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See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life diffolving vegetate again:

All forms that perish other forms supply,
(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 fo closely in this paffage, as to use almost his very words. "Thus in the several orders of terrestrial forms, a refignation is required, a facrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death, fuftain the animals; and the animal bodies diffolved, enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous insects are reduced by the fuperior kinds of birds and beasts: 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

Ep. 3. v. 13.

VOL. II.

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 pastime, 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 †.

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THE poetry of these lines is as beautiful, as the philosophy is folid. They who imagine that all things in this world were made for the immediate use 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 use, is, I think, neither eafy nor neceffary to be proved. Some manifeftly serve for

But

The Moralifts, pag. 130. After borrowing fo largely from this treatise, 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

the food and fupport of others, whose fouls may be necessary to prepare and preferve their bodies for that purpose, and may at the fame time be happy in a consciousness of their own exiftence. 'Tis probable they are intended to promote each others good reciprocally: Nay, man himself contributes to the happiness *, and betters the condition of the brutes in se̱veral respects, by cultivating and improving the ground, by watching the seafons, by protecting and providing for them, when they are unable to protect and provide for themselves." These are the words of Dr. Law, in his learned Commentary on King's Origin of Evil, first published in Latin, 1701, a work of penetration and close reasoning; which, it is remarkable, Bayle had never read, but only fome extracts from it, when he first wrote his famous article of the Paulicians, in his

• That very life his learned hunger craves,
He faves from famine, from the favage faves ;
Nay, feafts the animal he dooms his feast,
And till he ends the being makes it bleft.

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Ep. iii. v. 63.

Dictionary,

.

Dictionary, where he has artfully employed all that force and acuteness of argument, which he certainly poffeffed, in promoting the gloomy and uncomfortable scheme of Scepticism or Manicheism.

36. And reafon raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.

THERE is a fine obfervation of Montefquicut, concerning the condition of brutes. They are deprived of the high advantages we enjoy; but they have some which we want. They have not our hopes, but then they are without our fears; they are fubject like us to death, but it is without knowing it; most of them are even

* Ep. iii. 97.

+ We ought not to be blind to the faults of this fine writer, whatever applause he deferves in general. But it must be confessed, that his ftyle is too fhort, abrupt, and epigrammatic; he tells us himself, he was fond of Lucius Florus; and he believed too credulously, and laid too great a stress upen, the relations of voyage-writers and travellers; as indeed did Locke, for which he is ridiculed by Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 344, of the Characteristics. If Shaftesbury, said the great Bishop Butler, had lived to fee the candor and moderation of the prefent times, in difcuffing religious subjects, he would have been a good christian.

more

more attentive than we are to felf-prefervation; and they do not make so bad a use of their paffions. B. i. c. I.

37. Who taught the nations of the field and wood

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To fhun their poison, and to chufe their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempefts to withstand,

Build on the wave, or arch beneath the fand ✶ ?

THIS paffage is highly finished; fuch objects are more fuited to the nature of poetry than abstract ideas. Every verb and epithet has here a descriptive force. We find more imagery from these lines to the end of the epiftle, than in any other parts of this Effay. The origin of the connexions in focial life, the account of the state of nature, the rise and effects of superftition and tyranny, and the restoration of true religion and just government, all these ought to be mentioned as paffages that deserve high applause, nay as fome of the moft exalted pieces of English poetry.

38. Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade t.

+ Ver. 152.

⚫ Ver. 99.

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LUCRE

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