Chapter XXXII: Appendix (8)

[672] Heloisa to Abelard: "God has a peculiar right over the hearts of great men. When he pleases to touch them he ravishes them, and lets them not speak nor breathe but for his glory."

[673] Heloisa to Abelard: "Yes, Abelard, I conjure you teach me the maxims of divine love. Oh! for pity's sake help a wretch to renounce her desires, herself, and, if it be possible, even to renounce you."

[674] Heloisa to Abelard: "When I shall have told you what rival hath ravished my heart from you, you will praise my inconstancy, and will pray this rival to fix it. By this you may judge that it is God alone that takes Heloise from you. What other rival could take me from you? Could you think me guilty of sacrificing the virtuous and learned Abelard to any other but God?"

[675] Horace, Epist. Lib. i. xi. 9:

Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.

My friends forgetting, by my friends forgot.--WAKEFIELD.

[676] Taken from Crashaw.--POPE.

Wakefield gives the complete couplet from Crashaw's Description of a religious House:

A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;
Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.

[677] The idea of the "wings of seraphs shedding perfumes" is from Milton, Par. Lost, v. 286, where Raphael "shakes heavenly fragrance" from "his plumes," and Dryden in his Tyrannic Love, Act v., mentions the perfumes, the spousals, and the celestial music as accompaniments of the death of St. Catherine:

Æthereal 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.

[678] Adapted from Dryden's Britannia Redivivus:

As star-light is dissolved away
And melts into the brightness of the day.

[679] Dryden's Cinyras and Myrrha, translated from Ovid:

For guilty pleasure gives a double gust.

[680] Heloisa to Abelard: "I will own to you what makes the greatest pleasure I have in my retirement. After having passed the day in thinking of you, full of the dear idea I give myself up at night to sleep. Then it is that Heloise, who dares not without trembling think of you by day, resigns herself entirely to the pleasure of hearing you, and speaking to you. I see you Abelard, and glut my eyes with the sight. Sometimes forgetting the perpetual obstacles to our desires, you press me to make you happy, and I easily yield to your transports. Sleep gives me what your enemies' rage has deprived you of, and our souls, animated with the same passion, are sensible of the same pleasure. But, oh, you delightful illusions, soft errors, how soon do you vanish away! At my awaking I open my eyes, and see no Abelard; I stretch out my arms to take hold of him, but he is not there; I call upon him, he hears me not."

[681] Dryden, Æneis, 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.

[682] The writer in the Gentleman's Magazine quotes the same expression from Steele's Miscellanies:

No more severely kind affect to put
That lovely anger on.

[683] Heloisa to Abelard: "You are happy, Abelard, and your misfortunes have been the occasion of your finding rest. The punishment of your body has cured the deadly wounds of your soul. I am a thousand times more to be lamented than you; I must resist those fires which love kindles in a young heart."

[684] Dryden's Ovid, Met. i.:

Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.--WAKEFIELD.

[685] 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.

[686] Heloisa to Abelard: "When we love pleasures we love the living and not the dead." In all editions till that of 1736 this couplet followed:

Cut from the root my perished joys I see,
And love's warm tide for ever stopped in thee.

[687] Hudibras, Part ii. Canto i. 309:

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.

[688] Heloisa to Abelard: "Whatever endeavours I use, on whatever side I turn me, the sweet idea still pursues me, and every object brings to my mind what I ought to forget. Even into holy places before the altar, I carry with me the memory of our guilty loves. They are my whole business."

[689] Abelard to Heloisa: "In spite of severe fasts your image appears to me, and confounds all my resolutions."

[690] Sedley's verses on Don Alonzo:

The gentle nymph,
Drops tears with every bead.--WAKEFIELD.

The force of the line is, however, in the phrase "too soft" which Pope has added. "With every bead I drop a tear of tender love instead of a tear of bitter repentance."

[691] Smith's Phædra and Hippolytus, Act i.:

All the idle pomp,
Priests, altars, victims swam before my sight.--STEEVENS.

[692] How finely does this glowing imagery introduce the transition,

While prostrate here, &c.--BOWLES.

[693] The whole of this paragraph is from Abelard's letter to Heloisa:

"I am a miserable sinner prostrate before my judge, and with my face pressed to the earth I mix my tears and sighs in the dust when the beams of grace and reason enlighten me. Come, see me in this posture and solicit me to love you! Come, if you think fit, and in your holy habit thrust yourself between God and me, and be a wall of separation! Come and force from me those sighs, thoughts, and vows which I owe to him only! Assist the evil spirits and be the instrument of their malice! But rather withdraw yourself and contribute to my salvation."

[694] Abelard to Heloisa: "Let me remove far from you, and obey the apostle who hath said, fly."

[695] Wakefield quotes the lines of Hopkins to a lady, where, speaking of her beauties, he entreats that she will

Drive 'em somewhere, as far as pole from pole;
Let winds between us rage, and waters roll.

[696] Abelard to Heloisa: "It will always be the highest love to show none: I here release you of all your oaths and engagements to me."

[697] The combination "heavenly-fair" is also found in Sandys, Congreve, and Tickell.--WAKEFIELD.

[698] "Low-thoughted care" is from Milton's Comus.--WARTON.

[699] This resembles a passage in Crashaw:

Fair hope! our earlier heaven.--WAKEFIELD.

