Chapter XXVII: Appendix (3)

Ver. 41. _Or ask of yonder, &c._] On these lines M. Voltaire thus descants: "Pope dit que l'homme ne peut savoir pourquoi les lunes de Jupiter sont moins grandes que Jupiter. Il se trompe en cela; c'est une erreur pardonnable. Il n'y a point de mathématicien qui n'eût fait voir," &c. And so goes on to show, like a great mathematician as he is, that it would be very inconvenient for the page to be as big as his lord and master. It is pity all this fine reasoning should proceed on a ridiculous blunder. The poet thus reproves the impious complainer of the order of Providence: You are dissatisfied with the weakness of your condition. But, in your situation, the nature of things requires just such a creature as you are: in a different situation, it might have required that you should be still weaker. And though you see not the reason of this in your own case, yet, that reasons there are, you may see in the case of other of God's creatures:

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.

Here, says the poet, the ridicule of the weeds' and the satellites' complaint, had they the faculties of speech and reasoning, would be obvious to all; because their very situation and office might have convinced them of their folly. Your folly, says the poet to his complainers, is as great, though not so evident, because the reason is more out of sight; but that a reason there is, may be demonstrated from the attributes of the Deity. This is the poet's clear and strong reasoning; from whence, we see, he was so far from saying, that man could not know the cause why Jove's satellites were less than Jove, that all the force of his reasoning turns upon this, that man did see and know it, and should from thence conclude, that there was a cause of this inferiority as well in the rational as in the material creation.

Ver. 64. _Egypt's God:_] Called so, because the god Apis was worshipped universally over the whole land of Egypt.

Ver. 87. _Who sees with equal eye, &c._] Matt. x. 29.

Ver. 93. _What future bliss, &c._] It hath been objected, that "the system of the best weakens the other natural arguments for a future state; because, if the evils which good men suffer, promote the benefit of the whole, then every thing is here in order, and nothing amiss that wants to be set right, nor has the good man any reason to expect amends, when the evils he suffered had such a tendency." To this it may be replied, 1. That the poet tells us, Ep. iv. ver. 361, that God loves from whole to parts. Therefore, if, in the beginning and progress of the moral system, the good of the whole be principally consulted, yet, on the completion of it, the good of particulars will be equally provided for. 2. The system of the best is so far from weakening those natural arguments, that it strengthens and supports them. For if those evils, to which good men are subject, be mere disorders, without any tendency to the greater good of the whole, then, though we must, indeed, conclude that they will hereafter be set right, yet this view of things, representing God as suffering disorders for no other end than to set them right, gives us too low an idea of the divine wisdom. But if those evils (according to the system of the best) contribute to the greater perfection of the whole, such a reason may be then given for their permission, as supports our idea of divine wisdom to the highest religious purposes. Then, as to the good man's hopes of retribution, these still remain in their original force: for our idea of God's justice, and how far that justice is engaged to a retribution, is exactly and invariably the same on either hypothesis. For though the system of the best supposes that the evils themselves will be fully compensated by the good they produce to the whole, yet this is so far from supposing that particulars shall suffer for a general good, that it is essential to this system, that, at the completion of things, when the whole is arrived to the state of utmost perfection, particular and universal good shall coincide;

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, &c.--Ep. iii. ver. 295.

Which coincidence can never be, without a retribution to each good man for the evils he has suffered here below.

Ver. 97. _from home,_] The construction is,--The soul, uneasy and confined, being from home, expatiates, etc. By which words, it was the poet's purpose to teach, that the present life is only a state of probation for another, more suitable to the essence of the soul, and to the free exercise of its qualities.

Ver. 110. _He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;_] The French translator, M. l'Abbé du Resnel, has turned the line thus:

Il ne désire point cette céleste flamme
Qui des purs Seraphins dévore, et nourrit l'ame.

_i.e._ The savage does not desire that heavenly flame, which at the same time that it devours the souls of pure seraphim, nourishes them. On which M. de Crousaz (who, by the assistance of a translation abounding in these absurdities, writ a Commentary on the Essay on Man, in which we find nothing but greater absurdities) remarks, "Mr. Pope, in exalting the fire of his poetry by an antithesis, throws occasionally his ridicule on those heavenly spirits. The Indian, says the poet, contents himself without any thing of that flame, which devours at the same time that it nourisheth." _Comm._ p. 77. But the poet is clear of this imputation. Nothing can be more grave or sober than his English, on this occasion; nor, I dare say, to do the translator justice, did he aim to be ridiculous. It is the sober, solid theology of the Sorbonne. Indeed, had such a writer as Mr. Pope used this school-jargon, we might have suspected he was not so serious as he should be. The reader, as he goes along, will see more of this translator's peculiarities. And the conclusion of the commentary on the fourth Epistle will show why I have been so careful to preserve them.

Ver. 131. _Ask for what end, &c._] If there be any fault in these lines, it is not in the general sentiment, but in the ill choice of instances made use of in illustrating it. It is the highest absurdity to think that earth is man's footstool, his canopy the skies, and the heavenly bodies lighted up principally for his use; yet surely, it is very excusable to suppose fruits and minerals given for this end.

