here dropp'd his discourse; there was, after this, a recovery from their several corruptions. Accordingly, he hath chosen that happy period for the conclusion of his song. But as good and ill governments and religions succeed one another without ceasing, he now, with great judgment, leaves facts, and turns his discourse [from 1. 283 to 296] to speak of a more lasting reform of mankind, in the invention of those philosophic principles, by whose observance a policy and religion may be for ever kept from sinking into tyranny and superstition. 'Twas then the studious head, or gen'rous mind, Follower of God, or friend of human kind, Poet or patriot, rose but to restore The faith and morals, Nature gave before; Relum'd her ancient light, not kindled new, If not God's image, yet his shadow drew; Taught power's due use to people and to kings, Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings, &c.

The easy and just transition into this subject, from the foregoing, is admirable. In the foregoing, he had described the effects of self-love; now the observation of these effects, he, with great art and high probability, makes the occasion of those discoveries, which speculative men made of the true principles of policy and religion, described in the present paragraph; and this he evidently hints at in that fine transition,

'TWAS THEN the studious head, &c.

Mr. De Crousaz, who saw nothing of this beauty, says,- It is not easy to guess to what epoch Mr. Pope would have us refer his THEN*. He has indeed proved himself no good guesser, which yet is the best quality of a critic. I will therefore tell him without more ado, Mr. Pope meant the polite and flourishing age of Greece; and those benefactors to mankind, which, I presume, he had principally in view, were Socrates and Aristotle, who, of all the Pagan world, spoke best of God, and wrote best of government.

Having thus described the true principles of civil and ecclesiastical policy, the great Poet proceeds [from 1. 295

Commentaire, p. 261.

to

to 305] to illustrate his account by the similar harmony of the universe:

Such is the world's great harmony, that springs
From union, order, full consent of things!

Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made,
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;
More powerful each as needful to the rest,
And in proportion as it blesses, blest;
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.

Thus, as in the beginning of this Epistle, he supported the great principle of mutual love or association in general, by considerations drawn from the properties of matter, and the mutual dependence between vegetable and animal life; so, in the conclusion, he has inforced the particular principles of civil and religious society, from that universal harmony which springs, in part, from those properties and dependencies.

But now the Pcet, having so much commended the invention and inventors of the philosophic principles of religion and government, lest an evil use should be made of this, by men's resting in theory and speculation, as they have been always too apt to do, in matters whose practice makes their happiness, he cautions his reader [from 1. 304 to 311] against this error, in a warmth of expression, which the sublime ideas of that universal harmony, operating incessantly to universal good, had raised up in him.

For forms of government let fools contest; Whate'er is best administer'd is best. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right. All must be false, that thwart this one great end, And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend. The seasonableness of this reproof will appear evident enough to those who know, that mad disputes about liberty and prerogative had once well nigh overturned our constitution; and that others about mystery and church authority had almost destroyed the very spirit of our holy religion.

But these fine lines have been strangely misunderstood.

The

The Author, against his own express words, against the plain sense of his system, has been conceived to mean, that all governments and all religions were, as to their forms and objects, indifferent. But as this wrong judgment proceeded from ignorance of the reason of the reproof, as explained above, that explanation is alone sufficient to rectify the mistake.

However, not to leave him under the least suspicion, in a matter of so much importance, I shall justify the sense here given to this passage more at large. First by considering the words themselves: and then by comparing this mistaken sense with the context.

The Poet, we must observe, is here speaking, not of civil society at large, but of a just legitimate policy,

Th' according music of a WELL-MIX'D State.

Now these are of several kinds; in some of which the democratic, in others the aristocratic, and in others the monarchic FORM prevails. Now as each of these mix'd forms is equally legitimate, as being founded on the principles of natural liberty, that man is guilty of the highest folly, who chuses rather to employ himself in a speculative contest for the superior excellence of one of these forms to the rest, than in promoting the good administration of that settled form to which he is subject. And yet all our warm disputes about government have been of this kind. Again, if, by forms of government, must needs be meant legitimate government, because that is the subject under debate, then by modes of faith, which is the correspondent idea, must needs be meant the modes or explanations of the true faith, because the Author is here too on the subject of true religion;

Relum'd her ancient light, not kindled new.

Besides, the very expression (than which nothing can be more precise) confines us to understand, by modes of faith, those human explanations of Christian mysteries, in contesting which, zeal and ignorance have so perpetually violated charity.

Secondly, If we consider the context; to suppose him to mean, that all forms of government are indifferent, is making him directly contradict the preceding paragraph; where he extols the patriot for discriminating the

true

true from the false modes of government. He, says
Poet,

Taught power's due use to people and to kings,
Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings;
The less and greater set so justly true,

That touching one must strike the other too;
'Till jarring interests of themselves create
Th' according music of a well-mix'd State.

the

Here he recommends the true form of government, which is the mixt. In another place he as strongly condemns the false, or the absolute jure divino form:

For Nature knew no right divine in Men. 1. 237.

To suppose him to mean, that all religions are indifferent, is an equally wrong as well as uncharitable suspicion. Mr. Pope, though his subject in this Essay on Man confines him to natural religion (his purpose being to vindicate God's natural dispensations to mankind against the Atheist), yet gives frequent intimations of a more sublime dispensation, and even of the necessity of it; particularly in his second Epistle [1. 139], where he speaks of the weakness and insufficiency of human reason*. Again, in his fourth Epistle [1. 331] speaking of the good man, the favourite of Heaven, he says,

For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul;
Till lengthen'd on to faith, and unconfin'd,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.

But natural religion never lengthened hope on to faith; nor did any religion, but the Christian, ever conceive that faith could fill the mind with happiness.

Lastly, The Poet, in this very Epistle, and in this very place, speaking of the great restorers of the religion of Nature, intimates that they could only draw God's shadow, not his image:

Relum'd her ancient light, not kindled new,

If not God's image, yet his shadow drew.

As reverencing that truth, which tells us that this discovery was reserved for the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the IMAGE OF GOD t.

* See the second Letter, pp. 80, 81.

+ 2 Cor. iv. 4.

Having thus largely considered Man in his social capacity, the Poet, in order to fix a momentous truth in the mind of his reader, concludes the Epistle in recapitulating the two principles which concur to the support of this part of his character, namely, self-love and social; and shewing that they are only two different motions of the appetite, to good, by which the Author of Nature has enabled Man to find his own happiness in the happiness of the whole. This the Poet illustrates with a thought as sublime as is that general harmony he describes :

On their own axis as the planets run,

Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions act the soul,

And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and Nature link'd the general frame,
And bad self-love and social be the same.

For he hath the art of converting poetical ornaments into philosophic reasoning; and of improving a simile into an analogical argument. But of this art, more in

our next.

LETTER IV.

THE Poet, in the two foregoing Epistles, having considered MAN with regard to the MEANS (that is, in all his relations, whether as an individual, or a member of society) comes now, in this last, to consider him with regard to the END, that is, HAPPINESS.

It opens with an invocation to happiness, in the manner of the ancient poets, who, when destitute of a patron god, applied to the Muse, and, if she was engaged, took up with any simple virtue, next at hand, to inspire and prosper their designs. This was the ancient invocation, which few modern poets have had the art to imitate with any degree of spirit or decorum; while our Author, not content to heighten this poetic ornament with the graces of the antique, hath also contrived to make it subservient to the method and reasoning of his philosophic composition. I will endeavour to explain so un common a beauty.

It