[700] "It should," says Mr. Mills, "be _near_ her cell. The doors of all cells open into the common cloister. In that cloister are often tombs." Steevens adds the frivolous objection that the "Paraclete had been too recently founded for monuments of the dead to be expected there." Heloisa had been five years abbess when she wrote her first letter to Abelard, and it is certainly not an extravagant supposition that a death might have occurred among the nuns in that space of time.

[701] 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.

[702] 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.

Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act iv. Sc. 4:

Hark! you are called: some say, the Genius so
Cries, "Come!" to him that instantly must die.

[703] Pope owes much throughout this poem to the character of Dido as drawn by Virgil, and this passage seems directly formed upon one in Dryden, Æn. iv. 667:

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.

The imitation of the passage in Ovid, Epist. vii. 101, similar to this from Virgil, is still more palpable:

Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari:
Ipse sono tenui dixit, "Elissa, veni!"
Nulla mora est; venio; venio, tibi debita conjux.--WAKEFIELD.

[704] It is well contrived that this invisible speaker should be a person that had been under the very same kind of misfortunes with Eloisa.--WARTON.

[705] Dryden's version of the latter part of the third book of Lucretius:

But all is there serene in that eternal sleep.--WAKEFIELD.

[706] In the first edition:

I come ye ghosts.--WAKEFIELD.

[707] Ogilby, Virg. Æn. xi.:

And to the dead our last sad duties pay.

Dryden, Æn. xi. 322:

Perform the last sad office to the slain.--WAKEFIELD.

[708] 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.

[709] 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.

Dryden's Virg. Æn. iv. 984:

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.

[710] 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.

[711] Dryden Æn., xi. 1194:

And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies.

[712] Abelard to Heloisa: "You shall see me to strengthen your piety by the horror of this carcase, and my death, then more eloquent than I can be, will tell you what you love when you love a man."

[713] Spenser, Faerie Queen, i. 4, 45:

Cause of my new grief, cause of new joy.--WAKEFIELD.

[714] Abelard and Eloisa were interred in the same grave, or in monuments adjoining, in the monastery of the Paraclete. He died in the year 1142, she in 1163 [4].--POPE.

Abelard and Heloisa are said to have been both sixty-three when they died. They were buried in the same crypt, but it was not till 1630, or near five hundred years after the death of Heloisa, that their remains were consigned to the same grave. Then their bones are reported to have been put into a double coffin, divided by a partition of lead. They subsequently underwent various disinterments and removals, till in 1817 the alleged relics were transferred to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, at Paris, and have not since been disturbed.

[715] Dryden, in his translation of Canace to Macareus:

I restrained my cries
And drunk the tears that trickled from my eyes.--WAKEFIELD.

[716] Milton, Il Penseroso:

There let the pealing organ blow
To the full-voiced choir below.

[717] "Dreadful sacrifice" is the ritual term. So in the History of Loretto, 1608, ch. 20, p. 278, "The priest, as the use is, assisted the cardinal in the time of the dreadful sacrifice."--STEEVENS.

[718] Warton says that the eight concluding lines of the Epistle "are rather flat and languid." It is indeed an absurd supposition that a woman who had been speaking the fervid language of christianity should imagine that her state in the world beyond the grave would be that of a "pensive ghost," and that her consolation would consist in having her woes "well-sung" on earth. And it is in the tremendous conflict between piety and passion, while divine and human love are contending fiercely for the mastery, that she finds relief in this unsubstantial idea that some future lover would make her the subject of a poem.

[719] 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.

This Pope had in his thoughts; but not knowing how to use what was not his own, he spoiled the thought when he had borrowed it. Martial exploits may be painted; perhaps woes may be painted; but they are surely not painted by being well sung: it is not easy to paint in song, or to sing in colours.--JOHNSON.

[720] Roscoe supposes Richardson to have asserted that there was an "entire discrepancy between the Essay on Man as published, and the original manuscripts," and to have implied that the change was from "infidelity" to its opposite. This is not the statement of Richardson. He says, on the contrary, that when the "exceptionable passages" were pointed out Pope "did not think of altering them," and "never dreamed of adopting" a more orthodox "scheme" for his Essay till after "its fatalism and deistical tendency" had excited that "general alarm" which could not precede the publication of the poem, and which only, in fact, commenced some three years later. Richardson is enforcing his charge against Warburton of inventing forced meanings, and the instance would contradict the accusation if Pope had altered his language from deism to orthodoxy before he printed the work. The commentary would then have expressed the natural sense of the text. The change of which Richardson speaks was not in the Essay itself, but in the interpretation Pope put upon it. While he was composing the poem he accepted the deistical construction of the Richardsons; and when he was terrified at the "general alarm" he endorsed the christian construction of Warburton.

[721] Dr. Desaguliers, the son of a French refugee, was born at Rochelle in 1683, and died, Feb. 29, 1744, at the Bedford Coffee-house, Covent Garden. He was a clergyman of the church of England, a great lover of science, and a friend of Newton. He delivered lectures for many years on Experimental Philosophy, and published an excellent work on the subject in 2 vols. 4to. He does not appear to have shown any turn for poetry, and those who ascribed to him the Essay on Man may have had no better ground for their opinion than that the poem treated of one kind of philosophy, and Desaguliers was learned in another.

[722] Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, died before his father in Jan. 1742. He published in 1734, a poem called An Essay on Human Life; and in 1737 An Epistle to Mr. Pope, in Anti-heroics. "The former," says Horace Walpole, "is written in imitation of Pope's ethic epistles, and has good lines, but not much poetry."

