Let this great truth be present night and day; 5 Look round our World; behold the chain of Love Combining all below and all above. NOTES. See tion fets them above both, muft needs have an abundance of it, which not being employed in the common fervice, but wasted in Luxury and Folly, the Poet properly calls a fuperfluity. W. VER. 4. Impudence of wealth,] Because wealth pretends to be wisdom, wit, learning, honefty, and, in fhort, all the virtues in their turns. W. VER. 3, 4, 5, 6. M. Du Refnel, not feeing into the admirable purpose of the caution contained in these four lines, hath quite dropped the most material circumstances contained in the last of them; and, what is worse, for the fake of a foolish antithefis, hath deftroyed the whole propriety of the thought in the two first and fo, between both, hath left his Author neither sense nor system. : "Dans le fein du bonheur, ou de l'adverfité." Now of all men, those in adversity have least need of this caution, as being least apt to forget, That God confults the good of the whole, and provides for it by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants; it being seen that fuch who yet retain the smart of any fresh calamity, are moft compaffionate to others labouring under diftreffes, and moft prompt and ready to relieve them. W. VER. 7. Look round our World, &c.] He introduceth the system of human Sociability (Ver. 7, 8.) by shewing it to be the dictate of the Creator; and that Man, in this, did but follow the example of general Nature, which is united in one close system of benevolence. W. "The bush protects that acorn which becomes an oak. The grafs maintains the nobleft animals. Thus does the vegetable nature both help itself and help the animal. Again, blights and blafts deftroy the tender plant, and breed contagions and pests among animals. Thus does the vegetable, or at least inanimate nature, both hurt itself and hurt the animal. By the industry of man and the dung of animals, the vegetable nature is fertilized and cultivated. The parent animal nourishes its young, and de fends See plastic Nature working to this end, Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace. Press to one centre ftill, the gen'ral Good, See life diffolving vegetate again: 10 15 All NOTES. fends them at a feafon when of themfelves defenceless. Thus does the animal nature both keep itself and help the vegetable. Again, by man and beaft are vegetables deftroyed; and by man and beast are man and beast destroyed. Thus does the animal nature both hurt itself and hurt the vegetable. Friendship and strife are concurrent principles. By friendship are prevented chaos and confufion; by strife are prevented sloth and lethargy. By ftrife all powers are roused to action; and by friendship they are tempered into harmony- and concord." MSS. of Harris. And again; "Hence we perceive the meaning of what Heraclitus fays in Plutarch, when he calls War the father, and king, and lord of all things; and afferts that, when Homer prayed That ftrife be banish'd both from God and men," he was not aware that he was curfing the generation of all things, as, in fact, they deduce their rise out of contest and antipathy." VER. 12. Form'd and impell'd, &c.] To make Matter fo cohere as to fit it for the ufes intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its infenfible parts is as neceffary as that quality fo equally and univerfally conferred upon it, called Attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our Author fays form'd; and to express the latter, impell'd. W. VER. 15. See dying vegetables] Pope has again copied Shaftefbury so closely in this paffage, as to use almost his very words: "Thus, in the feveral terreftrial forms, a refignation is required; a facrifice, and mutual yielding of nature, 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 infects are reduced by the fuperior kinds of birds ør beasts: and these again are checked by man, who, in his turn, fubmits All forms that perish other forms fupply, (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die,) NOTES. Like 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 fo juft; how much more reasonably may all inferior natures be fubjected to the superior nature of the world!" The Moralist, p. 130. Whatever cenfures Shaftesbury has incurred for his many inde cent and groundless objections against the Christian religion, yet we ought candidly to confefs, that two of his treatises, the Enquiry concerning Virtue, and the Moralifts, deferve attention and applause. The former is written with great perfpicuity of method and clofenefs of argument, and with a purity and fimplicity of ftyle very different from the over-ornamented, tumid style of many of his other works. The latter is perhaps the finest imita tion of the manner of Plato, as Lord Monboddo has fhewn at large, in our language. In both are advanced the moft cogent arguments for an Intelligent First Caufe, and the benevolence, wisdom, and goodness of a fuperintending Providence. Our Author has therefore been guilty of manifest injustice in infinuating, in the last book of the Dunciad, ver. 418. that the very Theocles, from whom he has copied fo much, and fo many of whofe fentiments and arguments he has adopted, is a preacher of Fate and Naturalifm. And, what is ftill more inexcufable, the words of Theocles are imperfectly quoted in the note of this paffage of the Dunciad, in order to give a colour to the infinuation; for, after the words "impowered Creatrefs," the two following ones-" or Thou," are unfairly omitted. See Characteristics, vol. ii. p. 345. The firft book of the Enquiry ends with a fentence far remote from irreligion and epicurifm: "Hence we may determine juftly the relation which virtue has to piety; the first being not complete without the latter; fince, where the latter is wanting, there can be neither the fame benignity, firmness, nor conftancy; the fame good compofure of the affections, nor uniformity of mind. And thus the perfection and height of virtue must be owing to the belief of a God!" Vol. ii. p. 76. In a letter of Dr. Warburton, transcribed from the manuscripts of Dr. Birch, in the British Museum, by the late Mr. Maty, are thefe Like bubbles on the fea of Matter born, They rife, they break, and to that fea return. NOTES. 20 Connects these remarkable words; "As to the paffages of Mr. Pope that correfpond with Leibnitz, you know he took them from Shaftefbury; and that Shaftesbury and Leibnitz had one common ori ginal, Plato, whose fyftem of the best, when pushed as far as Leibnitz has carried it, muft end in Fate." A ftrange opinion once prevailed, that Leibnitz was not serious in his Theodicée. Le Clerc and De Maiscaux were of this opinion. But Mr. Jour dan, in his entertaining Voyage Literaire, p. 150. has produced a letter of the celebrated and learned Mr. Le Croze, that effectually deftroys this abfurd fuppofition. I shall add to this long note, that it seems to be an insufferable inftance of affectation in Bolingbroke, never once to have men tioned Shaftesbury, who was much his fuperior in learning and philofophy, and from whom he has borrowed fo many fentiments and opinions. See alfo Letters of Shaftesbury to a Young Clergyman. VER. 19, 20. Like bubbles, &c.] M. Du Refnel translates these two lines thus: "Sort du neant y réntre, et reparoit au jour." He is here, indeed, confiftently wrong: for having (as we faid) mistaken the Poet's account of the preservation of Matter for the areation of it, he commits the very fame mistake with regard to the vegetable and animal fyftems; and fo talks now, though with the lateft, of the production of things out of nothing. Indeed, by his fpeaking of their returning into nothing, he has subjected his Author to M. Du Croufaz's cenfure. "Mr. Pope defcends to the most yulgar prejudices, when he tells us that each being returns to nothing the Vulgar think that what disappears is annihilated," &c. Comm. p. 221. W. VER. 22. One all-extending, all-preferving Soul] Which, in the language of Sir Ifaac Newton, is, "Deus omnipræfens eft, non per virtutem folam, fed etiam per fubftantiam: nam virtus fine fubftantia fubfiftere non poteft." Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. fub fin. W. 25 Connects each being, greatest with the least; For him as kindly fpread the flow'ry lawn: Know, Nature's children all divide her care; 30 35 40 NOTES. While VER. 23. Greatest with the leaft ;] As acting more ftrongly and immediately in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man fay, with great elegance, eft anima brutorùm :" "In this 'tis God directs" "Deus W. VER. 43. Know, Nature's children all] The poetry of these lines is as beautiful as the philofophy 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, in deed |