"THE young of moft other kinds, are inftantly helpful to themselves, fenfible, vigorous, know how to fhun danger, and feek their good: A human infant is of all the most helpless, weak, infirm. And wherefore should it not have been fo ordered? Where is the lofs in such a species? Or what is man the worfe for that defect, amidst such large fupplies? Does not this defect engage him the more ftrongly to fociety, and force him to own that he is purposely, and not by accident, made rational and fociable; and can no otherwise increase or fubfift, than in that focial intercourfe and community which is his natural state? Is not both conjugal affection, and natural affection to parents, duty to magistrates, love of a common city, community, or country, with the other duties and focial parts of life, deduced from hence,

* A longer care man's helpless kind demands; That longer care contracts more lafting bands.

And again;

Ep. iii. v. 131.

And still new needs, new helps, new habits rife,
That graft benevolence on charities. Ep. iii. v. 137:

and

and founded in these very wants? What can be happier than fuch a deficiency, as it is the occafion of fo much good? What better than a want fo abundantly made up, and answered by fo many enjoyments? Now if there are ftill to be found among mankind, fuch as even in the midst of thefe wants feem not afhamed to affect a right of independency, and deny themfelves to be by nature fociable; where would their fhame have been, had nature otherwife fupplied these wants? What duty or obligation had been ever thought of? What refpect or reverence of parents, magistrates, their country, or their kind? Would not their full and felf-fufficient state more strongly have determined them to throw off nature, and deny the ends and author of their creation * ?”

31. And pride bestow'd on all a common friend †.

THE obfervation is from La Rochefoucault; "Nature, who fo wifely has fitted

*The Moralifts, pag. 201.

+ Ver. 272.

the

the organs of our body to make us happy, feems likewife to have beftowed pride on us, on purpose, as it were, to fave us the pain of knowing our imperfections *.”

Un fot en ecrivant fait tout avec plaifir.

Il n'a point en fes vers l'embarras de choifir,
Et toujours amoreux de ce qu'il vient d' ecrire,
Ravi d'etonnement en foi-meme il s' admire.
Mais un efprit fublime en vain veut s' elever,
A ce degré parfait qu' il tache de trouver;
Et toujours mecontent de ce qu' il vient de faire
Il plaift a tout le monde, & ne scauroit se plaire.

WHEN Boileau read these words to his friend Moliere to whom they are addreffed, the latter, fqueezing his hand with earneftnefs, faid-" This is one of the best truths you have ever uttered. I am not one of those sublime geniuses of whom you fpeak; but fuch as I am, I must declare I have never wrote any thing in my life, with which I have been thoroughly fatisfied +."

34. See matter next, with various life endu'd, Prefs to one centre ftill, the gen'ral good.

* Maxim 36.

Sat. 2. 85.

See

See dying vegetables life fuftain,

See life diffolving vegetate again :
All forms that perifh other forms fupply,

(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the fea of matter born,

They rife, they break, and to that fea return *.

POPE has again copied Shaftesbury so clofely in this paffage, as to ufe almost his very words. "Thus in the feveral orders of terreftrial forms, a refignation is required, a facrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death, sustain the animals; and the animal bodies diffolved, enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous infects are reduced by the fuperior kinds of birds and beafts: And these again are checked by man; who in his turn fubmits to other natures, and refigns his form a facrifice in common to the rest of things. And if in natures fo little exalted or pre-eminent above each other, the facrifice of interest can appear so just; how much more reasonably may all inferior na

VOL. II.

• Ep. 3. v. 13.
H

tures

tures be fubjected to the fuperior nature of the world!"

35. Has God, thou fool! work'd folely for thy good,

Thy joy, thy paftime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn:
Is it for thee the lark afcends and fings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings +.

THE poetry of thefe lines is as beautiful, as the philofophy is folid. They who imagine that all things in this world were made for the immediate ufe of man alone, run themselves into inextricable difficulties. Man indeed is the head of this lower part of the creation, and perhaps it was defigned to be abfolutely under his command. that all things here tend directly to his own ufe, is, I think, neither eafy nor neceffary to be proved. Some manifeftly ferve for

But

* The Moralifts, pag. 130. After borrowing so largely from this treatife, our author fhould not methinks have ridiculed it, as he does, in the Fourth Book of the Dunciad; ver. 417.

Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vifion faw.

+ Ver. 27.

the