Chapter 36

[1160]MS.:Let metaphysics common reason split.[1161]In the MS. this couplet follows:Too nice distinctions honest sense will shun,Know pleasure, good, and happiness are one.[1162]MS.:Both fly from pain, to pleasure both aspire,With one aversion, and with one desire.Pope charges the schoolmen with being at war about a name when they distinguished between "sense" and "reason," and the distinction is a capital article in his own moral creed. He charges them with maintaining that sense and reason were not merely separate, but contending powers, and he too has insisted on the universality of the strife. "Sense," or, in his language, "self-love," "looks," ver. 73, to "immediate," "reason" to "future good," and in this difference of view the "temptations" of self-love "throng thicker than the arguments" of reason. The contest is the subject of a long disquisition further on, and Pope laments, ver. 149-160, that passion should conquer in the fight. When he interjected the paragraph, in which he contradicted himself, he rested his case on the proposition that reason, which pursues interest well-understood, and self-love, which gratifies present passion, "aspire to one end,—pleasure." But the pleasure sought by reason and self-love respectively is not the same pleasure, and so incompatible were the two pleasures in his estimation that he calls one, ver. 92, "our greatest evil," the other "our greatest good."[1163]MS.:Reason itself more nicely shares in all.[1164]MS.:Passions whose ends are honest, means are fair.[1165]"List," which would probably now be thought a vulgarism, was in Pope's day the established word. Our form, "enlist," was apparently unknown to Johnson, who did not insert it in his Dictionary.[1166]"Passions that court an aim" is surely a strange expression.—Warton.For "court" Pope had at first written "boast."[1167]The "imparted" or sympathetic passions are the benevolent impulses and affections. As to their "kind," or nature, they are, says Pope, "modes of self-love," but when the self-love assumes the form of loving others the passion is "exalted, and takes the name of some virtue." He passes the affections over here with this slight allusion, and returns to them at ver. 255, and more at length in Epistle iii.[1168]What says old Epictetus, who knew stoicism better than these men? "I am not to be apathetic or void of passions, like a statue. I am to discharge all the relations of a social and friendly life,—the parent, the husband, the brother, the magistrate." The stoic apathy was no more than a freedom from irrational and excessive agitations of the soul.—James Harris.[1169]That is, in cold insensibility. Lady Chudleigh's dialogue on the death of her daughter:Honour is ever the reward of pain:A lazy virtue no applause will gain.—Wakefield.[1170]The stoic aimed at inner perfection, and trusted to the serenity of virtue to sustain him in all the trials of life. Pope erroneously imagined that stoics were selfish and inactive because they were calm and self-contained. Seneca, De Ot. i. 4, says, they insisted that we must never cease labouring for the common good, and Cicero, De Fin. iii. 19, says they placed their force of character at the service of mankind, and thought it their duty to live, and if need were to die, for the benefit of the public.[1171]A couplet is added in the MS.:Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight,Comes without arms, and conquers but by flight.[1172]MS.:Passions like tempests put in act the soul.[1173]Spectator, June 18, 1712. No. 408: "Passions are to the mind as winds to a ship; they only can move it, and they too often destroy it. Reason must then take the place of pilot, and can never fail of securing her charge if she be not wanting to herself."[1174]Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 55:On life's wide ocean diversely launched out,Our minds alike are tossed on waves of doubt,Holding no steady course, or constant sail,But shift and tack with ev'ry veering gale.—Wakefield.[1175]In the mariner's compass the paper on which the points of the compass are marked is called "the card."[1176]Carew's Poems:A troop of deities came down to guideOur steerless barks in passion's swelling tide,By virtue's card.—Wakefield.After ver. 108 in the MS.:A tedious voyage! where how useless liesThe compass, if no pow'rful gusts arise!—Warburton.[1177]Psalm civ. 3: "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, and walketh upon the wings of the wind."—Bowles.Dryden's Ceyx and Alcyone:And now sublime she rides upon the wind.—Warton.Pope held that "fierce ambition" was instigated by the Almighty, Epist. i. ver. 159, and compared his inspiration of such tumultuous passions to his "heaving old ocean, and winging the storm." The poet must be understood as upholding the same extended and licentious doctrine when he returns to the comparison, and talks of "God mounting the storm" of the passions, and "walking upon the wind."[1178]After ver. 112 in the MS.:The soft, reward the virtuous or invite;The fierce, the vicious punish or affright.—Warburton.[1179]How, that is, can the stoic succeed in destroying passions which enter into the very composition of man? The stoic made no such pretension. What he laboured to "destroy" were those "perturbations of mind" which Zeno, Tusc. iv. 6, maintained to be "repugnant to reason, and against nature," and for which the stoical remedy, Tusc. iv. 28, was the demonstration that they "were vicious, and had nothing natural or necessary in them." The principle for which Pope contended was the very maxim of the stoics,—they insisted that "reason should keep to nature's road." The real question was, whether they did not sometimes go too far, and condemn natural emotions under the name of prohibited perturbations.[1180]All he means is, that the intentions of God are manifested in the nature of man.[1181]Dryden, State of Innocence, Act v.:With all the num'rous family of death.Garth, Dispensary, vi. 138:And all the faded family of care.—Wakefield.[1182]Warton remarks that the group of allegorical personages are here suddenly changed to things which are to be "mixed with art."[1183]MS.:To blend them well, and harmonise their strifeMakes all etc.[1184]In plain prose thus: "To grasp present pleasures and to find future pleasures is the whole employ of body and mind." Pope's line is rendered intolerable by its elliptical and inverted language, and the unmeaning expletive "still."[1185]MS.:Present to seize, or future to obtainThe whole employ of body and of brain.[1186]MS.:On stronger senses stronger passions strike.[1187]MS.:Hence passions rise, and more or less inflame,Proportioned to each organ of the frame,Nor here internal faculties control,Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul.Pope derived the notion from Mandeville, who says that the diversity of passions in different men "depend only upon the different frame,—the inward formation of either the solids or the fluids." According to Pope the strongest organ gives rise to some passion of corresponding strength, which finally absorbs all other passions.[1188]The use of this doctrine, as applied to the knowledge of mankind, is one of the subjects of the second book.—Pope.Pope refers to Moral Essays, Epist. 1. Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men.[1189]The metaphor is taken from the casting of metal. The "mind's disease," says Pope, is in the original casting, and is not a defect which arises subsequently.[1190]Dryden's Juvenal, Sat. x. 489:One, with cruel art,Makes Colon suffer for the peccant part.—Wakefield.[1191]The "faculties" are not a class of powers distinct from "wit, spirit, reason," but these last are among the faculties, and we must understand the passage as if Pope had written that wit and spirit, with all the other faculties, including reason itself, contribute to the growth of the ruling passion.[1192]By inventing arguments in its justification, as Pope explains at ver. 156.[1193]Taken from Bacon, De Calore.—Warton.This comparison, which might be very proper in philosophy, has a mean effect in poetry.—Bowles.In the MS. this couplet is added:Its own best forces lead the mind astray,Just as with Teague his own legs ran away.Two lines, which do not appear in the subsequent editions, were inserted after ver. 148 in the quarto of 1735:The ruling passion, be it what it will,The ruling passion conquers reason still.[1194]MS.:And we who vainly boast her rightful swayIn our weak etc.[1195]M.S.:Can reason more etc.[1196]From La Rochefoucauld: "Reason frequently puts itself on the side of the strongest passion; there is no violent passion which has not its reason to justify it."