[Ep. 3. 1. 262.] describes as building Hell on spite, and Heaven on pride, he upbraids them [from 1. 94 to 109.] with the example of the poor Indian, to whom also Nature hath given this common HOPE of mankind. But though his untutored mind had betrayed him into many childish fancies concerning the nature of that future state, yet he is so far from excluding any part of his own. species (a vice which could proceed only from vain science, which puffeth up), that he humanely admits even his faithful dog to bear him company.

And then [from 1. 108 to 119.] shews them, that complaints against the established order of things, begin in the highest absurdity from misapplied reason and power, and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade the God of Heaven, and assume his place.

Go wiser thou, and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence:
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if Man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If Man alone ingross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there,

That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality:

To which sense the lines immediately following confine us:

Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the God of God.

From these men, the Poet turns to his Friend, and [from I. 118 to 137.] remarks that the ground of all this extravagance is pride; which, more or less, infects the whole species:--shews the ill effects of it, in the case of the fallen angels; and observes, that even wishing to invert the laws of order is a lower species of their crime :then brings an instance of one of the effects of pride, which is the folly of thinking every thing made solely for the use of Man; without the least regard to any other of God's creatures.

Ask for what end the heavenly Bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? PRIDE answers, Tis for mine:
For me, kind Nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flower;

Annual

Annual for me, the grape, the rose, renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings,
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise,
My footstool, Earth; my canopy, the skies.

The ridicule of imagining the greater portions of the material system were solely for the use of Man, philosophy has sufficiently exposed: and common sense, as the Poet shews, instructs us to know that our fellow-creatures, placed by Providence the joint inhabitants of this globe, are designed by Providence to be joint sharers with us of its blessings.

Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn.
Is it for thee, the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
Is thine alone the seed that strows the plain?
The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain.
Ep. iii. 1. 27.

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Having thus given a general idea of the goodness and wisdom of God, and the folly and ingratitude of Man, the great Author comes next (after this necessary preparation) to the confirmation of his thesis, That partial Moral Evil is universal Good: but introduceth it with a proper argument to abate our wonder at the phænomenon of moral evil, which argument he builds on a concession of his adversaries. If we ask you," says he, [from 1. 136 to 147.] "whether Nature doth not err "from the gracious end of its Creator, when plagues, earthquakes, and tempests, unpeople whole regions at a time? you readily answer, No. For that God acts by general and not by particular laws; and that "the course of matter and motion must be necessarily subject to some irregularities, because nothing created " is perfect." Say you so? I then ask, why you should expect this perfection in Man? If you own that the great

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end

end of God (notwithstanding all this deviation) be generat happiness, then it is Nature, and not God that deviates; and do you expect greater constancy in Man?

Then Nature deviates, and can Man do less?

i. e. if Nature, or the inanimate system (on which God hath imposed his laws, which it obeys as a machine obeys the hand of the workman), may in course of time deviate from its first direction, as the best philosophy shews it may*; where is the wonder that Man, who was created a free agent, and hath it in his power every moment to transgress the eternal Rule of Right, should sometimes go out of order?

Having thus shewn how Moral Evil came into the world, namely, by Man's abuse of his own free will, he comes to the point, the confirmation of his thesis, by shewing how moral Evil promotes Good; and employs the same concession of his adversaries, concerning natural Evil, to illustrate it.

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1. He shews it tends to the good of the whole, or universe [from 1. 146 to 157.] and this by analogy. "You own, says he, that storms and tempests, clouds, rain, "heat, and variety of seasons are necessary (notwith"standing the accidental evils they bring with them) to "the health and plenty of this globe; why then should you suppose there is not the same use, with regard to "the universe, in a Borgia and a Catiline?" But you say, you can see the one and not the other. You say right. One terminates in this system, the other refers to the whole. But, says the Poet, in another place,

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-of this frame, the bearings and the ties, The strong connexions, nice dependencies, Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd thro'? Or can a part contain the whole? 1. 29, et seq.

While Comets move in very eccentric orbs, in all manner of positions, blind Fate could never make all the Planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric, some inconsiderable irregularities excepted, which may have risen from the mutual actions of Comets and Planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase till this system wants a reformation, Sir Is. Newt. Optics, Quest. ult.

Own

Own therefore, says he, here, that,

From pride, from pride our very reasoning springs;
Account for moral as for natural things:

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both to reason right, is to submit.

2. But secondly, to strengthen the foregoing analogical argument, and to make the wisdom and goodness of God still more apparent, he observes next [from 1. 156 to 165] that moral evil is not only productive of good to the whole, but is even productive of good in our own system. It might, says he, perhaps appear better to us, that there were nothing in this world but peace

and virtue,

That never air nor ocean felt the wind,

That never passion discompos'd the mind.

But then consider, that as our material system is supported by the strife of its elementary particles, so is our intellectual system by the conflict of our passions, which are the elements of human action.

Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief,
These mix'd with art,

the family of pain,

and to due bounds confin'd,

Make and maintain the balance of the mind.

Ep. 2. 1. 107, et seq.

For (as he says again in his second Epistle, where he illustrates this observation at large)

What crops of wit and honesty appear

From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear! 1. 175. In a word, as without the benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, and corrupt, and spread universal contagion throughout all the ranks of animals that inhabit, or are supported, by them; so, without the benefit of the passions, that harmony, and virtue, the effects of the absence of those passions, would be a lifeless calm, a stoical apathy,

Contracted all, retiring to the breast:

But health of mind is exercise, not rest. Ep. 2. l. 93, Therefore, concludes the Poet, instead of regarding the conflict of elements, and the passions of the mind, as disVOL. XI.

D

orders;

orders; you ought to consider them as what they are, part of the general order of Providence: and that they are so, appears from their always preserving the same unvaried course, throughout all ages, from the creation, to the present time :

The general order, since the whole began,

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

We see therefore it would be doing great injustice to our Author to suspect that he intended, by this, to give any encouragement to vice; or to insinuate the necessity of it to a happy life, on the equally execrable and absurd scheme of the Author of the Fable of the Bees. His system, as all his Ethic Epistles shew, is this, That the passions, for the reasons given above, are necessary to the support of virtue: That indeed the passions in excess, produce vice, which is, in its own nature, the greatest of all evils; and comes into the world from the abuse of Man's free-will; but that God, in his infinite wisdom, and goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity to the advancement of human happiness, and makes it productive of general good:

TH'ETERNAL ART EDUCES GOOD FROM ILL.

Ep. 2. I. 165.

This, set against what we have observed of the Poet's doctrine of a future state, will furnish us with an instance of his steering (as he well expresses it in his Preface) between doctrines seemingly opposite: If his Essay has any merit, he thinks it is in this. And doubtless it is uncommon merit to reject the extravagances of every system, and take in only what is rational and real. The Characteristics, and the Fable of the Bees, are two seemingly inconsistent systems: The extravagancy of the first is in giving a scheme of Virtue without Religion; and of the latter, in giving a scheme of Religion without Virtue. These our Poet leaves to any body that will take them up; but agrees however so far with the first, that virtue would be worth having, though itself was its only reward; and so far with the latter, that God makes evil, against Its nature, productive of good.

The Poet having thus justified Providence in its permission of partial MORAL EVIL, employs the remaining

part