Ver. 150. _Then Nature deviates; &c._] "While comets move in very eccentric orbs, in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric; some inconsiderable irregularities excepted, which may have risen from the mutual actions of comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this system wants a reformation." _Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Quæst. ult._

Ver. 155. _If plagues, &c._] What hath misled M. de Crousaz in his censure of this passage, is his supposing the comparison to be between the effects of two things in this sublunary world; when not only the elegancy, but the justness of it, consists in its being between the effects of a thing in the universe at large, and the familiar, known effects of one in this sublunary world. For the position enforced in these lines is this, that partial evil tends to the good of the whole:

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 illustrating the effects of partial moral evil in a particular system, by that of partial natural evil in the same system, and so he leaves his position in the lurch. But the poet reasons at another rate. The way to prove his point, he knew, was to illustrate the effect of partial moral evil in the universe, by partial natural evil in a particular system. Whether partial moral evil tend to the good of the universe, being a question which, by reason of our ignorance of many parts of that universe, we cannot decide but from known effects, the rules of good reasoning require that it be proved by analogy, _i.e._ setting it by, and comparing it with, a thing clear and certain; and it is a thing clear and certain, that partial natural evil tends to the good of our particular system.

Ver. 157. _Who knows but He, &c._] The sublimity with which the great Author of Nature is here characterized, is but the second beauty of this fine passage. The greatest is the making the very dispensation objected to, the periphrasis of his title.

Ver. 174. _And little less than angels, &c._] "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." Psalm viii. 5.

Ver. 202. _And stunned him, &c._] This instance is poetical, and even sublime, but misplaced. He is arguing philosophically in a case that required him to employ the real objects of sense only: and, what is worse, he speaks of this as a real object, If nature thundered, &c. The case is different where, in ver. 253, he speaks of the motion of the heavenly bodies, under the sublime conception of ruling angels: for whether there be ruling angels or no, there is real motion, which was all his argument wanted; but if there be no music of the spheres, there was no real sound, which his argument was obliged to find.

Ver. 209. _Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race,_] M. du Resnel has turned the latter part of the line thus,

Jusqu'à l'homme, ce chef, ce roi de l'univers.

"Even to man, this head, this king of the universe," which is so sad a blunder, that it contradicts the poet's peculiar system; who, although he allows man to be king of this inferior world, yet he thinks it madness to make him king of the universe. If the philosophy and argument of the poem could not teach him this, yet methinks the poet's own words, in this very Epistle, might have prevented his mistake:

So man; who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.

If the translator imagined that Mr. Pope was speaking ironically where he talks of man's imperial race, and so would heighten the ridicule of the original by _ce roi de l'univers_, the mistake is still worse; for the force of the argument depends upon its being said seriously; the poet being here speaking of a scale from the highest to the lowest in the mundane system.

Ver. 224. _For ever separate, &c._] Near, by the similitude of the operation; separate, by the immense difference in the nature of the powers.

Ver. 226. _What thin partitions, &c._] So thin, that the atheistic philosophers, as Protagoras, held that thought was only sense: and from thence concluded, that every imagination or opinion of every man was true; Πασα φαντασια εστιν αληθης. But the poet determines more philosophically that they are really and essentially different, how thin soever the partition be by which they are divided. Thus (to illustrate the truth of this observation) when a geometer considers a triangle, in order to demonstrate the equality of its three angles to two right ones, he has the picture or image of some sensible triangle in his mind, which is sense; yet, notwithstanding, he must needs have the notion or idea of an intellectual triangle likewise, which is thought; for this plain reason, because every image or picture of a triangle must needs be obtusangular, or rectangular, or acutangular; but that which, in his mind, is the subject of his proposition, is the ratio of a triangle, undetermined to any of these species. On this account it was that Aristotle said, Νοηματα τινι διοισει, του μη φαντασματα ειναι, η ουδε ταυτα φαντασματα, αλλ' ουκ ανευ φαντασματων. "The conceptions of the mind differ somewhat from sensible images; they are not sensible images, and yet not quite free or disengaged from sensible images."

Ver. 243. _Or in the full creation leave a void, &c._] This is only an illustrating allusion to the Aristotelian doctrines of _plenum_ and _vacuum_, the full and void here meant relating not to matter but to life.

Ver. 247. _And if each system in gradation roll,_] Alluding to the motion of the planetary bodies of each system, and to the figures described by that motion.

Ver. 251. _Let earth unbalanced_] _i.e._ Being no longer kept within its orbit by the different directions of its progressive and attractive motions,--which, like equal weights in a balance, keep it in an equilibre.

Ver. 253. _Let ruling angels, &c._] The poet, throughout this work, has, with great art, used an advantage which his employing a Platonic principle for the foundation of his Essay, had afforded him; and that is, the expressing himself, as here, in Platonic language, which, luckily for his purpose, is highly poetical, at the same time that it adds a grace to the uniformity of his reasoning.

