THE FOLLOWING LINES WERE SUNG BY DURASTANTI, WHEN SHE TOOK HER LEAVE OF THE ENGLISH STAGE. THE WORDS WERE IN HASTE PUT TOGETHER BY MR. POPE, AT THE REQUEST OF THE EARL OF PETERBOROUGH, GENEROUS, gay, and gallant nation, All but Cupid's gentle darts! Happy soil, adieu, adieu ! Let old charmers yield to new. In arms, in arts, be still more shining; All your joys be still increasing ; All your tastes be still refining; All your jars for ever ceasing: But let old charmers yield to new :Happy soil, adieu, adieu ! UPON THE DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH'S HOUSE AT WOODSTOCK. Atria longa patent; sed nec cœnantibus usquam, Nec somno locus est: quàm bene non habitas! MART. Epig. SEE, sir, here's the grand approach, Thanks, sir, cried I, 'tis very fine, VERSES LEFT BY MR. POPE, ON HIS LYING IN THE SAME BED WHICH WILMOT, THE CELEBRATED EARL OF ROCHESTER, SLEPT IN, AT ADDERBURY, THEN BELONGING TO THE DUKE OF ARGYLE, JULY 19, 1739 WITH no poetic ardour fired I press the bed where Wilmot lay; Beneath thy roof, Argyle, are bred Such flames as high in patriots burn THE THREE GENTLE SHEPHERDS. OF gentle Philips will I ever sing, VERSES TO DR. BOLTON, IN THE NAME OF MRS. BUTLER'S SPIRIT, LATELY DECEASED. STRIPP'D to the naked soul, escaped from clay, That feels the worth it left, in proofs like this; DORSET, the grace of courts, the Muses' pride, II. ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBAL, ONE OF THE PRINCIPAL SECRETARIES OF STATE TO KING WILLIAM III. WHO HAVING RESIGNED HIS PLACE, DIED IN HIS RETIREMENT AT EASTHAMSTED, IN BERKSHIRE, 1716. A PLEASING form; a firm, yet cautious mind; Sincere, though prudent; constant, yet resign'd: Honour unchanged, a principle profest, IIL. ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT, ONLY SON OF THE LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT ; AT THE CHURCH OF STANTON-HARCOURT IN OXFORDSHIRE, 1720. To this sad shrine, whoe'er thou art! draw near, Here lies the friend most loved, the son most dear: Who ne'er knew joy, but friendship might divide, Or gave his father grief but when he died. How vain is reason, eloquence how weak! If Pope must tell what HARCOURT cannot speak. Oh let thy once-loved friend inscribe thy stone, And, with a father's sorrows, mix his own! IV. ON JAMES CRAGGS, Esq. IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY. JACOBUS CRAGGS REGNI MAGNÆ BRITANNIE A SECRETIS ET CONSILIIS SANCTIORIBUS, PRINCIPIS PARITER AC POPULI AMOR ET DELICIÆ : OB. FEB. XIV. MDCCXX. STATESMAN, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, V. INTENDED FOR MR. ROWE, IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY. THY reliques, RowE', to this fair urn we trust, And sacred, place by DRYDEN's awful dust: 1 It is altered, on the monument in the Abbey, erected to Rowe and his daughter. Thy reliques, Rowe! to this sad shrine we trust, To these, so mourn'd in death, so loved in life! Beneath a rude and nameless stone1 he lies, Now for two ages having snatch'd from fate Whate'er was beauteous, or whate'er was great, Lies crown'd with princes' honours, poets' lays, Due to his merit, and brave thirst of praise. Living, great Nature fear'd he might outvie Her works; and, dying, fears herself may die1. VI. ON MRS. CORBET, WHO DIED OF A CANCER IN HER BREAST. HERE rests a woman, good without pretence, IX. ON GENERAL HENRY WITHERS. IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY, 1729. HERE, WITHERS, rest! thou bravest, gentlest mind, For thee the hardy veteran drops a tear, WITHERS, adieu! yet not with thee remove VII. ON THE MONUMENT OF THE HONOURABLE ROBERT DIGBY, AND OF HIS SISTER MARY, ERECTED BY THEIR FATHER THE LORD DIGBY, IN THE CHURCH OF SHERBORNE IN DORSETSHIRE, 1727. Go! fair example of untainted youth, Who knew no wish but what the world might hear: And thou, blest maid! attendant on his doom, Yet take these tears, mortality's relief, VIII. ON SIR GODFREY KNELLER, IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY, 1723. KNELLER, by Heaven and not a master taught, Whose art was nature, and whose pictures thought; 1 The tomb of Mr. Dryden was erected upon this hint by the Duke of Buckingham; to which was originally intended this Epitaph: "This Sheffield raised. The sacred dust below Was Dryden once: The rest who does not know?" which the Author since changed into the plain inscription now upon it, being only the name of that great Poet: J. DRYDEN. Natus Aug. 9. 1613. Mortuus Maij 1. 1700. JOANNES SHEFFIELD DUX BUCKINGHAMIENSIS POSUIT. OF manners gentle, of affections mild; 1 Imitated from the famous Epitaph on Raphael :- Rerum magna parens, et moriente, mori." XII. INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON, IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY. ISAACUS NEWTONUS: Quem Immortalem Testantur Tempus, Natura, Cœlum: Mortalem Hoc marmor fatetur. Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: GOD said, Let Newton be! and all was light. XIV. ON EDMUND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, WHO DIED IN THE NINETEENTH YEAR OF HIS AGE, 1735. IF modest youth, with cool reflection crown'd, XV. FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER-ABBEY. HEROES and KINGS! your distance keep: ANOTHER ON THE SAME. UNDER this marble, or under this sill, AN ESSAY ON MAN. IN FOUR EPISTLES. TO H. ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. THE DESIGN. HAVING proposed to write some pieces on Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression) come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being. The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points; there are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the mind as in that of the body; more good will accrue to mankind, by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory, of morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms ut terly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate, yet not inconsistent, and a short, yet not imperfect, system of ethics. This I might have done in prose, but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts, so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: the other may seem odd, but is true. I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: if any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity. What is now published, is only to be considered as a general map of MAN, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated Consequently in the charts which are now to follow. these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable. EPISTLE I. ARGUMENT. OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO THE UNIVERSE. Of Man in the abstract.-I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things. II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown. III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future 'state, that all his happiness in the present depends. IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his dispensations. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural. VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable. VII. That, throughout the whole visible world, a universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that reason alone countervails all the other faculties. VIII. How much further this order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire. X. The consequence of all the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state. AWAKE, MY ST. JOHN ! leave all meaner things A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot, I. Say first, of God above, or man below, Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind? Of systems possible, if 'tis confest Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, though labour'd on with pain, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; In God's, one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So Man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; "Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; Then say not Man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; |