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AN ESSAY ON MAN.

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H. ST JOHN LORD BOLINGBROKE1.

THE DESIGN.

AVING proposed to write some pieces on Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression2) come home to Men's Business and

1 [Henry St John, afterwards Viscount Boling broke, was born about the year 1678. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, he commenced a life of dissipation in the metropolis towards the close of the century, manifesting however literary tastes by poetical productions, which neither Swift nor Pope could ever bring themselves to praise. In 1701 he took his seat in Parliament, as member for the family borough of Wootton Bassett, which he afterwards exchanged for the family county of Wilts. In politics, he at once became a Tory of the Tories, and a High Churchman of the High Churchmen; soon raising himself by the fire of his oratory, the bitterness of his sarcasm, and the cruel unscrupulousness of his invective, to a distinguished position. Such different judges as Pitt and Brougham agree in concluding him to have been one of the most consummate orators of any age. In 1704 he became Secretary-at-war in the so-called Compromise ministry, and followed Harley out of office in 1708. Though he had, according to his avowal, done for ever with politics and ambition, he returned into office as Secretary of State, when the famous intrigue of 1710 brought the Tories into power. It was this ministry which resolved upon the termination of the war with France; and the famous Examiner contained no bitterer and more effective onslaughts upon Marlborough, than those written by his former protégé St John. He was at this time on intimate terms with Prior and Swift, with whom he founded the Brothers' Club; but at the same time this literary minister was one of the most determined enemies of the freedom of the press, and the author of the Stamp Act, from which, in the end, as might have been expected, the Tory publications suffered more than the Whig. In 1712, he was created Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St John; and his rivalry with Harley (now Earl of Oxford) was fast rising into open enmity. They held out together long enough to ensure the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht in 1713, to further which Bolingbroke had in 1712 visited Paris, when he was reported to have had an interview with the Pretender. At all events, it is certain that with the latter Bolingbroke was, from 1713, engaged in secret intrigues; and had involved himself so deeply, that after the death of Queen Anne, a prosecution threatened him, from which he saved himself by flight to Paris, in March 1715. In

his absence he was attainted of treason, and his name erased from the roll of peers. Before the attainder, he had accepted at the hands of the Pretender the seals of the Secretary of State. The death of Louis XIV. in September put an end to the Pretender's chances, and the rising in Scotland with which the the year closed, was undertaken against the express opinion of Bolingbroke. Scotch, Irish, Jesuit and female intrigues caused him to be rejected by the Pretender; and he remained a total exile from politics till 1725. In his retirement at La Source near Orleans, he composed his affected Reflexions on Exile, and his celebrated Letter to Sir William Windham (not published till 1753), the latter an elaborate vindication of his political conduct. He also occupied himself with the philosophical studies which resulted in the Essays published after his death by Mallet. In 1723, he obtained a

pardon, but not a reversal of his attainder; in 1725, on his return to England, he recovered his property and was thus, to use his own expression, two-thirds restored.' During the years from 1725 to 1735, he resided at Dawley near Uxbridge, in the immediate neighbourhood of Twickenham, the abode of his friend and admirer Pope. In the year 1727 he again commenced political writing, with the hope of overthrowing the influence of Walpole. But the death of George I. failing to overthrow that minister, Bolingbroke continued his hopeless attacks, in the vain hope of influencing the mind of the heir to the throne of George II., Frederick prince of Wales. His letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and the Idea of a Patriot King were political bids concealed under the pretence of a philosophy above parties. In 1744, after his father's death, he settled down for the remainder of his life in his ancestral home at Battersea, where he died in 1751, confident that posterity would do justice to his memory when acquainted with the fulness of his genius from his posthumous writings. Patriotism and philosophy were ideas with which he had been wont to make free throughout his life; selfishness, which is consonant with neither, was the motive of all his actions and the spirit which dictated all his works. The national instinct was sure enough to recognise his philosophy as dangerous, and his patriotism as rotten.]

[See Bacon's Dedication of his Essays to the Duke of Buckingham.]

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 utterly 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 wandring 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, and leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, 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. P.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

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, v. 17, &c. 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, v. 35, &c. 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, v. 77, &c. 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. 109, &c. 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, v. 131, &c. 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, v. 173, &c. VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an 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, v. 207. 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, v. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v. 250. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, v. 281, &c. to the end.

A

EPISTLE I.

WAKE, 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;

5

A mighty maze! but not without a plan1;

A Wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies 2,
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man3.

I. Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can
we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

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3 Milton's phrase, judiciously altered, who says JUSTIFY the ways of God to Man. Milton was addressing himself to believers,... Pope...to unbelievers...; he, therefore, more fitly employs the word vindicate, which conveys the idea of a confutation attended with punishment. Warburton.

[There is no question of punishment, only of a decisive and final confutation.]

Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,

25

What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,

May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole1?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

30

II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,

35

Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than JOVE?
Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest
That Wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be3,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man:
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)

Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?
Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,

May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain1,

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce;
to second too some other use.

Yet serves

40

45

50

55

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When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod,

Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God":
Then shall Man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur'd to his state and place;

[Warton quotes the Platonic, "The part is created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part.']

[Satellites is here a tetrasyllable, as in the original Latin.]

65

70

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His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?

The blest to day is as completely so,

75

As who began a thousand years ago.

III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,

All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:

Or who could suffer Being here below?

80

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall1,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world. {
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore. |
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest 2 :
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,

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No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold 3.
To Be, contents his natural desire,

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