—Warton.[1197]Pope copied Mandeville: "Man's strong habits and inclinations can only be subdued by passions of greater violence."[1198]Cowley's poem on the late civil war:The plague, we know, drives all diseases out.—Wakefield.Ruffhead and Bowles unite in condemning the colloquial familiarity of Pope's simile.[1199]MS.:This bias nature to our temper lends.The couplet was not in the first edition.[1200]The particular application of this to the several pursuits of men, and the general good resulting thence, falls also into the succeeding book.—Pope.The "succeeding book" is the Moral Essays, which are almost entirely made up of satiric sketches. Pope dilated upon the evil resulting from "the mind's disease, the ruling passion," but barely touched upon "the general good."[1201]Man can only be driven from passion to passion during the infancy of the ruling passion, which continues to grow, Pope tells us, till it has overspread the entire mind, and obliterated every subordinate desire.[1202]From Rochefoucauld, Maxim 266: "It is a mistake to believe that none but the violent passions, such as ambition and love, are able to triumph over the other passions. Laziness, languid as it is, often gets the mastery of them all, usurps over all the designs and actions of life, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues."—Warton.[1203]MS.:Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ill.[1204]Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's Miscellanies, iv. p. 312:Hypocrisy at last should enter in,And fix this floating mercury of sin.—Wakefield.[1205]MS.:The noblest fruits the planter's hope may mock,Which thrive inserted on the savage stock.[1206]He argues that our primitive tendencies are too various to be steady. Man is mercurial and fickle till his numerous passions are lost in the ruling passion, which converts our changeable propensities into a single desire. Under the government of reason this "savage" and vicious "stock" sends forth a healthy shoot of virtue which is rendered strong and stable by the vigour of the ruling passion, or parent stem. The theory is wrong throughout. People are not composed of only one passion, virtue cannot be the product of a vice, and the simulated virtue which proceeds from a solitary passion will be as contracted as its cause. Pope's catalogue of the ruling passions, and their attendant virtues, exhibits a counterfeit dismembered virtue,—a single false limb in the place of a complete and living body. An unmaimed virtue requires the cultivation of our nature in its complexity, and virtues are grafted on lawful tendencies, and not on lawless passions.[1207]Ver. 184 is followed by this couplet in the MS.:As dulcet pippins from the crabtree come,As sloes' rough juices melt into a plum.[1208]Pope probably alluded to Swift when he spoke of the "crops of wit and honesty" which were the product of "spleen, obstinacy, and hate." The spleen and hate engendered wit by prompting satiric effusions; but wit is not in itself a virtue, and when Pope inserted it in his catalogue he must have been thinking of the moral ends it might subserve.[1209]MS.:Vain-glory, courage, justice can supply.[1210]MS.:Envy, in critics and old maids the devil,Is emulation in the learn'd and civil."Emulation," says Bishop Butler, "is merely the desire of equality with, or superiority over others, with whom we compare ourselves. To desire the attainment of this equality, or superiority, by the particular means of others being brought down to our level, or below it, is, I think, the distinct notion of envy." A man who was made up of rivalry, which is Pope's supposition, would be an odious character, even without the additional taint of envy, from which, nevertheless, he could hardly be free.[1211]Pope speaks after Mandeville, who says that shame and pride are the "two passions in which the seeds of most virtues are contained." Pride he defined to be the faculty by which men overvalued themselves, and were led to do what would win them applause. "There is not," he says, "a duty to others or ourselves that may not be counterfeited by it." No quality, he admits, is more detested, and it would defeat its own end if it did not disguise itself in the garb of virtue.[1212]As Pope supposes shame to be "a disease of the mind," he could not apply the term to the self-reproaches of an enlightened conscience, but must mean the humiliation produced by censure. This species of shame can only bind us to average decency of conduct, is a feeble protection against secret vice, and often an incentive to baseness. Spurious shame, as Mandeville remarks, induces women to murder their illegitimate children, drives many to tell falsehoods to conceal their faults, changes with the company and public opinion, and begets a degrading compliance with the evil habits of associates, and with the lax customs of the age.[1213]After ver. 194 in the MS.:How oft with passion, virtue points her charms!Then shines the hero, then the patriot warms.Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had knownHad Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none?But virtues opposite to make agree,That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee.Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak,"Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a pique.Once for a whim, persuade yourself to payA debt to reason, like a debt at play.For right or wrong have mortals suffered more?B[lount] for his prince, or B** for his whore?Whose self-denials nature most control?His who would save a sixpence, or his soul.Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin,Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin?What we resolve we can: but here's the fault,We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought."—Warburton.There is another version of the last couplet but one in the MS.:Which will become more exemplary thin,W[eb] for his health, De Rancé for his sin?Web may have been the General Webb who got considerable reputation for his defeat of the French at Wynendale in 1708. Swift in his Journal to Stella, April 19, 1711, speaks of him as "going with a crutch and a stick." Rancé was born at Paris in 1626, and died in 1700. In 1662 he assumed the government of the monastery of La Trappe, and was noted for the austerities he imposed and practised. Mr. Croker thinks that "B." who "suffered for his prince" was Edward Blount, the Roman Catholic Devonshire squire. He went into voluntary exile after the rebellion of 1715, but did not remain abroad many years.[1214]Yet in the previous couplet we are informed that there is hardly a virtue which will not grow on the "pride" we are here enjoined to "check."[1215]MS.:Thus every ruling passion of the mindStands to some virtue and some vice inclined.[1216]The MS. has two other versions of this line:Check but its force or compass short of ill.Turn but the bias from the side of ill.[1217]But not by grafting temperance and humanity upon his ruling passions—sensuality and cruelty. He must have torn up his evil passions by the roots, and cultivated virtues in their stead.[1218]Catiline hemmed in by superior forces died fighting with the courage of despair. Unless he was greatly maligned his conspiracies were prompted by profligate selfishness without any mixture of patriotism. Decius, instructed by a vision on the eve of the battle of Vesuvius,B.C.340, that the general on the one side, and the army on the other was doomed, rushed into the thick of the fight to ensure by his own death the destruction of the enemy. The story of Decius may be fabulous, like that of Pope's next example, Curtius, who when informed,B.C.362, that a chasm which had opened in the Roman forum could never be filled up till the basis of the Roman greatness had been committed to it, was alleged to have mounted on horseback clad in armour, and to have leaped into the gulf. Courage, the quality common to Catiline, Decius, and Curtius, is never a ruling passion, but is the effect of some antecedent motive, which may be vanity or duty, lofty patriotism or criminal ambition.[1219]MS.:And either makes a patriot or a knave.[1220]MS.:Divide, before the genius of the mind.or,'Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind.The idea expressed in the couplet is an adaptation of a passage in the first chapter of Genesis. As God in the chaos of the world "divided the light from the darkness," so the God within us, which is our reason, does the same with the chaos of the mind. The chaos, on Pope's system, was in the actions, and not in the motives. The sweet water and the bitter flowed from the same tainted fountain,—from ambition, pride, sloth, etc.