Ver. 259. _What if the foot, &c._] This fine illustration in defence of the system of nature, is taken from St. Paul, who employed it to defend the system of grace.

Ver. 266. _The great directing_ MIND, _&c._] "Veneramur autem et colimus ob dominium. Deus enim sine dominio, providentiâ, et causis finalibus, nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura." _Newtoni Princip. Schol. gener. sub finem._

Ver. 268. _Whose body nature is, &c._] M. de Crousaz remarks, on this line, that "A Spinozist would express himself in this manner." I believe he would; for so the infamous Toland has done, in his atheist's liturgy, called Pantheisticon. But so would St. Paul likewise, who, writing on this subject, the omnipresence of God in his Providence, and in his Substance, says, in the words of a pantheistical Greek poet, _In him we live, and move, and have our being_; _i.e._ we are parts of him, _his offspring_: And the reason is, because a religious theist and an impious pantheist both profess to believe the omnipresence of God. But would Spinoza, as Mr. Pope does, call God the great directing mind of all, who hath intentionally created a perfect universe? Or would a Spinozist have told us,

The workman from the work distinct was known?

a line that overturns all Spinozism from its very foundations. But this sublime description of the Godhead contains not only the divinity of St. Paul; but, if that will not satisfy the men he writes against, the philosophy likewise of Sir Isaac Newton. The poet says,

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul; &c.

The philosopher:--"In ipso continentur et moventur universa, sed absque mutuâ passione. Deus nihil patitur ex corporum motibus; illa nullam sentiunt resistentiam ex omnipræsentiâ Dei.--Corpore omni et figurâ corporeâ destituitur.--Omnia regit et omnia cognoscit.--Cum unaquæque spatii, particula sit semper, et unumquodque durationis indivisibile momentum, ubique certe rerum omnium Fabricator ac Dominus non erit nunquam, nusquam."

Mr. Pope:

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.

Sir Isaac Newton:--"Annon ex phænomenis constat esse entem incorporeum, viventem, intelligentem, omnipræsentem, qui in spatio infinito, tanquam sensorio suo, res ipsas intime cernat, penitusque perspiciat, totasque intra se præsens præsentes complectatur?"

But now, admitting there were an ambiguity in these expressions, so great that a Spinozist might employ them to express his own particular principles; and such a thing might well be, because the Spinozists, in order to hide the impiety of their principle, are wont to express the omnipresence of God in terms that any religious theist might employ; in this case, I say, how are we to judge of the poet's meaning? Surely by the whole tenor of his argument. Now, take the words in the sense of the Spinozists, and he is made, in the conclusion of the epistle, to overthrow all he had been advancing throughout the body of it: for Spinozism is the destruction of an universe, where every thing tends, by a foreseen contrivance in all its parts, to the perfection of the whole. But allow him to employ the passage in the sense of St. Paul, That we, and all creatures, live, and move, and have our being in God; and then it will be seen to be the most logical support of all that had preceded. For the poet, having, as we say, laboured through his epistle to prove, that every thing in the universe tends, by a foreseen contrivance, and a present direction of all its parts, to the perfection of the whole, it might be objected, that such a disposition of things, implying in God a painful, operose, and inconceivable extent of Providence, it could not be supposed that such care extended to all, but was confined to the more noble parts of the creation. This gross conception of the First Cause the poet exposes, by showing that God is equally and intimately present to every particle of matter, to every sort of substance, and in every instant of being.

Ver. 277. _As full, as perfect, &c._] Which M. du Resnel translates thus,

Dans un homme ignoré sous une humble chaumière,
Que dans le séraphin, rayonnant de lumière.

_i.e._ "As well in the ignorant man, who inhabits a humble cottage, as in the seraph encompassed with rays of light." The translator, in good earnest thought, that a vile man that mourned could be no other than some poor country cottager. Which has betrayed M. de Crousaz into this important remark: "For all that, we sometimes find in persons of the lowest rank, a fund of probity and resignation which preserves them from contempt; their minds are, indeed, but narrow, yet fitted to their station," &c. _Comm._ p. 120. But Mr. Pope had no such childish idea in his head. He was here opposing the human species to the angelic; and so spoke of the first, when compared to the latter, as vile and disconsolate. The force and beauty of the reflection depend upon this sense; and, what is more, the propriety of it.

Ver. 278. _As the rapt seraph, &c._] Alluding to the name seraphim, signifying burners.

Ver. 294. _One truth is clear, whatever is, is right._] It will be difficult to think any caviller should have objected to this conclusion; especially when the author, in this very epistle, has himself thus explained it:

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.

