1. 296. secure, in the sense of confident. Browne's Milton, Clarendon Press Series, i. p. 261. Quarles' Enchiridion : "The way to be safe is not to be secure." Hamlet's father was murdered in his "secure hour." Security is mortal's chiefest enemy." 66 So Ben Jonson in his epode: Macbeth, iii. 5. 32. "Men may securely sin, but safely never.' 1. 287. Safe in the band of one disposing power. Dugald Stewart, Active and Moral Powers; Works, 7. 224: To the man who believes that everything is ordered for the best, and that his happiness is in the hands of a Being who watches over him with the care of a parent, the difficulties and dangers of life only serve to call forth the latent powers of the soul by reminding him of the prize for which he combats, and of that beneficent Providence by which the conflict was appointed.' 1. 294. Whatever is, is right. (1754), 2. 140: Hawkins Browne, De Immortal. Animae, 'si sapiens justusque sit autor Hunc mundi ornatum qui protulit atque gubernat, Quodcunque est fit rite, canit prout ille poeta.' 1. 1. EPISTLE II. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, Taine, Lit. Angl. 3. 389: Le premier vers résume tout le livre précédent, et le second résume tout le livre présent; c'est une sorte d'escalier qui conduit d'un temple à un temple, regulièrement composé de marches symmétriques et si habilement placées, que de la première on aperçoit d'un coup d'œil tout l'édifice qu'on quitte, et que de la seconde on aperçoit d'un coup d'œil tout l'édifice qu'on va visiter.' This is the oldest dictum of logic or philosophy on record, and was thought so highly of that it was even attributed to the oracle of Apollo. Its original purport was to direct curiosity away from the phenomena of the universe-light, heat, winds, earthquakes, the succession of the seasons, day and night, &c.—as inscrutable, towards life and human affairs. The contrast intended by Pope is between the futility of metaphysical speculation on the attributes of the Deity, and the more profitable employment of the study of man. It is a great height of science,' says Richard of S. Victor, De Praeparat. Animi, cap. 75, 'perfectly to know oneself. The full knowledge of the rational spirit is a lofty mountain, from the summit of which we look down on all philosophy.' Pascal, Pensées, Si l'homme commençoit par s'étudier lui-même, il verroit combien il est incapable de passer outre.' Cf. Quarles' Hieroglyphics: Boileau, Epîtres, 5. 26: 'Je songe à me connaître, et me cherche en moi-même Wordsworth says, on the other hand, The man whose eye Is ever on himself, doth look on one 'The least of Nature's works.' 1. 3. Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state. Cf. Prior, Solomon; Works, vol. 1, p. 283: • Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost proudly rise 1. 8. In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast. Cf. Diderot, 'Le cœur humain est tour à tour un sanctuaire et un cloacque.' 1. 14. abus'd or disabus'd. Abus'd deceived. Skelton, Speke Parrot, 376 (before 1520), The dull abusyd brayne.' So 'abuse,' Quarles' Feast for Worms, Med. 4, 'How full of dangerous and foul abuse.' This is one of the few words used by Pope in a sense now obsolete. The French retain it in this sense. Abuser, Fr., marks, however, a distinct shade in deception. On trompe celui qui s'en laisse imposer; on abuse celui qui se laisse captiver. Il ne suffit pas d'être détrompé de ce qui nous tient au cœur, il faut en être désabusé.' 1 17. Sole judge of truth, in endless error burl'd, &c. From Pascal, Thoughts, English Translation, 1704. What a chimaera is man! What a confused chaos! What a subject of contradiction! A professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of the earth; the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the glory and the scandal of the universe!' 1. 20. For the sentiment, cf. Hor. Carm. 1, 28, 4, 'nec quicquam tibi prodest Aerias tentasse domos, animoque rotundum Percurrisse polum, morituro.' 1. 22. Correct old time, and regulate the sun. Said by Warburton to be an allusion to Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology. Perhaps the reform of the Calendar, which was then under discussion, is meant. The Old Style,' which had been disused in the Catholic countries of Europe ever since 1583, was reformed in Germany for the Protestant States at the Diet of Ratisbon, in 1700. The 'New Style' was not introduced into England till 1752. 23. empyreal. Of the nature of fire.' Gr. μmúρios; Ital. empireo. Dante, Infern. 