[1221]MS.:Extremes in man concur to gen'ral use.Pope's meaning seems to be that in all terrestrial things, except man, extremes or contraries produce opposite and uncompounded effects. In man, extremes, in the shape of virtue and vice, join and mix together. There is no force in the distinction. Hot water, for instance, mixes with cold, and a mean temperature is the result.[1222]"Great purposes," says Warburton in explanation of this passage, "are served by vice and virtue invading each other's bounds, no less than the perfecting the constitution of the whole, as lights and shades, in a well wrought picture, make the harmony and spirit of the composition." By this rule virtue dashed with vice is more "spirited and harmonious" than virtue without alloy. Warburton allowed himself to be deluded by a metaphor. Black paint has no resemblance to black morals,—shadows in a picture to hatred, avarice, and so on.[1223]Too nice, that is, to permit us to distinguish where ends, etc. The ellipse goes beyond any poetical licence which is consistent with writing English.[1224]The lines from ver. 207 to 214 are versified from Clarke's Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, 10th ed., p. 184: "As in painting two very different colours may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, so that it shall not be possible to determine exactly where the one ends, and the other begins, and yet the colours may differ as much as can be, not in degree only but in kind, so, though it may, perhaps, be very difficult in some nice cases to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, yet right and wrong are totally different, even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness." The argument of Clarke was directed against Hobbes, and his disciples, who denied that there was any inherent difference between good and evil, and supported their paradox by pleading the impossibility of drawing a line between the two.[1225]Here follows in the MS.:To strangle in its birth each rising crimeRequires but little,—just to think in time.In ev'ry vice, at first, in some degreeWe see some virtue, or we think we see.Our vices thus are virtues in disguise,Wicked but by degrees, or by surprise.Of the last couplet there is a second version:Thus spite of all the Frenchman's witty liesMost vices are but virtues in disguise.The witty Frenchman was La Rochefoucauld. Pope's counter-maxim is only a form of La Rochefoucald's principle, converted into an apparent contradiction by an equivocal use of the phrase "virtues in disguise." Those who pursue vicious objects are reluctant to allow that they are the slaves of vice. "Hence," says Hutcheson, in a passage quoted by Warton, "the basest actions are dressed in some tolerable mask. What others call avarice, appears to the agent a prudent care of a family or friends; fraud, artful conduct; malice and revenge, a just sense of honour; fire and sword and desolation among enemies, a just defence of our country; persecution, a zeal for truth." Pope assumes that the vice is inspired by genuine virtue, whereas the virtue is a pretence, a flimsy pretext to excuse wrong-doing. The vice is real, the virtue fictitious, and this is the principle of La Rochefoucauld.[1226]Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part i.:For truth has such a face and such a mien,As to be loved needs only to be seen.—Wakefield.The lines from ver. 217 to 221 are thus varied in the MS.:Vice all abhor, the monster is too foul;Naked, indeed, she shocks us to the soul;But dressed too well, with tempting time and place,That but to pity her is to embrace.Where art thou, Vice? 'twas never yet agreed, etc.[1227]The word is inappropriate. Men do not become sensual out of pity to the miseries of sensuality, or envious from compassion for the pangs of envy. Pity may be felt for the evils which vice entails, but this is not pity for the vice, nor a temptation to practise it.[1228]After ver. 220 in ed. 1:A cheat, a whore, who starts not at the name,In all the Inns of Court, or Drury Lane?These two omitted in the subsequent editions.—Pope.The dishonest lawyer, and woman of the town, applied soft names to their vices, and were startled to be called by their proper appellations. The couplet was followed in the MS. by some further illustrations:—B[lun]t but doesK—— brings matters on;Rogues but do business; spies but serve the crown;Sid has the secret, ChartresH[e]r[ve]y the court, and Huggins knows the town;Kind-hearted Peter helps the rich in want,Nero's a wag, and Messaline gallant.The last couplet assumed a second form:Nero's a wag, Faustina some suspectOf gallantry, and Sutton of neglect.Sutton, Peter Walter, Hervey, Huggins, Chartres, and Blunt will reappear in connection with the offences for which they are satirised here. Sid was Lord Godophin, who was lampooned under the name of Sid Hamet by Swift. Pope, in his Moral Essays, Epist. 1, ver. 86, speaks of hisNewmarket fame, and judgment in a bet;and the phrase, "Sid has the secret" is an insinuation that his "judgment in a bet" sometimes arose from his being privy to the tricks of the turf.[1229]After ver. 226 in the MS.:The Col'nel swears the agent is a dog;The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue;Against the thief th' attorney loud inveighs,For whose ten pound the county twenty pays;The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state,And dying mourns small villains hanged by great.—Warburton.The agent of whom the Colonel complained was the army agent. The scrivener, who drew contracts, and invested money, hated the attorneys because they were in part competitors for the same class of business. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, says, that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791, aged 93, was the last of the scriveners. Their occupation had gradually lapsed to other professions, legal or monetary. Pope's remaining instances are forced. The attorney did not pay more than his neighbours to the county expenditure for prosecuting thieves, and as the trials were much to his own profit, he was the last person who had an interest in inveighing against thievery. As little did the thief at his execution denounce "the knaves of state," of whom he commonly knew nothing. Pope has put the satire of the Beggar's Opera into the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets and highwaymen.[1230]MS.:Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.[1231]From moral insensibility, that is, they are either unconscious of their vice, or, being conscious, pretend ignorance.[1232]Pope goes too far. The worst men acknowledge that some things are crimes.[1233]Addison, Spectator, No. 183: "There was no person so vicious who had not some good in him, nor any person so virtuous who had not in him some evil."[1234]This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS.:Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,Nay in a minister, or on a throne.[1235]Complete virtue, and complete vice, says Pope, are both hostile to self-interest, a plain confession that his selfish system was incompatible with thorough virtue. He assures us, Epist. iv. ver. 310, that "virtue alone is happiness below," but to be consistent he must have meant virtue seasoned with vice.[1236]He is far from saying that good effects naturally rise from vice or folly, and affirms nothing but that God superintends the world in such a manner that they do not produce all those destructive consequences that might reasonably be expected from them.—Johnson.MS.:That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice.Or,And public good extracts from private vice.The last version is taken from the title of Mandeville's work, "The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits." Johnson's interpretation of the text does not agree with Pope's assertion, that "imperfections are usefully distributed to all orders of men."[1237]MS.:Each frailty wisely to each rank applied.The line is disfigured by the clumsy transition from the present tense to the past for the sake of the rhyme, which is a trifle in comparison with the doctrine that "heaven applies happy frailties to all ranks." If the "frailties" specified by Pope are "happy," fear must be a recommendation in a statesman, rashness in a general, presumption in a king, and a credulous faith in the presumption the best condition for the people.[1238]The sense of shame in virgins is not a frailty to be ranked with pride, rashness, and presumption.

