Chapter 38

[1320]Bolingbroke, Fragment 3: "Reason improved sociability, extended it to relations more remote, and united several families into one community, as instinct had united several individuals into one family." "Interest" in Pope's line signifies "advantage." Reason, he says, teaches man to improve on the ties of instinct, and form connections beyond his immediate family, whereby he at once extends his love, and the advantages derived from it.[1321]That is, man becomes constant from choice.[1322]MS.:And ev'ry tender passion takes its turn.The line in the text alludes to Pope's hypothesis that every virtue is grafted upon a ruling passion.[1323]"Charity" is used in the antiquated sense of "love." "New needs," says Pope, give rise to "new helps," and the virtue "benevolence" is grafted upon the natural affections.[1324]He means that the latest brood, being young children, love their parents by nature, while the previous brood, being grown up, only love parents from habit.[1325]MS.:Scarce had the last the parents' care outgrownBefore they saw those parents want their own.Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book iii.:and issuing into man,Grudges their life from whence his own began.[1326]MS.:Stretch the long interest, and support the line.[1327]The MS. goes on thus:She spake, and man her high behests obeyed;Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he strayed;For pride was not; joint tenant of the shadeHe shared with beasts his table and his bed;No murder etc."He speaks," says M. Crousaz, "of what passed in the earliest ages of the world no less positively than an eye-witness." Pope followed the ancient fable which he may have read, among other places, in Montaigne's Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communications with beasts, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do."[1328]"Her birth" is the birth of nature. The personification of nature in the phrase "the state of nature," or "the natural state," is so forced, that we do not at once perceive that "nature" is the noun to which "her" refers.[1329]"Union" is put for voluntary union, the union of social affection, in contrast to the bonds of fear, coercion, and the necessities of life, which are large elements in the present condition of mankind. The beasts were included in the common league, and animals of prey unknown in Pope's state of nature. But he did not keep steady to his first account.[1330]So Hall, Satires, Book iii. Sat. 1:Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise,And man grew greedy, discordous, and nice.Now man that erst hail-fellow was with beast,Woxe on to ween himself a god at least.—Wakefield.[1331]Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book xv.:The woolly fleece that clothed her murderer.[1332]Virgil, Ecl. x. 58: "lucos sonantes;" Dryden, "sounding woods."—Wakefield.[1333]MS.:He called on heav'n for blessing, they for food.[1334]MS.:Unstained with gore the grassy altar grew,Priests yet were temperate, yet no passions knew;Nor yet would glutton zeal devoutly eat,Nor faithful av'rice hugged his god in plate.The pagans feasted upon the meat they offered to idols, which is what we are to understand by the "glutton zeal" that "devoutly eats."[1335]Dryden, Virg. Æn. ix. 640:Ah how unlike the living is the dead.—Wakefield.[1336]MS.:Of half that live himself the living tomb.[1337]MS.:Who, foe to nature, other kinds o'erthrownRestless he seeks dominion o'er his own.Or,Who deaf to nature's universal groan,Murders all other kinds, betrays his own.This is the same amiable being who is celebrated, ver. 51, for "helping the wants and woes of other creatures," and sparing singing-birds and gilded insects out of pure compassion.[1338]Pope probably meant that man was a "fiercer savage" than the animals of which he shed the blood, but as the "blood" only is mentioned, there is no proper positive to the comparative.[1339]Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole delineation:Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,And after forged the sword to murder man.—Wakefield.MS.:While nature, strict the injury to scan,Left man the only beast to prey on man.[1340]MS.:In early times when man aspired to art.The lines from ver. 161 to 168 are parenthetical, and Pope now goes back to the primitive age in which uncorrupted man associated freely with the beasts, and profited by their teaching.[1341]MS.:'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake.[1342]It is a caution commonly practised amongst navigators, when thrown upon a desert coast, and in want of refreshments, to observe what fruits have been touched by the birds, and to venture on these without further hesitation.—Warburton.[1343]See Pliny's Nat. Hist. Lib. viii. cap. 27, where several instances are given of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs by their own use of them, and pointing to some operations in the art of healing by their own practice.—Warburton.The instances are all fanciful or fabulous.[1344]Montaigne, Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Democritus held and proved, that most of the arts we have were taught us by other animals, as by the spider to weave and sew, by the swallow to build, by the swan and nightingale music, and by several animals to make medicines."[1345]The MS. adds:Behold the rabbit's fortress in the sands,The beaver's storied house not made with hands.A rabbit-burrow has no resemblance to a military fortress, and Pope prudently omitted the incongruous comparison. Martial, Lib. xiii. Ep. 60, had used the illustration in a directly opposite sense, and said that rabbits, by teaching the art of mining, had shown the enemy how fortresses could be taken.[1346]Oppian, Halicut. Lib. i., describes this fish in the following manner: "They swim on the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which exactly resemble the hulk of a ship. They raise two feet like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the side. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean."—-Pope.The paper-nautilus, or Argonauta Argo, has eight arms. The first pair in the female expand at their extremities, so that each of the two arms terminates in a broad thin membrane. These broad membranes do not exist in the male, and modern naturalists reject the idea that they are used for sails.[1347]MS.:There, too, each form of social commerce find,So late by reason taught to human kind.Behold th' embodied locust rushing forthIn sabled millions from th' inclement north;In herds the wolves, invasive robbers, roam,In flocks, the sheep pacific, race at home.What warlike discipline the cranes display,How leagued their squadron, how direct their way.[1348]The Guardian, No. 157: "Everything is common among ants."[1349]"Anarchy without confusion" is a contradiction in terms, according to the meaning which is now universally attached to the word anarchy. Pope understands by it the mere absence of all inequality of station.[1350]The Guardian, No. 157: "Bees have each of them a hole in their hives; their honey is their own; every bee minds her own concerns." The natural history of former times abounded in fables, and among the number was the fancy that each bee had its separate cell, and private store of honey.[1351]An adaptation of the Latin proverb, mentioned by Cicero, Off. i. 10, and Terence, Heaut. iv. 5, that over-strained law is often unrestrained injustice. The letter contravenes the spirit.[1352]The imagery of the passage is derived from an observation of a Greek philosopher, who compared laws to spiders' webs,—too fragile to hold fast great offenders, and too strong to suffer trivial culprits to escape.—Wakefield.Pope upbraids men for enacting laws too strong for the weak instead of following the laws of bees, which are "wise as nature, and as fixed as fate." Such is their superior consideration for the weak that the workers kill the drones when they become burthensome to them, and so far are we behind them in our poor law legislation that we are compelled to maintain the useless members of society,—the old, the crippled, the hopelessly sick, the insane, the idiotic—all of whom, if we would only learn mercy and wisdom of the bee, we should immediately put to death. The doctrine of Pope is altogether childish. The contracted routine of a bee's existence has too little in common with the complicated relations of human life for bee-hive usages to displace the statutes of the realm.[1353]Till ed. 5:Who for those arts they learned of brutes before,As kings shall crown them, or as gods adore.