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EPISTLE I.

AWAKE, MY ST. JOHN! leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.

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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;
A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promifcuous fhoot,
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,

Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or fightless foar;
Eye Nature's walks, fhoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rife;

NOTES.

ΙΟ

Laugh

VER. 12. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i. e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their paffions; or those who leave behind them common sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of Metaphyfics. Both which follies are expofed in the fourth epiftle, where the popular and philofophical errors concerning Happiness are detected. The figure is taken from animal life.

W.

VER. 13. Eye Nature's walks,] Thefe metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, feem much below the dignity of the subject, and an unnatural mixture of the ludicrous and ferious.

Laugh where we muft, be candid where we can; 15 But vindicate the ways of God to Man.

I. Say first, of God above, or Man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of Man, what fee we but his ftation here,

From which to reafon, or to which refer? Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

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May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.

NOTES.

But

VER. 15. Laugh where we must,] "La fottife (fays old Montaigne) eft une mauvaife qualité; mais ne la pouvoir fupporter, & s'en dépiter & rouger, comme il m'advient, c'est une autre forte de maladie, qui ne doit gueres à la fottife en importunité."

VER. 16. But vindicate the ways] Hinting, by this allufion to the well-known line of Milton,

"And justify the ways of God to man ;"

that he intended his poem for a defence of Providence as well as Milton, but he took a very different method in pursuing that end. It cannot be doubted that Warburton seriously intended to do fervice to religion, by endeavouring to place this poem on the fide of Revelation, and to take Pope out of the hands of the infidels. But he laboured in vain, and with an ill-grounded zeal; as would evidently appear if we were to undertake the unpleafing task of collecting all the paffages which he has tortured and turned into meanings never dreamt of, or defigned by the poet.

VER. 19, 20. Of Man, what fee we but his ftation here,
From which to reafon, or to which refer?

The fenfe is, "we fee nothing of Man but as he stands at prefent in his station here: From which ftation, all our reasonings on his

nature

But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations juft, has thy pervading foul

Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn fupports, upheld by God, or thee?

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NOTES.

II. Pre

nature and end must be drawn; and to this station they must all be referred." The confequence is that our reafonings on his nature and end must needs be very imperfect.

W.

VER. 29. But of this frame, the bearings] "Imagine only fome perfon entirely a stranger to navigation, and ignorant of the nature of the fea or waters, how great his astonishment would be, when finding himself on board some veffel anchoring at sea, remote from all land-profpect; whilft it was yet a calm, he viewed the ponderous machine firm and motionless in the midft of the smooth ocean, and confidered its foundations beneath, together with its cordage, mafts, and fails above. How eafily would he fee the whole one regular structure, all things depending on one another; the uses of the rooms below, the lodgments, and the conveniencies of men and ftores? But being ignorant of the intent, or of all above, would he pronounce the mafts and cordage to be uselefs and cumbersome, and for this reafon condemn the frame and despise the architect? O my friend! let us not thus betray our ignorance; but confider where we are, and in what universe. Think of the many parts of the vast machine, in which we have fo little infight, 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 cafe of flesh, confined even to the hold and meaneft ftation of the veffel." I have inferted this paffage at length, because it is a noble and poetical illustration of the foregoing lines, as well as of many other paffages in this Effay. Characteristics, vol. ii. P. 188.

The whole doctrine of Plato is contained in this one fhort fentence: Μέρος μὲν ἔνεκα όλε, και εχ ̓ ὅλον ἕνεκα μέρες απεργάζεται. See a very fine paffage in A. Gellius, lib. 6. cap. 1. containing the opinion of Chryfippus on the origin of evil.

VER. 32. Can a part contain the whole ?] "HOBBES (fays Dr. Campbell) acknowledged God the author of all things, but thought, or at least pretended he thought, too reverently of him

to

II. Prefumptuous Man! the reason would'st thou

find,

Why form'd fo weak, fo little, and fo blind?
First, if thou can'ft, the harder reafon guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no lefs?
Ask of thy mother Earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they fhade?
Or afk of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?

NOTES.

35

40

Of

to believe his nature could be comprehended by human understanding. But what gave a handle to fome to treat him as an atheift, was, the contempt he expressed for many of those scholastic terms, invented by assuming men, who would impose their own crude notions of the Divine Being, on their fellow-creatures, as fo many articles of faith." One of the most false and pernicious tenets of Hobbes was the debafing and difparaging human nature, and saying, that man was to man a wolf; and attempting, as Cudworth expreffes it, to "villanize mankind.”

VER. 35. Prefumptuous Man!] Voltaire, tom. iv. p. 227. has the following remarkable words: I own it flatters me to see that Pope has fallen upon the very same sentiment which 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 etonnez-vous, qu'il ne l'ait pas plus borné, plus ignorant, et plus malheureux? Quand un Français et un Anglais penfent de meme, il fait bien qu'ils ayent raison.

VER. 41. Or ask of yonder, &c.] On these lines M. Voltaire thus defcants:" Pope dit que l'homme ne peut favoir pourquoi les Lunes de Jupiter font moins grandes que Jupiter? Il se trompe en cela, c'eft une erreur pardonable. Il n'y a point de Mathematicien qui n'ent fait voir," &c. [Vol. ii. p. 384. Ed. Gen.] And fo goes on to shew, like a great mathematician as he is, that it would be very inconvenient for the Page to be as big as his Lord and Master. It is pity all this fine reasoning should proceed on a ridiculous blunder. The poet thus reproves the impious complainer of the order of Providence: "You are diffatisfied with the weakness of your condition: But, in your fituation, the na

ture

Of Systems poffible, if 'tis confeft

That Wisdom infinite must form the best,

Where all must full or not coherent be,

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And all that rises, rise in due degree;

Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man :
And all the question (wrangle e'er fo long)
Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?
Refpecting Man, whatever wrong we call,

May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

NOTES.

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In

ture of things requires just such a creature as you are; in a different fituation, it might have required that you should be still weaker. And though you see not the reason of this in your own cafe; yet, that reasons there are, you may fee in the cafe of other of God's

creatures.

"Ask of thy mother Earth, why oaks are made Taller or ftronger than the weeds they shade?

Or ask of yonder argent fields above,

Why Jove's Satellites are less than Jove?"

Here (fays the Poet) the ridicule of the weeds' and the Satellites' complaint, had they the faculties of speech and reasoning, would be obvious to all; because their very fituation and office might have convinced them of their folly. Your folly, fays the. Poet to his complainers, is as great, though not so evident, because the reason is more out of fight; but that a reason there is, may be demonftrated from the attributes of the Deity. This is the Poet's clear and ftrong reasoning; from whence, we fee, he was fo far from saying, that Man could not know the cause why Jove's Satellites were less than Jove, that all the force of his reafoning turns upon this, that Man did fee and know it, and fhould from thence conclude, that there was a cause of this inferiority as well in the rational, as in the material Creation.

W.

VER. 53. In human works,] Verbatim from Bolingbroke. Fragments 43 and 63.

VOL. III.

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