[1160]MS.:Let metaphysics common reason split.

[1160]MS.:

Let metaphysics common reason split.

[1161]In the MS. this couplet follows:Too nice distinctions honest sense will shun,Know pleasure, good, and happiness are one.

[1161]In the MS. this couplet follows:

Too nice distinctions honest sense will shun,Know pleasure, good, and happiness are one.

[1162]MS.:Both fly from pain, to pleasure both aspire,With one aversion, and with one desire.Pope charges the schoolmen with being at war about a name when they distinguished between "sense" and "reason," and the distinction is a capital article in his own moral creed. He charges them with maintaining that sense and reason were not merely separate, but contending powers, and he too has insisted on the universality of the strife. "Sense," or, in his language, "self-love," "looks," ver. 73, to "immediate," "reason" to "future good," and in this difference of view the "temptations" of self-love "throng thicker than the arguments" of reason. The contest is the subject of a long disquisition further on, and Pope laments, ver. 149-160, that passion should conquer in the fight. When he interjected the paragraph, in which he contradicted himself, he rested his case on the proposition that reason, which pursues interest well-understood, and self-love, which gratifies present passion, "aspire to one end,—pleasure." But the pleasure sought by reason and self-love respectively is not the same pleasure, and so incompatible were the two pleasures in his estimation that he calls one, ver. 92, "our greatest evil," the other "our greatest good."

[1162]MS.:

Both fly from pain, to pleasure both aspire,With one aversion, and with one desire.

Pope charges the schoolmen with being at war about a name when they distinguished between "sense" and "reason," and the distinction is a capital article in his own moral creed. He charges them with maintaining that sense and reason were not merely separate, but contending powers, and he too has insisted on the universality of the strife. "Sense," or, in his language, "self-love," "looks," ver. 73, to "immediate," "reason" to "future good," and in this difference of view the "temptations" of self-love "throng thicker than the arguments" of reason. The contest is the subject of a long disquisition further on, and Pope laments, ver. 149-160, that passion should conquer in the fight. When he interjected the paragraph, in which he contradicted himself, he rested his case on the proposition that reason, which pursues interest well-understood, and self-love, which gratifies present passion, "aspire to one end,—pleasure." But the pleasure sought by reason and self-love respectively is not the same pleasure, and so incompatible were the two pleasures in his estimation that he calls one, ver. 92, "our greatest evil," the other "our greatest good."

[1163]MS.:Reason itself more nicely shares in all.

[1163]MS.:

Reason itself more nicely shares in all.

[1164]MS.:Passions whose ends are honest, means are fair.

[1164]MS.:

Passions whose ends are honest, means are fair.

[1165]"List," which would probably now be thought a vulgarism, was in Pope's day the established word. Our form, "enlist," was apparently unknown to Johnson, who did not insert it in his Dictionary.

[1166]"Passions that court an aim" is surely a strange expression.—Warton.For "court" Pope had at first written "boast."

[1166]"Passions that court an aim" is surely a strange expression.—Warton.

For "court" Pope had at first written "boast."

[1167]The "imparted" or sympathetic passions are the benevolent impulses and affections. As to their "kind," or nature, they are, says Pope, "modes of self-love," but when the self-love assumes the form of loving others the passion is "exalted, and takes the name of some virtue." He passes the affections over here with this slight allusion, and returns to them at ver. 255, and more at length in Epistle iii.

[1168]What says old Epictetus, who knew stoicism better than these men? "I am not to be apathetic or void of passions, like a statue. I am to discharge all the relations of a social and friendly life,—the parent, the husband, the brother, the magistrate." The stoic apathy was no more than a freedom from irrational and excessive agitations of the soul.—James Harris.

[1169]That is, in cold insensibility. Lady Chudleigh's dialogue on the death of her daughter:Honour is ever the reward of pain:A lazy virtue no applause will gain.—Wakefield.

[1169]That is, in cold insensibility. Lady Chudleigh's dialogue on the death of her daughter:

Honour is ever the reward of pain:A lazy virtue no applause will gain.—Wakefield.

[1170]The stoic aimed at inner perfection, and trusted to the serenity of virtue to sustain him in all the trials of life. Pope erroneously imagined that stoics were selfish and inactive because they were calm and self-contained. Seneca, De Ot. i. 4, says, they insisted that we must never cease labouring for the common good, and Cicero, De Fin. iii. 19, says they placed their force of character at the service of mankind, and thought it their duty to live, and if need were to die, for the benefit of the public.

[1171]A couplet is added in the MS.:Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight,Comes without arms, and conquers but by flight.

[1171]A couplet is added in the MS.:

Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight,Comes without arms, and conquers but by flight.

[1172]MS.:Passions like tempests put in act the soul.

[1172]MS.:

Passions like tempests put in act the soul.

[1173]Spectator, June 18, 1712. No. 408: "Passions are to the mind as winds to a ship; they only can move it, and they too often destroy it. Reason must then take the place of pilot, and can never fail of securing her charge if she be not wanting to herself."

[1174]Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 55:On life's wide ocean diversely launched out,Our minds alike are tossed on waves of doubt,Holding no steady course, or constant sail,But shift and tack with ev'ry veering gale.—Wakefield.

[1174]Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 55:

On life's wide ocean diversely launched out,Our minds alike are tossed on waves of doubt,Holding no steady course, or constant sail,But shift and tack with ev'ry veering gale.—Wakefield.

[1175]In the mariner's compass the paper on which the points of the compass are marked is called "the card."

[1176]Carew's Poems:A troop of deities came down to guideOur steerless barks in passion's swelling tide,By virtue's card.—Wakefield.After ver. 108 in the MS.:A tedious voyage! where how useless liesThe compass, if no pow'rful gusts arise!—Warburton.

[1176]Carew's Poems:

A troop of deities came down to guideOur steerless barks in passion's swelling tide,By virtue's card.—Wakefield.

After ver. 108 in the MS.:

A tedious voyage! where how useless liesThe compass, if no pow'rful gusts arise!—Warburton.

[1177]Psalm civ. 3: "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, and walketh upon the wings of the wind."—Bowles.Dryden's Ceyx and Alcyone:And now sublime she rides upon the wind.—Warton.Pope held that "fierce ambition" was instigated by the Almighty, Epist. i. ver. 159, and compared his inspiration of such tumultuous passions to his "heaving old ocean, and winging the storm." The poet must be understood as upholding the same extended and licentious doctrine when he returns to the comparison, and talks of "God mounting the storm" of the passions, and "walking upon the wind."

