed ancient candour in malicious days
To frailties mild, &c.
 Pope fell into the prevalent vice of uttering extravagant,
 The hint for the first verse in this couplet seems to have been
supplied by Dryden's conclusion of the Religio Laici:
Yet neither praise expect, nor censure fear.
Joyful to live yet not afraid to die.
 These concluding lines bear a great resemblance to Boileau's
conclusion of his Art of Poetry, but are perhaps superior:
Censeur un peu facheux, mais souvent necessaire;
Plus enclin a blamer, que savant a bien faire.--WARTON.
 Warburton's remarks on the quotation from Addison's paper in the
 The author of this work, in which some of Warburton's opinions
 Upton published Critical Observations upon Shakespeare, and says
 The objector was Warton. He justly intimated that the character
 In his Observations on the Poetic character of Pope, Bowles
appearances of nature."
 "The small edition of Pope," writes Warburton to Hurd, June 30,
 Rape of the Lock, cant. i. ver. 3; Singer's Spence, p. 147.
 Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, vol. iii., p. 19;
 Warburton's Pope, vol. iv. p. 26.
 Dennis's Remarks on Pope's Rape of the Lock, preface, p. ix.;
 Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 400. The disclaimer of Addison
 Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 398.
 De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 116.
 Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets, 3rd ed., p. 140.
 Remarks on Mr. Pope's Rape of the Lock, p. 27.
 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 113.
 Dennis's Remarks, p. 24.
 Dennis's Remarks, p. 40.
 Dennis's Remarks, Preface, p. v. vii.
 Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 221.
 Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, ed. 1847, vol. i. p. 39.
 Lives of the Poets, vol. i. p. 74.
 Historical Rhapsody on Mr. Pope, 2nd ed., p. 89.
 De Quincey's Works, vol. xii. p. 17.
 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii. sc. 1.
 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 696.
 Bowles's Pope, vol. x. p. 363; Bowles's Letters to Campbell, 2nd
 Campbell's Specimens of British Poets, 1 vol. ed., p. lxxxvii.
 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 693.
 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 693.
 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 694.
 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 697.
 Warburton's Pope, vol. iv. p. 16.
 Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed., vol. ii. p. 404;
Bowles's Letters to T. Campbell, 2nd ed., p. 28.
 Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 116; Cowper to Unwin,
 Pope's Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 4.
 Prologue to the Satires, ver. 28, 342; Essay on Man, Ep. i. ver.
 The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, chap. 3.
 The title of Mrs. continued in Pope's early time to be applied
 Pope never, I think, is so unsuccessful as when he is writing to
 C---- or C----l in all the impressions which appeared in Pope's
Or Gallus song, so tender and so true,
As e'en Lycoris might with pity view.--WAKEFIELD.
 This is formed from Virgil, Geor. iv. 6. Sedley's version of the
The subject's humble, but not so the praise,
If any muse assists the poet's lays.
Dryden's Translation:
Slight is the subject, but the praise not small
If heav'n assist, and Phoebus hear my call.--WAKEFIELD.
 "_Compel_," says Dennis, "is a botch for the sake of the rhyme.
Sherwin.--WARTON.
----tantaene animis coelestibus irae?
And dwell such passions in coelestial minds?--WAKEFIELD.
It was in the first editions:
And dwells such rage in softest bosoms then,
And lodge such daring souls in little men?--POPE.
Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul.
 Verse 13, &c., stood thus in the first edition:
Sol through white curtains did his beams display,
And ope'd those eyes which brighter shine than they:
Shock just had giv'n himself the rousing shake,
And nymphs prepared their chocolate to take;
Thrice the wrought slipper knocked against the ground,
And striking watches the tenth hour resound.--POPE.
 Belinda rung a hand-bell, which not being answered, she knocked
 All the verses from hence to the end of this canto were added
afterwards.--POPE.
 The frequenters of the court appeared in clothes of unusual
 "The silver token" alludes to the silver pennies which fairies
 The drive in Hyde Park is still called the ring, though the site
The box at the theatre, and the ring in Hyde Park, are frequently
Wilt thou still sparkle in the box
Or ogle in the ring.
How lately did this celebrated thing
Blaze in the box, and sparkle in the ring.
 Epilogue to Dryden's Tyrannick Love:
For after death we sprites have just such natures
We had, for all the world, when human creatures.--STEEVENS.
Quae gratia currum
Armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentes
Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos.
To Dryden's version of which passage our poet was indebted:
The love of horses which they had alive,
And care of chariots, after death survive.--WAKEFIELD.
The realms of ocean and the fields of air.--WAKEFIELD.
And all those airy shapes you now behold
Were human bodies once, and clothed with earthly mould.
For spirits when they please
Can either sex assume, or both....
... In what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes,
And works of love or enmity fulfill.
 Parody of Homer.--WARBURTON.
Dryden, Hind and Panther, 3rd part:
Immortal pow'rs the term of conscience know,
But int'rest is her name with men below.--HOLT WHITE.
 That is, too sensible of their beauty.--WARBURTON.
 The gnomes who prompt the disdain of the nymphs predestined to
disappointment.--CROKER.
Jam clypeus clypeis, umbone repellitur umbo.
Ense minax ensis, pede pes, et cuspide cuspis, &c.
Statius.--WARBURTON.
 "Claim thy protection" signifies "I claim to be protected by
thee," whereas the sense here is, "I claim to protect thee."
 The language of the Platonists, the writers of the intelligible
world of Spirits, &c.--POPE.
 It cannot be that Belinda then saw for the first time a
 Ancient traditions of the Rabbis relate, that several of the
 A comparison pressed too far loses its beauty in departing from
Up rose the sun, and up rose Emily,
everyone feels the matchless charm of the allusion.
 From hence the poem continues, in the first edition, to ver. 46:
"The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air;"
all after, to the end of this Canto, being additional.--POPE.
 Wakefield remarks, that this line is marred by the abbreviation,
Look on her face and _you_ forget them all.
 Sandys's Paraphrase of the Song of Solomon, 1641:
One hair of thine in fetters ties.
Buchanan, Epigram, lib. i. xiv.:
Et modo membra pilo vinctus miser abstrahoruno.--STEEVENS.
She knows her man, and when you rant and swear,
Can draw you to her with a single hair.
 An imitation, or a translation rather, of AEneid, ii. 390:
----dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's Translation:
Apollo heard, and granting half his pray'r,
Shuffled in winds the rest, and tossed in empty air.
So Dryden's version of Ceyx & Alcyone, Ovid. _Met._ x.:
This last petition heard of all her pray'r
The rest dispersed by winds were lost in air.--WAKEFIELD.
the moon was bright
And the sea trembled with her silver light.--HOLT WHITE.
Pope, says Wakefield, has put "tides" in the plural "merely to
 Dryden's Virgin Martyr:
And music dying in remoter sounds.--STEEVENS.
 A parody on the beginning of the second and tenth books of the
All night the chiefs before their vessels lay,
And lost in sleep the labours of the day:
All but the king; with various thoughts oppressed
His country's cares lay rolling in his breast.
----The fine nets which oft we woven see
Of scorched dew.
 Milton of the wings of Raphael, Par. Lost, v. 283:
And colours dipped in heav'n;
Sky-tinctured grain.--WAKEFIELD.
 The comets.
 "Did you ever," says Dennis, "hear before that the planets were
 In the first edition:
Hover, and catch the shooting stars by night.
Dryden's Flower and Leaf:
At other times we reign by night alone,
And posting through the skies pursue the moon.
 A compliment to Queen Anne, whom he lavishly commends in his
Windsor Forest.--WAKEFIELD.
The angel in Addison's Rosamond, Act 3, says,
In hours of peace, unseen, unknown
I hover o'er the British throne.
 Sir T. Browne, Relig. Med. Part I. 31; "I do think that many
mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous
revelations of spirits; for those noble essences in heaven bear a
 That is, her ear-drops set with brilliants.--WAKEFIELD.
 To crisp in our earlier writers is a common word for curl, from
the Latin _crispo_.--WAKEFIELD.
 "This," says Warburton, in a manuscript note, "was a fine stroke
relation."
 Ovid, Met. xiii, 2: Clypei dominus _septemplicis_
Sandys's Translation:
Uprose the master of the seven-fold Shield.
 The hoop petticoat, in spite of the notion of Addison, that "a
touch of his pen would make it contract itself like the sensitive
Then drooped the fading flow'rs, their beauty fled,
And rivelled up with heat, lay dying in their bed.--WAKEFIELD.
 Chocolate was made in a kind of mill.--CROKER.
 The anonymous translator of Ariadne to Theseus:
And trembling at the waves which roll below.--WAKEFIELD.
 The first edition continues from this line to ver. 24 of this
 The modern portion of Hampton Court, and the East and South
 Originally in the first edition,
In various talk the cheerful hours they passed,
Of who was bit, or who capotted last.--POPE.
While thus in talk the flying hours they pass.
Ne'er chuse a screen, and never touch a fan,
 The snuff-box of the beau, and the fan of the woman of fashion,
 The fifth Pastoral of A. Philips:
The sun now mounted to the noon of day
Began to shoot direct his burning ray.
 From Congreve.--WARTON.
And the long labours of your voyage end.--WAKEFIELD.
 All that follows of the game at ombre, was added since the first
Sudden the board with cups and spoons is crowned.--POPE.
 The game could be played with two, three, or five; but three was
 From the Spanish _matador_, a murderer, because the matadors in
 Knave was the old term for a servant, and Wakefield remarks that
 The ombre had the privilege of deciding which suit should be
trumps.
 The whole idea of this description of a game at ombre is taken
from Vida's description of a game at Chess in his poem intitled
_Scacchia Ludus_.--WARBURTON.
 Spadillio is from _Espadilla_, the Spanish term for the ace of
 Dryden's MacFlecknoe:
The hoary prince in majesty appeared.
 Pam, the highest card in loo, is the knave of clubs.
 These lines are a parody of several passages in
Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell.--WAKEFIELD.
 Unless hearts were trumps the ace of hearts ranked after king,
queen, and knave.
With groans the Latins rend the vaulted sky,
Woods, hills, and valleys to the voice reply.
Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae;
Et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis!
Turno tempus erit magno cum optaverit emptum
Intactum Pallanta; et cum spolia ista diemque
Oderit. Virg.--WARBURTON.
Dryden's Translation, x. 698:
O mortals! blind of fate; who never know
To bear high fortune, or endure the low!
The time shall come, when Turnus, but in vain,
Shall wish untouched the trophies of the slain:
Shall wish the fatal belt were far away;
And curse the dire remembrance of the day.--WAKEFIELD.
 From hence the first edition continues to ver. 134.--POPE.
 Coffee it seems was then not only made but ground by the ladies,
supposed that they roasted it also.--CROKER.
 A sarcastic allusion to the pretentious talk of the would-be
 Vide Ovid's Metamorphoses, viii.--POPE.
And thus the purple hair is dearly paid.
 Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel:
But when to sin our blessed nature leans
The careful devil is still at hand with means.
 In the first edition it was thus,
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.--Ver. 134.
First he expands the glitt'ring forfex wide
T' inclose the lock; then joins it to divide;
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever,
From the fair head, for ever, and for ever.--Ver. 154.
All that is between was added afterwards.--POPE.
 This repetition is formed on similar passages in
As, for instance, Dryden's AEn. vi. 950:
Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw;
And thrice the flitting shadow slipped away.
 See Milton, lib. vi. 330, of Satan cut asunder by the Angel
But th' ethereal substance closed
Not long divisible.
Dum juga montis aper, fluvios dum piscis amabit,
Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt. Virg.--POPE.
 A famous book written about that time by a woman: full of court
 Ladies in those days sometimes received visits in their
So long thy honoured name and praise shall last.
Your honour, name, and praise shall never die!--WAKEFIELD.
 So Juvenal exactly, x. 146:
Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris.--WAKEFIELD.
 Addison of Troy in his poem to the king:
And laid the labour of the gods in dust.--WAKEFIELD.
 Addison's translation of Horace, Ode iii. 3:
Thrice should my favourite Greeks his works confound,
And hew the shining fabric to the ground.--WAKEFIELD.
