All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy Th' extenfive bleffing of his luxury, That very life his learned hunger craves, He faves from famine, from the favage faves; 65 And, 'till he ends the being, makes it bleft; 70 75 II. Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them beft; 80 To blifs alike by that direction tend, And find the means proportion'd to their end. NOTES. VER. 68. Than favour'd Man, &c.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals fince, efteemed those who were ftruck by lightning as facred persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. P. F Say, where full Inftinct is th' unerring guide, 85 While ftill too wide or fhort is human Wit; 90 Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain, 95 Who taught the nations of the field and wood To fhun their poifon, and to chufe their food? 100 Prescient, the tides or tempefts to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the fand? VARIATION S. After ver. 84. in the MS. While Man, with op'ning views of various ways Who made the spider parallels defign, Sure as De-moivre, without rule or line? Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before? Its But as he fram'd a Whole, the Whole to bless, And creature link'd to creature, man to man. 120 Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace; They love themselves a third time in their race. Thus beaft and bird their common charge attend, 125 The mothers nurse it, and the fires defend; The young difmifs'd to wander earth or air, -There ftops the Instinct, and there ends the care: 130 The link diffolves, each feeks a fresh embrace, A longer care man's helpless kind demands; At once extend the int'reft, and the love; And still new needs, new helps, new habits rife, Still as one brood, and as another rofe, These natʼral love maintain'd, habitual those: 140 [trod; IV. Nor think, in NATURE'S STATE they blindly The ftate of Nature was the reign of god: Self-love and focial at her birth began, Union the bond of all things, and of Man. Pride then was not; nor Arts, that pride to aid; Man walk'd with beaft, joint tenant of the fhade; NOTES. 15.0 VER. 152. Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the fade] The poet ftill: takes his imagery from Platonic The fame his table, and the fame his bed; NOTES. 155 ideas for the reafon given above. Plato had faid from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beafts. Moral inftructors took advantage of the popular fenfe of this tradition, to convey their precepts under those fables, which give fpeech to the whole brute creation. The naturalifts understood the tradition to fignify, that, in the first Ages, Men used inarticulate founds, like beafts, to express their wants and fenfations; and that it was by flow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic. and Gregory of Nyff. VER. 156. All vocal beings, &c.] This may be well explained by a fublime paffage of the pfalmift, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of the great ideas of those Chains of Love, Combining all below, and all above, Which to one point and to one center bring Beast, Man, or Angel, Servant, Lord, or King; breaks out into this rapturous and divine apoftrophe, to call back the devious creation to its priftine rectitude (that very ftate our author describes above): “Praise the Lord, "all his angels; praife him, all ye hofts. Praife ye him, "fun and moon; praise him, all ye ftars of light. Let "them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, "and they were created. Praise the Lord, from the "earth, ye dragons, and all deeps; fire and hail, fnow and vapour, ftormy wind fulfilling his word: Moun |