[1177]Psalm civ. 3: "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, and walketh upon the wings of the wind."—Bowles.

Dryden's Ceyx and Alcyone:

And now sublime she rides upon the wind.—Warton.

Pope held that "fierce ambition" was instigated by the Almighty, Epist. i. ver. 159, and compared his inspiration of such tumultuous passions to his "heaving old ocean, and winging the storm." The poet must be understood as upholding the same extended and licentious doctrine when he returns to the comparison, and talks of "God mounting the storm" of the passions, and "walking upon the wind."

[1178]After ver. 112 in the MS.:The soft, reward the virtuous or invite;The fierce, the vicious punish or affright.—Warburton.

[1178]After ver. 112 in the MS.:

The soft, reward the virtuous or invite;The fierce, the vicious punish or affright.—Warburton.

[1179]How, that is, can the stoic succeed in destroying passions which enter into the very composition of man? The stoic made no such pretension. What he laboured to "destroy" were those "perturbations of mind" which Zeno, Tusc. iv. 6, maintained to be "repugnant to reason, and against nature," and for which the stoical remedy, Tusc. iv. 28, was the demonstration that they "were vicious, and had nothing natural or necessary in them." The principle for which Pope contended was the very maxim of the stoics,—they insisted that "reason should keep to nature's road." The real question was, whether they did not sometimes go too far, and condemn natural emotions under the name of prohibited perturbations.

[1180]All he means is, that the intentions of God are manifested in the nature of man.

[1181]Dryden, State of Innocence, Act v.:With all the num'rous family of death.Garth, Dispensary, vi. 138:And all the faded family of care.—Wakefield.

[1181]Dryden, State of Innocence, Act v.:

With all the num'rous family of death.

Garth, Dispensary, vi. 138:

And all the faded family of care.—Wakefield.

[1182]Warton remarks that the group of allegorical personages are here suddenly changed to things which are to be "mixed with art."

[1183]MS.:To blend them well, and harmonise their strifeMakes all etc.

[1183]MS.:

To blend them well, and harmonise their strifeMakes all etc.

[1184]In plain prose thus: "To grasp present pleasures and to find future pleasures is the whole employ of body and mind." Pope's line is rendered intolerable by its elliptical and inverted language, and the unmeaning expletive "still."

[1185]MS.:Present to seize, or future to obtainThe whole employ of body and of brain.

[1185]MS.:

Present to seize, or future to obtainThe whole employ of body and of brain.

[1186]MS.:On stronger senses stronger passions strike.

[1186]MS.:

On stronger senses stronger passions strike.

[1187]MS.:Hence passions rise, and more or less inflame,Proportioned to each organ of the frame,Nor here internal faculties control,Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul.Pope derived the notion from Mandeville, who says that the diversity of passions in different men "depend only upon the different frame,—the inward formation of either the solids or the fluids." According to Pope the strongest organ gives rise to some passion of corresponding strength, which finally absorbs all other passions.

[1187]MS.:

Hence passions rise, and more or less inflame,Proportioned to each organ of the frame,Nor here internal faculties control,Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul.

Pope derived the notion from Mandeville, who says that the diversity of passions in different men "depend only upon the different frame,—the inward formation of either the solids or the fluids." According to Pope the strongest organ gives rise to some passion of corresponding strength, which finally absorbs all other passions.

[1188]The use of this doctrine, as applied to the knowledge of mankind, is one of the subjects of the second book.—Pope.Pope refers to Moral Essays, Epist. 1. Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men.

[1188]The use of this doctrine, as applied to the knowledge of mankind, is one of the subjects of the second book.—Pope.

Pope refers to Moral Essays, Epist. 1. Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men.

[1189]The metaphor is taken from the casting of metal. The "mind's disease," says Pope, is in the original casting, and is not a defect which arises subsequently.

[1190]Dryden's Juvenal, Sat. x. 489:One, with cruel art,Makes Colon suffer for the peccant part.—Wakefield.

[1190]Dryden's Juvenal, Sat. x. 489:

One, with cruel art,Makes Colon suffer for the peccant part.—Wakefield.

[1191]The "faculties" are not a class of powers distinct from "wit, spirit, reason," but these last are among the faculties, and we must understand the passage as if Pope had written that wit and spirit, with all the other faculties, including reason itself, contribute to the growth of the ruling passion.

[1192]By inventing arguments in its justification, as Pope explains at ver. 156.

[1193]Taken from Bacon, De Calore.—Warton.This comparison, which might be very proper in philosophy, has a mean effect in poetry.—Bowles.In the MS. this couplet is added:Its own best forces lead the mind astray,Just as with Teague his own legs ran away.Two lines, which do not appear in the subsequent editions, were inserted after ver. 148 in the quarto of 1735:The ruling passion, be it what it will,The ruling passion conquers reason still.

[1193]Taken from Bacon, De Calore.—Warton.

This comparison, which might be very proper in philosophy, has a mean effect in poetry.—Bowles.

In the MS. this couplet is added:

Its own best forces lead the mind astray,Just as with Teague his own legs ran away.

Two lines, which do not appear in the subsequent editions, were inserted after ver. 148 in the quarto of 1735:

The ruling passion, be it what it will,The ruling passion conquers reason still.

[1194]MS.:And we who vainly boast her rightful swayIn our weak etc.

[1194]MS.:

And we who vainly boast her rightful swayIn our weak etc.

[1195]M.S.:Can reason more etc.

[1195]M.S.:

Can reason more etc.

[1196]From La Rochefoucauld: "Reason frequently puts itself on the side of the strongest passion; there is no violent passion which has not its reason to justify it."—Warton.

[1197]Pope copied Mandeville: "Man's strong habits and inclinations can only be subdued by passions of greater violence."

[1198]Cowley's poem on the late civil war:The plague, we know, drives all diseases out.—Wakefield.Ruffhead and Bowles unite in condemning the colloquial familiarity of Pope's simile.

[1198]Cowley's poem on the late civil war:

The plague, we know, drives all diseases out.—Wakefield.

Ruffhead and Bowles unite in condemning the colloquial familiarity of Pope's simile.

[1199]MS.:This bias nature to our temper lends.The couplet was not in the first edition.

[1199]MS.:

This bias nature to our temper lends.

The couplet was not in the first edition.

[1200]The particular application of this to the several pursuits of men, and the general good resulting thence, falls also into the succeeding book.—Pope.The "succeeding book" is the Moral Essays, which are almost entirely made up of satiric sketches. Pope dilated upon the evil resulting from "the mind's disease, the ruling passion," but barely touched upon "the general good."

[1200]The particular application of this to the several pursuits of men, and the general good resulting thence, falls also into the succeeding book.—Pope.

The "succeeding book" is the Moral Essays, which are almost entirely made up of satiric sketches. Pope dilated upon the evil resulting from "the mind's disease, the ruling passion," but barely touched upon "the general good."

