In vain thy Reason finer webs shall draw, And right, too rigid, harden into wrong, Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. And for those arts mere Instinct could afford, V. Great Nature spoke; observant Men obey'd; Cities were built, Societies were made : COMMENTARY. 200 Ver. 199. Great Nature spoke ;] After all this necessary preparation, the Poet shews (from ver. 198 to 209.) how civil Society followed, and the advantages it produced. NOTES. Ver. 199. observant Men obey'd ;] The epithet is beautiful, as signifying both obedience to the voice of Nature, and attention. to the lessons of the animal creation. But M. l'Abbé, who has a strange fatality of contradicting his original, whenever he attempts to paraphrase (as he calls it) the sense, turns the lines in this manner: "Par ces mots la nature excita l'industrie, Chained up the fury of savage Man; and so contradicts the author's whole system of benevolence, and goes over to the Atheist's, VARIATIONS. who Ver. 197.] In the first Editions, Who for those Arts they learn'd of BRUTES before, "Les sauvages racontent que ce fut Michabou (le DIEU des Eaux] qui apprit à leurs ancêtres à pêcher; qu'il inventa les rêts, et que ce fut la toile d'ARAIGNEE, qui lui en donna l'idée."Journal d'un Voyage dans l'Amerique Sept. par Charlevoix. Vol. v. p. 417. Par. 1744. 8vo. Warburton. Here rose one little state; another near NOTES.. who supposes the state of nature to be a state of war. to have misled him was these lines : What seems "What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, And he return'd a friend who came a foe." But M. du Resnel should have considered, that though the author holds a state of nature to be a state of peace, yet he never imagined it impossible that there should be quarrels in it. He had said, says in "So drives self-love through just and through unjust." He pushes no system to an extravagance, but steers (as he his preface) through doctrines seemingly opposite, or, in other words, follows truth uniformly throughout. Ver. 208. When love was liberty,]. Where love is liberty, and nature law." Warburton. Eloisa to Abelard. Bowles. VARIATIONS. Ver. 201. Here rose one little state, &c.] In the MS. thus: The neighbours leagued to guard their common spot; And love was nature's dictate; murder, not. For want alone each animal contends; Tigers with tigers, that remov'd, are friends ; Plain nature's wants the common mother crown'd, No treasure then for rapine to invade ; What need to fight for sun-shine, or for shade? When beauty could be kind to all who lov'd. Warburton. Thus States were form'd; the name of King un known, Till common interest plac'd the sway in one. 210 'Twas VIRTUE ONLY (or in arts or arms, Diffusing blessings, or averting harms) COMMENTARY. Ver. 209. Thus States were form'd;] Having thus explained the original of Civil Society, he shews us next (from ver. 208 to 215.) that to this Society a civil magistrate, properly so called, did belong. And this in confutation of that idle hypothesis, which pretends that God conferred the regal title on the Fathers of families; from whence men, when they had instituted Society, were to fetch their Governors. On the contrary, our author shews, that a King was unknown, till common interest, which led men to institute civil government, led them at the same time to institute a Governor. However, that it is true that the same wisdom or valour, which gained regal obedience from sons to the sire, procured kings a paternal authority, and made them considered as fathers of their people; which probably was the original (and, while mistaken, continues to be the chief support) of that slavish error; Antiquity representing its earliest monarchs under the idea of a common father, warng avdgv. Afterwards, indeed, they became a kind of foster-fathers, Toμéra λawr, as Homer calls one of them; till at length they began to devour that flock they had been so long accustomed to shear; and, as Plutarch says of Cecrops, ἐκ χρησῦ βασιλεως ἄγριον καὶ δρακοντίδη γενόμενον ΤΥΡΑΝΝΟΝ. NOTES. Ver. 208. When love was liberty,] i. e. When men had no need to guard their native liberty from their governors by civil pactions; the love which each master of a family had for those under his care being their best security. Warburton. Ver. 211. 'Twas Virtue only, &c.] Our author hath good authority for this account of the origin of kingship. Aristotle assures us, that it was Virtue only, or in arts or arms: Kaliçara Βασιλεὺς ἐκ τῶν ἐπιεικῶν καθ ̓ ὑπεροχὴν ἀρετῆς, ἡ πράξεον τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρετῆς, ἡ καθ' ὑπεροχὴν τοιέτω γένεις. Warburton. The same which in a sire the sons obey'd, VI. Till then, by Nature crown'd, each patri arch sate, King, priest, and parent of his growing state; COMMENTARY. 215 Ver. 215. Till then, by Nature crown'd, &c.] The Poet now returns (at ver. 215 to 241.) to what he had left unfinished in his description of natural Society. This, which appears irregular, is, indeed, a fine instance of his thorough knowledge of method. I will explain it : This third epistle, we see, considers Man with respect to SoCIETY; the second, with respect to HIMSELF; and the fourth, with respect to HAPPINESS. But in none of these relations does the Poet ever lose sight of him under that in which he stands to GOD. It will follow, therefore, that speaking of him with respect to Society, the account would be most imperfect, were he not at the same time considered with respect to his Religion; for between these two, there is a close, and, while things continue in order, a most interesting connexion: “True FAITH, true POLICY united ran; That was but love of God, and this of Man.” Now Religion suffering no change or depravation when Man first entered into civil Society, but continuing the same as in the state of Nature; the author, to avoid repetition, and to bring the account of true and false Religion nearer to one another, in order to contrast them by the advantage of that situation, deferred giving an account of his Religion till he had spoken of the origin of civil Society. NOTES. Ver. 214. A Prince the father] Joinville relates, that he had frequently seen St. Louis, after having heard mass in the summer, seat himself at the foot of an old oak in the forest of Vincennes, where any one of his subjects might approach him, and lay his business or complaint before this good king. Our author would have much improved all that he says of Government, if he had lived to have read one of the best, perhaps, of all treatises on politics, that of the President Montesquieu. Warton. On him, their second Providence, they hung, COMMENTARY. Society. Thence it is, that he here resumes the account of the state of Nature, that is, so much of it as he had left untouched, which was only the Religion of it. This consisting in the knowledge of the one God, the Creator of all things, he shews how Men came by that knowledge: That it was either found out by REASON, which giving to every effect a cause, instructed them to go from cause to cause, till they came to the first, who, being causeless, would necessarily be judged self-existent; or else that it was taught by TRADITION, which preserved the memory of the Creation. He then tells us what these men, undebauched by false science, understood by God's nature and attributes: First, of God's Nature, that they easily distinguished between the Worker and the Work; saw the substance of the Creator to be distinct and different from that of the Creature, and so were in no danger of falling into the horrid opinion of the Greek philosophers, and their follower, Spinoza. And simple Reason teaching them that the Creator was but One, they easily saw that ALL WAS RIGHT, and so were in as little danger of falling into the Manichean error; which, when oblique Wit had broken the steady light of Reason, imagined all was not right, having before imagined that all was not the work of One. Secondly, he shews, what they understood of God's Attributes; that they easily acknowledged a Father where they found a Deity; and could not conceive a sovereign Being to be any other than a sovereign Good. NOTES. Ver. 219. He from the wond'ring] A finer example can perhaps scarcely be given of a compact and comprehensive style. The manner in which the four elements were subdued is comprised in these four lines alone. Pope is here, as Quintilian says of another, "densus et brevis, et instans sibi." There is not an useless word in this passage; there are but three epithets, wondering, profound, aërial; |