[723] In the Life of Pope by the pretended Squire Ayre, it is said that "a certain gentleman," meaning Mallet, was at Pope's house shortly after the first Epistle was published, and in answer to the question "What new pieces were brought to light?" replied, "That there was a thing come out called an Essay on Man, and it was a most abominable piece of stuff; shocking poetry, insufferable philosophy, no coherence, no connection at all." Pope confessed he was the author, which, says Ayre, "was like a clap of thunder to the mistaken bard; with a blush and a bow he took his leave of Pope, and never ventured to show his unlucky face there again." The final statement is contradicted by the letters of Pope and Mallet, which prove that they carried on a cordial intercourse to the last. The rest of the story is improbable, for it is not likely that Pope, who was bent at this early period upon keeping the authorship a secret, would have unmasked himself in a manner to preclude confidence, and provoke Mallet to divulge the truth to the world. Ayre's authority is good for nothing, and Ruffhead only copied Ayre, but his repetition of the anecdote gave it currency, and it has ever since passed unquestioned from writer to writer.

[724] Warburton. "Your Travels I hear much of," says Pope in the letter to Swift; "my own I promise you shall never more be in a strange land, but a diligent, I hope, useful investigation of my own territories. I mean no more translations, but something domestic, fit for my own country, and my own time." The allusion is obscure, and it may be doubted whether Pope referred to his ethical scheme, which he did not commence till four years later.

[725] Bolingbroke.

[726] The authority was Lord Bathurst. Dr. Hugh Blair dined with him in 1763, and says in a letter to Boswell, that "the conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us that the Essay on Man was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own handwriting, and remembered well that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse." Boswell read the account to Johnson, who replied, "Depend upon it, sir, this is too strongly stated. Pope may have had from Bolingbroke the philosophic stamina of his Essay, and admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify. But the thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine; we are sure that the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the poem, was Pope's own."

[727] The first treatise of Crousaz was translated by Miss Carter, and published in 1738, under the title of An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man. The second treatise was translated by Johnson himself, and published in 1742, with the title, A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality.

[728] Theobald's Shakespeare was published in 1733, the same year with the first three epistles of the Essay on Man.

[729] Warburton's first letter in vindication of Pope appeared in The Works of the Learned, December 1738. The journal called The Present State of the Republic of Letters, had come to an end in 1736.

[730] Jacob Robinson, a bookseller in Fleet-street, was the publisher of The Works of the Learned, to which Warburton sent his five letters in reply to Crousaz.

[731] This was done in 1740, when the five letters were expanded into six. A seventh letter was added in a subsequent edition, and the whole was re-arranged in four letters in the edition of 1742.

[732] Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 219.

[733] Warton states that Dobson relinquished the undertaking from the impossibility of preserving in Latin verse the conciseness of the English. He appears to have accomplished half his task; for when Christopher Smart subsequently volunteered his services, Pope said in his reply, Nov. 18, 1740, "The two first epistles are already well done." A specimen from Dobson's translation of each of these epistles was among the papers of Spence, and is printed in the appendix to Mr. Singer's edition of the Anecdotes. A version of the Essay in Latin hexameters appeared at Wirtemberg. This, Pope tells Smart, was "very faithful but inelegant," and he adds that his reason for desiring a more adequate rendering was that either the sense or the poetry was lost in all the foreign translations.

[734] By "his friend," Johnson means Warburton, not Dobson.

[735] This sort of burlesque abstract, which may be so easily but so unjustly made of any composition whatever, is exactly similar to the imperfect and unfair representation which the same critic has given of the beautiful imagery in Il Penseroso of Milton.--WARTON.

Johnson's criticism of a poem like this, cannot be compared with his futile declamation against the imagery of the Penseroso. For in speaking of the Penseroso, Johnson spoke of what I do not hesitate to say he did not understand. He had no congenial feelings properly to appreciate the character of such poetry; but the case is different where he brings his great mind to try, by the test of truth, arguments and doctrines which appeal to the understanding. Johnson was not an inadequate judge of Pope's philosophy, though he was certainly so of Milton's poetry. But no composition could possibly stand before his contemptuous declamation.--BOWLES.

[736] Bowles himself had a low opinion of the "system of philosophy" embodied in the Essay on Man. After stating that Pope was the pupil of Bolingbroke, he adds, "But this poem will continue to charm from the music of its verse, the splendour of its diction, and the beauty of its illustrations, when the philosophy that gave rise to it, like the coarse manure that fed the flowers, is perceived and remembered no more."

[737] Burke's Works, ed. 1808, vol. v. p. 172.

[738] Spence, p. 108, 127.

[739] Essay on Man, Epist. iv. ver. 391. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 40. "You have begun at my request the work which I have wished long that you would undertake."

[740] Spence, p. 238.

[741] Spence, p. 36.

[742] Spence, p. 103.

[743] Pope to Swift, Sept. 15, 1734.

[744] Spence, p. 12.

[745] Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. ii. p. 149.

[746] "It may safely," says Lord Kames, "be pronounced a capital defect in the composition of a verse, to put a low word, incapable of an accent, in the place where this accent should be," and he instances the last syllable of "dependencies," in Pope's Essay on Man, Epist. i. ver. 30:

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 advantage. The want of accent softens the rhyme, and relieves the monotonous, cloying effect of a full concord of sound. In most of Pope's imperfect rhymes the similarity of sound is too slight, and the ear is disappointed.

[747] Letters by Eminent Persons, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 48.

