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What shocks one part will edify the rest,
Nor with one fyftem can they all be bleft.
The very best will variously incline,

And what rewards your Virtue, punish mine.
WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.-This world 'tis true,
Was made for Cæfar-but for Titus too:

146

And which more bleft? who chain'd his country? fay, Or he whose Virtue figh'd to lose a day!

"But sometimes Virtue starves, while Vice is fed.” What then? Is the reward of Virtue bread?

That, Vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil;
The knave deferves it, when he tills the foil,
The knave deferves it when he tempts the main,
Where Folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
The good man may be weak, be indolent;
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.

But grant him Riches, your demand is o'er?

150

155

"No-fhall the good want Health, the good want "Pow'r ?"

Add Health, and Pow'r, and ev'ry earthly thing. "Why bounded Pow'r? why private? why no

• 66

king?"

160

VARIATIONS.

Nay,

After Ver. 142. in fome Editions,

Give each a Syftem, all must be at ftrife;

What diff'rent Systems for a Man and Wife?

The joke, though lively, was ill plac'd, and therefore ftruck out of the text.

NOTES.

VER. 157. But grant him Riches,] It does by no means follow, that because he should want riches, wealth, and power, he fhould want every thing, and never know where to ftop.

Nay, why external for internal giv'n?

Why is not Man a God, and Earth a Heav'n?
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while he has more to give :
Immense the pow'r, immense were the demand;
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The foul's calm fun-fhine, and the heart-felt joy,

166

Is

NOTES.

VER. 162. Why is not Man a God,] The manner in which Ramsay endeavours, but in vain, to explain the doctrine of the Effay, is as follows: "Pope is far from afferting, that the prefent ftate of Man is his primitive state, and is conformable to Order: His defign is to fhew, that fince the Fall, all is proportioned with weight, measure, and harmony, to the condition of a degraded Being, who fuffers, and who deferves to suffer, and who cannot be restored but by sufferings; that physical evils are defigned to cure moral evil; that the paffions and the crimes of the moft abandoned men are confined, directed, and governed by infinite wisdom, in such a manner as to make order emerge out of confufion, light of darkness, and to call out innumerable advantages from the tranfitory inconveniences of this life; that this fo gracious Providence conducts all things to its own ends, and without either caufing or approving the effects of their deliberate malice that all is ordained in the physical order, as all is free in the moral; that these two orders are connected closely without fatality, and are not fubject to that neceffity which renders us virtuous without merit, and vicious without crime; that we fee at present but a fingle wheel of the magnificent machine of the univerfe; but a fmall link of the great chain; and but an infignificant part of that immense plan which will one day be unfolded. Then will God justify all the incomprehenfible proceedings of his wifdom and goodness, and will vindicate himself, as Milton fpeaks, from the rafh judgment of mortals."

;

But there are too many paffages in this Effay to suffer us to admit of the forced interpretation here given by Ramsay.

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Is Virtue's prize: A better would you fix?
Then give Humility a coach and fix,
Justice a Conqu❜ror's fword, or Truth a gown,
Or Public Spirit its great cure, a Crown.

Weak, foolish Man! will Heav'n reward us there
With the fame trash mad mortals wifh for here?

170

The Boy and Man an Individual makes,

175

Yet figh'ft thou now for apples and for cakes?

Go,

VARIATIONS.

After Verse 172. in the MS.

Say, what rewards this idle world imparts,
Or fit for searching heads or honest hearts.

NOTES.

VER. 170. Then give Humility] In a work of fous and fe vere a cast, in a work of reasoning, in a work of theology, defigned to explain the most interesting fubject that can employ the mind of man, surely such ftrokes of levity, of satire, of ridicule, as also lines 204. 223. 276. however poignant and witty, are ill placed and disgusting, are violations of that propriety which Pope in general fo ftrictly obferved. Lucretius preferves throughout, the dignity he at first assumed; even his farcasms and irony on the fuperftitious, have fomething auguft, and a noble haughtiness in them; as in particular where he asks, "How it comes to pass that Jupiter fometimes strikes his own temples with his thunderbolts; whether he employs himself in casting them in the deserts for the fake of exercising his arm; and why he hurls them in places where he cannot strike the guilty.