But without any regard to the evidence of this illustration, M. de Crousaz exclaims: "See the general conclusion, All that is, is right. So that at the sight of Charles the First losing his head on the scaffold, we must have said, this is right; at the sight too of his judges condemning him, we must have said, this is right; at the sight of some of these judges, taken and condemned for the action which he had owned to be right, we must have cried out, this is doubly right." Never was any thing more amazing than that the absurdities arising from the sense in which this critic takes the great principle, of whatever is, is right, did not show him his mistake. For could any one in his senses employ a proposition in a meaning from whence such evident absurdities immediately arise? I have observed, that this conclusion, whatever is, is right, is a consequence of these premises, that partial evil tends to universal good; which the author employs as a principle to humble the pride of man, who would impiously make God accountable for his creation. What then does common sense teach us to understand by whatever is, is right? Did the poet mean right with regard to man, or right with regard to God; right with regard to itself, or right with regard to its ultimate tendency? Surely with regard to God; for he tells us his design is to vindicate the ways of God to man. Surely with regard to its ultimate tendency; for he tells us again, all partial ill is universal good. Ver. 291. Now is this any encouragement to vice? Or does it take off from the crime of him who commits it, that God providentially produces good out of evil? Had Mr. Pope abruptly said in his conclusion, the result of all is, that whatever is, is right, the objector had even then been inexcusable for putting so absurd a sense upon the words, when he might have seen that it was a conclusion from the general principle above-mentioned; and therefore must necessarily have another meaning. But what must we think of him, when the poet, to prevent mistakes, had delivered, in this very place, the principle itself, together with this conclusion as the consequence of it?

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.

He could not have told his reader plainer that his conclusion was the consequence of that principle, unless he had written therefore in great church letters.

NOTES ON EPISTLE II.

Ver. 3. _Placed on this isthmus, &c._] As the poet hath given us this sublime description of man for the very contrary purpose to what sceptics are wont to employ such kind of paintings, namely, not to deter men from the search, but to excite them to the discovery of truth; he hath, with great judgment, represented men as doubting and wavering between the right and wrong object; from which state it is allowable to hope he may be relieved by a careful and circumspect use of reason. On the contrary, had he supposed man so blind as to be busied in choosing, or doubtful in his choice, between two objects equally wrong, the case had appeared desperate, and all study of man had been effectually discouraged. But M. du Resnel, not seeing the reason and beauty of this conduct, hath run into the very absurdity, which I have here shown Mr. Pope so artfully avoided. Of which the learned reader may take the following proofs. The poet says,

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 thought; and, to this their principle, the latter word alludes, whose virtue, as he says afterwards, is

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 condamné?
Aux douceurs du répos seroit-il destiné?

and these are both wrong, for man is neither condemned to slavish toil and labour, nor yet indulged in the luxury of repose. The poet says,

In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast.

_i.e._ He doubts, as appears from the very next line, whether his soul be mortal or immortal; one of which is the truth, namely, its 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.

The translator, as we say, unconscious of the poet's purpose, rambles as before:

Tantôt de son esprit admirant l'excellence,
Il pense qu'il est Dieu, qu'il en a la puissance;
Et tantôt gémissant des besoins de son corps,
Il croit que de la brute, il n'a que les ressorts.

Here his head, turned to a sceptical view, was running on the different extravagances of Plato in his theology, and of Descartes in his physiology. Sometimes, says he, man believes himself a real God; and sometimes again, a mere machine: things quite out of the poet's thought in this place. Again, the poet, in a beautiful allusion to Scripture sentiments, breaks out into this just and moral reflection on man's condition here,

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 né, qu'il respire;
Et toute sa raison n'est presque qu'un délire.

and so make his author directly contradict himself, where he says of man, that he hath

Too much knowledge for the sceptic side.

Ver. 10. _Born but to die, &c._] The author's meaning is, that as we are born to die, and yet do enjoy some small portion of life, so, though we reason to err, yet we comprehend some few truths. This is the weak state of reason, in which error mixes itself with all its true conclusions concerning man's nature.

Ver. 11. _Alike in ignorance, &c._] _i.e._ The proper sphere of his reason is so narrow, and the exercise of it so nice, that the too immoderate use of it is attended with the same ignorance that proceeds from the not using it at all. Yet though, in both these cases, he is abused by himself, he has it still in his own power to disabuse himself, in making his passions subservient to the means, and regulating his reason by the end of life.

Ver. 12. _Whether he thinks too little or too much:_] It is so true, that ignorance arises as well from pushing our inquiries too far, as from not carrying them far enough, that we may observe, when speculations, even in science, are carried beyond a certain point,--that point where use is reasonably supposed to end, and mere curiosity to begin,--they conclude in the most extravagant and senseless inferences, such as the unreality of matter; the reality of space; the servility of the will, &c. The cause of this sudden fall out of full light into utter darkness, seems not to arise from the natural condition of things, but to be the arbitrary decree of infinite wisdom and goodness, which imposed a barrier to the extravagances of its giddy, lawless creature, always inclined to pursue truths of less importance too far, and to neglect those which are more necessary for his improvement in his station here.