[748] Spence, p. 108.

[749] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.

[750] Bolingbroke's Works, Philadelphia, vol. iii. pp. 40, 45; vol. iv. p. 111.

[751] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.

[752] Grimouard, Essai sur Bolingbroke, quoted by Cooke, Memoirs of Bolingbroke, vol. ii. p. 96.

[753] Chesterfield's Works, ed. Mahon, vol. ii. p. 445.

[754] Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 219. The manuscript of this passage exists in Warburton's handwriting. Ruffhead altered two or three words, which are here restored from the original.

[755] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 91.

[756] Spence, who wrote down the anecdote from Warburton's conversation, says that Hooke talked of "Lord Bolingbroke's disbelief of the moral attributes of God," which agrees substantially with the language in Ruffhead.

[757] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 320.

[758] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 23, 24; vol. iii. p. 430.

[759] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 111.

[760] Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 1; iv. ver. 398, and the additional couplet in the note.

[761] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 175, 152.

[762] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.

[763] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 88.

[764] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336.

[765] Warburton, Note on Epist. ii. ver. 149.

[766] Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.

[767] Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303.

[768] Epist. ii. ver. 274; Epist. iii. ver. 286.

[769] Epist. iii. ver. 305.

[770] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.

[771] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 436.

[772] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 333, 366. "The imperfection of the parts," says Leibnitz, Opera, p. 638, "produce a greater perfection in the whole." According to his custom, Bolingbroke copied Leibnitz without naming him.

[773] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 41.

[774] Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 339.

[775] Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 339, 345, 346, 348.

[776] Spence, p. 107.

[777] Middleton to Warburton, Jan. 7, 1740.

[778] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 262.

[779] Spence, p. 238.

[780] Watson's Life of Warburton, p. 15.

[781] Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.

[782] Tyers, Historical Rhapsody, p. 78.

[783] For this we have the authority of Dr. Law, the Bishop of Carlisle, in the preface to his translation of King's Origin of Evil.

[784] Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430. Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xlv.

[785] Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, ed. 1742, p. 182.

[786] Warburton's Pope, Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 31.

[787] Warton's Pope, vol. iii. p. 162.

[788] Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, p. 121.

[789] Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224.

[790] Warburton to Dr. Doddridge, Feb. 12, 1739, in Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 816.

[791] Warburton's Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, 1740, p. 83.

[792] Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 113.

[793] Warburton's Pope, Epist. iv. ver. 394.

[794] Warton's Pope, vol. ix. p. 342.

[795] Nichols, Illustrations of Lit. Hist., vol. ii. p. 53.

[796] Warburton's Works, vol. xii. pp. 92, 185.

[797] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 53.

[798] Pope to Warburton, Sept. 20, 1739; Jan. 4, 1740.

[799] Œuvres de Louis Racine, ed. 1808, tom. i. p. 444. "If," said Voltaire, "Pope wrote this letter to Racine, God must have given him at the close of his life the gift of tongues." Voltaire repeats three times over in his works, that he associated with Pope for a twelvemonth, and knew, what was publicly notorious in England, that he could hardly read French, and could not speak one word or write one line of the language. The objection was founded on the mistaken assumption that the French translation was the original letter. In the later editions of Racine's poem the letter is printed from Pope's English. Voltaire was annoyed that Pope should "retract" his deism, and wanted to have it believed that Ramsay alone was responsible for the sentiments expressed in the letter to Racine.

[800] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 457.

[801] Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 542. Spence, p. 277.

[802] Œuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 451.

[803] Œuvres de Louis Racine, tom. i. p. 442.

[804] Spence, p. 231.

[805] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 62.

[806] Epist. ii. ver. i.

[807] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 52.

[808] Leibnitz, Opera Philosophica, ed. Erdmann, pp. 506, 544.

[809] Hume's Essays, ed. 1809, vol. ii. pp. 146, 147, 152.

[810] Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 153.

[811] John, xv. 2.

[812] Phillimore's Life of Lord Lyttelton, vol. i. p. 304.

[813] Leibnitz, Opera, p. 628.

[814] Epist. i. ver. 159, 151-4.

[815] Epist. i. ver. 141-6.

[816] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 366.

[817] Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 571, 577.

[818] Epist. i. ver. 147, iv. ver. 115.

[819] Epist. iv. ver. 116, note.

[820] Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 312, 431, 507, 603.

[821] Epist. i. ver. 241-258.

[822] Epist. i. ver. 47-8.

[823] Epist. i. ver. 43-50.

[824] Voltaire, Œuvres, tom. xlvii. p. 98.

[825] Jeremiah, ix. 23, 24.

[826] John, xiv. 9.

[827] Epist. ii. ver. 1-2.

[828] Epist. ii. ver. 3-18.

[829] Epist. i. 61-8.

[830] Epist. ii. ver. 53-8.

[831] Warburton's Commentary, Epist. ii. ver. 53.

[832] Epist. ii. ver. 235-8.

[833] Epist. ii. ver. 53.

[834] Epist. i. ver. 131.

[835] Epist. ii. ver. 126.

[836] Madame de Staël, De l'Allemagne, Part iii., Chap. 16.

[837] Butler's Sermons, Oxford, 1835, pp. xx., 8, 161.

[838] A man may eat from principle, which often happens with the sick when they are wishing to die, and appetite is extinct. For the same reason they may eat delicacies when the stomach rebels against common fare. This was the case with Pascal in his illness, and, from a mistaken asceticism, he endeavoured to swallow the choice food without tasting it.