—Pope.[1354]Roscommon's version of Horace's Art of Poetry:Cities were built, and useful laws were made.—Wakefield.[1355]In the MS. thus:The neighbours leagued to guard their common spot,And love was nature's dictate, murder not.For want alone each animal contends;Tigers with tigers, that removed, are friends.Plain nature's wants the common mother crowned,She poured her acorns, herbs, and streams around.No treasure then for rapine to invade,What need to fight for sunshine, or for shade?And half the cause of contest was removed,When beauty could be kind to all who loved.—Warburton.Of the first couplet there are two other versions in the MS.:Fear would forbid th' unpractised to engage,And nature's dictate love, not blood and rage.Or,Unpractised man, that knew no murd'ring skill,And nature's dictate was to love, not kill.[1356]MS.:Commerce, convenience, change might strongly draw.[1357]These two lines added since the first edition.—Pope.The second line of the couplet had already appeared in the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, ver. 92, in connection with sentiments which leave no doubt of Pope's meaning. In the primitive and golden age he held that love had full liberty to obey its inclinations, or, as he expressed it in the passage of the MS. quoted by Warburton, "beauty could then be kind to all who loved." In other words there was a community of women regulated by no other law than natural impulse.[1358]MS.:These states had lords 'tis true, but each its own,Not all subjected to the rule of one,Unless where from one lineage all began,And swelled into a nation from a man.The nature of the distinction which Pope draws between the lordship over the early states, and kingly rule, is clear from ver. 215, where he says that till monarchy was established patriarchal government prevailed, and each state was only a collection of relations who obeyed the family chief. In a monarchy two or more states were joined together, and the national began to take the place of the family tie. The effect of the change would be great. The social bond between the governor and the governed would be weakened, and the official dignity, the harsh authority, and selfish impulses of the ruler would be quickly increased.[1359]"Sons," that is, "obeyed a sire" on account of his "virtue," and not on account of his parental authority. Pope had in his mind the remarks of Locke. A mature understanding is necessary for the right direction of the will, and parents must govern the will of the child till he is competent to govern his own. He is then responsible to himself. He owes his parents lasting honour, gratitude, and assistance, but ceases to be under their command, and if, in primitive times, the children, who had arrived at years of discretion, accepted a father for their ruler, his "virtue," says Pope, was the cause.[1360]Locke, Civil Government, bk. ii. chap. vi. sect. 74: "It is obvious to conceive how easy it was in the first ages of the world for the father of the family to become the prince of it." The right order of Pope's distorted language is that "virtue made the father of a people a prince." He was raised to be a prince because he had manifested a fatherly care for the people.[1361]Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 4: "The chiefest person in every household was always as it were a king, and fathers did at the first exercise the office of priests."[1362]A finer example can perhaps scarce be given of a compact and comprehensive style. The manner in which the four elements were subdued is comprised in these four lines alone. There is not an useless word in this passage. There are but three epithets,—"wond'ring, profound, aerial"—and they are placed precisely with the very substantive that is of most consequence. If there had been epithets joined with the other substantives, it would have weakened the nervousness of the sentence. This was a secret of versification Pope well understood, and hath often practised with peculiar success.—Warton.Warton's criticism appears to be wrong throughout. He says the lines describe "the manner in which the four elements were subdued;" but we learn nothing of "the manner" by being told that "fire" was "commanded," and water "controlled." He says "there is not an useless word;" but as either "command" or "control" would apply with equal propriety to both fire and water, the second verb is added solely to eke out the line, and the adjective "profound," when joined to "abyss," is weak tautology for the sake of the rhyme. He says that the epithets "are placed precisely with the very substantive that is of most consequence;" but why is the "fire" less important than the "abyss?" The verses might pass without comment if Warton had not extolled them for imaginary merits. The first line is an example of the sacrifice of truth and picturesqueness to hyperbolical, affected forms of speech. To talk of "calling food from the wond'ring furrow" conveys a false idea of agricultural processes.[1363]MS.:He crowned the wond'ring earth with golden grain,Taught to command the fire, control the main,Drew from the secret deep the finny drove,And fetched the soaring eagle from above.The first couplet is again varied:He taught the arts of life, the means of food,To pierce the forest, and to stem the flood.[1364]MS.:Till weak, and old, and dying they began.This couplet is followed in the MS. by a second which Pope omitted:Saw his shrunk arms, pale cheeks, and faded eye,Beheld him bend, and droop, and sink, and die.[1365]Men are said by the poet to have been awakened by the death of the patriarch to reflection upon his original, and to have advanced upwards from father to father, that is, from cause to cause, till their enquiries terminated in one original Father, one first, independent, uncreated cause.—Johnson.At ver. 148 we are told that "the state of nature was the reign of God," and at ver. 156 that "all vocal beings"—man, bird, and beast—joined then in "hymning" their Creator. This condition of things, we learn from ver. 149, dated from the "birth" of nature, which is contrary to Pope's present conjecture that the primitive families may, perhaps, have had no conception of a Deity. The poet's language is irrational. If God did not reveal himself to them in any direct way, they might yet be supposed capable of inferring from their own existence and that of the universe, a truth which their posterity deduced from the death of patriarch after patriarch.[1366]Pope ought to have written "began." He has improperly put the participle for the past tense. The meaning of the couplet is, that men may possibly have learned from tradition that, "this all," did not exist from eternity, but had a beginning, and therefore a Creator.[1367]A belief, that is, in the unity of God was the original faith, and polytheism a later corruption.[1368]Warburton says that the allusion is to the refraction of light in passing through the oblique sides of the glass prism.[1369]It was before the fall that God pronounced that all was good. But our author never adverts to any lapsed condition of man.—Warton.He adverts to it in this passage, where he contrasts primitive virtue with subsequent license.[1370]This couplet follows in the MS.:'Twas simple worship in the native grove,Religion, morals, had no name but love.[1371]The divine right of kings to their throne, and the unlawfulness of deposing them, however much they might oppress the people for whose benefit they were appointed to rule, was a doctrine first taught in the time of the Stuarts. "It was never heard of among mankind," says Locke writing in 1690, "till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this last age." In opposition to the slavish theory which would subject nations to despots, Pope says that when government was instituted allegiance was the voluntary homage of love.[1372]Mr. Pope told us that of the number that had read these Epistles, he knew of no one that took the elegance, or even the true meaning of the word "enormous," except Lord Bolingbroke alone. I wonder at it. I am sure I never understood it otherwise than as "out of all rule," and I do not know how anybody could that had read Horace's "abnormis sapiens," and Milton's "enormous bliss." Mr. Pope added for that reason, against his rule of brevity, the two next lines to explain it, and accordingly I since saw them interlined in the original MS.