Ver. 17. _Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurled:_] Some have imagined that the author, by, in endless error hurled, meant, cast into endless error, or into the regions of endless error, and therefore have taken notice of it as an incongruity of speech. But they neither understood the poet's language, nor his sense. To hurl and cast are not synonymous; but related only as the genus and species; for to hurl signifies not simply to cast, but to cast backward and forward, and is taken from the rural game called hurling. So that, into endless error hurled, as these critics would have it, would have been a barbarism. His words therefore signify tossed about in endless error; and this he intended they should signify, as appears from the antithesis, sole judge of truth. So that the sense of the whole is, "Though, as sole judge of truth, he is now fixed and stable; yet, as involved in endless error, he is now again hurled, or tossed up and down in it." This shows us how cautious we ought to be in censuring the expressions of a writer, one of whose characteristic qualities was correctness of expression and propriety of sentiment.

Ver. 20. _Go, measure earth, &c._] Alluding to the noble and useful labours of the modern mathematicians, in measuring a degree at the equator and the polar circle, in order to determine the true figure of the earth; of great importance to astronomy and navigation; and which proved of equal honour to the wonderful sagacity of Newton.

Ver. 22. _Correct old Time, &c._] This alludes to Newton's Grecian Chronology, which he reformed on those two sublime conceptions, the difference between the reigns of kings, and the generations of men; and the position of the colures of the equinoxes and solstices at the time of the Argonautic expedition.

Ver. 29, 30. _Go, teach Eternal Wisdom, &c._] These two lines are a conclusion from all that had been said from ver. 18 to this effect: "Go now, vain man, elated with thy acquirements in real science, and imaginary intimacy with God; go, and run into all the extravagances I have exploded in the first Epistle, where thou pretendest to teach Providence how to govern; then drop into the obscurities of thy own nature, and thereby manifest thy ignorance and folly."

Ver. 31. _Superior beings, &c._] In these lines the poet speaks to this effect: "But to make you fully sensible of the difficulty of this study, I shall instance in the great Newton himself, whom, when superior beings, not long since, saw capable of unfolding the whole law of nature, they were in doubt whether the owner of such prodigious sagacity should not be reckoned of their order, just as men, when they see the surprising marks of reason in an ape, are almost tempted to rank him with their own kind." And yet this wondrous man could go no further in the knowledge of himself than the generality of his species. M. du Resnel, who understood nothing of all this, translates these four celebrated lines thus:

Des célestes esprits la vive intelligence
Regarde avec pitié notre foible science;
Newton, le grand Newton, que nous admirons tous,
Est peut-être pour eux, ce qu'un singe est pour nous.

But it is not the pity, but the admiration of the celestial spirits which is here spoken of. And it was for no slight cause they admired; it was, to see a mortal man unfold the whole law of nature. By which we see it was not Mr. Pope's intention to bring any of the ape's qualities, but its sagacity, into the comparison. But why the ape's, it may be said, rather than the sagacity of some more decent animal, particularly the half-reasoning elephant, as the poet calls it; which, as well on account of this its excellence, as for its having no ridiculous side, like the ape, on which it could be viewed, seems better to have deserved this honour? I reply, because, as a shape resembling human (which only the ape has) must be joined with great sagacity, to raise a suspicion that the animal, thus endowed, is related to man, so the spirituality, which Newton had in common with angels, joined to a penetration superior to man, made those beings suspect he might be one of their order. On this ground of relation, we see the whole beauty of the thought depends. And here let me take notice of a new species of the sublime, of which our poet may be justly said to be the maker; so new, that we have yet no name for it, though of a nature distinct from every other known beauty of poetry. The two great perfections in works of genius are wit and sublimity. Many writers have been witty; some have been sublime; and a few have even possessed both these qualities separately. But none, that I know of, besides our poet, hath had the art to incorporate them; of which he hath given many examples, both in this Essay, and his other poems; one of the noblest being the passage in question. This seems to be the last effort of the imagination to poetical perfection; and in this compounded excellence, the wit receives a dignity from the sublime, and the sublime a splendour from the wit, which, in their state of separate existence, they neither of them had. Yet a late critic, who writes with the decision of a Lord of Session on Parnassus, thinks otherwise: "It may be gathered," says he, "from what is said above, that wit and ridicule make not an agreeable mixture with grandeur. Dissimilar emotions have a fine effect in a slow succession; but in a rapid succession which approaches to co-existence, they will not be relished."[1595] What pity is it, that the poet should here confute the critic, by doing what the critic, with his rules, teaches us cannot be done. Boileau, who was both poet and critic, had a clear view of this excellence in idea; while the mere critic had no idea of what had been clearly set before his eyes.

On peut être à la fois et pompeux et plaisant;
Et je haïs un sublime ennuyeux et pesant.

Ver. 37. _Who saw its fires here rise, &c._] Sir Isaac Newton, in calculating the velocity of a comet's motion, and the course it describes, when it becomes visible in its descent to, and ascent from, the sun, conjectured, with the highest appearance of truth, that comets revolve perpetually round the sun, in ellipses vastly eccentrical, and very nearly approaching to parabolas. In which he was greatly confirmed, in observing between two comets a coincidence in their perihelions, and a perfect agreement in their velocities.