[839] Epist. ii. ver. 70, 113, 116, 119-22.

[840] Epist. ii. ver. 131-148, 157.

[841] Epist. ii. ver. 138, 147.

[842] Crousaz's Commentary on Pope's Essay, translated by Johnson, p. 109.

[843] Fable of the Bees, ninth edition, vol. i. p. 137.

[844] Epist. ii. ver. 175, 197.

[845] Epist. ii. ver. 185-194.

[846] Epist. ii. ver. 59, 67.

[847] Epist. ii. ver. 147.

[848] Epist. ii. ver. 201.

[849] Matthew, xii. 33.

[850] Epist. iii. ver. 261.

[851] Epist. ii. ver. 185-194, 196.

[852] Spence, p. 9.

[853] Epist. ii. ver. 216, note.

[854] Epist. ii. ver. 245.

[855] Epist. ii. ver. 285-292.

[856] Epist. ii. ver. 291. Spence, p. 109.

[857] Epist. ii. ver. 238.

[858] Argument of Epist. ii.

[859] Epist. ii. ver. 241-4.

[860] Epist. ii. ver. 272.

[861] Epist. ii. ver. 286-7.

[862] Epist. ii. ver. 288.

[863] Epist. ii. ver. 268.

[864] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 154.

[865] Epist. ii. ver. 273.

[866] Epist. ii. ver. 275-282.

[867] Epist. ii. ver. 293-4.

[868] Epist. iii. ver. 149.

[869] Epist. iii. ver. 209.

[870] Epist. iii. ver. 232-40.

[871] Epist. iii. ver. 201-6.

[872] Epist. iii. ver. 149-168.

[873] Epist. iii. ver. 245.

[874] Epist. iii. ver. 221.

[875] Epist. iii. ver. 154, 217.

[876] Epist. i. ver. 165-170.

[877] Epist. iii. ver. 169-198.

[878] Epist. iii. ver. 179-182.

[879] Epist. iii. ver. 183-188, 210.

[880] Epist. iii. ver. 303.

[881] Epist. iii. ver. 269, 279.

[882] Epist. iii. ver. 305.

[883] Epist. iii. ver. 307-310.

[884] Epist. iv. ver. 331.

[885] Epist. iv. ver. 111-115.

[886] Spence, p. 107.

[887] Spence, p. 206.

[888] Epist. i. ver. 16.

[889] The Design, _post_, p. 343.

[890] Epist. iii. ver. 19.

[891] Epist. i. ver. 73, 93-4.

[892] Epist. iv. ver. 310. Argument to Epist. iv.

[893] Epist. iv. ver. 66.

[894] Epist. iv. ver. 167-172.

[895] Mackintosh, Miscellaneous Works, ed. 1851, p. 13.

[896] Epist. iv. ver. 57.

[897] Epist. iv. ver. 69-72.

[898] Recollections by Samuel Rogers, pp. 31, 35.

[899] Argument to Epist. iv.

[900] Epist. iv. ver. 77-80.

[901] Bolingbroke's Works, Vol. iv., p. 378.

[902] Epist. iv. ver. 149.

[903] Epist. iv. ver. 87.

[904] Epist. iv. ver. 89.

[905] Epist. iv. ver. 98.

[906] Epist. iv. ver. 99-102.

[907] Epist. iv. ver. 98, 121-130.

[908] Matt. x. 29-31.

[909] Wollaston, Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed., p. 192.

[910] Epist. iv. ver. 105.

[911] Epist. iv. ver. 149-155.

[912] Epist. iv. ver. 156.

[913] Philipp. iv. 11.

[914] Heb. xii. 11.

[915] Epist. iv. ver. 157-166.

[916] Epist. iv. ver. 189-192.

[917] Epist. iv. ver. 193-204.

[918] Epist. iv. ver. 205-258.

[919] Epist. iv. ver. 259-268.

[920] Henry V., Act iv., Sc. 1.

[921] Epist. ii. ver. 85.

[922] Epist. iv. ver. 19.

[923] Epist. iv. ver. 23, 28.

[924] Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 286.

[925] Epist. iv. ver. 29.

[926] Epist. ii. ver. 35-42.

[927] Epist. iv. ver. 29-34.

[928] Rasselas, chap. xxii.

[929] Butler, Sermons, Preface, pp. vii., xi.

[930] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 430.

[931] The Design. See _post_, p. 344.

[932] De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863, vol. viii. pp. 21, 51; xii. pp, 25, 33.

[933] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 44.

[934] Johnson, Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 105.

[935] De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. p. 32.

[936] Voltaire, Œuvres, tom. xii. p. 156; xxxvii. p. 260.

[937] Marmontel, Éléments de Littérature, Art. Épitre.

[938] Dugald Stewart, Works, ed. Hamilton, vol. vii. p. 133.

[939] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, ed. 1841, p. 147.

[940] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 42.

[941] Life of Byron by Moore, 1 vol. ed. p. 696.

[942] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 375, 377-8.

[943] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 374.

[944] De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. pp. 21, 22.

[945] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. pp. 45-50; xii. 297-303.

[946] Marmontel, Éléments de Littérature, Art. Didactique.

[947] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iii. p. 44.

[948] Bolingbroke, Works, vol. ii. p. 220; iii. p. 128.

[949] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 50.

[950] Milton, Comus, ver. 476.

[951] Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 378.

[952] De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 51.

[953] Taine, Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise, 2nd ed. tom. iii. p. 91; iv. pp. 172-176, 203.

