bishop King's Origin of Evil, and to the
Moralifts of Lord Shaftesbury, than to the
philofophers abovementioned. The late
Lord Bathurst repeatedly affured me, that
he had read the whole scheme of the Effay
on Man, in the hand-writing of Boling-
broke, and drawn up in a series of propo-
fitions, which POPE was to verify and
illuftrate. In doing which, our poet, it
must be confeffed, left feveral paffages fo
expreffed, as to be favourable to fatalifm
and neceffity, notwithstanding all the pains
that can be taken, and the turns that can
be given to those passages, to place them
on the fide of religion, and make them
coincide with the fundamental doctrines of
revelation.

1. Awake*, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings;
Let us (fince life can little more fupply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

EPIST. I. V. 1,

• Ben Jonfon begins a poem thus,
Wake! friend, from forth thy lethargy-

THIS opening is awful, and commands the attention of the reader. The word awake has peculiar force, and obliquely alludes to his noble friend's leaving his political, for philosophical pursuits. May I venture to observe, that the metaphors in the fucceeding lines, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, feem below the dignity of the subject; especially,

EYE nature's walks, SHOOT folly as it flies,
And CATCH the manners living as they RISE.

2. But vindicate the ways of God to man.

This line is taken from Milton ;

And juftify the ways of God to man*.

POPE feems to have hinted, by this allufion to the Paradife Loft, that he intended his poem for a defence of providence, as well as Milton: but he took a very different method in purfuing that end; and imagined that the goodness and justice of the Deity might be defended, without hav

• Paradife Loft, b. i. ver. 26.

ing recourse to the doctrine of a futuré state, and of the depraved state of man.

3.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties ❤,
The ftrong connections, nice dependencies,

Gradations juft, has thy pervading foul

Look'd thro'? Or can a part contain the whole?

.

"IMAGINE only fome perfon entirely a stranger to navigation, and ignorant of the nature of the sea or waters, how great his aftonishment would be, when finding himfelf on board fome veffel anchoring at fea, remote from all land-prospect, whilst it was yet a calm, he viewed the ponderous machine firm and motionless in the midst of the fmooth ocean, and confidered it's foundations beneath, together with it's cordage, mafts, and fails a ve. How cafily would he fee the Whole one regular ftructure, all things dependi on one another; the ufes of the room below, the lodgements, and the conveniencies of men and ftores? But being ignorant of the in

Τάμεση προς αυτο το όλον δεν σκοπείν, ει σύμφωνα pas appottor] a exeu

Plotinns,

tent

tent or design of all above, would he pronounce the mafts and cordage to be uselefs and cumbersome, and for this reafon condemn the frame, and defpife the architect? O my friend! let us not thus betray our ignorance; but confider where we are, and in what an univerfe. Think of the many parts of the vast machine, in which we have fo little insight, and of which it is impoffible we should know the ends and uses: when instead of seeing to the highest pendants, we see only fome lower deck, and are in this dark case of flesh, confined even to the hold and meaneft ftation of the veffel *." I have inferted this paffage at length,

Characteristics, vol. ii. pag, 188. edit. 12m0.-There is a close resemblance in the following lines with another pallage of Shaftesbury's Moralifts.

What would this man? Now upward will he foar,
And little lefs than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, juft as griev'd appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

Afk not merely, why man is naked, why unhoofed, why flower footed than the beasts: Ak, why he has not wings alfo for the air, fins' for the water, and fo on: that he might take poffeffion of each element, and reign in all.

VOL. II.

F

Not

length, because it is a noble and poetical illuftration of the foregoing lines, as well as of many other paffages in this Effay.

4. Prefumptuous man! the reafon would't thou. Find,
Why form'd fo weak, so little and so blind?
First if thou can't the harder reasori guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no lefs.

66

VOLTAIRE, in the late additions to his works, has the following remarkable words. "1 own it flatters me to fee that POPE has fallen upon the very fame fentiment whigh I had entertained many years ago." "Vous vous étonnez que Dieu ait fait l'homme fi borné, fi ignorant, fi peu heureux. Que ne vous étonnez-vous, qu'il ne l'ait pas fait plus borné, plus ignorant, & plus malheureux? Quand un Francais & un Anglais

Not fo, faid I, neither; this would Be to rate' him high indeed! As if he were by nature, lord of all, which is more than I could willingly allow.. 'Tis enough, replied he, that this is yielded. For if we allow once, a fubordination in his case, if nature herself be not for man, but man for nature; then muft man, by his good leave, fubmit to the elements of nature, and not the elements to him." Vol. ii. pag. 196, ut fupra.

Ver. 34

penfent