Ille quoque eversus mons est, &c.
Quid faciant crines, cum ferro talia cedant?
Catull. de Com. Berenices.--POPE.
But anxious cares already seized the queen;
She fed within her veins a flame unseen.
Dryden's Transl.--WAKEFIELD.
 The thought and turn of these lines is imitated from the
Dispensary, Canto iii.:
Not beauties fret so much if freckles come,
Or nose should redden in the drawing-room.
 All the lines from hence to the 94th verse, that describe the
While her racked soul repose and peace requires,
The fierce Thalestris fans the rising fires.
And continued at the 94th verse of this Canto.--POPE.
 Garth in the Dispensary, canto iv.:
The bat with sooty wings flits through the grove.
 Spleen was thought to be engendered by the east wind. Cowper, in
the unhealthful east
That breathes the spleen.
Protinus Invidiae nigro squallentia tabo
Tecta petit. Domus est imis in vallibus antri
Abdita, sole carens, non ulli pervia vento.
Shut from the winds and from the wholesome skies,
In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies;
Dismal and cold, where not a beam of light
Invades the winter, or disturbs the night.
Addison's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.
 For "Megrim," the first edition has "Languor."
 "Wait" for "wait on" or "by" is a very harsh ellipse, though it
has the sanction of Dryden.
 Hypochondriacal disorders, under the name of vapours or spleen,
 Oldham had expressed the same idea in The Dream:
Not dying saints enjoy such ecstacies
When they in visions antedate their bliss.
creations of the imagination which are mistaken for realities.
 In the last century the word "machine" was currently employed to
machines" is meant angels interposing on behalf of mankind.
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
Of bodies changed to various forms I sing.
--Dryden's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.
 See Hom. Iliad, xviii., of Vulcan's walking tripods.--POPE.
 The fanciful person, here alluded to, was Dr. Edward Pelling,
 This is adopted from the Loyal Subject of Beaumont and
Fletcher.--STEEVENS.
 In imitation of the golden branch which AEneas carried as a
They're fair, 'tis true, they're cheerful, and they're green,
But I, though sad, procure a gladsome mien.
 Bishop Lowth notices Pope's frequent violation of grammar in
O thou my voice inspire
Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with fire,
Thy clime is rude,
Replete with vapours, and disposes much
All hearts to sadness, and none more than mine.
 Citron-water was a cordial distilled from a mixture of spirit of
Takes a large dram of citron-water.
 That is, at whose shrine all our sex resign ease, pleasure, and
virtue. "Honour" means female reputation.
 A parody of Virgil, Ecl. i. 60.--WAKEFIELD.
Garth, Dispensary, Canto iii.:
The tow'ring Alps shall sooner sink to vales,
And leeches in our glasses swell to whales;
Or Norwich trade in instruments of steel,
And Bromingham in stuffs and druggets deal.
This is one instance out of many in which Pope took unwarrantable
description "was the very picture of the man."
 A cane diversified with darker spots.--WAKEFIELD.
brandishes it in the air, or hangs it on a button."
 In allusion to Achilles's oath in Homer, Il. i.--POPE.
But by this scepter solemnly I swear
Which never more green leaf or growing branch shall bear.
Dryden's Trans.--WAKEFIELD.
If yet he lives and draws this vital air.
 Borrowed from Dryden's Epistle to Mr. Granville:
The long contended honours of the field.--HOLT WHITE.
 These two lines are additional; and assign the cause of the
 A parody of Virg. AEn. iv. 657:
Felix heu nimium felix! si litora tantum
Nunquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.--WAKEFIELD.
 Pope originally wrote:
'Twas this the morning omens did foretell.
 Butler, the poet, says that the object of black patches was to
Some sprinkled freckles on his face were seen
Whose dusk set off the whiteness of his skin.
 Prior's Henry and Emma:
No longer shall thy comely tresses break
In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck.--WAKEFIELD.
 Sir William Bowles on the Death of Charles II.:
And in their rulers fate bewail their own.
 Translated from Virgil, AEn. iv. 440:
Fata obstant, placidasque viri deus obstruit aures.
 The entreaties to stay which Dido's sister, Anna, addressed to
unshaken. Pope's couplet supposes that he inwardly wavered.
 A new character introduced in the subsequent editions, to open
more clearly the moral of the poem, in a parody of the speech of
Sarpedon to Glaucus in Homer.--POPE.
thirty-seven:
To arms, to arms! the bold Thalestris cries.
Why boast we, Glaucus! our extended reign,
Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain;
Our num'rous herds that range each fruitful field,
And hills where vines their purple harvest yield;
Our foaming bowls with gen'rous nectar crowned,
Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly sound;
Why on those shores are we with joy surveyed,
Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed;
Unless great acts superior merit prove,
And vindicate the bounteous pow'rs above?
'Tis ours, the dignity they give, to grace;
The first in valour, as the first in place:
That while with wond'ring eyes our martial bands
Behold our deeds transcending our commands,
Such, they may cry, deserve the sov'reign state,
Whom those that envy, dare not imitate.
Could all our care elude the greedy grave,
Which claims no less the fearful than the brave,
For lust of fame I should not vainly dare
In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war.
But since, alas! ignoble age must come,
Disease, and death's inexorable doom;
The life which others pay, let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe;
Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live,
Or let us glory gain, or glory give.--WARBURTON.
 Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel:
The young men's vision, and the old men's dream.--WAKEFIELD.
 Denham, in his version of the speech of Homer parodied by our
poet:
Why all the tributes land and sea affords?--
As gods behold us, and as gods adore.--WAKEFIELD.
Nor shall side-boxes watch my restless eyes,
And, as they catch the glance in rows arise
With humble bows; nor white-gloved beaux approach
In crowds behind to guard me to my coach.--WAKEFIELD.
 It is a verse frequently repeated in Homer after any speech,
----So spoke--and all the heroes applauded.--POPE.
 From hence the first edition goes on to the conclusion, except a
----ferit aethera clamor.
Their shouting strikes the skies.--WAKEFIELD.
 This verse is an improvement on the original, AEneid. viii. 246:
----trebidentque immisse lumine manes.
And the ghosts tremble at intruding light.--WAKEFIELD.
Who pale with fear the rending earth survey
And startle at the sudden flash of day.
 These four lines added, for the reason before mentioned.--POPE.
 Minerva in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with the
suitors in the Odyssey, perches on a beam of the roof to behold
 Like the heroes in Homer when they are spectators of a
 This idea is borrowed from a couplet in the Duke of Buckingham's
_dramatis personae_ in the reign of Charles II.
Or else like bells, eternally they chime
They sigh in simile, and die in rhyme.
 Wakefield quotes passages from Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond, and
Milton, in which the phrase "living death" occurs.
 The words of a song in the Opera of Camilla.--POPE.
Sic ubi fata vocant, udis abjectus in herbis,
Ad vada Maeandri concinit albus olor.
 Vid. Homer, Il. viii. and Virg. AEn. xii.--POPE.
 These two lines added for the above reason.--POPE.
 Pins to adorn the hair were then called bodkins, and Sir George
A diamond bodkin in each tress,
The badges of her nobleness,
For every stone, as well as she,
Can boast an ancient pedigree.
 "Who," asked Dennis, "ever heard of a dead man that burnt in
Cupid's flames?" Pope had originally written,
And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive.
 Dryden's Alexander's Feast:
A present deity! they shout around:
A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.--STEEVENS.
 Vide Ariosto, Canto xxxiv.--POPE.
 The alms would not be "lost on earth," however unprofitable they
 Dryden's Oedipus, act 2:
The smiles of courtiers, and the harlot's tears,
The tradesman's oaths, and mourning of an heir,
Are truths, to what priests tell.--HOLT WHITE.
 Denham, in Cooper's Hill, gave him a hint:
their airy shape
All but a quick poetic sight escape.--WAKEFIELD.
Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite crinem
Stella micat. Ovid.--POPE.
Descends, and draws behind a trail of light.--WAKEFIELD.
 These two lines added, for the same reason, to keep in view the
machinery of the poem.--POPE.
And as it flew
A train of following flames ascending drew;
Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way
Across the skies, as falling meteors play.
 John Partridge was a ridiculous stargazer, who in his almanacks
Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye.
 The compliment was meant to be serious, but is marred by its
extravagance. "Millions" is too hyperbolical.
 Spenser in his 75th Sonnet:
Not so, quoth I: let baser things devise
To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,
And in the heavens write your glorious name.
And Cowley, in his imitation of Horace, Ode iv. 2:
He bids him live and grow in fame
Among the stars he sticks his name.--WAKEFIELD.
 Wakefield says "there is an affectation and ambiguity in this
 The Memoirs by Ayre appeared in 1745, without the name of the
 "Pray in your next," writes Caryll to Pope, July 16, 1717, "tell
 Dr. Morell, in his notes to Seneca's Epistles, says, "I remember
 A belief akin to that which grew up in deserts prevailed in
And beck'ning woos me, from the fatal tree
To pluck a garland for herself or me.
 Elements of Criticism, 6th ed., vol. i. p. 477.
 Ben Jonson's Elegy on the Marchioness of Winchester:
What gentle ghost besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?
And beck'ning woos me?--WARTON.
the battle swerved
With many an inroad gored.
 The third Elegy of Crashaw:
And I, what is my crime, I cannot tell,
Unless it be a crime t' have loved too well.--STEEVENS.
 Shakespeare, Henry VIII. Act iii. Sc. 2:
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels.
And where imprisoned in so sweet a cage
A soul might well be pleased to pass an age.
 Cowley has a couplet not unlike his, Davideis, i. 80:
Where their vast court the mother-waters keep,
And undisturbed by moons in silence sleep.--WAKEFIELD.
 Duke's translation of Juvenal, Sat. iv.:
Without one virtue to redeem his fame.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden, Ovid's Amor. ii. 19:
But thou dull husband of a wife too fair.--WAKEFIELD.
Love-darting eyes or tresses like the morn.--WAKEFIELD.
 Rolling eyes are contrary to the English idea of feminine
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll.
 Wakefield mentions that the phrase "unknowing how to yield" is
The furies that relentless breast have steeled
And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.
The soul by pure religion taught to glow
At others' good, or melt at others' woe.--WAKEFIELD.
Nor was I near to close his dying eyes,
To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies.--WAKEFIELD.
 The anonymous translator of Ariadne to Theseus:
Poor Ariadne! thou must perish here,
Breathe out thy soul in strange and hated air,
Nor see thy pitying mother shed one tear;
Want a kind hand, which thy fixed eyes may close,
And thy stiff limbs may decently compose.
What pious care my ghastful lid shall close?
What decent hand my frozen limbs compose.--WAKEFIELD.
inaccurately for "thy limbs were composed decently."
How light would lie the turf upon my breast.
A. Philips in his third Pastoral:
The flow'ry turf lie light upon thy breast.
This thought was common with the ancients.--WAKEFIELD.
Of silver wings he took a shining pair
Fringed with gold.--WAKEFIELD.
indiscreetly what has been said by others.--LORD KAMES.
 When Pope describes the retribution which is to fall upon the
imperious relatives of the unfortunate lady, he says,
Thus unlamented pass the proud away;
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
You are the queen all flow'rs among,
But die you must, fair maid, ere long,
As he, the maker of this song.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dean Milman, in his History of Latin Christianity, says that
 The sentiments which Warton imagined to be borrowed from Madame
 M. Remusat, who accepts the letters without misgiving,
 Essai Historique sur Abailard et Heloise, ed. 1861, p. xxvi.
 Essai Historique, p. lxiii.
 History of Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 363.
 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 33.
 Mason's Life of Whitehead, p. 35.
 The letter which Abelard addressed to his friend, and which had
fallen into the hands of Eloisa.
 Dryden's Don Sebastian:
And when I say Sebastian, dear Sebastian!
I kiss the name I speak.--STEEVENS.
Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore
My soul-shrined saint, my fair idea lies.--WAKEFIELD.
 Claudian, De Nupt. Honor. et Mar. ver. 9:
Nomenque beatum
Injussae scripsere manus.--WAKEFIELD.