[954] Taine, tom. iv. p. 175.

[955] This prefatory notice only appeared in the first edition of the first epistle.

[956] "Whose" is by some authors made the possessive case of "which," and applied to things as well as persons.--LOWTH.

[957] Two "Epistles to Mr. Pope concerning the Authors of the Age," by the poet Young. They were published in 1730.

[958] The second Epistle of the Essay on Man had the brief preface which follows: "The author has been induced to publish these Epistles separately for two reasons, the one that he might not impose upon the public too much at once of what he thinks incorrect; the other, that by this method he might profit of its judgment on the parts, in order to make the whole less unworthy of it."

[959] "The Design" was prefixed in 1735, when Pope inserted the four Epistles of the Essay on Man in his works.

[960] The early editions have "forming out of all."

[961] For "St. John" the manuscript has "Memmius," and the first edition "Lælius." Memmius was an author and orator of no great distinction to whom Lucretius dedicated his De Rerum Natura. Lælius was celebrated for his statesmanship, his philosophical pursuits, and his friendship, and is described by Horace as delighting, on his retirement from public affairs, in the society of the poet Lucilius. Thus the name was fitted to the functions of Bolingbroke, and the relation in which he stood to Pope.

[962] Pope's manuscript supplies various readings of this line:

puzzled to flattered
puzzling to blustering
grovelling low-thoughted
To working statesmen and ambitious kings.

In a letter to Swift, Dec. 19, 1734, Pope says that the couplet was a monitory, and ineffectual hint to Bolingbroke, to give up politics for philosophy. If the censure was directed against the party vices of the man the reproof is inconsistent with the eulogy on his patriotism, Epist. iv. ver. 265, and if against his pursuit in the abstract, it is folly to say that statesmanship is one of the "meaner things" which should be left to "low ambition," and empty "pride."

[963] MS.:

Since life, my friend, can, etc.

[964] Denham, of Prudence:

Learn to live well, that thou may'st die so too:
To live and die is all we have to do:

the latter of which verses our poet has inserted without alteration in his Prologue to the Satires, ver. 262.--WAKEFIELD.

[965] This exordium relates to the whole work, first in general, then in particular. The 6th, 7th, and 8th lines allude to the subjects of this book,--the general order and design of Providence; the constitution of the human mind, whose passions cultivated are virtues, neglected vices; the temptations of misapplied self-love, and wrong pursuits of power, pleasure, and false happiness.--POPE.

"The whole work" was to have been in four books, and the phrase "this book" means the four published Epistles of the Essay on Man, which were to form the first book of the full design.

[966] In the first edition,

A mighty maze of walks without a plan.

This Pope altered because, says Johnson, "if there was no plan it was vain to describe or to trace the maze."

[967] The 6th verse alludes to the subject of this first Epistle--the state of man here and hereafter, disposed by Providence, though to him unknown.--POPE.

[968] Alludes to the subject of the second Epistle,--the passions, their good or evil.--POPE.

[969] Alludes to the subject of the fourth Epistle,--of man's various pursuits of happiness or pleasure.--POPE.

[970] The 10th, 13th, and 14th verses allude to the subject of the second Epistle of the second book,--the characters of men and manners.--POPE.

The four published Moral Essays were a portion of the projected second book.

[971] 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.

[972] MS.:

Of all that blindly creep the tracts explore,
And all the dazzled race that blindly soar.

Those who "blindly creep" are the ignorant and indifferent; those who "sightless soar" are the presumptuous, who endeavour to transcend the bounds prescribed to the intellect of man.

[973] 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.

[974] These metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, seem much below the dignity of the subject, and an unnatural mixture of the ludicrous and serious.--WARTON.

They are the more so as Pope is not content with barely touching the metaphor of shooting _en passant_, but pursues it with so much minuteness. Let us "_beat_ this ample field,"--"_try_ what the _covert_ yields,"--"_eye_ nature's walks,"--"_shoot_ folly." An illustration, if not at all dignified, or in correspondence with the theme, should not be pursued so minutely that the mind must perforce observe its meanness.--BOWLES.

[975] "Candid" here bears the unusual sense of "lenient and favourable in our judgment."

[976] Alludes to the subject which runs through the whole design,--the justification of the methods of Providence.--POPE.

Milton, Par. Lost, i. 26:

And justify the ways of God to men.--WARTON.

[977] The last part of the verse is barbarously elliptical. The meaning is that all our reasonings respecting the end of man must be drawn from his station here, and to this station we must refer all that we learn respecting him. Since we can know nothing but what relates to our present condition, the doctrine of a future life is excluded.

[978] MS.:

Through endless worlds His endless works are known,
But ours, etc.

[979] MS.:

He who can all the flaming limits pierce,
Of worlds on worlds that form one universe.

[980] "And what" was the reading of all editions till that of 1743. Wollaston's Religion of Nature, ed. 1750, p. 143: "The fixed stars are so many other suns with their several sets of planets about them."

[981] MS.:

What other habitants in ev'ry star.

[982] 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.

Pope's assertion in the text that it is impossible for us to "tell why heaven has made us as we are," unless we had a complete insight into the plan of universal creation, contradicts ver. 48, where he says that "it is plain there must be somewhere such a rank as man."

[983] First edition: "And centres."

[984] Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "As distant as are the various systems, and systems of systems that compose the universe, and different as we may imagine them to be, they are all tied together by relations and connections, by gradations and dependencies."--WAKEFIELD.