—Richardson.Milton's "enormous bliss" was bliss "wild, above rule or art." The persons who misunderstood the epithet in Pope's poem must have been those who read the MS.; for the explanatory couplet appeared in the first edition of the Epistle. He obviously meant by "enormous faith" that the faith was an enormity, and it is difficult to conjecture what other sense could be attached to his phrase.[1373]The "cause" here signifies the purpose or motive manifested in the constitution of the world, and this purpose is "inverted" by the doctrine that "many are made for one." The one is made for the many,—the prince for the people.[1374]Wicked rulers, terrified by an evil conscience, became the dupe of impostors who professed to speak in the name of the invisible powers.[1375]MS.:Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending ground.Wakefield points out that the lines, ver. 249-252, are from Lucretius, v. 1217.[1376]MS.:From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal nigh,And gods supernal from the bursting sky.[1377]Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., translated by Addison:An umpire, partial, and unjust,And a lewd woman's impious lust.[1378]Bolingbroke, Fragment 22: "Men made the Supreme Being after their own image. Fierce and cruel themselves they represented him hating without reason, revenging without provocation, and punishing without measure." Pope says that tyrants would believe such gods as were formed like tyrants. He meant that the tyrants would believeinthe gods, but probably found the "in" unmanageable.[1379]MS.:The native wood seemed sacred now no more.People no longer held sacred the natural temple in which, ver. 155, men and beasts formerly "hymned their God," but it was thought necessary to worship in costly buildings, and sacrifice animals on "marble altars."[1380]Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "God was appeased provided his altars reeked with gore." A sentence of the same Fragment furnished Pope with his view of heathen sacrifices: "The Supreme Being was represented so vindictive and cruel, that nothing less than acts of the utmost cruelty could appease his anger, and his priests were so many butchers of men and other animals."[1381]The "flamen" was a priest attached exclusively to the service of some particular god.[1382]MS.:The glutton priest first tasted living food.Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "As if God was appeased whenever the priest was glutted with roast meat." Wakefield remarks that Pope followed Pythagoras in calling food "living," because it had once been alive. A meat diet is said, ver. 167, to have been the origin of wars, and here we are told that the "flamen first tasted living food" after war and tyranny had over-spread the earth, which is an inconsistency, unless Pope believed that his "glutton priests" were more abstemious than the rest of mankind till animals were sacrificed in the name of religion. The poet, in this Epistle, is loud in denouncing the practice of eating animal food, but he ate it without scruple himself.[1383]Milton, Par. Lost, i. 392:First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with bloodOf human sacrifice, and parent's tears,Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loudTheir children's cries unheard, that passed through fireTo his grim idol.Many of Pope's writings are strewed with Miltonic phrases, though they need not be pointed out, and certainly do not detract from his general merit. Such interweavings of significant and forcible expressions have often a striking effect.—Bowles.[1384]The image is derived from the old engines of war, such as the catapult which threw stones. The Flamen made an engine of his god, and assailed foes by threatening them with chastisement from heaven.[1385]Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 5: "At the first, it may be, that all was permitted unto their discretion which were to rule, till they saw that to live by one man's became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to unto laws."—Warton.In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:For say what makes the liberty of man?'Tis not in doing what he would but can.The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an infringement of liberty, and were probably cancelled because the reason was as applicable to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon Pope's principle the worst despotism would not interfere with the liberty of the subject, provided only that resistance was hopeless.[1386]When the proprietor is asleep the weak rob him by stealth, and when he is awake the strong rob him by violence.[1387]Bolingbroke, Fragment 6: "Private good depends on the public."[1388]The inspired strains of the Hebrew Scriptures are the only instance in which poetry has "restored faith and morals." The heathen poets adopted the absurd and profligate fables current in their day, and christian poets have never done more than reflect the prevalent christianity. The term "patriot" is commonly applied to political benefactors, and not to the preachers and disseminators of righteousness. Pope fell back on the fiction of regenerating poets and patriots to avoid all mention of the saints and martyrs who really performed the mighty work. Bolingbroke hated the apostles of genuine religion, and his pupil had no reverence for them.[1389]Pope breaks down in his comparison of a mixed government to a stringed instrument. An instrument would not be "set justly true," but rendered worthless, when in "touching one" string the musician "must strike the other too."[1390]This is the very same illustration that Tully uses, De Republica: "Quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia."—Warton.[1391]The deduction and application of the foregoing principles, with the use or abuse of civil and ecclesiastical policy, was intended for the subject of the third book.—Pope.[1392]"Consent" is now limited to mental consent, and the word is obsolete in the sense of "consent of things."[1393]From Denham's Cooper's Hill:Wisely she knew the harmony of things,As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.—Hurd.[1394]"Where the small and weak" are "made to serve, not suffer," "the great and mighty to strengthen, not invade."[1395]This couplet is at variance with ver. 289-294, where a mixed form of government is lauded for its superiority.[1396]Cowley's verses on the death of Crashaw:His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets mightBe wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.The position is demonstrably absurd in both poets. All conduct originates in principles. Where the principles, therefore, are not strictly pure, and accurately true, the conduct must deviate from the line of perfect rectitude.—Wakefield."I prefer a bad action to a bad principle," says Rousseau, somewhere, and Rousseau was right. A bad action may remain isolated; a bad principle is always prolific, because, after all, it is the mind which governs, and man acts according to his thoughts much oftener than he himself imagines.—Guizot.He whose life is in the right cannot, says Pope, in any sense calling for blame, have a wrong faith. But the answer is that his life cannot be in the right unless in so far as it bends to the influences of a true faith. How feeble a conception must that man have of the infinity which lurks in a human spirit, who can persuade himself that its total capacities of life are exhaustible by the few gross acts incident to social relations, or open to human valuation? The true internal acts of moral man are his thoughts, his yearnings, his aspirations, his sympathies or repulsions of heart. This is the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly eyes.—De Quincey.[1397]MS.:Prefer we then the greater to the less,For charity is all men's happiness.[1398]MS.:But charity the greatest of the three.1 Cor. xiii. 13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."[1399]The MS. adds this couplet:Th' extended earth is but one sphere of blissTo him, who makes another's blessing his.[1400]At the same time.[1401]From the Spectator, No. 588, said to be written by Mr. Grove: "Is benevolence inconsistent with self-love? Are their motions contrary? No more than the diurnal rotation of the earth is opposed to its annual; or its motion round its own centre, which might be improved as an illustration of self-love, to that which whirls it about the common centre of the world, answering to universal benevolence."—Warton.[1402]"Nature" is not a power coordinate with God, but only the means by which he acts.