[1201]Man can only be driven from passion to passion during the infancy of the ruling passion, which continues to grow, Pope tells us, till it has overspread the entire mind, and obliterated every subordinate desire.

[1202]From Rochefoucauld, Maxim 266: "It is a mistake to believe that none but the violent passions, such as ambition and love, are able to triumph over the other passions. Laziness, languid as it is, often gets the mastery of them all, usurps over all the designs and actions of life, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues."—Warton.

[1203]MS.:Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ill.

[1203]MS.:

Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ill.

[1204]Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's Miscellanies, iv. p. 312:Hypocrisy at last should enter in,And fix this floating mercury of sin.—Wakefield.

[1204]Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's Miscellanies, iv. p. 312:

Hypocrisy at last should enter in,And fix this floating mercury of sin.—Wakefield.

[1205]MS.:The noblest fruits the planter's hope may mock,Which thrive inserted on the savage stock.

[1205]MS.:

The noblest fruits the planter's hope may mock,Which thrive inserted on the savage stock.

[1206]He argues that our primitive tendencies are too various to be steady. Man is mercurial and fickle till his numerous passions are lost in the ruling passion, which converts our changeable propensities into a single desire. Under the government of reason this "savage" and vicious "stock" sends forth a healthy shoot of virtue which is rendered strong and stable by the vigour of the ruling passion, or parent stem. The theory is wrong throughout. People are not composed of only one passion, virtue cannot be the product of a vice, and the simulated virtue which proceeds from a solitary passion will be as contracted as its cause. Pope's catalogue of the ruling passions, and their attendant virtues, exhibits a counterfeit dismembered virtue,—a single false limb in the place of a complete and living body. An unmaimed virtue requires the cultivation of our nature in its complexity, and virtues are grafted on lawful tendencies, and not on lawless passions.

[1207]Ver. 184 is followed by this couplet in the MS.:As dulcet pippins from the crabtree come,As sloes' rough juices melt into a plum.

[1207]Ver. 184 is followed by this couplet in the MS.:

As dulcet pippins from the crabtree come,As sloes' rough juices melt into a plum.

[1208]Pope probably alluded to Swift when he spoke of the "crops of wit and honesty" which were the product of "spleen, obstinacy, and hate." The spleen and hate engendered wit by prompting satiric effusions; but wit is not in itself a virtue, and when Pope inserted it in his catalogue he must have been thinking of the moral ends it might subserve.

[1209]MS.:Vain-glory, courage, justice can supply.

[1209]MS.:

Vain-glory, courage, justice can supply.

[1210]MS.:Envy, in critics and old maids the devil,Is emulation in the learn'd and civil."Emulation," says Bishop Butler, "is merely the desire of equality with, or superiority over others, with whom we compare ourselves. To desire the attainment of this equality, or superiority, by the particular means of others being brought down to our level, or below it, is, I think, the distinct notion of envy." A man who was made up of rivalry, which is Pope's supposition, would be an odious character, even without the additional taint of envy, from which, nevertheless, he could hardly be free.

[1210]MS.:

Envy, in critics and old maids the devil,Is emulation in the learn'd and civil.

"Emulation," says Bishop Butler, "is merely the desire of equality with, or superiority over others, with whom we compare ourselves. To desire the attainment of this equality, or superiority, by the particular means of others being brought down to our level, or below it, is, I think, the distinct notion of envy." A man who was made up of rivalry, which is Pope's supposition, would be an odious character, even without the additional taint of envy, from which, nevertheless, he could hardly be free.

[1211]Pope speaks after Mandeville, who says that shame and pride are the "two passions in which the seeds of most virtues are contained." Pride he defined to be the faculty by which men overvalued themselves, and were led to do what would win them applause. "There is not," he says, "a duty to others or ourselves that may not be counterfeited by it." No quality, he admits, is more detested, and it would defeat its own end if it did not disguise itself in the garb of virtue.

[1212]As Pope supposes shame to be "a disease of the mind," he could not apply the term to the self-reproaches of an enlightened conscience, but must mean the humiliation produced by censure. This species of shame can only bind us to average decency of conduct, is a feeble protection against secret vice, and often an incentive to baseness. Spurious shame, as Mandeville remarks, induces women to murder their illegitimate children, drives many to tell falsehoods to conceal their faults, changes with the company and public opinion, and begets a degrading compliance with the evil habits of associates, and with the lax customs of the age.

[1213]After ver. 194 in the MS.:How oft with passion, virtue points her charms!Then shines the hero, then the patriot warms.Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had knownHad Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none?But virtues opposite to make agree,That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee.Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak,"Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a pique.Once for a whim, persuade yourself to payA debt to reason, like a debt at play.For right or wrong have mortals suffered more?B[lount] for his prince, or B** for his whore?Whose self-denials nature most control?His who would save a sixpence, or his soul.Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin,Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin?What we resolve we can: but here's the fault,We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought."—Warburton.There is another version of the last couplet but one in the MS.:Which will become more exemplary thin,W[eb] for his health, De Rancé for his sin?Web may have been the General Webb who got considerable reputation for his defeat of the French at Wynendale in 1708. Swift in his Journal to Stella, April 19, 1711, speaks of him as "going with a crutch and a stick." Rancé was born at Paris in 1626, and died in 1700. In 1662 he assumed the government of the monastery of La Trappe, and was noted for the austerities he imposed and practised. Mr. Croker thinks that "B." who "suffered for his prince" was Edward Blount, the Roman Catholic Devonshire squire. He went into voluntary exile after the rebellion of 1715, but did not remain abroad many years.

[1213]After ver. 194 in the MS.:

How oft with passion, virtue points her charms!Then shines the hero, then the patriot warms.Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had knownHad Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none?But virtues opposite to make agree,That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee.Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak,"Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a pique.Once for a whim, persuade yourself to payA debt to reason, like a debt at play.For right or wrong have mortals suffered more?B[lount] for his prince, or B** for his whore?Whose self-denials nature most control?His who would save a sixpence, or his soul.Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin,Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin?What we resolve we can: but here's the fault,We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought."—Warburton.

There is another version of the last couplet but one in the MS.:

Which will become more exemplary thin,W[eb] for his health, De Rancé for his sin?

Web may have been the General Webb who got considerable reputation for his defeat of the French at Wynendale in 1708. Swift in his Journal to Stella, April 19, 1711, speaks of him as "going with a crutch and a stick." Rancé was born at Paris in 1626, and died in 1700. In 1662 he assumed the government of the monastery of La Trappe, and was noted for the austerities he imposed and practised. Mr. Croker thinks that "B." who "suffered for his prince" was Edward Blount, the Roman Catholic Devonshire squire. He went into voluntary exile after the rebellion of 1715, but did not remain abroad many years.

[1214]Yet in the previous couplet we are informed that there is hardly a virtue which will not grow on the "pride" we are here enjoined to "check."

[1215]MS.:Thus every ruling passion of the mindStands to some virtue and some vice inclined.