 Drayton's Heroical Epistle of Rosamond to Henry:
My hapless name with Henry's name I found--
Then do I strive to wash it out with tears,
But then the same more evident appears.--HOLT WHITE.
 This is borrowed from Milton's Comus, ver. 428:
By grots and caverns shagged with horrid shades.--WAKEFIELD.
 A suspected poem of the Duke of Wharton on the Fear of Death:
Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray
And statues pity feign;
Where pale-eyed griefs their wasting vigils keep.--WAKEFIELD.
A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1836, quotes a
parallel couplet from a poem by the Duke of Wharton:
Where kneeling statues constant vigils keep,
And round the tombs the marble cherubs weep.
 He followed Milton in the Penseroso:
Forget thyself to marble.--WAKEFIELD.
 In every edition till that of Warburton the reading was,
Heav'n claims me all in vain while he has part.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "By that melancholy relation to your friend
you have awakened all my sorrows."
A day for ever sad, for ever dear.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Shall my Abelard be never mentioned without
 Heloisa to Abelard: "I met with my name a hundred times. I never
For sure that flame is kindled from below
Which breeds such sad variety of woe.--WAKEFIELD.
Now warm in love, now with'ring in the grave.--WAKEFIELD.
 Fame is not a passion.--WARTON.
Ambition is the passion, and fame is the object of the passion.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Let me have a faithful account of all that
concerns you. I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "We may write to each other. Let us not lose
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Tell me not by way of excuse you will spare
To live and die is all we have to do.--WAKEFIELD.
Prior's Celia to Damon:
And these poor eyes
No longer shall their little lustre keep,
And only be of use to read and weep.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Be not then unkind, nor deny me that little
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Letters were first invented for comforting
such solitary wretches as myself."
 Otway's translation of Phaedra to Hippolytus:
Thus secrets safe to farthest shores may move:
By letters foes converse, and learn to love.--WAKEFIELD.
 This is the most exquisite description of the first commencement
 Prior's Celia to Damon:
In vain I strove to check my growing flame,
Or shelter passion under friendship's name.
 The Divinity himself. Dryden, in his 12th Elegy:
So faultless was the frame, as if the whole
Had been an emanation of the soul.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "That life in your eyes which so admirably
 She says herself, "You had, I confess, two qualities in great
 He was her preceptor in philosophy and divinity.--POPE.
The fair themselves go mended from thy hand.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's Oedipus, end of Act iii.:
And backward trod the paths I sought to shun.
 Thy holy precepts and the sanctity of thy character had made me
 Dryden, Ovid's Met. x.:
And own no laws but those which love ordains.--WAKEFIELD.
Love will not be confined by maisterie:
When maisterie comes, the lord of Love anon
Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he gone.
Hudibras, Part iii. Cant. i. 553:
Love that's too generous to abide
To be against its nature tied,
Disdains against its will to stay,
But struggles out and flies away.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden's Aurengezebe:
'Tis true of marriage bands I'm weary grown,
Love scorns all ties but those that are his own.--STEEVENS.
The passage cited by Pope from Chaucer is in the Franklin's Tale.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "It is not love but the desire of riches and
 Heloisa to Abelard: "This restless tormenting
 Heloisa to Abelard: "How often I have made protestations that it
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Though I knew that the name of wife was
 Heloisa to Abelard: "We are called your sisters, and if it were
possible to think of any expressions which would signify a dearer
 Denham, Cooper's Hill:
Happy when both to the same centre move,
When kings give liberty, and subjects love.--CUNNINGHAM.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "If there is anything which may properly be
A dying lover pale and gasping lies.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Where was I? where was your Heloise then?
 Careless readers may misapprehend the sense. "Pain" here means
punishment, _poena_.--HOLT WHITE.
Like a verse of Drummond's:
The grief was common, common were the cries.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Oh whither does the excess of passion hurry
 A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Settle's Empress of
_Empress._--Let my tears and blushes speak the rest.
 The altar of Paraclete, says Mr. Berrington, did not then exist.
Argenteuil, the other at St. Denys.---WARTON.
 Her kissing the veil with "cold lips" strongly marks her want of
 Prior, in Henry and Emma, has a verse of similar pauses, and
similar phraseology:
Thy lips all trembling, and thy cheeks all pale.--WAKEFIELD.
 Abelard to Heloisa: "I saw your eyes when you spoke your last
 Heloisa to Abelard: "You may see me, hear my sighs, and be a
 Concannen's Match at Football, Canto iii.:
And drank in poison from her lovely eye.
Creech, at the beginning of his Lucretius:
Where on thy bosom he supinely lies,
And greedily drinks love at both his eyes.--WAKEFIELD.
Smith's Phaedra and Hippolytus, Act i.:
Drank gorging in the dear delicious poison.--STEEVENS.
 "If thou canst forget me, think at least upon thy flock," says
 He founded the monastery.--POPE.
 So Dryden says of Absalom,
And Paradise was opened in his face.
The original of the image in the text is in Isaiah li. 3:
He will make her wilderness like Eden,
And her desert like the garden of Jehovah.
Whence Milton derived it, Par. Reg. i. 7:
And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.--WAKEFIELD.
 The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes Boileau, Le Moine:
La les salons sont peints, les meubles sont dores
Des larmes et du sang des pauvres devores.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "These cloisters owe nothing to public
 There were no benefactors whose praises were celebrated in the
 Our author imitates Milton:
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden had said of his Good Parson:
His eyes diffused a venerable grace.--WAKEFIELD.
And kindling glories brighten all the skies.--WAKEFIELD.
 By pretending that she desires Abelard to visit the Paraclete in
 Heloisa to Abelard: "But why should I entreat you in the name of
 From the superscription of Heloisa's letter to Abelard: "To her
 Our poet is indebted to a translation of the Virgilian cento of
Ausonius in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 143:
My love, my life,
And every tender name in one, my wife.--WAKEFIELD.
 Mr. Mills, a clergyman, who visited the Paraclete about the year
 Addison's translation of book iii, of the AEneis:
The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow.
 The little river Ardusson glittered along the valley of the
Paraclete.--MILLS.
 Philips, in his fourth Pastoral:
Nor dropping waters which from rocks distil,
And welly grots with tinkling echoes fill.--WAKEFIELD.
 Milton's Penseroso:
When the gust hath blown his fill
Ending on the rustling leaves.--WAKEFIELD.
When western winds on curling waters play.
Most upbraid
The madness of the visionary maid.--WAKEFIELD.
 Milton's Penseroso:
To arched walks of twilight groves.--WAKEFIELD.
 Waller's version of AEneid iv.:
A death-like quiet, and deep silence fell.
Dryden's Astraea Redux:
A dreadful quiet felt.--WAKEFIELD.
Charles Bainbrigg on the death of Edward King:
Terribilis requies et vasta silentia cingant.--STEEVENS.
 Fenton in his version of Sappho to Phaon:
With him the caves were cool, the grove was green,
But now his absence withers all the scene.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's Theodore and Honoria:
With deeper brown the grove was overspread.--STEEVENS.
assistant
Sure, a continuation for this poem could be:
  The Trojan from the main beheld a wood,
Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood.--WAKEFIELD.
 In allusion to this sacrifice of herself at his will she says in
 Abelard to Heloisa: "I hope you will be contented when you have
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Among those who are wedded to God I serve a
I know I ought to hate you for the fault;
But oh! I cannot do the thing I ought.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "I am here a sinner, but one, who far from
 Abelard to Heloisa: "To forget in the case of love is the most
necessary penitence, and the most difficult."
 Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia:
Then impotent of mind, with altered sense
She hugged th' offender, and forgave th' offence.--WAKEFIELD.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "A heart which has been so sensibly affected
 Heloisa to Abelard: "God has a peculiar right over the hearts of
 Heloisa to Abelard: "Yes, Abelard, I conjure you teach me the
 Heloisa to Abelard: "When I shall have told you what rival hath
Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.
My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot.--WAKEFIELD.
 Taken from Crashaw.--POPE.
A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.
 The idea of the "wings of seraphs shedding perfumes" is from
AEthereal music did her death prepare,
Like joyful sounds of spousals in the air;
A radiant light did her crowned temple gild,
And all the place with fragrant scents was filled;
Of charming notes we heard the last rebounds,
And music dying in remoter sounds.
 Adapted from Dryden's Britannia Redivivus:
As star-light is dissolved away
And melts into the brightness of the day.
 Dryden's Cinyras and Myrrha, translated from Ovid:
For guilty pleasure gives a double gust.
 Heloisa to Abelard: "I will own to you what makes the greatest
pleasure I have in my retirement. After having passed the day in
 Dryden, AEneis, iv. 677, supplied the idea:
She seems, alone,
To wander in her sleep through ways unknown,
Guideless and dark; or in a desert plain
To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain.
No more severely kind affect to put
That lovely anger on.
 Dryden's Ovid, Met. i.:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.--WAKEFIELD.
 Sir William Davenant's Address to the Queen:
Smooth as the face of waters first appeared,
Ere tides began to strive, or winds were heard;
Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far
Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are.--WAKEFIELD.
Cut from the root my perished joys I see,
And love's warm tide for ever stopped in thee.
Love in your heart as idly burns
As fire in antique Roman urns
To warm the dead, and vainly light
Those only that see nothing by 't.--WAKEFIELD.
business."
 Abelard to Heloisa: "In spite of severe fasts your image appears
 Sedley's verses on Don Alonzo:
The gentle nymph,
Drops tears with every bead.--WAKEFIELD.
 Smith's Phaedra and Hippolytus, Act i.:
All the idle pomp,
Priests, altars, victims swam before my sight.--STEEVENS.
 How finely does this glowing imagery introduce the transition,
While prostrate here, &c.--BOWLES.
 The whole of this paragraph is from Abelard's letter to Heloisa:
 Abelard to Heloisa: "Let me remove far from you, and obey the
apostle who hath said, fly."
 Wakefield quotes the lines of Hopkins to a lady, where, speaking
Drive 'em somewhere, as far as pole from pole;
Let winds between us rage, and waters roll.
 Abelard to Heloisa: "It will always be the highest love to show
 "Low-thoughted care" is from Milton's Comus.--WARTON.
 This resembles a passage in Crashaw:
Fair hope! our earlier heaven.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's Palamon and Arcite:
And issuing sighs that smoked along the wall.--WAKEFIELD.
Addison's translation of a passage from Claudian:
Oft in the winds is heard a plaintive sound
Of melancholy ghosts that hover round.
 Fenton's translation of Sappho to Phaon:
Here, while by sorrow lulled to sleep I lay,
Thus said the guardian nymph, or seemed to say.--WAKEFIELD.
Hark! you are called: some say, the Genius so
Cries, "Come!" to him that instantly must die.
 Pope owes much throughout this poem to the character of Dido as
Oft when she visited this lonely dome
Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb:
She thought she heard him summon her away,
Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay.
Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari:
Ipse sono tenui dixit, "Elissa, veni!"
Nulla mora est; venio; venio, tibi debita conjux.--WAKEFIELD.
 It is well contrived that this invisible speaker should be a
person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with
 Dryden's version of the latter part of the third book of
But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.--WAKEFIELD.
 In the first edition:
I come ye ghosts.--WAKEFIELD.
 Ogilby, Virg. AEn. xi.:
And to the dead our last sad duties pay.
Perform the last sad office to the slain.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden's Aurengezebe at the commencement of Act iv.:
I thought before you drew your latest breath,
To sooth your passage, and to soften death.
 Oldham's translation of Bion on the death of Adonis:
Kiss, while I watch thy swimming eye-balls roll,
Watch thy last gasp, and catch thy springing soul.
While I in death
Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the flying breath.
And in his Cleomenes, the end of Act iv.:
----sucking in each other's latest breath.--WAKEFIELD.
 Rowe's ode to Delia:
When e'er it comes, may'st thou be by,
Support my sinking frame, and teach me how to die.--WAKEFIELD.
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies.
Cause of my new grief, cause of new joy.--WAKEFIELD.
 Abelard and Eloisa were interred in the same grave, or in
 Dryden, in his translation of Canace to Macareus:
I restrained my cries
And drunk the tears that trickled from my eyes.--WAKEFIELD.