[1321]That is, man becomes constant from choice.

[1322]MS.:And ev'ry tender passion takes its turn.The line in the text alludes to Pope's hypothesis that every virtue is grafted upon a ruling passion.

[1322]MS.:

And ev'ry tender passion takes its turn.

The line in the text alludes to Pope's hypothesis that every virtue is grafted upon a ruling passion.

[1323]"Charity" is used in the antiquated sense of "love." "New needs," says Pope, give rise to "new helps," and the virtue "benevolence" is grafted upon the natural affections.

[1324]He means that the latest brood, being young children, love their parents by nature, while the previous brood, being grown up, only love parents from habit.

[1325]MS.:Scarce had the last the parents' care outgrownBefore they saw those parents want their own.Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book iii.:and issuing into man,Grudges their life from whence his own began.

[1325]MS.:

Scarce had the last the parents' care outgrownBefore they saw those parents want their own.

Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Book iii.:

and issuing into man,Grudges their life from whence his own began.

[1326]MS.:Stretch the long interest, and support the line.

[1326]MS.:

Stretch the long interest, and support the line.

[1327]The MS. goes on thus:She spake, and man her high behests obeyed;Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he strayed;For pride was not; joint tenant of the shadeHe shared with beasts his table and his bed;No murder etc."He speaks," says M. Crousaz, "of what passed in the earliest ages of the world no less positively than an eye-witness." Pope followed the ancient fable which he may have read, among other places, in Montaigne's Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communications with beasts, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do."

[1327]The MS. goes on thus:

She spake, and man her high behests obeyed;Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he strayed;For pride was not; joint tenant of the shadeHe shared with beasts his table and his bed;No murder etc.

"He speaks," says M. Crousaz, "of what passed in the earliest ages of the world no less positively than an eye-witness." Pope followed the ancient fable which he may have read, among other places, in Montaigne's Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communications with beasts, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do."

[1328]"Her birth" is the birth of nature. The personification of nature in the phrase "the state of nature," or "the natural state," is so forced, that we do not at once perceive that "nature" is the noun to which "her" refers.

[1329]"Union" is put for voluntary union, the union of social affection, in contrast to the bonds of fear, coercion, and the necessities of life, which are large elements in the present condition of mankind. The beasts were included in the common league, and animals of prey unknown in Pope's state of nature. But he did not keep steady to his first account.

[1330]So Hall, Satires, Book iii. Sat. 1:Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise,And man grew greedy, discordous, and nice.Now man that erst hail-fellow was with beast,Woxe on to ween himself a god at least.—Wakefield.

[1330]So Hall, Satires, Book iii. Sat. 1:

Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise,And man grew greedy, discordous, and nice.Now man that erst hail-fellow was with beast,Woxe on to ween himself a god at least.—Wakefield.

[1331]Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book xv.:The woolly fleece that clothed her murderer.

[1331]Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book xv.:

The woolly fleece that clothed her murderer.

[1332]Virgil, Ecl. x. 58: "lucos sonantes;" Dryden, "sounding woods."—Wakefield.

[1333]MS.:He called on heav'n for blessing, they for food.

[1333]MS.:

He called on heav'n for blessing, they for food.

[1334]MS.:Unstained with gore the grassy altar grew,Priests yet were temperate, yet no passions knew;Nor yet would glutton zeal devoutly eat,Nor faithful av'rice hugged his god in plate.The pagans feasted upon the meat they offered to idols, which is what we are to understand by the "glutton zeal" that "devoutly eats."

[1334]MS.:

Unstained with gore the grassy altar grew,Priests yet were temperate, yet no passions knew;Nor yet would glutton zeal devoutly eat,Nor faithful av'rice hugged his god in plate.

The pagans feasted upon the meat they offered to idols, which is what we are to understand by the "glutton zeal" that "devoutly eats."

[1335]Dryden, Virg. Æn. ix. 640:Ah how unlike the living is the dead.—Wakefield.

[1335]Dryden, Virg. Æn. ix. 640:

Ah how unlike the living is the dead.—Wakefield.

[1336]MS.:Of half that live himself the living tomb.

[1336]MS.:

Of half that live himself the living tomb.

[1337]MS.:Who, foe to nature, other kinds o'erthrownRestless he seeks dominion o'er his own.Or,Who deaf to nature's universal groan,Murders all other kinds, betrays his own.This is the same amiable being who is celebrated, ver. 51, for "helping the wants and woes of other creatures," and sparing singing-birds and gilded insects out of pure compassion.

[1337]MS.:

Who, foe to nature, other kinds o'erthrownRestless he seeks dominion o'er his own.

Or,

Who deaf to nature's universal groan,Murders all other kinds, betrays his own.

This is the same amiable being who is celebrated, ver. 51, for "helping the wants and woes of other creatures," and sparing singing-birds and gilded insects out of pure compassion.

[1338]Pope probably meant that man was a "fiercer savage" than the animals of which he shed the blood, but as the "blood" only is mentioned, there is no proper positive to the comparative.

[1339]Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole delineation:Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,And after forged the sword to murder man.—Wakefield.MS.:While nature, strict the injury to scan,Left man the only beast to prey on man.

[1339]Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole delineation:

Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,And after forged the sword to murder man.—Wakefield.

MS.:

While nature, strict the injury to scan,Left man the only beast to prey on man.

[1340]MS.:In early times when man aspired to art.The lines from ver. 161 to 168 are parenthetical, and Pope now goes back to the primitive age in which uncorrupted man associated freely with the beasts, and profited by their teaching.

[1340]MS.:

In early times when man aspired to art.

The lines from ver. 161 to 168 are parenthetical, and Pope now goes back to the primitive age in which uncorrupted man associated freely with the beasts, and profited by their teaching.

[1341]MS.:'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake.

[1341]MS.:

'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake.