[1215]MS.:

Thus every ruling passion of the mindStands to some virtue and some vice inclined.

[1216]The MS. has two other versions of this line:Check but its force or compass short of ill.Turn but the bias from the side of ill.

[1216]The MS. has two other versions of this line:

Check but its force or compass short of ill.Turn but the bias from the side of ill.

[1217]But not by grafting temperance and humanity upon his ruling passions—sensuality and cruelty. He must have torn up his evil passions by the roots, and cultivated virtues in their stead.

[1218]Catiline hemmed in by superior forces died fighting with the courage of despair. Unless he was greatly maligned his conspiracies were prompted by profligate selfishness without any mixture of patriotism. Decius, instructed by a vision on the eve of the battle of Vesuvius,B.C.340, that the general on the one side, and the army on the other was doomed, rushed into the thick of the fight to ensure by his own death the destruction of the enemy. The story of Decius may be fabulous, like that of Pope's next example, Curtius, who when informed,B.C.362, that a chasm which had opened in the Roman forum could never be filled up till the basis of the Roman greatness had been committed to it, was alleged to have mounted on horseback clad in armour, and to have leaped into the gulf. Courage, the quality common to Catiline, Decius, and Curtius, is never a ruling passion, but is the effect of some antecedent motive, which may be vanity or duty, lofty patriotism or criminal ambition.

[1219]MS.:And either makes a patriot or a knave.

[1219]MS.:

And either makes a patriot or a knave.

[1220]MS.:Divide, before the genius of the mind.or,'Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind.The idea expressed in the couplet is an adaptation of a passage in the first chapter of Genesis. As God in the chaos of the world "divided the light from the darkness," so the God within us, which is our reason, does the same with the chaos of the mind. The chaos, on Pope's system, was in the actions, and not in the motives. The sweet water and the bitter flowed from the same tainted fountain,—from ambition, pride, sloth, etc.

[1220]MS.:

Divide, before the genius of the mind.

or,

'Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind.

The idea expressed in the couplet is an adaptation of a passage in the first chapter of Genesis. As God in the chaos of the world "divided the light from the darkness," so the God within us, which is our reason, does the same with the chaos of the mind. The chaos, on Pope's system, was in the actions, and not in the motives. The sweet water and the bitter flowed from the same tainted fountain,—from ambition, pride, sloth, etc.

[1221]MS.:Extremes in man concur to gen'ral use.Pope's meaning seems to be that in all terrestrial things, except man, extremes or contraries produce opposite and uncompounded effects. In man, extremes, in the shape of virtue and vice, join and mix together. There is no force in the distinction. Hot water, for instance, mixes with cold, and a mean temperature is the result.

[1221]MS.:

Extremes in man concur to gen'ral use.

Pope's meaning seems to be that in all terrestrial things, except man, extremes or contraries produce opposite and uncompounded effects. In man, extremes, in the shape of virtue and vice, join and mix together. There is no force in the distinction. Hot water, for instance, mixes with cold, and a mean temperature is the result.

[1222]"Great purposes," says Warburton in explanation of this passage, "are served by vice and virtue invading each other's bounds, no less than the perfecting the constitution of the whole, as lights and shades, in a well wrought picture, make the harmony and spirit of the composition." By this rule virtue dashed with vice is more "spirited and harmonious" than virtue without alloy. Warburton allowed himself to be deluded by a metaphor. Black paint has no resemblance to black morals,—shadows in a picture to hatred, avarice, and so on.

[1223]Too nice, that is, to permit us to distinguish where ends, etc. The ellipse goes beyond any poetical licence which is consistent with writing English.

[1224]The lines from ver. 207 to 214 are versified from Clarke's Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, 10th ed., p. 184: "As in painting two very different colours may, from the highest intenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, so that it shall not be possible to determine exactly where the one ends, and the other begins, and yet the colours may differ as much as can be, not in degree only but in kind, so, though it may, perhaps, be very difficult in some nice cases to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, yet right and wrong are totally different, even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness." The argument of Clarke was directed against Hobbes, and his disciples, who denied that there was any inherent difference between good and evil, and supported their paradox by pleading the impossibility of drawing a line between the two.

[1225]Here follows in the MS.:To strangle in its birth each rising crimeRequires but little,—just to think in time.In ev'ry vice, at first, in some degreeWe see some virtue, or we think we see.Our vices thus are virtues in disguise,Wicked but by degrees, or by surprise.Of the last couplet there is a second version:Thus spite of all the Frenchman's witty liesMost vices are but virtues in disguise.The witty Frenchman was La Rochefoucauld. Pope's counter-maxim is only a form of La Rochefoucald's principle, converted into an apparent contradiction by an equivocal use of the phrase "virtues in disguise." Those who pursue vicious objects are reluctant to allow that they are the slaves of vice. "Hence," says Hutcheson, in a passage quoted by Warton, "the basest actions are dressed in some tolerable mask. What others call avarice, appears to the agent a prudent care of a family or friends; fraud, artful conduct; malice and revenge, a just sense of honour; fire and sword and desolation among enemies, a just defence of our country; persecution, a zeal for truth." Pope assumes that the vice is inspired by genuine virtue, whereas the virtue is a pretence, a flimsy pretext to excuse wrong-doing. The vice is real, the virtue fictitious, and this is the principle of La Rochefoucauld.

[1225]Here follows in the MS.:

To strangle in its birth each rising crimeRequires but little,—just to think in time.In ev'ry vice, at first, in some degreeWe see some virtue, or we think we see.Our vices thus are virtues in disguise,Wicked but by degrees, or by surprise.

Of the last couplet there is a second version:

Thus spite of all the Frenchman's witty liesMost vices are but virtues in disguise.

The witty Frenchman was La Rochefoucauld. Pope's counter-maxim is only a form of La Rochefoucald's principle, converted into an apparent contradiction by an equivocal use of the phrase "virtues in disguise." Those who pursue vicious objects are reluctant to allow that they are the slaves of vice. "Hence," says Hutcheson, in a passage quoted by Warton, "the basest actions are dressed in some tolerable mask. What others call avarice, appears to the agent a prudent care of a family or friends; fraud, artful conduct; malice and revenge, a just sense of honour; fire and sword and desolation among enemies, a just defence of our country; persecution, a zeal for truth." Pope assumes that the vice is inspired by genuine virtue, whereas the virtue is a pretence, a flimsy pretext to excuse wrong-doing. The vice is real, the virtue fictitious, and this is the principle of La Rochefoucauld.

[1226]Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part i.:For truth has such a face and such a mien,As to be loved needs only to be seen.—Wakefield.The lines from ver. 217 to 221 are thus varied in the MS.:Vice all abhor, the monster is too foul;Naked, indeed, she shocks us to the soul;But dressed too well, with tempting time and place,That but to pity her is to embrace.Where art thou, Vice? 'twas never yet agreed, etc.

[1226]Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part i.:

For truth has such a face and such a mien,As to be loved needs only to be seen.—Wakefield.