[985] Pascal's Thoughts, translated by Dr. Kennet, 2nd ed., 1727, p. 288: "If a man did but begin with the study of himself he would soon find how incapable he was of proceeding further. For what possibility is there that the part should contain the whole?"

[986] I should have pointed out the expression and great effect of this line as illustrating the subject it describes; but Ruffhead says "it is the most heavy, languid, and unpoetical of all Pope ever wrote, and that the expletive 'to' before the verb is unpardonable."--BOWLES.

[987] An allusion to the golden chain of Homer, which the poet represents as sustained by Jove, with the whole creation appended to it.--WAKEFIELD.

[988] "Why one reason," says Wakefield, "should be harder than the other I am unable to discern." The passage is taken, as Warton pointed out, from Voltaire's remarks on Pascal's Thoughts, but Voltaire put the questions on the same footing, and did not pretend that the second was harder to solve than the first. "You are astonished," he says "that God has made man so contracted, so ignorant, and so unhappy. Why are you not astonished that he has not made him more contracted, more ignorant, and more unhappy?" Neither question ought to have presented any difficulty to Pope, since it was "plain" to him that "the best possible system" required that "there should be somewhere such a rank as man." All who admit the attributes of the Deity must allow that every portion of the world, sentient or insensible, is the consummation of wisdom with reference to its place in the infinite and eternal scheme. "God," says Leibnitz, "does not even neglect inanimate things; they are unconscious, but God is conscious for them. He would reproach himself with the least real defect in the universe, although no one perceived it."

[989] Wakefield quotes Milton, Par. Lost, iii. 460, where the phrase "those argent fields" is applied to the heavens.

[990] This word is commonly pronounced in prose with the e mute in the plural, as in the singular, and is therefore only of three syllables; but Pope has in the plural continued the Latin form and assigned it four. I think, improperly.--JOHNSON.

[991] Pope says that we cannot tell why Jupiter's satellites are less than Jupiter. Any mathematician could have shown him that if Jupiter was less than his satellites they would not revolve round him.--VOLTAIRE.

Warburton, to evade Voltaire's criticism, put a strained and paraphrastic interpretation upon Pope's lines. Their natural meaning is, that man is too ignorant to comprehend why he is not less instead of greater,--nay, that he cannot even tell why oaks are taller than weeds, why Jupiter's satellites are less than Jupiter, and all his investigations into the earth and the heavens will not supply him with the answer.

[992] Pope did not generally condescend to the artificial inversion which places the adjective after the substantive. Here, in a passage where simplicity was an object, we have "systems possible" followed by "wisdom infinite,"--combinations, too, which have the effect of producing a disagreeable monotony, occurring in the same part of the lines to which they respectively belong.--CONINGTON.

[993] Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "Since infinite wisdom not only established the end, but directed the means, the system of the universe must necessarily be the best of all possible systems."--WAKEFIELD.

[994] There must be no interval, that is, between the parts, or they will not cohere.

[995] Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "It might be determined in the divine ideas that there should be a gradation of life and intellect throughout the universe. In this case it was necessary that there should be some creatures at our pitch of rationality."--WAKEFIELD.

The theory of a chain of beings was adopted by Bolingbroke and Pope from Archbishop King's Essay on the Origin of Evil. Arguing from the analogy of our own world, King contended that a universe fully peopled with superior natures would leave room for an inferior grade, and these for lower grades still, in a continuously descending scale. There must either be inferior creatures, or else voids in creation, and we may presume that the maximum of existence is most conducive to the ends of benevolence and wisdom.

[996] MS.:

Is but if God has placed his creature wrong.

[997] Bolingbroke, Fragment 50: "The seeming imperfection of the parts is necessary to the real perfection of the whole."--WAKEFIELD.

The sentence quoted by Wakefield was copied by Bolingbroke from Leibnitz. Lord Shaftesbury adopted the same hypothesis in his Inquiry concerning Virtue. If, he says, our earth is a part only of some other system, and if what is ill in our system makes for the good of the general system, then there is nothing ill with respect to the whole. Rousseau, who heartily embraced the doctrine, remarks that "we cannot give direct proofs for or against, because these proofs depend on a complete knowledge of the constitution of the universe, and of the ends of its author."

[998] Bolingbroke, Fragments 43 and 63: "We labour hard, we complicate various means to bring about some one paltry purpose.--In the works of men the most complicated schemes produce very hardly and very uncertainly one single effect: in the works of God one single scheme produces a multitude of different effects, and answers an immense variety of purposes."--WAKEFIELD.

How clearly and closely is this sentiment expressed by Pope, and yet how difficult to render into verse with precision and effect.--BOWLES.

In the first line the phrase "one single," for "one single movement," is especially inelegant. Bowles might have selected many couplets from the Essay on Man more deserving of the commendation. The thought which Pope owed to Bolingbroke, Bolingbroke owed to Leibnitz, who says in his Théodicée, "Everything in nature is connected, and if a skilful artizan, engineer, architect, statesman, often makes the same contrivance serve for several purposes, we may affirm that God, whose wisdom and power are perfect, does so always." Hence Pope contends that what is defective in man considered separately, may be advantageous in relation to the hidden ends he is intended to serve.

[999] Bolingbroke, Fragments 43: "We ought to consider the world no otherwise than as a little wheel in our solar system; nor our solar system any otherwise than as a little but larger wheel in the immense machine of the universe; and both the one and the other necessary perhaps to the motion of the whole."--WAKEFIELD.