2. 20; nell' empireo ciel.' Pope makes it empýreal; Gray, Ode for Music, st. 2, and Akenside, Pleasures of Imagination, 1. 259, have empyréan; Milton has both. The Greek physicists of later times conceived the earth as the centre of seven spheres; the first contained within the second, the second within the third, and all within the seventh. Of this seventh sphere or heaven the element was of the nature of fire.' It was the home of the divine and eternal beings. The soul of man, when disengaged by death from the body, mounts through the lower spheres to the empyreal by the effect of gravity. It is then in an element of the same nature-fiery etheras itself. Cf. Cicero, Tusc. Disp. 1. 43. It would seem that this conception of the world is not strictly that of Plato (died B. C. 347), though it is attributed to him by his commentators. The Latin theologians of the middle age made nine spheres, distinguishing the venture, In 2, Sentent. Dist. 2. p. 2: piendo; aereum, aethereum, igneum, aqueum, empyreum, Trinitatis.' fiery' from the empyrean.' S. BonaNovem ponuntur caeli largissime acciOlympicum, planetarum, firmamentum, 1. 24. first good. First, i. e. from which all others are derived; type, prototype, model. These ideas,' as they were called, had their residence in the highest or empyreal' heaven. fair. It has been said that English has no proper equivalent for the Greek kaλóv. Fair' is used by our oldest writers in this sense, in which it is now obsolete. One of Drummond's poems is a Hymn on the Fairest Fair. It is an address to God. 1. 25. mazy. See Ep. 1. 6. followers. The Neo-platonic school of philosophers, of whom Ammonius Saccas (died circ. A.D. 250), is usually considered the first, as Plotinus (died A.D. 270) was the most considerable. 1. 26. And quitting sense call imitating God. Union with God' would be more correct. Plotinus held that the senses (sense) could make known to us only the material world. The business of man, or of the philosophic man, was to return to God by virtue, by contemplation, and ecstatic (quitting sense) intuition of pure deity. Cf. Parnell, A Night Piece: 1. 34. Newton. Such joy though far transcending sense Have pious souls in parting hence.' Sir Isaac Newton (died 1727), author of the theory of Universal Gravitation, the greatest scientific discovery ever made. These lines show that Pope in 1733 was aware that the Newtonian system was universally accepted. Yet in the Dunciad, iv. 643 (1742), Philosophy that reached the heav'ns before Shrinks to her hidden cause and is no more,' he intended a satire on the Newtonian theory. In later editions he altered the phrase into second cause,' which he intended as a compliment to that divine genius.' No discovery, at once so vast and so novel, ever made its way to acceptance more quickly. The first edition of Newton's Principia was published in 1687. Halley, Wren, and all the leading members of the Royal Society, embraced the system immediately and zealously; and in less than twenty years it was introduced into the Universities of England and Scotland without a struggle. (See Whewell, Hist of Induct. Sciences, 2. 144.) In celebrating Newton in verse Pope had been anticipated. By Thomson in an Elegy to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, 1727; by Mallet in The Excursion, canto 2; and by Desaguliers, see Southey, Specimens, 2. 135. He was imitated by Voltaire in his Épître à la Marquise du Châtelet, 1738. l'ope's line reads like a travestie of Thomson, who had said with far better taste: 'Whether with angels thou Sittest in dread discourse or fellow-blest, Voltaire also appeals to the 'superior beings,' but in a frigid conceit : Byron's allusion, Don Juan, canto 7, st. 5, Newton, that proverb of the mind,' is so ill-expressed, that it is only by aid of the context that we can see it was meant to be a compliment. Goldwin Smith, Lect. on Mod. Hist., I. 49, 50. And shew'd a Newton as we shew an ape. Cf. Introduct. p. 11; Moral Essays, 3. 