There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below.
 "Dreadful sacrifice" is the ritual term. So in the History of
 Warton says that the eight concluding lines of the Epistle "are
 The last line is imitated from Addison's Campaign.
Marlb'rough's exploits appear divinely bright--
Raised of themselves their genuine charms they boast,
And those who paint them truest, praise them most.
 Roscoe supposes Richardson to have asserted that there was an
 Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, died
Anti-heroics. "The former," says Horace Walpole, "is written in
 The first treatise of Crousaz was translated by Miss Carter, and
 Theobald's Shakespeare was published in 1733, the same year with
 Warburton's first letter in vindication of Pope appeared in The
 This was done in 1740, when the five letters were expanded into
 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 219.
 Warton states that Dobson relinquished the undertaking from the
impossibility of preserving in Latin verse the conciseness of the
 By "his friend," Johnson means Warburton, not Dobson.
 This sort of burlesque abstract, which may be so easily but so
declamation.--BOWLES.
 Bowles himself had a low opinion of the "system of philosophy"
 Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. ii. p. 149.
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, &c.
What appeared a defect to Lord Kames will seem to many persons an
 Letters by Eminent Persons, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 48.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.
 Grimouard, Essai sur Bolingbroke, quoted by Cooke, Memoirs of
 Chesterfield's Works, ed. Mahon, vol. ii. p. 445.
 Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 219. The manuscript of this passage
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 91.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 320.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 111.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 88.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.
 Warburton, Note on Epist. ii. ver. 149.
 Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.
 Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.
 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 436.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 333, 366. "The imperfection of
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 41.
 Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 339.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 262.
 Watson's Life of Warburton, p. 15.
 Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.
 Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430. Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xlv.
 Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, ed. 1742, p.
 Warburton's Pope, Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 31.
 Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, p. 121.
 Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.
Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 816.
 Warburton's Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, 1740, p. 83.
 Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 113.
 Warburton's Pope, Epist. iv. ver. 394.
 Nichols, Illustrations of Lit. Hist., vol. ii. p. 53.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 53.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 457.
 Oeuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 451.
 Oeuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 442.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 62.
 Epist. ii. ver. i.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 52.
 Phillimore's Life of Lord Lyttelton, vol. i. p. 304.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 366.
 Voltaire, Oeuvres, tom. xlvii. p. 98.
 Warburton's Commentary, Epist. ii. ver. 53.
 Madame de Stael, De l'Allemagne, Part iii., Chap. 16.
 A man may eat from principle, which often happens with the sick
 Crousaz's Commentary on Pope's Essay, translated by Johnson, p.
 Fable of the Bees, ninth edition, vol. i. p. 137.
 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 154.
 Epist. iv. ver. 310. Argument to Epist. iv.
 Wollaston, Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed., p. 192.
 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 286.
 Rasselas, chap. xxii.
 Butler, Sermons, Preface, pp. vii., xi.
 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 430.
 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 44.
 Johnson, Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 105.
 De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. p. 32.
 Dugald Stewart, Works, ed. Hamilton, vol. vii. p. 133.
 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 42.
 Life of Byron by Moore, 1 vol. ed. p. 696.
 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iii. p. 44.
 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 50.
 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 51.
 Taine, Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise, 2nd ed. tom. iii. p.
 This prefatory notice only appeared in the first edition of the
first epistle.
 "Whose" is by some authors made the possessive case of "which,"
and applied to things as well as persons.--LOWTH.
 Two "Epistles to Mr. Pope concerning the Authors of the Age," by
 "The Design" was prefixed in 1735, when Pope inserted the four
Epistles of the Essay on Man in his works.
 The early editions have "forming out of all."
 Pope's manuscript supplies various readings of this line:
puzzled            to flattered
puzzling           to blustering
grovelling         low-thoughted
To working statesmen and ambitious kings.
Since life, my friend, can, etc.
Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too:
To live and die is all we have to do:
 In the first edition,
A mighty maze of walks without a plan.
 The 6th verse alludes to the subject of this first Epistle--the
 Alludes to the subject of the fourth Epistle,--of man's various
pursuits of happiness or pleasure.--POPE.
 The 10th, 13th, and 14th verses allude to the subject of the
second Epistle of the second book,--the characters of men and
 The 11th and 12th verses allude to the subject of the first
Epistle of the second book,--the limits of reason, learning, and
ignorance.--POPE.
This Epistle was never written, but some part of the matter was
incorporated into the fourth Book of the Dunciad.
Of all that blindly creep the tracts explore,
And all the dazzled race that blindly soar.
 Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part ii.:
while he with watchful eye
Observes, and shoots their treasons as they fly.--WAKEFIELD.
Dryden, Aurengzebe, Act iii.:
Youth should watch joys and shoot 'em as they fly.
 These metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and
meanness.--BOWLES.
 "Candid" here bears the unusual sense of "lenient and favourable
 Alludes to the subject which runs through the whole design,--the
And justify the ways of God to men.--WARTON.
Through endless worlds His endless works are known,
But ours, etc.
He who can all the flaming limits pierce,
Of worlds on worlds that form one universe.
 "And what" was the reading of all editions till that of 1743.
What other habitants in ev'ry star.
 This was the reading of the first edition which Pope ultimately
restored, but in the edition of 1735 the line stands thus:
May tell why heav'n made all things as they are.
 First edition: "And centres."
 Pascal's Thoughts, translated by Dr. Kennet, 2nd ed., 1727, p.
 An allusion to the golden chain of Homer, which the poet
 Wakefield quotes Milton, Par. Lost, iii. 460, where the phrase
"those argent fields" is applied to the heavens.
 This word is commonly pronounced in prose with the e mute in the
 Pope says that we cannot tell why Jupiter's satellites are less
Warburton, to evade Voltaire's criticism, put a strained and
 Pope did not generally condescend to the artificial inversion
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "Since infinite wisdom not only
 There must be no interval, that is, between the parts, or they
will not cohere.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "It might be determined in the divine
Is but if God has placed his creature wrong.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 50: "The seeming imperfection of the parts
The sentence quoted by Wakefield was copied by Bolingbroke from
 Bolingbroke, Fragments 43 and 63: "We labour hard, we complicate
 Bolingbroke, Fragments 43: "We ought to consider the world no
We see but here a part, etc.
 Since the monarchy of the universe is a dominion unlimited in
When the proud steed shall know why man now reins
His stubborn neck, now drives, etc.
 In the former editions,
 Pope may mean that we cannot tell with respect to the general
 The expression, "as he ought," is imperfect for "ought to
 Bolingbroke, Frag. 50: "The nature of every creature is adapted
to his state here, to the place he is to inhabit."
 This line is the application to man of the language which the
Lord of a span, and hero of a day,
In one short scene to strut and pass away,
What then, imports it whether here or there?
If to be perfect in a certain state,
What matter here or there, or soon or late?
And he that's bless'd to-day as fully so,
As who began ten thousand years ago.
Omitted in the subsequent editions.--POPE.
The man as much to all intents is dead
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.
 See this pursued in Epist. iii. ver. 66, etc., ver. 79,
 This resembles Phaedrus, Fab. v. 15:
Ipsi principes
Illam osculantur, qua sunt oppressi, manum.--WAKEFIELD.
Pope, in the MS., had expanded the idea, and added this couplet:
No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed
That Virgil's Gnat should die as Caesar bleed.
Systems like atoms into ruin hurled.
What bliss above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy bliss below.
 Pope has frequently contradicted this line, and allowed that men
 All editions till that of 1743 had "at" for "from." The home of
Seeks God in clouds or on the wings of wind.
Out of the solar walk and heaven's highway.--HURD.
 The ancient opinion that the souls of the just went thither. See
 Shakespeare, Tempest, Act iv. Sc. 1. "The cloud-capped towers."
From that dire deluge through the wat'ry waste.--WAKEFIELD.
This hope kind nature's flattery has giv'n,
Behind his cloud-topp'd hills he builds a heav'n;
Some happier world which woods on woods infold,
Where never christian pierced for thirst of gold.
Where gold ne'er grows, and never Spaniards come,
Where trees bear maize, and rivers flow with rum.
Exiled or chained he lets you understand
Death but returns him to his native land;
Or firm as martyrs, smiling yields the ghost,
Rich of a life that is not to be lost.
But does he say the Maker is not good,
Till he's exalted to what state he would:
Himself alone high heav'n's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will and where?
There is an earlier form of the last couplet:
He waits for bliss in a remoter sphere
Nor proudly claims it when he will and where.
 So in Homer, at the funeral of Patroclus, xxiii. 212, of our
poet's translation:
Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board,
Fall two, selected to attend their lord.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Sense" is put for "the senses," and Pope exclaims against the
folly of censuring the government of God on the strength of the
imperfect information which the senses supply.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 25: "This is to weigh his own opinion
conceptions of the savage, which Pope supposed to be false. "Our
 First edition:
Pronounce He acts too little or too much.
Yet if unhappy think tis He's unjust,
which is the reading of the first edition, except that "thou" is
substituted for "if."
 The meaning cannot be that the caviller complained that other
 The "balance" in which qualities are weighed; the "rod" with
which offences are chastised.
 Divines maintained that there must be a future state, or that
 The first edition reads "In pride, my friend, in pride," and the
 Verbatim from Bolingbroke: "Men would be angels, and we see in
Milton that angels would be gods."--WARTON.
Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be gods."--HURD.
 Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning, ed. Montagu, p. 267:
 Piety must equally answer with grateful adoration that all these
For me young nature decks her vernal bow'r,
Suckles each bud, and pencils ev'ry flow'r.
His couch a trench, his canopy the skies.--WAKEFIELD.
or when oceans
When earth quick swallows, inundations sweep.
 "A nation" in the first edition. The expression is hyperbolical.
Where now the throng
That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart,
Looked to the sea for safety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep,
A prince with half his people.
 Pope says, that "earthquakes swallow towns _to_ one grave, whole
 First edition:
Blame we for this the wise Almighty Cause;
No, 'tis replied, he acts by gen'ral laws.
 "Some change" for "there has been some change," is bad English.
 The assertion is monstrous that we cannot be expected to control
 To draw a parallel between things of a nature entirely different
 Shortly after his father, Alexander VI., ascended the papal
 God does not "pour ambition into Caesar's mind," or the
all-perfect being would be the author of sin. The aberrations of
ambition are the acts of the ambitious man.
 Alexander the Great. He made a pilgrimage to the temple of
 The four lines, ver. 157-160, first appeared in the edition of
From whence all physical or moral ill?
'Tis nature wand'ring from the eternal will.
 See this subject extended in Epist. ii. from ver. 100 to ver.
 Pope uses almost the very words of Bolingbroke: "To think
 This is Pope's summary of his weak defence of moral evil. Moral
 Psalm viii. 5: "Thou hast made him a little lower than the
angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."--WARBURTON.
 The inversion is harsh; and when the words are ranged in their
proper order, "If he call all creatures made for his use," is but
 Shaftesbury's Moralists, Part ii. Sect. 4: "Nature has managed
 It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that in
 First edition:
So justly all proportioned to each state.
 That is, in its own state or condition.
 First edition:
Each beast, each insect, happy as it can,
Is heav'n unkind to nothing but to man?
Shall man, shall reasonable man alone
Be or endowed with all, or pleased with none?
 First edition:
No self-confounding faculties to share,
No senses stronger than his brain can bear.
 First edition:
What the advantage if his finer eyes
Study a mite, not comprehend the skies.
The second edition has some further variations:
Why has not man a microscopic sight?
For this plain reason, man is not a mite:
Say what th' advantage of so fine an eye?
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the sky.
 The abbreviated language of the last four lines, which are not
 Locke, Essay on the Human Understanding, bk. ii. chap. 23, sect.
Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortal ears.--WAKEFIELD.
 First edition:
Through gen'ral life, behold the scale arise
Of sensual and of mental faculties!
Vast range of sense from man's imperial race
To the green myriads, etc.
 The manner of the lions hunting their prey in the deserts of
smell the stupid ass
Degrees of scent the vulgar brute between.
 It was formerly a common belief that fish were deaf; but Pope
 Dryden, Marriage-a-la-mode, Act ii.:
And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such,
That, spider-like, we feel the tender'st touch.--WAKEFIELD.