[1000] MS.:

We see but here a part, etc.

[1001] Since the monarchy of the universe is a dominion unlimited in extent, and everlasting in duration, the general system of it must necessarily be quite beyond our comprehension. And since there appears such a subordination, and reference of the several parts to each other, as to constitute it properly one administration or government, we cannot have a thorough knowledge of any part without knowing the whole. This surely should convince us that we are much less competent judges of the very small part which comes under our notice in this world than we are apt to imagine.--BISHOP BUTLER.

[1002] MS.:

When the proud steed shall know why man now reins
His stubborn neck, now drives, etc.

[1003] In the former editions,

Now wears a garland an Egyptian god.--WARBURTON.

A bull was kept at Memphis by the Egyptians, and worshipped, under the name of Apis, as a god. Other oxen were sacrificed to him, which brought the bovine "victims" and the bovine "god" into direct contrast.

[1004] Pope may mean that we cannot tell with respect to the general scheme of Providence why we are made what we are, in which case he unsays what he had said just before, that "it is plain there must be somewhere such a rank as man." Or he may mean that we cannot tell with respect to ourselves the use and end of our being and its vicissitudes, in which case the doctrine would debase every person who received it, by diverting him from his true end, which is to imitate and adore the perfections of God.

[1005] The expression, "as he ought," is imperfect for "ought to be."--WARTON.

[1006] Bolingbroke, Frag. 50: "The nature of every creature is adapted to his state here, to the place he is to inhabit."

[1007] This line is the application to man of the language which the schoolmen applied to the Deity,--that his eternity was a moment, and his immensity a point. The couplet in the MS. was at first as follows:

Lord of a span, and hero of a day,
In one short scene to strut and pass away,

[1008] MS.:

What then, imports it whether here or there?

[1009] Ed. 1:

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.

This note appeared, 1735, in vol. 2 of the quarto edition of Pope's Poetical Works. The lines originally followed ver. 98, and when they re-appeared in the text in 1743 they were shifted to their present position. They are especially bad,--elliptical and prosaic in expression, and sophistical in argument. The suffering which matters nothing when it is over is not unimportant while it lasts. A prolonged imprisonment in a noisome dungeon does not cease to be a penalty because the captive will one day be free. The Bible recognises the bitterness of human misery, but teaches that christians are to be reconciled to it on account of the moral purposes it subserves, and the endless felicity which ensues. Pope notes in his MS. that ver. 76 is "reversed from Lucretius on death," and Wakefield quotes the translation of Dryden which Pope copied:

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.

[1010] See this pursued in Epist. iii. ver. 66, etc., ver. 79, etc.--POPE.

[1011] This resembles Phædrus, Fab. v. 15:

Ipsi principes
Illam osculantur, quâ sunt oppressi, manum.--WAKEFIELD.

[1012] Matt. x. 29.--WARBURTON.

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 Cæsar bleed.

It is doubtful whether Virgil was the author of the Culex or Gnat, which, says Mr. Long, "is a kind of Bucolic poem in 413 hexameters, often very obscure." Pope's assertion that there is "no great, no little," is contradicted by the passage in St. Matthew to which Warburton refers. Our Lord there assures us that "we are of more value than many sparrows," and the ruin of a world, with its myriad of sentient beings, must be of infinitely greater moment in the sight of the Deity than the bursting of a bubble. Pope repeats, ver. 279, a statement which is repugnant to reason, to revelation, and to his own system of a scale of beings.

[1013] MS.:

Systems like atoms into ruin hurled.

[1014] Edit. 1. Fol. and Quart.:

What bliss above he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy bliss below.

Further opened in Epist. ii. ver. 283. Epist. iii. ver. 74. Epist. iv. ver. 346, etc.--POPE.

[1015] Pope has frequently contradicted this line, and allowed that men who place their happiness in right objects, and use the recognised means, enjoy a present pleasure, in addition to the hope of an equal or greater pleasure in the future. This hope in turn is constantly realised, in contradiction to the lively saying ascribed to Lord Bacon, that "hope makes a good breakfast, but a bad supper."

[1016] All editions till that of 1743 had "at" for "from." The home of the soul was this world according to the first reading, and the next world according to the second. The alteration was made under the auspices of Warburton to get rid of the imputation that Pope doubted or disbelieved the immortality of the soul.

[1017] MS.:

Seeks God in clouds or on the wings of wind.

The savage, that is, being ignorant of scientific laws, supposes the wind and the rain to be produced directly by the Deity without the interposition of secondary causes.

[1018] Dryden, Threnod. August. Stanza 12:

Out of the solar walk and heaven's highway.--HURD.

[1019] The ancient opinion that the souls of the just went thither. See Tully, Som. Scipion. and Manilius i. [ver. 733-799.]--POPE.

Virtue is in Cicero the title of admission into the milky way, but the version which Manilius gives of the popular creed assumes that the milky way is the general receptacle for earthly celebrities, without any special regard to their morals.

[1020] Shakespeare, Tempest, Act iv. Sc. 1. "The cloud-capped towers."

[1021] Dryden, Æn. vii. 310:

From that dire deluge through the wat'ry waste.--WAKEFIELD.

MS.:

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.

Pope must have assumed that the Indian's hope of a blissful immortality was an unsubstantial dream, or he would not have called it "nature's _flattery_."

[1022] MS.:

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.

[1023] 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.

[1024] "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.