Ver. 45. _vanity, or dress,_] These are the first parts of what the poet, in the preceding line, calls the scholar's equipage of pride. By vanity, is meant that luxuriancy of thought and expression in which a writer indulges himself, to show the fruitfulness of his fancy or invention. By dress, is to be understood a lower degree of that practice, in amplification of thought and ornamental expression, to give force to what the writer would convey: but even this, the poet, in a severe search after truth, condemns; and with great judgment, conciseness of thought, and simplicity of expression, being as well the best instruments, as the best vehicles of truth. Shakespeare touches upon this latter advantage with great force and humour. The flatterer says to Timon in distress, "I cannot cover the monstrous bulk of their ingratitude with any size of words." The other replies, "Let it go naked; men may see't the better."

Ver. 46. _Or learning's luxury, or idleness;_] The luxury of learning consists in dressing up and disguising old notions in a new way, so as to make them more fashionable and palatable; instead of examining and scrutinizing their truth. As this is often done for pomp and show, it is called luxury; as it is often done too to save pains and labour, it is called idleness.

Ver. 47. _Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,_] Such as the mathematical demonstration concerning the small quantity of matter; the endless divisibility of it, &c.

Ver. 48. _Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;_] _i.e._ when admiration has set the mind on the rack.

Ver. 49. _Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;_]

_i.e._ Those parts of Natural Philosophy, Logic, Rhetoric, Poetry, &c., which administer to luxury, deceit, ambition, effeminacy, &c.

Ver. 74. _Reason, the future, &c._] _i.e._ by experience, reason collects the future; and by argumentation, the consequence.

Ver. 109. _Nor God alone, &c._

The translator turns it thus:

Dieu lui-même, Dieu sort de son profond repos.

And so, makes an epicurean God, of the Governor of the universe. M. de Crousaz does not spare this expression of God's coming out of his profound repose. "It is," says he, "excessively poetical, and presents us with ideas which we ought not to dwell upon," &c. and then, as usual, blames the author for the blunder of his translator. _Comm._ p. 158.

Ver. 109. _Nor God alone, &c._] These words are only a simple affirmation in the poetic dress of a similitude, to this purpose: "Good is not only produced by the subdual of the passions, but by the turbulent exercise of them,"--a truth conveyed under the most sublime imagery that poetry could conceive or paint. For the author is here only showing the providential issue of the passions, and how, by God's gracious disposition, they are turned away from their natural destructive bias, to promote the happiness of mankind. As to the method in which they are to be treated by man, in whom they are found, all that he contends for, in favour of them, is only this, that they should not be quite rooted up and destroyed, as the stoics, and their followers, in all religions, foolishly attempted. For the rest, he constantly repeats this advice,

The action of the stronger to suspend,
Reason still use, to reason still attend.

Ver. 133. _As man, perhaps, &c._] "Antipater Sidonius Poeta omnibus annis uno die natali tantum corripiebatur febre, et eo consumptus est satis longâ senectâ." _Plin._ 1. vii. _N. H._ This Antipater was in the times of Crassus, and is celebrated for the quickness of his parts by Cicero.

Ver. 147. _Reason itself, &c._] The Poet, in some other of his epistles, gives examples of the doctrines and precepts here delivered. Thus, in that Of the Use of Riches, he has illustrated this truth in the 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.

Ver. 149. _We, wretched subjects, &c._] St. Paul himself did not choose to employ other arguments, when disposed to give us the highest idea of the usefulness of christianity (Rom. vii.) But it may be, the poet finds a remedy in natural religion. Far from it. He here leaves reason unrelieved. What is this, then, but an intimation that we ought to seek for a cure in that religion, which only dares profess to give it?

Ver. 163. _'Tis hers to rectify, &c._] The meaning of this precept is, That as the ruling passion is implanted by nature, it is reason's office to regulate, direct, and restrain, but not to overthrow it. To reform the passion of avarice, for instance, into a parsimonious dispensation of the public revenues: to direct the passion of love, whose object is worth and beauty,

To the first good, first perfect, and first fair,

the το καλον τ' αγαθον, as his master Plato advises; and to restrain spleen to a contempt and hatred of vice. This is what the poet meant, and what every unprejudiced man could not but see he must needs mean, by rectifying the master passion, though he had not confined us to this sense, in the reason he gives of his precept in these words:

A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends,
And several men impels to several ends;

for what ends are they which God impels to, but the ends of virtue?

Ver. 175. _Th' eternal art, &c._] The author has, throughout these epistles, explained his meaning to be that vice is, in its own nature, the greatest of evils, and produced through the abuse of man's free will:

What makes all physical and moral ill?
There deviates nature, and here wanders will:

but that God in his infinite goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity to the advancement of human happiness. A doctrine very different from the Fable of the Bees, which impiously and foolishly supposes it to have that natural tendency.

Ver. 204. _The god within the mind._] A Platonic phrase for conscience; and here employed with great judgment and propriety. For conscience either signifies, speculatively, the judgment we pass of things upon whatever principles we chance to have, and then it is only opinion, a very unable judge and divider; or else it signifies, practically, the application of the eternal rule of right (received by us as the law of God) to the regulation of our actions; and then it is properly conscience, the god (or the law of God) within the mind, of power to divide the light from the darkness in this Chaos of the passions.