[1342]It is a caution commonly practised amongst navigators, when thrown upon a desert coast, and in want of refreshments, to observe what fruits have been touched by the birds, and to venture on these without further hesitation.—Warburton.

[1343]See Pliny's Nat. Hist. Lib. viii. cap. 27, where several instances are given of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs by their own use of them, and pointing to some operations in the art of healing by their own practice.—Warburton.The instances are all fanciful or fabulous.

The instances are all fanciful or fabulous.

[1344]Montaigne, Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Democritus held and proved, that most of the arts we have were taught us by other animals, as by the spider to weave and sew, by the swallow to build, by the swan and nightingale music, and by several animals to make medicines."

[1345]The MS. adds:Behold the rabbit's fortress in the sands,The beaver's storied house not made with hands.A rabbit-burrow has no resemblance to a military fortress, and Pope prudently omitted the incongruous comparison. Martial, Lib. xiii. Ep. 60, had used the illustration in a directly opposite sense, and said that rabbits, by teaching the art of mining, had shown the enemy how fortresses could be taken.

[1345]The MS. adds:

Behold the rabbit's fortress in the sands,The beaver's storied house not made with hands.

A rabbit-burrow has no resemblance to a military fortress, and Pope prudently omitted the incongruous comparison. Martial, Lib. xiii. Ep. 60, had used the illustration in a directly opposite sense, and said that rabbits, by teaching the art of mining, had shown the enemy how fortresses could be taken.

[1346]Oppian, Halicut. Lib. i., describes this fish in the following manner: "They swim on the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which exactly resemble the hulk of a ship. They raise two feet like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the side. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean."—-Pope.The paper-nautilus, or Argonauta Argo, has eight arms. The first pair in the female expand at their extremities, so that each of the two arms terminates in a broad thin membrane. These broad membranes do not exist in the male, and modern naturalists reject the idea that they are used for sails.

The paper-nautilus, or Argonauta Argo, has eight arms. The first pair in the female expand at their extremities, so that each of the two arms terminates in a broad thin membrane. These broad membranes do not exist in the male, and modern naturalists reject the idea that they are used for sails.

[1347]MS.:There, too, each form of social commerce find,So late by reason taught to human kind.Behold th' embodied locust rushing forthIn sabled millions from th' inclement north;In herds the wolves, invasive robbers, roam,In flocks, the sheep pacific, race at home.What warlike discipline the cranes display,How leagued their squadron, how direct their way.

[1347]MS.:

There, too, each form of social commerce find,So late by reason taught to human kind.Behold th' embodied locust rushing forthIn sabled millions from th' inclement north;In herds the wolves, invasive robbers, roam,In flocks, the sheep pacific, race at home.What warlike discipline the cranes display,How leagued their squadron, how direct their way.

[1348]The Guardian, No. 157: "Everything is common among ants."

[1349]"Anarchy without confusion" is a contradiction in terms, according to the meaning which is now universally attached to the word anarchy. Pope understands by it the mere absence of all inequality of station.

[1350]The Guardian, No. 157: "Bees have each of them a hole in their hives; their honey is their own; every bee minds her own concerns." The natural history of former times abounded in fables, and among the number was the fancy that each bee had its separate cell, and private store of honey.

[1351]An adaptation of the Latin proverb, mentioned by Cicero, Off. i. 10, and Terence, Heaut. iv. 5, that over-strained law is often unrestrained injustice. The letter contravenes the spirit.

[1352]The imagery of the passage is derived from an observation of a Greek philosopher, who compared laws to spiders' webs,—too fragile to hold fast great offenders, and too strong to suffer trivial culprits to escape.—Wakefield.Pope upbraids men for enacting laws too strong for the weak instead of following the laws of bees, which are "wise as nature, and as fixed as fate." Such is their superior consideration for the weak that the workers kill the drones when they become burthensome to them, and so far are we behind them in our poor law legislation that we are compelled to maintain the useless members of society,—the old, the crippled, the hopelessly sick, the insane, the idiotic—all of whom, if we would only learn mercy and wisdom of the bee, we should immediately put to death. The doctrine of Pope is altogether childish. The contracted routine of a bee's existence has too little in common with the complicated relations of human life for bee-hive usages to displace the statutes of the realm.

Pope upbraids men for enacting laws too strong for the weak instead of following the laws of bees, which are "wise as nature, and as fixed as fate." Such is their superior consideration for the weak that the workers kill the drones when they become burthensome to them, and so far are we behind them in our poor law legislation that we are compelled to maintain the useless members of society,—the old, the crippled, the hopelessly sick, the insane, the idiotic—all of whom, if we would only learn mercy and wisdom of the bee, we should immediately put to death. The doctrine of Pope is altogether childish. The contracted routine of a bee's existence has too little in common with the complicated relations of human life for bee-hive usages to displace the statutes of the realm.

[1353]Till ed. 5:Who for those arts they learned of brutes before,As kings shall crown them, or as gods adore.—Pope.

[1353]Till ed. 5:

Who for those arts they learned of brutes before,As kings shall crown them, or as gods adore.—Pope.

[1354]Roscommon's version of Horace's Art of Poetry:Cities were built, and useful laws were made.—Wakefield.

[1354]Roscommon's version of Horace's Art of Poetry:

Cities were built, and useful laws were made.—Wakefield.

[1355]In the MS. thus:The neighbours leagued to guard their common spot,And love was nature's dictate, murder not.For want alone each animal contends;Tigers with tigers, that removed, are friends.Plain nature's wants the common mother crowned,She poured her acorns, herbs, and streams around.No treasure then for rapine to invade,What need to fight for sunshine, or for shade?And half the cause of contest was removed,When beauty could be kind to all who loved.—Warburton.Of the first couplet there are two other versions in the MS.:Fear would forbid th' unpractised to engage,And nature's dictate love, not blood and rage.Or,Unpractised man, that knew no murd'ring skill,And nature's dictate was to love, not kill.

[1355]In the MS. thus:

The neighbours leagued to guard their common spot,And love was nature's dictate, murder not.For want alone each animal contends;Tigers with tigers, that removed, are friends.Plain nature's wants the common mother crowned,She poured her acorns, herbs, and streams around.No treasure then for rapine to invade,What need to fight for sunshine, or for shade?And half the cause of contest was removed,When beauty could be kind to all who loved.—Warburton.

Of the first couplet there are two other versions in the MS.:

Fear would forbid th' unpractised to engage,And nature's dictate love, not blood and rage.

Or,

Unpractised man, that knew no murd'ring skill,And nature's dictate was to love, not kill.