 The house-spider conceals itself in a cell, which is constructed
 When the nectar of flowers is poisonous, the bee has not the
 At first it ran,
How instinct varies! What a hog may want
Compared with thine, half-reasoning elephant.--WARTON.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
Pope is illustrating his proposition that there must be grades of
 The idea is in Locke's Essay, bk. iii. chap. 6, sect. 12, which
Ethereal essence, spirit, substance, man.--POPE.
Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From infinite perfection, to the brink
Of dreary nothing.--WARTON.
 All that can be said of a scale of beings is to be found in the
 Suffer men, says Pope, to encroach upon superior powers, and
in nature what it hates, a void;
Or leave a gap in the creation void;
The scale is broken if a step destroyed.
Great nature, break thy chain, that links together
The fabric of this globe, and make a chaos.
Yet more ev'n systems in gradation roll.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 42: "We cannot doubt that numberless
worlds, and systems of worlds, compose this amazing whole, the
universe."
And earth self-balanced on her centre hung.
 I like the reading of earlier editions better;
Planets and suns _rush_ lawless through the sky.--WAKEFIELD.
 After Pope's death "tremble" was misprinted "trembles," and the
 These six lines, ver. 251-256, are added since the first
 Plotinus, translated by Cudworth, Intellectual System, ed.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 66: "Nothing can be more absurd than the
 Vid. the prosecution and application of this in Epist. iv. ver.
The worker from the work distinct was known.
 Every ear must feel the ill effect of the monotony in these
lines. The cause is obvious. When the pause falls on the fourth
 Our poet is certainly indebted to the following verses of Mrs.
He's all in all: his wisdom, goodness, pow'r,
Spring in each blade, and bloom in ev'ry flow'r;
Smile o'er the meads, and bend in ev'ry hill, }
Glide in the stream, and murmur in the rill:  }
All nature moves obedient to his will.        }
Where'er thou art, he is: th' eternal mind
Acts through all places, is to none confined;
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above,
And through the universal mass does move.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Our mortal part," is put in opposition to "soul," and the
 Dugald Stewart observes that everyone must be displeased with
 First edition:
As the rapt Seraphim that sings and burns.
And those eternal burning Seraphims
Which from their faces dart out fiery light.
 These are lines of a marvellous energy and closeness of
expression.--WARTON.
The concluding lines appear to be a false jingle of words which
 The "order" is the gradation of beings, and "what we blame" is
Cease then, nor order imperfection call
On which depends the happiness of all.
Reason, to think of God when she pretends,
Begins a censor, an adorer ends.
See and confess, this just, this kind degree
Of blindness, etc.
 Pope would not express a "sure and certain hope in a blessed
In the same hand, the same all-plastic pow'r.
 "Nature is the art whereby God governs the world," says
Sir T. Browne, Relig. Med. Part i. 16: "In brief all things are
artificial; for nature is the art of God."
 Art, in the sense of design, is manifest in nature, and has been
 From Fontenelle: "Everything is chance, provided we give this
name to an order unknown to us."--WARTON.
 Feltham's Resolves: "The world is kept in order by discord, and
 This line ran thus in the first edition:
And spite of pride, and in thy reason's spite.
Pope afterwards, says Johnson, discovered, or was shown, that the
Learn we ourselves, not God presume to scan,
But know the study, etc.
The only science of mankind is man.
The proper study, etc.--POPE.
 From Cowley, who says of life, in his ode on Life and Fame:
Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise
Up betwixt two eternities.--WARTON.
 Kennet's Pascal, p. 160: "We have an idea of truth, not to be
effaced by all the wiles of the sceptic."
 The stoic took his stand upon virtue, and with a stern faith in
 Johnson, in his translation of Crousaz, says he cannot determine
 First edition:
To deem himself a part of God or beast.
 Man is not born only to die, but death has the present life on
 "Such is the reason of man that he is equally ignorant whether,
 From Kennet's Pascal, p. 180: "If we think too little of a thing
 Kennet's Pascal, p. 162: "What a chimaera then is man! What a
confused chaos! What a subject of contradiction!"
 "Abused" here means "deceived," a sense of the word which was
 From Kennet's Pascal, p. 162: "A professed judge of all things,
 After ver. 18 in the MS.:
For more perfection than this state can bear
In vain we sigh; heav'n made us as we are.
Pray hard ye monkies, and ye may be men.]
As wisely sure a modest ape might aim
To be like man, whose faculties and frame
He sees, he feels, as you or I to be
An angel thing we neither know nor see.
Observe how near he edges on our race;
What human tricks! how risible of face!
"It must be so--why else have I the sense
Of more than monkey charms and excellence?
Why else to walk on two so oft essayed?
And why this ardent longing for a maid?"
So Pug might plead, and call his gods unkind,
Till set on end, and married to his mind.
Go, reas'ning thing! assume the Doctor's chair,
As Plato deep, as Seneca severe:
Fix moral fitness, and to God give rule,
Then drop, etc.--WARBURTON.
Observe his love of tricks, his laughing face;
An elder brother, too, to human race.
Go, reas'ning man, go mount, etc.
Instruct erratic planets where to run.
 Warburton says that the phrase "correct old Time" refers to Sir
Show by what rules the wand'ring planets stray,
Correct old Time, and teach the sun his way.--POPE.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 58: "They soar up on Platonic wings to the
And proudly rave of imitating God.
So Eastern madmen in a circle run.
 Plutarch tells us, in his Life of Numa, that the followers of
Of moral fitness fix th' unerring rule.
Angels themselves, I grant it, when they saw
One mighty man, etc.
Admired an angel in a human shape.
Simia coelicolum, risusque jocusque deorum est
Abdita naturae scrutari, arcanaque divum.--WARTON.
panegyric.--BOWLES.
Ah, turn the glass! it shows thee all along
As weak in conduct, as in science strong.
 Ed. 4: The whirling comet.--POPE.
Could he who taught each planet where to roll,
Describe or fix one movement of the soul?
Who marked their points to rise or to descend,
Explain his own beginning or his end?--POPE.
Who saw the stars here rise, and here descend?--POPE.
Or more of God, or more of man can find,
Than this that one is good, and one is blind?
 "Alas," says Pope, "what wonder" that Newton should be unable to
Unchecked may mount thy intellectual part
From whim to whim,--at best from art to art.
Joins truth to truth, or mounts
There mounts unchecked, and soars from art to art.
 An allusion to the web of Penelope in Homer's
Odyssey.--WAKEFIELD.
 That is, of all the studies which are dictated by the vices of
pride and vanity. He followed Bolingbroke, who wrote long tirades
 This paragraph first appeared in the edition of 1743. In the
Two different principles our nature move;
One spurs, one reins; this reason, that self-love.
Cicero's Offices, i. 28: "The powers of the mind are twofold; one
 The MS. goes on thus:
Of good and evil gods what frighted fools,
Of good and evil, reason puzzled schools,
Deceived, deceiving taught, to these refer;
Know both must operate, or both must err.--WARBURTON.
 "Acts," in the signification of "incites to action" was formerly
Self-love the spring of action lends the force;
Reason's comparing balance states the course:
The primal impulse, and controlling weight
To give the motion, and to regulate.
 Without self-love, that is, man would be like "a plant," and
 Meteors may flame lawless through empty space, but man could not
 The objects, that is, of reason lie at a distance. MS.:
Self-love yet stronger as its objects near;
Reason's diminished as remote appear.
 From Lord Bacon: "The affections carry ever an appetite to good
"The sensual man," says Crousaz in illustration of the principle,
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 6: "Self-love is the original spring of
 MS.: "nature." "Grace" here signifies the Divine assistance
signification, was the equivalent of what Pope calls "self-love."
Let metaphysics common reason split.
 In the MS. this couplet follows:
Too nice distinctions honest sense will shun,
Know pleasure, good, and happiness are one.
Both fly from pain, to pleasure both aspire,
With one aversion, and with one desire.
end,--pleasure." But the pleasure sought by reason and self-love
Reason itself more nicely shares in all.
Passions whose ends are honest, means are fair.
 "List," which would probably now be thought a vulgarism, was in
 "Passions that court an aim" is surely a strange
expression.--WARTON.
For "court" Pope had at first written "boast."
 The "imparted" or sympathetic passions are the benevolent
 That is, in cold insensibility. Lady Chudleigh's dialogue on the
Honour is ever the reward of pain:
A lazy virtue no applause will gain.--WAKEFIELD.
 The stoic aimed at inner perfection, and trusted to the serenity
 A couplet is added in the MS.:
Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight,
Comes without arms, and conquers but by flight.
Passions like tempests put in act the soul.
 Spectator, June 18, 1712. No. 408: "Passions are to the mind as
 Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v.
On life's wide ocean diversely launched out,
Our minds alike are tossed on waves of doubt,
Holding no steady course, or constant sail,
But shift and tack with ev'ry veering gale.--WAKEFIELD.
 In the mariner's compass the paper on which the points of the
compass are marked is called "the card."
 Carew's Poems:
A troop of deities came down to guide
Our steerless barks in passion's swelling tide,
By virtue's card.--WAKEFIELD.
After ver. 108 in the MS.:
A tedious voyage! where how useless lies
The compass, if no pow'rful gusts arise!--WARBURTON.
 Psalm civ. 3: "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the
waters, and walketh upon the wings of the wind."--BOWLES.
Dryden's Ceyx and Alcyone:
And now sublime she rides upon the wind.--WARTON.
 After ver. 112 in the MS.:
The soft, reward the virtuous or invite;
The fierce, the vicious punish or affright.--WARBURTON.
 How, that is, can the stoic succeed in destroying passions which
With all the num'rous family of death.
And all the faded family of care.--WAKEFIELD.
 Warton remarks that the group of allegorical personages are here
To blend them well, and harmonise their strife
Makes all etc.
 In plain prose thus: "To grasp present pleasures and to find
Present to seize, or future to obtain
The whole employ of body and of brain.
On stronger senses stronger passions strike.
Hence passions rise, and more or less inflame,
Proportioned to each organ of the frame,
Nor here internal faculties control,
Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul.
strength, which finally absorbs all other passions.
 The metaphor is taken from the casting of metal. The "mind's
One, with cruel art,
Makes Colon suffer for the peccant part.--WAKEFIELD.
 The "faculties" are not a class of powers distinct from "wit,
 By inventing arguments in its justification, as Pope explains at
 Taken from Bacon, De Calore.--WARTON.
In the MS. this couplet is added:
Its own best forces lead the mind astray,
Just as with Teague his own legs ran away.
The ruling passion, be it what it will,
The ruling passion conquers reason still.
And we who vainly boast her rightful sway
In our weak etc.
Can reason more etc.
 Cowley's poem on the late civil war:
The plague, we know, drives all diseases out.--WAKEFIELD.
This bias nature to our temper lends.
The couplet was not in the first edition.
 The particular application of this to the several pursuits of
men, and the general good resulting thence, falls also into the
succeeding book.--POPE.
 From Rochefoucauld, Maxim 266: "It is a mistake to believe that
Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ill.
 Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's Miscellanies, iv. p. 312:
Hypocrisy at last should enter in,
And fix this floating mercury of sin.--WAKEFIELD.
The noblest fruits the planter's hope may mock,
Which thrive inserted on the savage stock.
 He argues that our primitive tendencies are too various to be
 Ver. 184 is followed by this couplet in the MS.:
As dulcet pippins from the crabtree come,
As sloes' rough juices melt into a plum.
catalogue he must have been thinking of the moral ends it might
subserve.
Vain-glory, courage, justice can supply.
Envy, in critics and old maids the devil,
Is emulation in the learn'd and civil.
 Pope speaks after Mandeville, who says that shame and pride are
 As Pope supposes shame to be "a disease of the mind," he could
 After ver. 194 in the MS.:
How oft with passion, virtue points her charms!
Then shines the hero, then the patriot warms.
Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had known
But virtues opposite to make agree,
That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee.
Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak,
"Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a pique.
Once for a whim, persuade yourself to pay
A debt to reason, like a debt at play.
For right or wrong have mortals suffered more?