Ver. 253. _Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, &c._]

As these lines have been misunderstood, I shall give the reader their plain and obvious meaning. To these frailties, says he, we owe all the endearments of private life; yet when we come to that age, which generally disposes men to think more seriously of the true value of things, and consequently of their provision for a future state, the consideration, that the grounds of those joys, loves, and friendships, are wants, frailties, and passions, proves the best expedient to wean us from the world; a disengagement so friendly to that provision we are now making for another state. The observation is new, and would in any place be extremely beautiful, but has here an infinite grace and propriety, as it so well confirms, by an instance of great moment, the general thesis, that God makes ill, at every step, productive of good.

Ver. 270. _the poet in his muse._] The author having said, that no one could change his own profession or views for those of another, intended to carry his observations still further, and show that men were unwilling to exchange their own acquirements even for those of the same kind, confessedly larger, and infinitely more eminent in another. To this end he wrote,

What partly pleases, totally will shock:
I question much, if Toland would be Locke.

But wanting another proper instance of this truth, he reserved the lines above for some following edition of this Essay, which he did not live to give.

Ver. 280. _And beads and pray'r-books are the toys of age:_] A satire on what is called, in popery, the _Opus operatum_. As this is a description of the circle of human life returning into itself by a second childhood, the poet has with great elegance concluded his description with the same image with which he set out, "And life's poor play is o'er."

Ver. 286. _And each vacuity of sense by pride:_] An eminent casuist, Father Francis Garasse, in his Somme Théologique, has drawn a very charitable conclusion from this principle, which he hath well illustrated: "Selon la justice," says this equitable divine, "tout travail honnête doit être recompensé de louange ou de satisfaction. Quand les bons esprits font un ouvrage excellent, ils sont justement recompensés par les suffrages du public. Quand un pauvre esprit travaille beaucoup, pour faire un mauvais ouvrage, il n'est pas juste ni raisonnable, qu'il attende des louanges publiques; car elles ne lui sont pas dues. Mais afin que ses travaux ne demeurent pas sans recompense, Dieu lui donne une satisfaction personelle, que personne ne lui peut envier sans une injustice plus que barbare; tout ainsi que Dieu, qui est juste, donne de la satisfaction aux grenouilles de leur chant. Autrement la blâme public, joint à leur mécontentement, seroit suffisant pour les réduire au désespoir."

NOTES ON EPISTLE III.

Ver. 3. _superfluous health,_] Immoderate labour and immoderate study are equally the impairers of health. They whose station sets them above both, must needs have an abundance of it, which not being employed in the common service, but wasted in luxury and folly, the post properly calls a superfluity.

Ver. 4. _impudence of wealth,_] Because wealth pretends to be wisdom, wit, learning, honesty, and, in short, all the virtues in their turns.

Ver. 3-6.] M. du Resnel, not seeing into the admirable purpose of the caution contained in these four lines, hath quite dropped the most material circumstances contained in the last of them; and what is worse, for the sake of a foolish antithesis, hath destroyed the whole propriety of the thought in the two first; and so, between both, hath left his author neither sense nor system.

Dans le sein du bonheur, ou de l'adversité.

Now, of all men, those in adversity have least needs of this caution, as being least apt to forget, that God consults the good of the whole, and provides for it by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants; it being seen that such who yet retain the smart of any fresh calamity, are most compassionate to others labouring under distresses, and most prompt and ready to relieve them.

Ver. 9. _See plastic nature, &c._] M. du Resnel mistook this description of the preservation of the material universe, by the quality of attraction, for a description of its creation; and so translates it

Vois du sein du Chaos éclater la lumière,
Chaque atome ébranlé courir pour s'embrasser, &c.

This destroys the poet's fine analogical argument, by which he proves, from the circumstance of mutual attraction in matter, that man, while he seeks society, and thereby promotes the good of his species, co-operates with God's general dispensation; whereas the circumstance of a creation proves nothing but a Creator.

Ver. 12. _Formed and impelled, &c._] Formed and impelled are not words of a loose, undistinguishable meaning thrown in to fill up the verse. This is not our author's way; they are full of sense, and of the most philosophical precision. For to make matter so cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts is as necessary as that quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our author says formed; and to express the latter, impelled.

Ver. 19, 20. _Like bubbles, &c._] M. du Resnel translates these two lines thus:

Sort du néant, y rentre, et reparoit au jour.

He is here, indeed, consistently wrong: for having, as we said, mistaken the poet's account of the preservation of matter for the creation of it, he commits the very same mistake with regard to the vegetable and animal systems; and so talks now, though with the latest, of the production of things out of nothing. Indeed, by his speaking of their returning into nothing, he has subjected his author to M. de Crousaz's censure: "Mr. Pope descends to the most vulgar prejudices, when he tells us that each being returns to nothing: the vulgar think that what disappears is annihilated," &c. _Comm._ p. 221.