[1356]MS.:Commerce, convenience, change might strongly draw.

[1356]MS.:

Commerce, convenience, change might strongly draw.

[1357]These two lines added since the first edition.—Pope.The second line of the couplet had already appeared in the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, ver. 92, in connection with sentiments which leave no doubt of Pope's meaning. In the primitive and golden age he held that love had full liberty to obey its inclinations, or, as he expressed it in the passage of the MS. quoted by Warburton, "beauty could then be kind to all who loved." In other words there was a community of women regulated by no other law than natural impulse.

[1357]These two lines added since the first edition.—Pope.

The second line of the couplet had already appeared in the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, ver. 92, in connection with sentiments which leave no doubt of Pope's meaning. In the primitive and golden age he held that love had full liberty to obey its inclinations, or, as he expressed it in the passage of the MS. quoted by Warburton, "beauty could then be kind to all who loved." In other words there was a community of women regulated by no other law than natural impulse.

[1358]MS.:These states had lords 'tis true, but each its own,Not all subjected to the rule of one,Unless where from one lineage all began,And swelled into a nation from a man.The nature of the distinction which Pope draws between the lordship over the early states, and kingly rule, is clear from ver. 215, where he says that till monarchy was established patriarchal government prevailed, and each state was only a collection of relations who obeyed the family chief. In a monarchy two or more states were joined together, and the national began to take the place of the family tie. The effect of the change would be great. The social bond between the governor and the governed would be weakened, and the official dignity, the harsh authority, and selfish impulses of the ruler would be quickly increased.

[1358]MS.:

These states had lords 'tis true, but each its own,Not all subjected to the rule of one,Unless where from one lineage all began,And swelled into a nation from a man.

The nature of the distinction which Pope draws between the lordship over the early states, and kingly rule, is clear from ver. 215, where he says that till monarchy was established patriarchal government prevailed, and each state was only a collection of relations who obeyed the family chief. In a monarchy two or more states were joined together, and the national began to take the place of the family tie. The effect of the change would be great. The social bond between the governor and the governed would be weakened, and the official dignity, the harsh authority, and selfish impulses of the ruler would be quickly increased.

[1359]"Sons," that is, "obeyed a sire" on account of his "virtue," and not on account of his parental authority. Pope had in his mind the remarks of Locke. A mature understanding is necessary for the right direction of the will, and parents must govern the will of the child till he is competent to govern his own. He is then responsible to himself. He owes his parents lasting honour, gratitude, and assistance, but ceases to be under their command, and if, in primitive times, the children, who had arrived at years of discretion, accepted a father for their ruler, his "virtue," says Pope, was the cause.

[1360]Locke, Civil Government, bk. ii. chap. vi. sect. 74: "It is obvious to conceive how easy it was in the first ages of the world for the father of the family to become the prince of it." The right order of Pope's distorted language is that "virtue made the father of a people a prince." He was raised to be a prince because he had manifested a fatherly care for the people.

[1361]Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 4: "The chiefest person in every household was always as it were a king, and fathers did at the first exercise the office of priests."

[1362]A finer example can perhaps scarce be given of a compact and comprehensive style. The manner in which the four elements were subdued is comprised in these four lines alone. There is not an useless word in this passage. There are but three epithets,—"wond'ring, profound, aerial"—and they are placed precisely with the very substantive that is of most consequence. If there had been epithets joined with the other substantives, it would have weakened the nervousness of the sentence. This was a secret of versification Pope well understood, and hath often practised with peculiar success.—Warton.Warton's criticism appears to be wrong throughout. He says the lines describe "the manner in which the four elements were subdued;" but we learn nothing of "the manner" by being told that "fire" was "commanded," and water "controlled." He says "there is not an useless word;" but as either "command" or "control" would apply with equal propriety to both fire and water, the second verb is added solely to eke out the line, and the adjective "profound," when joined to "abyss," is weak tautology for the sake of the rhyme. He says that the epithets "are placed precisely with the very substantive that is of most consequence;" but why is the "fire" less important than the "abyss?" The verses might pass without comment if Warton had not extolled them for imaginary merits. The first line is an example of the sacrifice of truth and picturesqueness to hyperbolical, affected forms of speech. To talk of "calling food from the wond'ring furrow" conveys a false idea of agricultural processes.

Warton's criticism appears to be wrong throughout. He says the lines describe "the manner in which the four elements were subdued;" but we learn nothing of "the manner" by being told that "fire" was "commanded," and water "controlled." He says "there is not an useless word;" but as either "command" or "control" would apply with equal propriety to both fire and water, the second verb is added solely to eke out the line, and the adjective "profound," when joined to "abyss," is weak tautology for the sake of the rhyme. He says that the epithets "are placed precisely with the very substantive that is of most consequence;" but why is the "fire" less important than the "abyss?" The verses might pass without comment if Warton had not extolled them for imaginary merits. The first line is an example of the sacrifice of truth and picturesqueness to hyperbolical, affected forms of speech. To talk of "calling food from the wond'ring furrow" conveys a false idea of agricultural processes.

[1363]MS.:He crowned the wond'ring earth with golden grain,Taught to command the fire, control the main,Drew from the secret deep the finny drove,And fetched the soaring eagle from above.The first couplet is again varied:He taught the arts of life, the means of food,To pierce the forest, and to stem the flood.

[1363]MS.:

He crowned the wond'ring earth with golden grain,Taught to command the fire, control the main,Drew from the secret deep the finny drove,And fetched the soaring eagle from above.

The first couplet is again varied:

He taught the arts of life, the means of food,To pierce the forest, and to stem the flood.

[1364]MS.:Till weak, and old, and dying they began.This couplet is followed in the MS. by a second which Pope omitted:Saw his shrunk arms, pale cheeks, and faded eye,Beheld him bend, and droop, and sink, and die.

[1364]MS.:

Till weak, and old, and dying they began.

This couplet is followed in the MS. by a second which Pope omitted:

Saw his shrunk arms, pale cheeks, and faded eye,Beheld him bend, and droop, and sink, and die.

[1365]Men are said by the poet to have been awakened by the death of the patriarch to reflection upon his original, and to have advanced upwards from father to father, that is, from cause to cause, till their enquiries terminated in one original Father, one first, independent, uncreated cause.—Johnson.At ver. 148 we are told that "the state of nature was the reign of God," and at ver. 156 that "all vocal beings"—man, bird, and beast—joined then in "hymning" their Creator. This condition of things, we learn from ver. 149, dated from the "birth" of nature, which is contrary to Pope's present conjecture that the primitive families may, perhaps, have had no conception of a Deity. The poet's language is irrational. If God did not reveal himself to them in any direct way, they might yet be supposed capable of inferring from their own existence and that of the universe, a truth which their posterity deduced from the death of patriarch after patriarch.