4: That man was made the standing jest of heav'n.' Critics have been divided as to the purport of this comparison. Do the 'superior beings' admire the aspiring intelligence, or ridicule the presumption, of man? The words are open to either interpretation. That ridicule is intended might be suspected from the parallelism to Milton, Paradise Lost, 8.76: 'He his fabric of the heav'ns Hath left to their disputes, perhaps to move For it must be very doubtful if the saying of Heraclitus, brought forward by Hurd, who calls it 'Plato,' was known to Pope. Fragm. Graec. Philos., fr. 43 (ed. Mullach): ὅτι ἀνθρώπων ὁ σοφώτατος πρὸς θεὸν πίθηκος φανεί. ται. Indeed the analogy that man is to angelic beings what the ape is to man is common enough in satirical writers. Rochester, in his bitter Lines on Sir Car Scrope, says God made a satire 'on man when He made thee; To shew there were some men as there are apes, And Palingenius (i. e. Manzolli, a neo-Latin poet, circ. 1520) has it, Zodiacus Simia caelicolum, risusque jocusque Deorum est Tunc Homo, cum temere ingenio confidit, et audet Abdita naturae scutari arcanaque Divum.' And the whole context of the passage in Pope is directed to depreciate the pretensions and humble the aspirations of man. The lines of Pope were probably in Wordsworth's mind when he wrote, Pref. to Lyrical Ballads, P. 347, Why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? Why take pains to prove that an ape is not a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man?' 1. 44. pride. Not vanity, presumption, Fr. orgueil; but splendour, magnificence, display, Fr. faste, Germ. pracht. Common in this sense in the sixteenth and seventeenth century writers, e. g. Spenser, Faery Queene, 1. 12. 14: For th' antique world excesse and pride did hate.' Pope has it often, e. g. Odyss. 8: Whose ivory sheath enwrought with curious pride. Cf. Lat. superbus, Virg. Aen. 2. 504: 'Barbarico postes auro spoliisque superbi.' 1. 46. learning's luxury, or idleness, &c. The abuse of learning is said to have been a favourite topic with Pope. He intended to have made it the subject of a separate essay in four epistles, but the intention was never executed. Cf. Palingenius, Zodiacus Vitae, Virgo, 575: 'Quis non esse putet stultum, qui rebus omissis Utilibus propriisque, aliena et inania quaerit,' &c. And Montaigne, Essais, 3. 12: 'en curiosité de scavoir, il en est de mesme ; l'homme se taille de la besongne bien plus qu'il n'en peult faire, et bien plus qu'il n'en a affaire. C'est aussi chastrer nos appetits désordonnez, d'esmousser cette cupidité qui nous espoinçonne à l'estude des livres ; . . . et est richement accomplir le vœu de pauvreté, d'y joindre encores celle de l'esprit.' Montaigne followed his favourite Seneca, who enlarges on the topic, Ep. 88. Johnson, Life of Milton, sneers at the fantastic luxury of various knowledge.' See also Young's Satires, Sat. 2: Study's the specious trifling of the mind.' Looking over the history of learning, it is true that there has been much waste of intellectual labour. But over-production seems to be both in nature and art the condition of production. What Cicero says of philosophy may be extended to all knowledge, Tusc. Disp. 2. 1: Difficile est pauca esse ei nota cui non sint aut pleraque aut omnia. Nam nec pauca nisi e multis eligi possunt, nec, qui pauca perceperit, non idem reliqua eodem studio persequetur.' 1. 50. Of all our vices have created arts, i. e. ‘of all those devices of luxury which our vices have created into arts.' Arts, i. e. logic, rhetoric, poetry, &c. On the academic sense of the word arts, see Sir William Hamilton, Lect. on Metaphys. vol. 1, p. 115. 1. 59. acts the soul. Cf. Ess. 3. 315: 'So two consistent motions act the soul.' Lowth, English Grammar, condemns this use of act as a solecism. But though this sense might be lost in Lowth's time, act, like Lat. ago, was both active and neuter. Cf. Prior, Solomon; Works, I. 223: 'Should only act and prompt us from within.' Locke, Essay, 3. 6. 26, has acted by;' and Addison, Spectator, 285, The ancient criticks who were acted by a spirit of candour.' Bp. Butler, however, Diss. on the Nature of Virtue, uses the modern actuate.' 'Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by various instincts and propensions; so are we.' 11. 61, 62. Man, but for that, no action could attend, And, but for this, were active to no end. That must refer to self-love, this to reason; but the statement that without reason man were active to no end, is not strictly correct. In Pope's analysis of moral action, self-love is the moving, and reason the guiding, power. Self-love therefore supplies what is technically called the end, reason directs the means. Perhaps the confusion is with that function of reason described below, 1. 74, by which it sees the future and the consequence. Bacon, too, De Augment. 6. 3, says, 'Notandum est affectus ipsos ad bonum apparens semper ferri, atque hac ex parte aliquid habere cum ratione commune; verum illud interest, quod affectus intuentur praecipue in praesentia; ratio |