Ver. 22. _One all-extending, all-preserving soul,_] Which, in the language of Sir Isaac Newton, is "Deus omnipræsens est, non per virtutem solam, sed etiam per substantiam: nam virtus sine substantiâ subsistere non potest." _Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. sub fin._

Ver. 23. _greatest with the least;_] As acting more strongly and immediately in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man say, with great elegance, "Deus est anima brutorum:"

In this 'tis God directs.

Ver. 45. _See all things for my use!_] On the contrary, the wise man hath said, "The Lord hath made all things for himself." Prov. xvi. 4.

Ver. 50. _Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole:_] Alluding to the witty system of that philosopher,[1596] which made animals mere machines, insensible of pain or pleasure; and so encouraged men in the exercise of that tyranny over their fellow-creatures, consequent on such a principle.

Ver. 152. _Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade;_] The poet still takes his imagery from Platonic ideas, for the reason given above. Plato had said, from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beasts. Moral instructors took advantage of the popular sense of this tradition, to convey their precepts under those fables which gave speech to the whole brute creation. The naturalists understood the tradition in the contrary sense, to signify, that, in the first ages, men used inarticulate sounds, like beasts, to express their wants and sensations; and that it was by slow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic., and Gregory of Nyss.

Ver. 156. _All vocal beings, &c._] This may be well explained by a sublime passage of the Psalmist, who, calling to mind the age of 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;

breaks out into this rapturous and divine apostrophe, to call back the devious creation to its pristine rectitude; that very state our author describes above: "Praise the Lord, all his angels; praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light," &c. Psalm cxlviii.

Ver. 158. _Unbribed, unbloody, &c._] _i.e._ the state described from ver. 263 to 269 was not yet arrived. For then, when superstition was become so extreme as to bribe the gods with human sacrifices, tyranny became necessitated to woo the priest for a favourable answer.

Ver. 159. _Heav'n's attribute, &c._] The poet supposeth the truth of the Scripture account, that man was created lord of this inferior world (Ep. i. ver. 230).

Subjected these to those, and all to thee.

What hath misled some to imagine that our author hath here fallen into a contradiction, was, I suppose, such passages as these, "Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine," &c.; and again, "Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good," &c. But, in truth, this is so far from contradicting what he had said of man's prerogative, that it greatly confirms it, and the Scripture account concerning it. And because the licentious manner in which this subject has been treated, has made some readers jealous and mistrustful of the author's sober meaning, I shall endeavour to explain it. Scripture says, that man was made lord of this sublunary world. But intoxicated with pride, the common effect of sovereignty, he erected himself, like little partial monarchs, into a tyrant. And as tyranny consists in supposing all made for the use of one, he took those freedoms with all, which are the consequence of such a principle. He soon began to consider the whole animal creation as his slaves rather than his subjects, as created for no use of their own, but for his use only, and therefore treated them with the utmost cruelty; and not content, to add insult to his cruelty, he endeavoured to philosophize himself into an opinion that these animals were mere machines, insensible of pain or pleasure. Thus man affected to be the wit as well as tyrant of the whole. So that it became one who adhered to the Scripture account of man's dominion to reprove this abuse of it, and to show that

Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.

Ver. 171. _Thus then to man, &c._]

M. du Resnel has translated the lines thus:

La nature indignée alors se fit entendre;
Va, malheureux mortel, va, lui dit-elle, apprendre;

One would wonder what should make the translator represent nature in such a passion with man, and calling him names, at a time when Mr. Pope supposed her in her best good-humour. But what led him into this mistake was another as gross. His author having described the state of innocence which ends at these lines,

Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare,

turns from those times, to a view of these latter ages, and breaks out into this tender and humane complaint,

Ah! how unlike the man of times to come,
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb, &c.

Unluckily, M. du Resnel took this man of times to come for the corrupter of that first age, and so imagined the poet had introduced nature only to set things right: he then supposed, of course, she was to be very angry; and not finding the author had represented her in any great emotion, he was willing to improve upon his original.

Ver. 174. _Learn from the beasts, &c._] See Pliny's _Nat. Hist._ 1. viii. c. 27, where several instances are given of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs, by their own use of them; and pointing out to some operations in the art of healing, by their own practice.

Ver. 199. _observant men obeyed;_] The epithet is beautiful, as signifying both obedience to the voice of nature, and attention to the lessons of the animal creation. But M. l'Abbé, who has a strange fatality of contradicting his original, whenever he attempts to paraphrase, as he calls it, the sense, turns the lines in this manner:

Par ces mots la nature excita l'industrie,
Et de l'homme féroce enchaina la furie.

"Chained up the fury of savage man"; and so contradicts the author's whole system of benevolence, and goes over to the atheist's, who supposes the state of nature to be a state of war. What seems to have misled him was these lines:

What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend who came a foe.

But M. du Resnel should have considered, that though the author holds a state of nature to be a state of peace, yet he never imagined it impossible that there should be quarrels in it. He had said,

So drives self-love through just and through unjust.