Whose self-denials nature most control?
His who would save a sixpence, or his soul.
Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin,
Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin?
What we resolve we can: but here's the fault,
We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought."--WARBURTON.
There is another version of the last couplet but one in the MS.:
Which will become more exemplary thin,
W[eb] for his health, De Rance for his sin?
 Yet in the previous couplet we are informed that there is hardly
Thus every ruling passion of the mind
Stands to some virtue and some vice inclined.
 The MS. has two other versions of this line:
Check but its force or compass short of ill.
Turn but the bias from the side of ill.
 But not by grafting temperance and humanity upon his ruling
 Catiline hemmed in by superior forces died fighting with the
And either makes a patriot or a knave.
Divide, before the genius of the mind.
'Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind.
Extremes in man concur to gen'ral use.
 "Great purposes," says Warburton in explanation of this passage,
morals,--shadows in a picture to hatred, avarice, and so on.
 Too nice, that is, to permit us to distinguish where ends, etc.
 The lines from ver. 207 to 214 are versified from Clarke's
pleading the impossibility of drawing a line between the two.
 Here follows in the MS.:
To strangle in its birth each rising crime
Requires but little,--just to think in time.
In ev'ry vice, at first, in some degree
We see some virtue, or we think we see.
Our vices thus are virtues in disguise,
Wicked but by degrees, or by surprise.
Of the last couplet there is a second version:
Thus spite of all the Frenchman's witty lies
Most vices are but virtues in disguise.
 Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part i.:
For truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.--WAKEFIELD.
The lines from ver. 217 to 221 are thus varied in the MS.:
Vice all abhor, the monster is too foul;
Naked, indeed, she shocks us to the soul;
But dressed too well, with tempting time and place,
That but to pity her is to embrace.
Where art thou, Vice? 'twas never yet agreed, etc.
 The word is inappropriate. Men do not become sensual out of pity
These two omitted in the subsequent editions.--POPE.
B[lun]t but does
K---- brings matters on;
Rogues but do business; spies but serve the crown;
Sid has the secret, Chartres
H[e]r[ve]y the court, and Huggins knows the town;
Kind-hearted Peter helps the rich in want,
Nero's a wag, and Messaline gallant.
The last couplet assumed a second form:
Nero's a wag, Faustina some suspect
Of gallantry, and Sutton of neglect.
Newmarket fame, and judgment in a bet;
and the phrase, "Sid has the secret" is an insinuation that his
 After ver. 226 in the MS.:
The Col'nel swears the agent is a dog;
The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue;
Against the thief th' attorney loud inveighs,
For whose ten pound the county twenty pays;
The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state,
And dying mourns small villains hanged by great.--WARBURTON.
The agent of whom the Colonel complained was the army agent. The
Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.
 Addison, Spectator, No. 183: "There was no person so vicious who
 This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS.:
Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,
Nay in a minister, or on a throne.
 Complete virtue, and complete vice, says Pope, are both hostile
to self-interest, a plain confession that his selfish system was
 He is far from saying that good effects naturally rise from vice
That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice.
And public good extracts from private vice.
Each frailty wisely to each rank applied.
 The sense of shame in virgins is not a frailty to be ranked with
 There is another side to the picture. The ends of vice are also
 That is, "heaven can build," the "can" being supplied from "can
 Shaftesbury's Moralists: "Is not both conjugal affection and
 The MS. adds this couplet:
What partly pleases, totally will shock;
Nor Ross would be Argyle, nor Toland
I question much if Toland would be Locke.
The Duke of Argyle and General Ross were both soldiers, both
The learn'd are blessed such wonders to explore.
The chemist's happy in his golden views,
Payn in his madness, Welsted in his muse.
 From La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 36: "Nature seems to have bestowed
pride on us, on purpose to save us the pain of knowing our own
imperfections."--WARTON.
 Bolingbroke, Frag. 50: "Hope, that cordial drop, which sweetens
every bitter potion, even the last."--WAKEFIELD.
With ev'ry age of man new passions rise,
Hope travels through nor quits him when he dies.
 The lines, ver. 275-282, first appeared in the edition of 1743.
Children at toys as men at titles aim,
And in effect both covet but the same,
This Philip's son proved in revolving years,
And first for rattles, then for worlds shed tears.
 When Pope used the phrase "a little louder," he was thinking of
the "rattle," and forgot the "straw."
 The "garters" refer to the badge of the order of the garter.
"Scarf," in the sense of a badge of honour, was in Pope's day
Clergymen, "procured him a scarf from my lord." Addison in the
 Small balls of glass or pearl, or other substance, strung upon a
At last he sleeps, and all the care is o'er.
Observant then, how from defects of mind
Spring half the bliss, or rest of humankind!
How pride rebuilds what reason can destroy, &c.
Of certainty by faith, of sense by pride.
These still repair what wisdom would destroy.
Through life's long dream new prospects entertain.
Life's prospects alter ev'ry step we gain,
And Nature gives no vanity in vain.
 See further of the use of this principle in man, Epist. 3, ver.
Confess one comfort ever will arise.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 53: "God is wise and man a fool."
 In several editions in quarto,
Learn, Dulness, learn! "The Universal Cause," etc.--WARBURTON.
 The "one end" is the good of the whole.
Must act by gen'ral not by partial laws.
Look nature through, and see the chain of love.
See lifeless matter moving to one end.--POPE.
 "Embrace" is an inappropriate word. The particles of matter do
not clasp. They are not even in contact, but only contiguous.
Press to one centre of commutual good.
 Shaftesbury's Moralists, Part i. Sect. 3: "The vegetables by
 Pope is speaking in the context of plants and animals, which are
 "Connects," that is, "the greatest with the least." Pope, in his
 Another couplet follows in the MS.:
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,
Each in proportion as he blesses blessed.
 The passage is indebted to Fenton, in his Epistle to Southerne:
Who winged the winds, and gave the streams to flow,
And raised the rocks, and spread the lawns below.--WAKEFIELD.
Think'st thou for thee he feeds the wanton fawn
And not as kindly spreads for him the lawn?
Think'st thou for thee the sky-lark mounts and sings?
 Apart from the metre the proper order of the words would be,
"loves and raptures of his own swell the note."
 MS.: "gracefully." The reading Pope substituted is not much
better, for the generality of men are not absurd enough to ride
 This description of the hog as living on the labours of the lord
 MS.: "Sir Gilbert," which meant Sir Gilbert Heathcote, a rich
Know, Nature's children with one care are nursed;
What warms a monarch, warmed an ermine first.
 After ver. 46 in the former editions:
What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat him!
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him,
As far as goose could judge he reasoned right;
But as to man, mistook the matter quite.--WARBURTON.
All creatures the Creator said were thine:
No creature but might since say, "Man is mine."
The snail looks round on flow'r and tree,
And cries, "All these were made for me."--WAKEFIELD.
reflections.--WARTON.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "The hypothesis that assumes the world
 That is, "Let it be granted that man is the intellectual lord;"
'Tis true the strong the weaker still control,
And pow'rful man is master of the whole:
Him therefore nature checks; he only knows, etc.
 What an exquisite assemblage is here, down to ver. 70, of deep
 That is, varying with her position, and the different angles in
which the reflected light strikes upon the eye.--WAKEFIELD.
Turns he his ear when Philomela sings?
Admires her eye the insect's gilded wings?
 Pope starts with the intimation that mankind extend their
 Borrowed from Milton's Samson Agonistes, ver. 549:
Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed
Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure
With touch ethereal of heav'n's fiery rod,
I drank.--WAKEFIELD.
 Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals since,
Plutarch mentions that persons struck with lightning were held in
 "View" is "prospect,"--a vision of future bliss.
 Pope repeats in this paragraph the argument he uses Epist. i.
 This is the true principle from which Pope immediately departs,
 The roman catholic council, which claims to be infallible.
 After ver. 84 in the MS.:
While man with op'ning views of various ways
Confounded, by the aid of knowledge strays:
Too weak to choose, yet choosing still in haste,
One moment gives the pleasure and distaste.--WARBURTON.
 In Pope's wide sense of the term, reason adapts means to ends,
 Pope says, ver. 79, that whether blessed with reason or instinct
 This is a mistake. Instinct is often imperfect with reference to
One in their act to think and to pursue,
Sure to will right, and what they will to do.
Reason prefer to instinct if you can.
 Addison, Spectator, No. 121; "To me instinct seems the immediate
ambition into Caesar's mind."
 "Wood" in all editions, though designated as an erratum by Pope
 This instinct is not invariable. Animals eat food poisoned
artificially, and sometimes feed greedily upon poisonous natural
 The halcyon or king-fisher was reputed by the ancients "to build
The cramp-fish, remora what secret charm
To stop the bark, arrest the distant arm?
 The geometric, or garden-spider, makes a web of concentric
 An eminent mathematician.--POPE.
Through air's vast oceans see the storks explore,
Columbus-like, a world unknown before.
 From Le Spectacle de la Nature of the Abbe Pluche: "Who informed
 The MS. has the lines which follow:
Boast we of arts? a bee can better hit
The squares than Gibbs, the bearings than Sir Kit.
To poise his dome a martin has the knack,
While bold Bernini lets St. Peter's crack.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 51: "We are designed to be social, not
 Ether was reputed to be an element finer than air, and to fill
Our fond begetters who would never die,
Love but themselves in their posterity.
The lines from ver. 115 to ver. 124 are varied in the MS.:
Quick with this spirit new-born nature moved,
Itself each creature in its species loved;
Each sought a pleasure not possessed alone,
Each sex desired alike till two were one.
This impulse animates; one nature feeds
The vital lamp, and swells the genial seeds:
All spread their image with like ardour stung,
All love themselves, reflected in their young.
misapprehended, the parental feeling.
 Pope's division of duties is not the law of creation. In a
Till taught to range the wood, or wing the air,
There instinct ends its passion and its care.
 Locke, Civil Government, book ii. chap. vii. sect. 79: "The
conjunction between male and female ought to last so long as is
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 3: "Reason improved sociability, extended
it to relations more remote, and united several families into one
 That is, man becomes constant from choice.
And ev'ry tender passion takes its turn.
 He means that the latest brood, being young children, love their
Scarce had the last the parents' care outgrown
Before they saw those parents want their own.
Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book iii.:
and issuing into man,
Grudges their life from whence his own began.
Stretch the long interest, and support the line.
 The MS. goes on thus:
She spake, and man her high behests obeyed;
Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he strayed;
For pride was not; joint tenant of the shade
He shared with beasts his table and his bed;
No murder etc.
 "Union" is put for voluntary union, the union of social
affection, in contrast to the bonds of fear, coercion, and the
 So Hall, Satires, Book iii. Sat. 1:
Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise,
And man grew greedy, discordous, and nice.
Now man that erst hail-fellow was with beast,
Woxe on to ween himself a god at least.--WAKEFIELD.
 Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book xv.:
The woolly fleece that clothed her murderer.
 Virgil, Ecl. x. 58: "lucos sonantes;" Dryden, "sounding
He called on heav'n for blessing, they for food.
Unstained with gore the grassy altar grew,
Priests yet were temperate, yet no passions knew;
Nor yet would glutton zeal devoutly eat,
Nor faithful av'rice hugged his god in plate.
Ah how unlike the living is the dead.--WAKEFIELD.
Of half that live himself the living tomb.
Who, foe to nature, other kinds o'erthrown
Restless he seeks dominion o'er his own.
Who deaf to nature's universal groan,
Murders all other kinds, betrays his own.
 Pope probably meant that man was a "fiercer savage" than the
animals of which he shed the blood, but as the "blood" only is
mentioned, there is no proper positive to the comparative.
 Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met.
Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole
Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,
And after forged the sword to murder man.--WAKEFIELD.
While nature, strict the injury to scan,
Left man the only beast to prey on man.
In early times when man aspired to art.
'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake.
 It is a caution commonly practised amongst navigators, when
 See Pliny's Nat. Hist. Lib. viii. cap. 27, where several
The instances are all fanciful or fabulous.
 Montaigne, Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Democritus held and
 The MS. adds:
Behold the rabbit's fortress in the sands,
The beaver's storied house not made with hands.
