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verse, conspire to its general beauty: that as all parts in an animal are not eyes; and as in a city, comedy, or picture, all ranks, characters, and colours, are not equal or alike; even so, excesses and contrary qualities, contribute to the proportion and harmony of the universal system that it is not strange, that we should not be able to discover perfection and order in every instance; because, in an infinity of things mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, can see nothing fully. This doctrine was inculcated by Plato and the Stoics, but more amply and particularly by the later Platonists, and by Antoninus and Simplicius. In illustrating his subject, POPE has been much more deeply indebted to the Theodiceé of Leibnitz, to Archbishop King's Origin of Evil, and to the Moralists of Lord Shaftesbury, than to the philosophers above-mentioned. The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me, that he had read the whole scheme of the Essay on Man, in the hand-writing of Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which POPE was to versify and illustrate: in doing which, our poet, it must be confessed, left several passages so expressed, as to be fa

vourable

vourable to fatalism and necessity, notwithstanding all the pains that can be taken, and the turns that can be given to those passages, to place them on the side of religion, and make them coincide with the fundamental doctrines of revelation.

1. Awake,* my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings;
Let us (since life can little more supply
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.

EPIST. I. V. 1.

This opening is awful, and commands the attention of the reader. The word awake has pe culiar force, and obliquely alludes to his noble friend's leaving his political for philosophical pursuits. May I venture to observe, that the metaphors in the succeeding lines, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, seem below the dignity of the subject; especially,

EYE nature's walks, SHOOT folly as it flies,
And CATCH the manners living as they RISE.

*Ben Jonson begins a poem thus: ·

Wake! friend, from forth thy lethargy

2. But

2. But vindicate the ways of God to man.

This line is taken from Milton:

And justify the ways of God to man.

*

POPE seems to have hinted, by this allusion to the Paradise Lost, 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; and imagined, that the goodness and justice of the Deity might be defended, without having recourse to the doctrine of a future state, and of the depraved state of man.

3. But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,t
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd thro'? Or can a part contain the whole?

Imagine only some person entirely a stranger to navigation, and ignorant of the nature of the

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sea, or waters, how great his astonishment would be, when finding himself on board some vessel anchoring at sea, remote from all land-prospect, whilst it was yet a calm, he viewed the ponderous machine firm and motionless in the midst of the smooth ocean, and considered its foundations beneath, together with its cordage, masts, and sails above. How easily would he see the Whole one regular structure, all things depending on one another; the uses of the rooms below, the lodgements, and the conveniences of men and stores! But being ignorant of the intent or design of all above, would he pronounce the masts and cordage to be useless and cumbersome, and for this reason condemn the frame, and despise the architect? O, my friend! let us not thus betray our ignorance; but consider where we are, and in what an universe. Think of the many parts of the vast machine, in which we have so little insight, and of which it is impossible we should know the ends and uses: when, instead of seeing to the highest pendants, we see only some lower deck, and are in this dark case of flesh, confined even to the hold and meanest station of

the

the vessel."* I have inserted this passage at length, because it is a noble and poetical illustration of the foregoing lines, as well as of many other passages in this Essay.

4. Presumptuous man! the reason would'st thou find,
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou can'st, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less.†

VOLTAIRE,

* Characteristics, vol. ii. pag. 188. edit. 12mo.-There is a close resemblance in the following lines with another passage of Shaftesbury's Moralists:

What would this man? Now upward will he soar,
And little less than angel, would be more;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears,
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

he might take

Not so, said I,
As if he were

"Ask not merely, why man is naked, why unhoofed, why slower footed than the beasts: Ask, why he has not wings also for the air, fins for the water, and so on: that possession of each element, and reign in all. neither; this would be to rate him high indeed! by nature, lord of all, which is more than I could willingly allow. 'Tis enough, replied he, that this is yielded. For if we allow once, a subordination in his case; if Nature herself be not for man, but man for Nature; then must man, by his good leave, submit to the elements of Nature, and not the ele ments to him." Vol. ii. pag. 196, ut supra.

+ Ver, 35.

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