And while the Mufe now stoops, or now afcends, To Man's low paffions, or their glorious ends, 376 Teach NOTES. On their own axis as the planets run, Yet make at once their circle round the fun : So two confiftent motions act the foul; And one regards itself, and one the whole. This fimile bears a close resemblance to that in the first act of the tragedy of Cato. VER. 373. Come then, my Friend! &c.] This noble apoftrophe, by which the Poet concludes the Effay in an addrefs to his friend, will furnish a critic with examples of every one of those five Species of elocution, from which, as from its sources, Longi nus deduceth the Sublime *. 1. The first and chief is a grandeur and fublimity of conception : "Come then, my Friend! my Genius! come along ; Oh Master of the Poet, and the Song ! And while the Muse now stoops, and now afcends, 2. The second, that pathetic enthusiasm, which, at the same time, melts and inflames: "Teach me, like thee, in various nature wife, 3. A certain elegant formation and ordonance of figures & 4. A *πέντε πηγαί τινές εἰσιν τ ̓ ὑψηγορίας. 1. Πρῶτον μὲν καὶ κράτισον τὸ περὶ τὰς νοήσεις ἀδρεπήβολον. 2. Δεύτερον δὲ τὸ σφοδρὸν καὶ ἐνθεσιαςι κὸν παθα. 3. Ποιὰ τῶν σχημάτων πλάσιο 4. Ἡ γενναῖα φράσις. H 5. Πέμπτη δὲ μεγέθες αἰτία, καὶ συγκλείωσα τὰ πρὸ ἑαυτῆς ἅπαντα, ἡ ἐν ἀξιώ ματι καὶ διάρσει συνθεσις. Teach me, like thee, in various nature wife, 380 Correct with spirit, elegant with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Oh! while along the stream of Time thy name Say, fhall my little bark attendant fail, Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? 4. A fplendid diction : NOTES. "When statesmen, heroes, kings, in duft repofe, From founds to things, from fancy to the heart; 385 When 5. And fifthly, which includes in itself all the reft, a weight and dignity in the compofition: "Shew'd erring Pride, Whatever is, IS RIGHT; That REASON, PASSION, anfwer one great AIM; That VIRTUE only makes our BLISS below; And all our Knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW." W. I find by a memorandum, written at the time, that it was on the 20th of January 1767, that Lord Bathurft informed me of the fact above mentioned; that he had read the outline of the Effay on Man, the scheme and tenour of its doctrines, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, which sketch he greatly com mended. VER. 383. Oh! while along] From the Silva of Statius, c. v. V. 120. "immenfæ veluti connexa Carinæ Cymba minor, cum fævit hyems -et eodem volvitur Auftro." When statesmen, heroes, kings, in duft repose, Thou wert my guide, philofopher, and friend? 390 And all our Knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW. VARIATIONS. VER. 307. That Virtue only, &c.] In the MS. thus, NOTES. VER. 391. I turn'd the tuneful art] Ought the lovers of true genuine poetry to be obliged to his friend, for being inftrumental in making Pope forfake works of imagination for the didactic! Which of the two fpecies of compofition may be the more useful and inftructive, is entirely befide the question; but, in point of poetic genius, the Rape of the Lock, and The Eloisa, as far excel the Effay on Man, and the Moral Epiftles, as the Gierufalemme, fo unjustly depreciated by Boileau, does all his Satires and his Art of Poetry; and as the second and fourth books of Virgil excel the Georgics. To be able to reason well in verse is not the first nor the most effential talent of a poet, great as its merit may be. VER. 398. OURSELVES TO KNOW.] How unfortunate has our learned commentator been, in all the five examples he has pro duced, of the five fpecies of elocution mentioned by Longinus? In the first example there is little grandeur and fublimity of conception. In the fecond, not one ftroke of the pathetic. In the third, not that formation and ufe of figures which, in the 16th fection, Longinus infifts upon. In the fourth example, nothing that can be called T Tenuén xéğıç; dictio tropis plena atque facta; i. e. artificio quodam elaborata. In the fifth and laft, the bare enumeration of the fubjects treated of in these four epiftles cannot be juftly given as an example of weight and dignity of compofition, which Longinus calls i n ἐν ἀξίωματι καὶ διάρσει σύνθεσις; magnifica elataque compofitio. After all, why would the commentator produce these five examples of the fources of the fublime, when, in another work, his Doctrine of Grace, he has laboured exceedingly to prove, that there is no fuch