"Tum fulmina mittat; et ædes

Sæpe fuas disturbet; et in deferta recedens
Sæviat, exercens telum, quod fæpe nocentes
Præterit, exanimatque indignos, inque merentes."

He has turned the infult into a magnificent image.

VER. 173. Weak, foolish Man!] These eight fucceeding lines were not in former editions; and indeed none of them, especially lines 177 and 179, do any credit to the Author, and rather make us wish they had been fuppreffed.

Go, like the Indian, in another life

Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife:
As well as dream fuch trifles are affign'd,
As toys and empires, for a god-like mind.
Rewards, that either would to Virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing:
How oft by these at fixty are undone
The virtues of a faint at twenty-one!
To whom can Riches give Repute, or Trust,
Content, or Pleasure, but the Good and Juft?
Judges and Senates have been bought for gold,
Efteem and Love were never to be fold.

Oh fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,
The lover and the love of human-kind,

180

185

190

Whofe life is healthful, and whose conscience clear, Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.

Honour and fhame from no Condition rife;

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

NOTES.

Fortune

VER. 185. Give Repute, or Truft,] We fee in the world, alas! too many examples of riches giving repute and truft, content, and pleasure to the worthlefs and profligate.

VER. 189. God hates the worthy mind,] The ground of the complaint is, not that the worthy man does not poffefs a large and ample fortue, but because he sometimes wants even neceffaries.

VER. 194. A well your part,] The Antients were very fond of this comparison of human life with a drama. Epictetus uses it in a well known paffage, chapter 27. and Arrian also recites it: it is repeated twice or thrice in Stobæus; and Antoninus finishes his meditations with an allufion to it. Ivie has given it from Epictetus in a manner fo truly Horatian, that I cannot forbear repeating it:

"Nos

Fortune in Men has some small diff'rence made, 195

One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade;

The

NOTES.

"Nos fumus in fcenâ ; quin et mandante magiftro,
Quifque datas agimus partes; fit longa brevisve
Fabula, nil refert: Tyrio feu dives in oftro
Incedam, pannis feu veler fquallidus, imo
Prognatus populo, feu fracto crure humerove
In triviis rogitem æra; placet lex”-

But our Author found the fame illustration in his friend's Essay. See Bolingbroke, vol. v. p. 79. “The whole world, nay, the whole universe, is filled with Beings which are all connected in one immense design. The fenfitive inhabitants of our globe, like the dramatis perfonæ, have different characters, and are applied to different purposes of action in every scene. The feveral parts of the material world, like the machines of a theatre, were contrived not for the actors, but for the action: and the whole order and system of the drama would be disordered and spoiled, if any alteration was made in either. The nature of every creature, his manner of being, is adapted to his state here, to the place he is to inhabit, and, as we may fay, to the part he is to act. If man was a creature inferior or superior to what he is, he would be a very prepofterous creature in this system. Gulliver's horfes made a very abfurd figure in the place of men, and men would make one as abfurd in the place of horses. I do not think that philosophers have shewn in every inftance why every thing is what it is, and as it is, or that nothing could be, in any one cafe, otherwife than it is, without producing a greater inconveniency to the whole than the particular inconveniency that would be removed. But I am sure this has been proved in so many instances, that it is trifling, as well as profane, to deny it in any. We complain often of our senses, and sometimes of our reasoning faculties: both are defective, weak, fallible and yet if the former were more extensive, more acute, and more nice, they would not anfwer the purposes of human life, they would be abfolutely inconfiftent with them. Just so, if our reasoning faculties were more perfect than they are, the order of intellectual Beings would be broken unneceffarily, and man would be raised above his proper form, without any real advantage to himself, fince the reason he has is fufficient for him in the state

allotted

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