At ver. 148 we are told that "the state of nature was the reign of God," and at ver. 156 that "all vocal beings"—man, bird, and beast—joined then in "hymning" their Creator. This condition of things, we learn from ver. 149, dated from the "birth" of nature, which is contrary to Pope's present conjecture that the primitive families may, perhaps, have had no conception of a Deity. The poet's language is irrational. If God did not reveal himself to them in any direct way, they might yet be supposed capable of inferring from their own existence and that of the universe, a truth which their posterity deduced from the death of patriarch after patriarch.

[1366]Pope ought to have written "began." He has improperly put the participle for the past tense. The meaning of the couplet is, that men may possibly have learned from tradition that, "this all," did not exist from eternity, but had a beginning, and therefore a Creator.

[1367]A belief, that is, in the unity of God was the original faith, and polytheism a later corruption.

[1368]Warburton says that the allusion is to the refraction of light in passing through the oblique sides of the glass prism.

[1369]It was before the fall that God pronounced that all was good. But our author never adverts to any lapsed condition of man.—Warton.He adverts to it in this passage, where he contrasts primitive virtue with subsequent license.

[1369]It was before the fall that God pronounced that all was good. But our author never adverts to any lapsed condition of man.—Warton.

He adverts to it in this passage, where he contrasts primitive virtue with subsequent license.

[1370]This couplet follows in the MS.:'Twas simple worship in the native grove,Religion, morals, had no name but love.

[1370]This couplet follows in the MS.:

'Twas simple worship in the native grove,Religion, morals, had no name but love.

[1371]The divine right of kings to their throne, and the unlawfulness of deposing them, however much they might oppress the people for whose benefit they were appointed to rule, was a doctrine first taught in the time of the Stuarts. "It was never heard of among mankind," says Locke writing in 1690, "till it was revealed to us by the divinity of this last age." In opposition to the slavish theory which would subject nations to despots, Pope says that when government was instituted allegiance was the voluntary homage of love.

[1372]Mr. Pope told us that of the number that had read these Epistles, he knew of no one that took the elegance, or even the true meaning of the word "enormous," except Lord Bolingbroke alone. I wonder at it. I am sure I never understood it otherwise than as "out of all rule," and I do not know how anybody could that had read Horace's "abnormis sapiens," and Milton's "enormous bliss." Mr. Pope added for that reason, against his rule of brevity, the two next lines to explain it, and accordingly I since saw them interlined in the original MS.—Richardson.Milton's "enormous bliss" was bliss "wild, above rule or art." The persons who misunderstood the epithet in Pope's poem must have been those who read the MS.; for the explanatory couplet appeared in the first edition of the Epistle. He obviously meant by "enormous faith" that the faith was an enormity, and it is difficult to conjecture what other sense could be attached to his phrase.

Milton's "enormous bliss" was bliss "wild, above rule or art." The persons who misunderstood the epithet in Pope's poem must have been those who read the MS.; for the explanatory couplet appeared in the first edition of the Epistle. He obviously meant by "enormous faith" that the faith was an enormity, and it is difficult to conjecture what other sense could be attached to his phrase.

[1373]The "cause" here signifies the purpose or motive manifested in the constitution of the world, and this purpose is "inverted" by the doctrine that "many are made for one." The one is made for the many,—the prince for the people.

[1374]Wicked rulers, terrified by an evil conscience, became the dupe of impostors who professed to speak in the name of the invisible powers.

[1375]MS.:Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending ground.Wakefield points out that the lines, ver. 249-252, are from Lucretius, v. 1217.

[1375]MS.:

Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending ground.

Wakefield points out that the lines, ver. 249-252, are from Lucretius, v. 1217.

[1376]MS.:From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal nigh,And gods supernal from the bursting sky.

[1376]MS.:

From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal nigh,And gods supernal from the bursting sky.

[1377]Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., translated by Addison:An umpire, partial, and unjust,And a lewd woman's impious lust.

[1377]Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., translated by Addison:

An umpire, partial, and unjust,And a lewd woman's impious lust.

[1378]Bolingbroke, Fragment 22: "Men made the Supreme Being after their own image. Fierce and cruel themselves they represented him hating without reason, revenging without provocation, and punishing without measure." Pope says that tyrants would believe such gods as were formed like tyrants. He meant that the tyrants would believeinthe gods, but probably found the "in" unmanageable.

[1379]MS.:The native wood seemed sacred now no more.People no longer held sacred the natural temple in which, ver. 155, men and beasts formerly "hymned their God," but it was thought necessary to worship in costly buildings, and sacrifice animals on "marble altars."

[1379]MS.:

The native wood seemed sacred now no more.

People no longer held sacred the natural temple in which, ver. 155, men and beasts formerly "hymned their God," but it was thought necessary to worship in costly buildings, and sacrifice animals on "marble altars."

[1380]Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "God was appeased provided his altars reeked with gore." A sentence of the same Fragment furnished Pope with his view of heathen sacrifices: "The Supreme Being was represented so vindictive and cruel, that nothing less than acts of the utmost cruelty could appease his anger, and his priests were so many butchers of men and other animals."

[1381]The "flamen" was a priest attached exclusively to the service of some particular god.

[1382]MS.:The glutton priest first tasted living food.Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "As if God was appeased whenever the priest was glutted with roast meat." Wakefield remarks that Pope followed Pythagoras in calling food "living," because it had once been alive. A meat diet is said, ver. 167, to have been the origin of wars, and here we are told that the "flamen first tasted living food" after war and tyranny had over-spread the earth, which is an inconsistency, unless Pope believed that his "glutton priests" were more abstemious than the rest of mankind till animals were sacrificed in the name of religion. The poet, in this Epistle, is loud in denouncing the practice of eating animal food, but he ate it without scruple himself.

[1382]MS.:

The glutton priest first tasted living food.

Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "As if God was appeased whenever the priest was glutted with roast meat." Wakefield remarks that Pope followed Pythagoras in calling food "living," because it had once been alive. A meat diet is said, ver. 167, to have been the origin of wars, and here we are told that the "flamen first tasted living food" after war and tyranny had over-spread the earth, which is an inconsistency, unless Pope believed that his "glutton priests" were more abstemious than the rest of mankind till animals were sacrificed in the name of religion. The poet, in this Epistle, is loud in denouncing the practice of eating animal food, but he ate it without scruple himself.