 Oppian, Halicut. Lib. i., describes this fish in the following
There, too, each form of social commerce find,
So late by reason taught to human kind.
Behold th' embodied locust rushing forth
In sabled millions from th' inclement north;
In herds the wolves, invasive robbers, roam,
In flocks, the sheep pacific, race at home.
What warlike discipline the cranes display,
How leagued their squadron, how direct their way.
 The Guardian, No. 157: "Everything is common among ants."
 "Anarchy without confusion" is a contradiction in terms,
 The Guardian, No. 157: "Bees have each of them a hole in their
 An adaptation of the Latin proverb, mentioned by Cicero, Off. i.
unrestrained injustice. The letter contravenes the spirit.
 The imagery of the passage is derived from an observation of a
Who for those arts they learned of brutes before,
As kings shall crown them, or as gods adore.--POPE.
 Roscommon's version of Horace's Art of Poetry:
Cities were built, and useful laws were made.--WAKEFIELD.
 In the MS. thus:
The neighbours leagued to guard their common spot,
And love was nature's dictate, murder not.
For want alone each animal contends;
Tigers with tigers, that removed, are friends.
Plain nature's wants the common mother crowned,
She poured her acorns, herbs, and streams around.
No treasure then for rapine to invade,
What need to fight for sunshine, or for shade?
And half the cause of contest was removed,
When beauty could be kind to all who loved.--WARBURTON.
Of the first couplet there are two other versions in the MS.:
Fear would forbid th' unpractised to engage,
And nature's dictate love, not blood and rage.
Unpractised man, that knew no murd'ring skill,
And nature's dictate was to love, not kill.
Commerce, convenience, change might strongly draw.
 These two lines added since the first edition.--POPE.
These states had lords 'tis true, but each its own,
Not all subjected to the rule of one,
Unless where from one lineage all began,
And swelled into a nation from a man.
 "Sons," that is, "obeyed a sire" on account of his "virtue," and
 Locke, Civil Government, bk. ii. chap. vi. sect. 74: "It is
 A finer example can perhaps scarce be given of a compact and
He crowned the wond'ring earth with golden grain,
Taught to command the fire, control the main,
Drew from the secret deep the finny drove,
And fetched the soaring eagle from above.
The first couplet is again varied:
He taught the arts of life, the means of food,
To pierce the forest, and to stem the flood.
Till weak, and old, and dying they began.
Saw his shrunk arms, pale cheeks, and faded eye,
Beheld him bend, and droop, and sink, and die.
 Men are said by the poet to have been awakened by the death of
 Pope ought to have written "began." He has improperly put the
 A belief, that is, in the unity of God was the original faith,
and polytheism a later corruption.
 This couplet follows in the MS.:
'Twas simple worship in the native grove,
Religion, morals, had no name but love.
 The divine right of kings to their throne, and the unlawfulness
 The "cause" here signifies the purpose or motive manifested in
many,--the prince for the people.
 Wicked rulers, terrified by an evil conscience, became the dupe
Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending ground.
From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal nigh,
And gods supernal from the bursting sky.
 Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., translated by Addison:
An umpire, partial, and unjust,
And a lewd woman's impious lust.
The native wood seemed sacred now no more.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "God was appeased provided his altars
 The "flamen" was a priest attached exclusively to the service of
The glutton priest first tasted living food.
First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parent's tears,
Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud
Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire
To his grim idol.
 The image is derived from the old engines of war, such as the
In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:
For say what makes the liberty of man?
'Tis not in doing what he would but can.
The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an
 When the proprietor is asleep the weak rob him by stealth, and
when he is awake the strong rob him by violence.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 6: "Private good depends on the public."
 The inspired strains of the Hebrew Scriptures are the only
christianity. The term "patriot" is commonly applied to political
 Pope breaks down in his comparison of a mixed government to a
 The deduction and application of the foregoing principles, with
 "Consent" is now limited to mental consent, and the word is
obsolete in the sense of "consent of things."
 From Denham's Cooper's Hill:
Wisely she knew the harmony of things,
As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.--HURD.
 "Where the small and weak" are "made to serve, not suffer," "the
 Cowley's verses on the death of Crashaw:
His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets might
Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.
The position is demonstrably absurd in both poets. All conduct
Prefer we then the greater to the less,
For charity is all men's happiness.
But charity the greatest of the three.
 The MS. adds this couplet:
Th' extended earth is but one sphere of bliss
To him, who makes another's blessing his.
 At the same time.
 "Nature" is not a power coordinate with God, but only the means
by which he acts.
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 51: "A due use of our reason makes
self-love and social coincide, or even become in effect the
subordinate, to happiness.
 Overlooked in the things which would yield it, and in other
None think the great unhappy but the great.
 Pope personified happiness at the beginning, but seems to have
O happiness! to which we all aspire,
Winged with strong hope, and borne with full desire;
That good, we still mistake, and still pursue,
Still out of reach, yet ever in our view;
That ease, for which in want, in wealth we sigh,
That ease, for which we labour and we die;
Tell me, ye sages, (sure 'tis yours to know),
Tell in what mortal soul this ease may grow.
 "Is there," asks Mr. Croker, "any other authority for shine as a
An iron harvest mounts, and still remains to mow.--WAKEFIELD.
 "Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow," is the
 These lines follow in the MS.:
Heav'n plants no vain desire in human kind,
But what it prompts to seek, directs to find,
From whom, so strongly pointing at the end,
To hide the means it never could intend.
Now since, whatever happiness we call,
Subsists not in the good of one, but all,
And whosoever would be blessed must bless,
Virtue alone can form that happiness.
 "Sincere" in its present use is the opposite of "disingenuous,"
And none can boast sincere felicity.
 Epicureans.--POPE.
 Epicureans.--POPE.
One grants his pleasure is but rest from pain;
One doubts of all; one owns ev'n virtue vain.
One trusts the senses, and one doubts of all.
 Sceptics.--POPE.
 Pope's complaint, that the directions of the ancient moralists
insisted.
 Pope has here adopted the sentiments of the Grecian sage who
For opinion creates the fantastic wants of fashion and luxury.
 He means that happiness does not "dwell" in any "extreme" of
True happiness, 'tis sacred truth I tell,
Lies but in thinking, &c.
 "The common sense" and "common ease" of which all the world have
 The MS. adds:
In no extreme lies real happiness,
Not ev'n of good or wisdom in excess.
 That is, all which can "justly" or rightly be termed happiness.
 The image is drawn from a person leaning towards another, and
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
 The MS. goes on thus:
'Tis not in self it can begin and end,
The bliss of one must with another blend:
The strongest, noblest pleasures of the mind
All hold of mutual converse with the kind.
Can sensual lust, or selfish rapine, know
Such as from bounty, love, or mercy flow?
Of human nature wit its worst may write,
We all revere it in our own despite.
 This couplet follows in the MS.:
To rob another's is to lose our own,
And the just bound once passed the whole is gone.
inference if you make,
That such are happier, 'tis a gross mistake.
Say not, "Heav'n's here profuse, there poorly saves,
And for one monarch makes a thousand slaves;"
You'll find when causes and their ends are known,
'Twas for the thousand heav'n has made that one.
Ev'n mutual want to common blessings tends,
One labours, one directs, and one defends,
While double pay benevolence receives,
Is blessed in what it takes, and what it gives.
In what (heav'n's hand impartial to confess)
Need men be equal but in happiness.
The bliss of all, if heav'n's indulgent aim,
He could not place in riches, pow'r or fame.
In these suppose it placed, one greatly blessed,
Others were hurt, impoverished, or oppressed;
Or did they equally on all descend,
If all were equal must not all contend?
 After ver. 66 in the MS.
Tis peace of mind alone is at a stay:
The rest mad fortune gives or takes away:
All other bliss by accident's debarred,
But virtue's, in the instant, a reward;
In hardest trials operates the best,
And more is relished as the more distressed.--WARBURTON.
There is still another couplet in the MS.:
Virtue's plain consequence is happiness,
Or virtue makes the disappointment less.
 The exemplification of this truth, by a view of the equality of
 Sir W. Temple, Works, vol. iii. p. 531: "Whether a good
How widely then at happiness we aim
By selfish pleasures, riches, pow'r or fame!
Increase of these is but increase of pain,
Wrong the materials, and the labour vain.
 He had in his mind Virgil's description, borrowed from Homer, of
mountains," from Dryden's translation, Geor. i. 374.
 "Still" is repeated to give force to the remonstrance. "Attempt
still to rise, and Heaven will still survey your vain toil with
laughter."
 An allusion to Psalm ii. 1, 4: "Why do the heathen rage, and the
The gods with laughter on the labour gaze,
And bury such in the mad heaps they raise.
 "Nature" is a name for the second causes, or instruments, by
 By "mere mankind" Pope means man in his present earthly
 From Bolingbroke, Fragment 52: "Agreeable sensations, the series
tranquillity of mind, and a competency of wealth."
 The MS. adds,
Behold the blessing then to none denied
But through our vice, by error or by pride;
Which nothing but excess can render vain,
And then lost only when too much we gain.
 The sense of this ill-expressed line is, that bad men taste the
The good, the bad may fortune's gifts possess;
The bad acquire them worse, enjoy them less.
 "That" is put improperly for "those that."
Secure to find, ev'n from the very worst,
If vice and virtue want, compassion first.
 But are not the one frequently mistaken for the other? How many
profligate hypocrites have passed for good?--WARTON.
 After ver. 92 in the MS.:
Let sober moralists correct their speech,
No bad man's happy: he is great, or rich.--WARBURTON.
 That is, "who fancy bliss allotted to vice."
 Lord Falkland was killed by a musket ball at the battle of
 The Hon. Robert Digby, who died, aged 40, April 19, 1726. Pope
wrote his epitaph.
Brave Sidney falls amid the martial strife,
Not that he's virtuous, but profuse of life.
Not virtue snatched Arbuthnot's hopeful bloom,
And sent thee, Craggs, untimely to the tomb.
Say not 'tis virtue, but too soft a frame,
That Walsh his race, and Scud'more ends her name.
Think not their virtues, more though heav'n ne'er gave,
Unites so many Digbys in a grave.
Fierce love, not virtue, Falkland, was thy doom,
Her grief, not virtue, nipped Louisa's bloom.
 William, fifth Lord Digby, was 74 when this fourth Epistle was
published in 1734, and he lived to be 92. He died December 1752.
 M. de Belsunce, was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the
 Some anonymous verses in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 76:
When nature sickens, and with fainting breath
Struggles beneath the bitter pangs of death.--WAKEFIELD.
O Rhoebus! we have lived too long for me,
If life and long were terms that could agree.--WAKEFIELD.
Yet hemmed with plagues, and breathing deathful air,
Marseilles' good bishop still possess the chair;
And long kind chance, or heav'n's more kind decree,
Lends an old parent, etc.
 How change can admit, or nature let fall any evil, however short
God sends not ill, 'tis nature lets it fall,
Or chance escape, and man improves it all.
Of every evil, since the world began
The real source is not in God, but man.
 This comparison of the favourites of the Almighty to the
 Warburton says that Pope alluded to Empedocles. The story ran
conceited madman, legends are not a proper illustration of God's
dealings with mankind. Pope had originally written,
T' explore Vesuvius if great Pliny aims,
Shall the loud mountain call back all its flames?
 The forgetfulness to thunder supposes unconscious obliviousness,
restrain it.
 Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: "If a man's
 Warton tells us in a note on one of Pope's letters to Bethel,
Or shall some ruin, as it nods to fall,
For Chartres' brains reserve the hanging wall?
No,--in a scene far higher heav'n imparts
Rewards for spotless hands, and honest hearts.
 Christians have never raised the objection. They only say that
since this world is not a kingdom of the just, reason, as well as
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 57: "Christian divines complain that good
This way, I fear, your project too must fall,
Will just what serves one good man serve 'em all?
 After ver. 142 in some editions:
Give each a system, all must be at strife;
What diff'rent systems for a man and wife?--WARBURTON.
 Young, Universal Passion, Sat. iii. 61.
The very best ambitiously advise.
The best in habits variously incline.