The lines from ver. 217 to 221 are thus varied in the MS.:

Vice all abhor, the monster is too foul;Naked, indeed, she shocks us to the soul;But dressed too well, with tempting time and place,That but to pity her is to embrace.Where art thou, Vice? 'twas never yet agreed, etc.

[1227]The word is inappropriate. Men do not become sensual out of pity to the miseries of sensuality, or envious from compassion for the pangs of envy. Pity may be felt for the evils which vice entails, but this is not pity for the vice, nor a temptation to practise it.

[1228]After ver. 220 in ed. 1:A cheat, a whore, who starts not at the name,In all the Inns of Court, or Drury Lane?These two omitted in the subsequent editions.—Pope.The dishonest lawyer, and woman of the town, applied soft names to their vices, and were startled to be called by their proper appellations. The couplet was followed in the MS. by some further illustrations:—B[lun]t but doesK—— brings matters on;Rogues but do business; spies but serve the crown;Sid has the secret, ChartresH[e]r[ve]y the court, and Huggins knows the town;Kind-hearted Peter helps the rich in want,Nero's a wag, and Messaline gallant.The last couplet assumed a second form:Nero's a wag, Faustina some suspectOf gallantry, and Sutton of neglect.Sutton, Peter Walter, Hervey, Huggins, Chartres, and Blunt will reappear in connection with the offences for which they are satirised here. Sid was Lord Godophin, who was lampooned under the name of Sid Hamet by Swift. Pope, in his Moral Essays, Epist. 1, ver. 86, speaks of hisNewmarket fame, and judgment in a bet;and the phrase, "Sid has the secret" is an insinuation that his "judgment in a bet" sometimes arose from his being privy to the tricks of the turf.

[1228]After ver. 220 in ed. 1:

A cheat, a whore, who starts not at the name,In all the Inns of Court, or Drury Lane?

These two omitted in the subsequent editions.—Pope.

The dishonest lawyer, and woman of the town, applied soft names to their vices, and were startled to be called by their proper appellations. The couplet was followed in the MS. by some further illustrations:—

B[lun]t but doesK—— brings matters on;Rogues but do business; spies but serve the crown;Sid has the secret, ChartresH[e]r[ve]y the court, and Huggins knows the town;Kind-hearted Peter helps the rich in want,Nero's a wag, and Messaline gallant.

The last couplet assumed a second form:

Nero's a wag, Faustina some suspectOf gallantry, and Sutton of neglect.

Sutton, Peter Walter, Hervey, Huggins, Chartres, and Blunt will reappear in connection with the offences for which they are satirised here. Sid was Lord Godophin, who was lampooned under the name of Sid Hamet by Swift. Pope, in his Moral Essays, Epist. 1, ver. 86, speaks of his

Newmarket fame, and judgment in a bet;

and the phrase, "Sid has the secret" is an insinuation that his "judgment in a bet" sometimes arose from his being privy to the tricks of the turf.

[1229]After ver. 226 in the MS.:The Col'nel swears the agent is a dog;The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue;Against the thief th' attorney loud inveighs,For whose ten pound the county twenty pays;The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state,And dying mourns small villains hanged by great.—Warburton.The agent of whom the Colonel complained was the army agent. The scrivener, who drew contracts, and invested money, hated the attorneys because they were in part competitors for the same class of business. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, says, that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791, aged 93, was the last of the scriveners. Their occupation had gradually lapsed to other professions, legal or monetary. Pope's remaining instances are forced. The attorney did not pay more than his neighbours to the county expenditure for prosecuting thieves, and as the trials were much to his own profit, he was the last person who had an interest in inveighing against thievery. As little did the thief at his execution denounce "the knaves of state," of whom he commonly knew nothing. Pope has put the satire of the Beggar's Opera into the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets and highwaymen.

[1229]After ver. 226 in the MS.:

The Col'nel swears the agent is a dog;The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue;Against the thief th' attorney loud inveighs,For whose ten pound the county twenty pays;The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state,And dying mourns small villains hanged by great.—Warburton.

The agent of whom the Colonel complained was the army agent. The scrivener, who drew contracts, and invested money, hated the attorneys because they were in part competitors for the same class of business. Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, says, that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791, aged 93, was the last of the scriveners. Their occupation had gradually lapsed to other professions, legal or monetary. Pope's remaining instances are forced. The attorney did not pay more than his neighbours to the county expenditure for prosecuting thieves, and as the trials were much to his own profit, he was the last person who had an interest in inveighing against thievery. As little did the thief at his execution denounce "the knaves of state," of whom he commonly knew nothing. Pope has put the satire of the Beggar's Opera into the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets and highwaymen.

[1230]MS.:Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.

[1230]MS.:

Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.

[1231]From moral insensibility, that is, they are either unconscious of their vice, or, being conscious, pretend ignorance.

[1232]Pope goes too far. The worst men acknowledge that some things are crimes.

[1233]Addison, Spectator, No. 183: "There was no person so vicious who had not some good in him, nor any person so virtuous who had not in him some evil."

[1234]This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS.:Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,Nay in a minister, or on a throne.

[1234]This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS.:

Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,Nay in a minister, or on a throne.

[1235]Complete virtue, and complete vice, says Pope, are both hostile to self-interest, a plain confession that his selfish system was incompatible with thorough virtue. He assures us, Epist. iv. ver. 310, that "virtue alone is happiness below," but to be consistent he must have meant virtue seasoned with vice.

[1236]He is far from saying that good effects naturally rise from vice or folly, and affirms nothing but that God superintends the world in such a manner that they do not produce all those destructive consequences that might reasonably be expected from them.—Johnson.MS.:That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice.Or,And public good extracts from private vice.The last version is taken from the title of Mandeville's work, "The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits." Johnson's interpretation of the text does not agree with Pope's assertion, that "imperfections are usefully distributed to all orders of men."

MS.:

That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice.

Or,

And public good extracts from private vice.

The last version is taken from the title of Mandeville's work, "The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits." Johnson's interpretation of the text does not agree with Pope's assertion, that "imperfections are usefully distributed to all orders of men."

[1237]MS.:Each frailty wisely to each rank applied.The line is disfigured by the clumsy transition from the present tense to the past for the sake of the rhyme, which is a trifle in comparison with the doctrine that "heaven applies happy frailties to all ranks." If the "frailties" specified by Pope are "happy," fear must be a recommendation in a statesman, rashness in a general, presumption in a king, and a credulous faith in the presumption the best condition for the people.

[1237]MS.:

Each frailty wisely to each rank applied.

The line is disfigured by the clumsy transition from the present tense to the past for the sake of the rhyme, which is a trifle in comparison with the doctrine that "heaven applies happy frailties to all ranks." If the "frailties" specified by Pope are "happy," fear must be a recommendation in a statesman, rashness in a general, presumption in a king, and a credulous faith in the presumption the best condition for the people.

[1238]The sense of shame in virgins is not a frailty to be ranked with pride, rashness, and presumption.

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