[1383]Milton, Par. Lost, i. 392:First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with bloodOf human sacrifice, and parent's tears,Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loudTheir children's cries unheard, that passed through fireTo his grim idol.Many of Pope's writings are strewed with Miltonic phrases, though they need not be pointed out, and certainly do not detract from his general merit. Such interweavings of significant and forcible expressions have often a striking effect.—Bowles.

[1383]Milton, Par. Lost, i. 392:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with bloodOf human sacrifice, and parent's tears,Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loudTheir children's cries unheard, that passed through fireTo his grim idol.

Many of Pope's writings are strewed with Miltonic phrases, though they need not be pointed out, and certainly do not detract from his general merit. Such interweavings of significant and forcible expressions have often a striking effect.—Bowles.

[1384]The image is derived from the old engines of war, such as the catapult which threw stones. The Flamen made an engine of his god, and assailed foes by threatening them with chastisement from heaven.

[1385]Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. chap. x. sect. 5: "At the first, it may be, that all was permitted unto their discretion which were to rule, till they saw that to live by one man's became the cause of all men's misery. This constrained them to unto laws."—Warton.In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:For say what makes the liberty of man?'Tis not in doing what he would but can.The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an infringement of liberty, and were probably cancelled because the reason was as applicable to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon Pope's principle the worst despotism would not interfere with the liberty of the subject, provided only that resistance was hopeless.

In the MS. there is this couplet after ver. 272:

For say what makes the liberty of man?'Tis not in doing what he would but can.

The lines were intended to give the reason why law is not an infringement of liberty, and were probably cancelled because the reason was as applicable to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon Pope's principle the worst despotism would not interfere with the liberty of the subject, provided only that resistance was hopeless.

[1386]When the proprietor is asleep the weak rob him by stealth, and when he is awake the strong rob him by violence.

[1387]Bolingbroke, Fragment 6: "Private good depends on the public."

[1388]The inspired strains of the Hebrew Scriptures are the only instance in which poetry has "restored faith and morals." The heathen poets adopted the absurd and profligate fables current in their day, and christian poets have never done more than reflect the prevalent christianity. The term "patriot" is commonly applied to political benefactors, and not to the preachers and disseminators of righteousness. Pope fell back on the fiction of regenerating poets and patriots to avoid all mention of the saints and martyrs who really performed the mighty work. Bolingbroke hated the apostles of genuine religion, and his pupil had no reverence for them.

[1389]Pope breaks down in his comparison of a mixed government to a stringed instrument. An instrument would not be "set justly true," but rendered worthless, when in "touching one" string the musician "must strike the other too."

[1390]This is the very same illustration that Tully uses, De Republica: "Quæ harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, ea est in civitate concordia."—Warton.

[1391]The deduction and application of the foregoing principles, with the use or abuse of civil and ecclesiastical policy, was intended for the subject of the third book.—Pope.

[1392]"Consent" is now limited to mental consent, and the word is obsolete in the sense of "consent of things."

[1393]From Denham's Cooper's Hill:Wisely she knew the harmony of things,As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.—Hurd.

[1393]From Denham's Cooper's Hill:

Wisely she knew the harmony of things,As well as that of sounds, from discord springs.—Hurd.

[1394]"Where the small and weak" are "made to serve, not suffer," "the great and mighty to strengthen, not invade."

[1395]This couplet is at variance with ver. 289-294, where a mixed form of government is lauded for its superiority.

[1396]Cowley's verses on the death of Crashaw:His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets mightBe wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.The position is demonstrably absurd in both poets. All conduct originates in principles. Where the principles, therefore, are not strictly pure, and accurately true, the conduct must deviate from the line of perfect rectitude.—Wakefield."I prefer a bad action to a bad principle," says Rousseau, somewhere, and Rousseau was right. A bad action may remain isolated; a bad principle is always prolific, because, after all, it is the mind which governs, and man acts according to his thoughts much oftener than he himself imagines.—Guizot.He whose life is in the right cannot, says Pope, in any sense calling for blame, have a wrong faith. But the answer is that his life cannot be in the right unless in so far as it bends to the influences of a true faith. How feeble a conception must that man have of the infinity which lurks in a human spirit, who can persuade himself that its total capacities of life are exhaustible by the few gross acts incident to social relations, or open to human valuation? The true internal acts of moral man are his thoughts, his yearnings, his aspirations, his sympathies or repulsions of heart. This is the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly eyes.—De Quincey.

[1396]Cowley's verses on the death of Crashaw:

His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets mightBe wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the right.

The position is demonstrably absurd in both poets. All conduct originates in principles. Where the principles, therefore, are not strictly pure, and accurately true, the conduct must deviate from the line of perfect rectitude.—Wakefield.

"I prefer a bad action to a bad principle," says Rousseau, somewhere, and Rousseau was right. A bad action may remain isolated; a bad principle is always prolific, because, after all, it is the mind which governs, and man acts according to his thoughts much oftener than he himself imagines.—Guizot.

He whose life is in the right cannot, says Pope, in any sense calling for blame, have a wrong faith. But the answer is that his life cannot be in the right unless in so far as it bends to the influences of a true faith. How feeble a conception must that man have of the infinity which lurks in a human spirit, who can persuade himself that its total capacities of life are exhaustible by the few gross acts incident to social relations, or open to human valuation? The true internal acts of moral man are his thoughts, his yearnings, his aspirations, his sympathies or repulsions of heart. This is the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly eyes.—De Quincey.

[1397]MS.:Prefer we then the greater to the less,For charity is all men's happiness.

[1397]MS.:

Prefer we then the greater to the less,For charity is all men's happiness.

[1398]MS.:But charity the greatest of the three.1 Cor. xiii. 13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

[1398]MS.:

But charity the greatest of the three.

1 Cor. xiii. 13: "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

[1399]The MS. adds this couplet:Th' extended earth is but one sphere of blissTo him, who makes another's blessing his.

[1399]The MS. adds this couplet:

Th' extended earth is but one sphere of blissTo him, who makes another's blessing his.

[1400]At the same time.

[1401]From the Spectator, No. 588, said to be written by Mr. Grove: "Is benevolence inconsistent with self-love? Are their motions contrary? No more than the diurnal rotation of the earth is opposed to its annual; or its motion round its own centre, which might be improved as an illustration of self-love, to that which whirls it about the common centre of the world, answering to universal benevolence."—Warton.

[1402]"Nature" is not a power coordinate with God, but only the means by which he acts.

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