E'en leave it as it is; this world, etc.
Justice gives way to force: the conquered world
Is Caesar's; Cato has no business in it.
And Act v. Sc. 1:
This world was made for Caesar.
 Unquestionably it must be one of the rewards if Pope is right in
Can God be just if virtue be unfed?
Why, fool, is the reward of virtue bread?
'Tis his who labours, his who sows the plain,
'Tis his who threshes, or who grinds the grain.
 The MS. has two readings:
Where madness fights for tyrants or for gain.
Where folly fights for kings or drowns for gain.
 "Why no king?" is equivalent to "why is he not any king?" The
proper form would be "why not a king?"
Then give him this, and that, and everything:
Still the complaint subsists; he is no king.
Outward rewards for inward worth are odd:
Why then complain not that he is no god?
 In a work of so serious a cast surely such strokes of levity, of
But come, for virtue the just payment fix,
For humble merit say a coach and six,
For justice a Lord Chancellor's awful gown, &c.
 After ver. 172 in the MS.:
Say, what rewards this idle world imparts,
Or fit for searching heads or honest hearts.--WARBURTON.
 Heaven in this line has either improperly the double sense of a
person and a place,--the God of heaven, and the kingdom of the
 These eight succeeding lines were not in former editions; and
 The "boy and man makes an individual" is not grammar.
 Thus till the edition of 1743:
For riches, can they give, but to the just,
His own contentment, or another's trust?
 We see in the world, alas! too many examples of riches giving
repute and trust, content and pleasure to the worthless and
profligate.--WARTON.
Let honour and preferment go for gold,
But glorious beauty isn't to be sold.
The MS. adds:
Were health of mind and body purchased here,
'Twere worth the cost; all else is bought too dear.
 The man, that is, who is the lover of human kind, and the object
 No rational believer in Providence ever did suppose that to have
 This seems not to be proper; the words "flaunt" and "flutter"
might with more propriety have changed places.--JOHNSON.
garment.--WAKEFIELD.
Oft of two brothers one shall be surveyed
Flutt'ring in rags, one flaunting in brocade.
 This must be understood as if Pope had written, "The cobbler is
aproned."
What differs more, you cry, than gown and hood?
A wise man and a fool, a bad and good.
The miserable rhyme in the text had the authority of a pun in
Why what a peevish fool was that of Crete
That taught his son the office of a fowl?
And yet, for all his wings, the fool was drowned.
 He alluded to Philip V. of Spain, who resigned his crown to his
 _Cordon_ is the French term for the ribbon of the orders of
To kings or to the favourites of kings.--HURD.
 In the MS. thus:
The richest blood, right-honourably old,
Down from Lucretia to Lucretia rolled,
May swell thy heart and gallop in thy breast,
Without one dash of usher or of priest:
Thy pride as much despise all other pride
As Christ-church once all colleges beside.--WARBURTON.
 A bad rhyme to the preceding word "race." It is taken from
Et si leur sang tout pur, ainsi que leur noblesse,
Est passe jusqu'a vous de Lucrece en Lucrece.--WARTON.
Thy boasted blood, a thousand years or so
May from Lucretia to Lucretia flow.
 Hall, Sat. iii.:
Or tedious bead rolls of descended blood,
 There are two other versions of this couplet in the MS.:
But to make wits of fools, and chiefs of cowards,
What can? not all the pride of all the Howards.
But make one wise, or loved, or happy man,
Not all the pride of all the Howards can.
Peace courts his hand, but spreads her charms in vain,
"Think nothing gained," he cries, "till nought remain."
 There is something so familiar, nay even vulgar, in these two
lines as renders them very unworthy of our author.--RUFFHEAD.
 That is, "the politic and wise" are "no less alike" than the
heroes, of whom he had said, ver. 219, that they had all the same
 Shakespeare, Richard II. Act i. Sc. 3: "The sly, slow hours."
 Marcus Aurelius, who regulated his life by the lofty principles
 Considering the manner in which Socrates was put to death, the
word "bleed" seems to be improperly used.--WARTON.
 This is said to Bolingbroke.
 Celebrated men are aware that their reputation spreads wide, and
 The men of renown,--the Shakespeares, Bacons, and Newtons,--can
 Wakefield says that "but for his political bias Pope would have
 "Honest" was formerly used in a less confined sense than at
 Pope has hitherto spoken of all fame. He now speaks of bad fame,
 He alludes to the disinterment of the bodies of Cromwell,
 Marcellus was an opponent of Caesar, and a partisan of Pompey.
And more contentment honest Sh[ippen] feels
Than W[alpole] with a senate at his heels.
More loved, more praised, more envied in his doom,
Than Caesar trampling on the rights of Rome.--WAKEFIELD.
 Which does not hinder our advancing with delight from truth to
 In the interests of charity, humility, and self-improvement, it
were to be wished that this was the universal result of superior
intelligence.
 Pope objects that wise men are "condemned to drudge," which is
 The allusion is to Bolingbroke's patriotic pretensions, and
 To a person that was praising Dr. Balguy's admirable discourses
 This line is inconsistent with ver. 261-2. A man who feels
 "Call" for "call forth."
 Mr. Croker suggests that Gripus and his wife may be Mr. Wortley
Montagu and Lady Mary. Pope accused them both of greed for money.
The greatest, bravest, wittiest of mankind.--BOWLES.
Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a name.--HURD.
 This resembles some lines in Roscommon's Essay:
That wretch, in spite of his forgotten rhymes,
Condemned to live to all succeeding times.--WAKEFIELD.
Pope's examples would not bear out his language unless Bacon and
In one man's fortune, mark and scorn them all.
contrivance to ruin or betray" James II. While, however, he was a
 In the MS. "great * * grows," that is, great Churchill or
One equal course how guilt and greatness ran.
 This couplet and the next have a view to his supposed peculation
account.--WAKEFIELD.
Let gathered nations next their chief behold,
How blessed with conquest, yet more blessed with gold:
Go then, and steep thy age in wealth and ease,
Stretched on the spoils of plundered provinces.
 "Acts of fame" are not the best means of "sanctifying" wealth.
True charity is unostentatious.
 Wakefield quotes Horace, Od. ii. 2, or, as Creech puts it in his
Unless a moderate use refine,
A value give, and make it shine.
But called it marriage, by that specious name
To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame.--WAKEFIELD.
 Originally, "Ambition, avarice, and th' imperious" etc., for
Marlborough was never the dupe of a "greedy minion."
 "Storied halls" are halls painted with stories or histories, as
in Milton, Il Penseroso, ver. 159:
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light.
 Addison's Verses on the Play-House:
A lofty fabric does the sight invade,
And stretches o'er the waves a pompous shade.--WAKEFIELD.
 Pope may mean that nothing affords happiness which infringes
 "It" in this couplet and the next stands for virtuous "merit."
it is twice blessed;
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.
 After ver. 316 in the MS.:
Ev'n while it seems unequal to dispose,
And chequers all the good man's joys with woes,
'Tis but to teach him to support each state,
With patience this, with moderation that;
And raise his base on that one solid joy,
Which conscience gives, and nothing can destroy.--WARBURTON.
 This is the Greek expression, [Greek: platus gelos], broad or
More pleasing, then, humanity's soft tears
Than all the mirth unfeeling folly wears.
Which not by starts, and from without acquired,
Is all ways exercised, and never tired.
 Is it so impossible that a "wish" should "remain" when Pope has
 "The good" is singular, and stands for "the good man," as is
But if you ask me now what sect I own,
I swear a blind obedience unto none.--WAKEFIELD.
 Bolingbroke's Letters to Pope: "The modest enquirer follows
nature, and nature's God."--WAKEFIELD.
Let us, my S[t. John], this plain truth confess,
Good nature makes, and keeps our happiness;
And faith and morals end as they began,
All in the love of God, and love of man.
 He hopes, indeed, for another life, but he does not from hence
 The "other kind" is the animal creation, which, says Pope, has
not been given any abortive instinct. Nature, which furnishes the
gratification.
 The meaning of this couplet comes out clearer in the prose
 "His greatest virtue" is benevolence; "his greatest bliss" the
 Pope exalts the duty of "benevolence," which, ver. 371, causes
"earth to smile with boundless bounty blessed." But bounty cannot
happiness is independent of externals.
 Warton remarks that this simile, which is copied from Chaucer,
A love so unconfined
With arms extended would embrace mankind.
Self-love would cease, or be dilated, when
We should behold as many selfs as men.--WAKEFIELD.
To rise from individuals to the whole
Is the true progress of the god-like soul.
The first impression the soft passions make,
Like the small pebble in the limpid lake,
Begets a greater and a greater still,
The circle widening till the whole it fill;
Till God and man, and brute and reptile kind
All wake, all move, all agitate his mind;
Earth with his bounteous overflows is blessed;
Heav'n pleased beholds its image in his breast.
Parent or friend first touch the virtuous mind,
His country next, and next all human kind.
 In the MS. thus:
And now transported o'er so vast a plain,
While the winged courser flies with all her rein,
While heav'n-ward now her mounting wing she feels,
Now scattered fools fly trembling from her heels,
Wilt thou, my St. John! keep her course in sight,
Confine her fury, and assist her flight?--WARBURTON.
"scattered fools flew trembling" from its crushing power.
 "Stoops to man's low passions or ascends to the glorious ends"
for which those passions have been given.
 "Did he rise with temper," asks the writer of A Letter to Mr.
 Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated by Soame and Dryden, Cantos
Happy, who in his verse can gently steer
From grave to light, from pleasant to severe.--WAKEFIELD.
And while the muse transported, unconfined,
Soars to the sky, or stoops among mankind,
Teach her like thee, through various fortune wise,
With dignity to sink, with temper rise;
Formed by thy converse, steer an equal flight
From grave to gay, from profit to delight
Artful with grace, and natural to please,
Intent in business, elegant in ease.
immensae veluti connexa carinae
Cymba minor, cum saevit hyems, pro parte, furentes
Parva receptat aquas, et eodem volvitur austro.--HURD.
immortality--CROUSAZ.
 An unfortunate prophecy. Posterity has more than confirmed the
contempt in which Bolingbroke's character was held by his
contemporaries.
 "Pretend" is used in the old and literal sense "to stretch out
before any one." Its exact synonym in Pope's line is "proclaim."
 Pope professes to believe that all his poetry up to the Essay on
 In the MS. thus:
That just to find a God is all we can,
And all the study of mankind is man.--WARBURTON.
The MS. has another version of the couplet in the text:
And all our knowledge, all our bliss below,
To love our neighbour, and ourselves to know.
 Voltaire, Oeuvres, tom. xiv. p. 169.
 Archbishop Whately, Bacon's Essays, p. 145, quotes this stanza,
and says that it is strange that Pope, and those who use similar
ignorant of the holiness of the Supreme Being; and Pope himself,
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust.
 It ought to be "confinedst" or "didst confine," and afterwards
"gavedst" or "didst give" in the second person.--WARTON.
 This may mean that the Deity was beneficent, or holy, or both,
 First edition:
Left conscience free and will.
acquaintance had discovered:
Can sins of moments claim the rod
Of everlasting fires?
And that offend great nature's God
Which nature's self inspires
 There is something elevated in the idea and expression,
Or think Thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round;
but the conclusion is a contrast of littleness,
And deal damnation round the land.--BOWLES.
involves himself in the full criminality of his error.--CROLY.
 I have often wondered that the same poet who wrote the Dunciad
Estne Dei sedes, nisi terra, et pontus, et aer,
Et coelum, et virtus?--WAKEFIELD.
 Erudition and acuteness are not the only requisites of a good
commentary, and letting the text speak for itself--AIKIN.
 Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, vol. i. p. 377.
 Soame Jenyns, who published in 1757 a Free Enquiry into the
 All three were republicans who flourished at the period of the
 In the Commentary on ver. 303.
 A false pretence. Waterland expressed his disapproval of
 Tindal, who was a deist, published in 1730 his well-known work,
 Waterland published a sermon called, A familiar discourse upon
 Nothing was ever more unfortunate than these five examples of
sublimity, all of which, as Dr. Warton observes, prove the
contrary.--BOWLES.