thing as fublimity, confidered in itself; that fublimity is only the application of such images as arbitrary and cafual connexions, rather than their own native grandeur, have dignified and ennobled; thus ftripping, what ages have admired as elegant and great, of its imaginary value, and refolving it into chance, caprice, and fashion. This paradox, and the Defence of it, have been completely confuted by the learned and ingenious Dr. Leland, in a Differtation on the Principles of Human Eloquence. So truly is Warburton characterized by a nervous writer, who fays, " he had an eager propensity to start aside from the regular and common orbit of opinion, upon every plain, every abftrufe, every trifling, and every important fubject." The fame writer, with a spirit of impartiality that does him credit, adds, "The Bishop of Gloucester, amidst all his fooleries in criticism, and all his outrages in controversy, certainly united a most vigorous and comprehensive intellect, with an open and a generous heart." I will just add, that the antiparadifical state mentioned by this prelate in the additional book of the Div. Legation, published by the Bishop of Worcester, has difpleafed many serious and able judges. If, after all, the Divine Legation is a work, as Dr. Hurd affures us it is, "of the moft tranfcendent merit, whether we confider the invention or execution; a work fo embellished by a lively fancy, and illuftrated from all quarters by exquifite learn-· ing and the most ingenious difquifition, that, in the whole compass of modern or ancient theology, there is nothing equal or fimilar to this extraordinary performance;" if, to the authority of Hooker, the acutenefs of Chillingworth, and the perfpicuity of Locke, he added more than all their learning; if these rare and admirable qualifications fhone out in him with greater luftre VOL. III. M. than than in any other ornament of our church, Stillingfleet, and Barrow, and Taylor himself not excepted; if, I fay, this high encomium of Dr. Hurd, on his all-accomplished friend, be juft and well-founded, it furely is of fmall confequence to an author of fuch exalted and extraordinary merits to say, that his notes on Shakespeare and Pope are conceited, futile, and frivolous. In the very last edition of Bishop Law's excellent translation of the Origin of Evil, is the following remarkable passage: "I had now the fatisfaction of seeing, that those very principles which had been maintained by Archbishop King, were adopted by Mr. Pope in his Essay on Man: this I used to recollect, and some times to relate, with pleasure, conceiving that fuch an account did no lefs honour to the poet than to our philofopher; but was foon made to understand, that any thing of that kind was taken highly amiss by one (i. e. Dr. Warburton), who had once held the doctrine of that fame Effay to be rank atheism, but afterwards turned a warm advocate for it, and thought proper to deny the account above mentioned, with heavy menaces against those who prefumed to infinuate that Pope borrowed any thing from any man whatsoever. Marmontel, in his Poetique, has given the following judgment on the Effay on Man: "Pope, dans les Epitres qui compofent fon Effai fur l'Homme, a fait voir combien la poefie pouvoit s'élever fur les ailes de la philofophie. C'eft dommage que ce Poete n'ait pas eu autant de methode que de profondeur. Mais il avoit pris un fyfteme; il failloit le foutenir. Ce fyfteme lui of froit des difficultés épouvantables; il falloit ou les vaincre, ou les eviter le dernier parti etoit le plus fur et le plus commode; auffi pour repondre aux plaintes de l'homme fur les malheurs de fon etat, lui donne-t-il le plus fouvent des images pour des preuves, et des injures pour des raisons." : Still more contemptuous and degrading, than the opinion of this French critic, are the terms in which Dr. Johnson has spoken of this Effay, in which are fo many fplendid and highly-finished paffages. "The fubject," he fays, " is perhaps not very proper for poetry; and the poet was not fufficiently mafter of his fubject: metaphysical morality was a new study; and he was proud of his acquisitions; and, fuppofing himself master of great secrets, was in hafte to teach what he had not learned. When these wonder-working founds fink into fenfe, and the doctrine of the Effay, difrobed of its ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked excellence, what fhall we difcover? that we are, in comparison with our |