ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

OF THE KNOWLEDGE AND CHARACTERS OF MEN.

THAT it is not sufficient for this knowledge to consider man in the abstract books will not serve the purpose, nor yet our own experience singly, ver. 1. General maxims, unless they be formed upon both, will be but notional, ver. 10. Some peculiarity in every man, characteristic to himself, yet varying from himself, ver. 15. Difficulties arising from our own passions, fancies, faculties, &c. ver. 31. The shortness of life, to observe in, and the uncertainty of the principles of action in men, to observe by, ver. 37, &c. Our own principle of action often hid from ourselves, ver. 41. Some few characters plain, but in general confounded, dissembled, or inconsistent, ver. 51. The same man utterly different in different places and seasons, ver. 71. Unimaginable weaknesses in the greatest, ver. 77, &c. Nothing constant and certain but God and nature, ver. 95. No judging of the motives from the actions; the same actions proceeding from contrary motives, and the same motives influencing contrary actions, ver. 100. II. Yet to form characters, we can only take the strongest actions of a man's life and try to make them agree: The utter uncertainty of this, from nature itself, and from policy, ver. 120. Characters given according to the rank of men of the world, ver. 135. And some reason for it, ver. 141. Education alters the nature, or at least the character, of many, ver. 149. Actions, passions, opinions, manners, humours, or principles, all subject to change. No judging by nature, from ver. 158 to 174. III. It only remains to find (if we can) his ruling passion: That will certainly influence all the rest, and can reconcile the seeming or real inconsistency of all his actions, ver. 175. Instanced in the extraordinary character of Clodio, ver. 179. A caution against mistaking second qualities for first, which will destroy all possibility of the knowledge of mankind, ver. 210. Examples of the strength of the ruling passion, and its continuation to the last breath, ver. 222, &c.

EPISTLE I.'

SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD

VISCOUNT COBHAM.'

YES, you despise the man to books confined,
Who from his study rails at human kind;

Though what he learns he speaks, and may advance
Some gen'ral maxims, or be right by chance.
The coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave,
That from his cage cries cuckold, whore, and knave,*

Though many a passenger he rightly call,
You hold him no philosopher at all.

And yet the fate of all extremes is such,
Men may be read, as well as books, too much."
To observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th' observer's sake;
To written wisdom, as another's, less:

3

Maxims are drawn from notions, these from guess.

4

There's some peculiar in each leaf and grain,

Some unmarked fibre, or some varying vein :
Shall only man be taken in the gross ?'
Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss."
That each from other differs, first confess;
Next, that he varies from himself no less;
Add nature's, custom's, reason's, passion's strife,
And all opinion's colours cast on life.

Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,
Quick whirls, and shifting eddies, of our minds?

1 Madame de Sévigné: "Say what they will of the great book of the world, we must read others to know how to read that."-WARTON.

2 The word is used in the technical sense given it by Locke: "For the mind being once furnished with simple ideas, it can put them together in several compositions, and so make variety of complex ideas, without examining whether they exist so together in nature, and hence I think it is that these ideas are called notions, as they had their original and constant existence more in the thoughts of men than in the reality of things." -Human Understanding, Bk. ii. c. 22.

3 Warburton's edition reads "those," following a misprint in the first edition, which was corrected in the errata of the edition of 1735, "these" being the reading of the subsequent editions.

4 The word is also used as a substantive by Milton :

By tincture or reflection they augment
Their small peculiar.

Paradise Lost, Bk. vii.

5 Warburton says that Pope in these lines (9-18) is reflecting on the system of La Rochefoucauld. The poet alleges that human nature is too full of delicate variety to admit of anything like scientific classification. Pope seems to have disapproved of La Rochefoucauld as an author. Writing to Swift, Oct. 15, 1725, he says: "I will not tell you what designs I have in my head (besides writing a set of maxims in opposition to all Rochefoucauld's principles) till I see you here, face to face.'

6 There are above 300 sorts of moss observed by naturalists.-POPE.

On human actions reason though you can, may be reason, but it is not man:

It

His principle of action once explore,

That instant 'tis his principle no more.

Like following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.

Yet more; the diff'rence is. as great between

The optics seeing, as the objects seen.

All manners take a tincture from our own ;

Or come discolored, through our passions shown.
Or fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies,

Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.

Nor will life's stream for observation stay,

It hurries all too fast to mark their way :'

In vain sedate reflections we would make,

When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
Oft, in the passions' wide rotation tost,

Our spring of action to ourselves is lost :
Tired, not determined, to the last we yield,
And what comes then is master of the field.

As the last image of that troubled heap,

2

When sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep,

(Though past the recollection of the thought) Becomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought; Something as dim to our internal view,

Is thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do.

True, some are open, and to all men known; Others so very close, they 're hid from none;

stream hurries all men along too swiftly for the observer to mark their course." But it is plain that Pope meant the stream itself to be the thing observed, and "all too swift" to be understood simply as "too swift."

2 i.c., consciousness.