What future blifs, he gives not thee to know, Lo, the 95 100 His VARIATIONS. VER. 93, 94. In the first Fol. and Quarto, COMMENTARY. "He fees, why Nature plants in Man alone Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find.)” It is only for the good man, he tell us, that Hope leads from goal to goal, &c. It would then be ftrange indeed, if it should prove an illufion. WARBURTON. VER. 99. Lo, the poor Indian ! &c.] The Poet, as we said, having bid Man comfort himself with expectation of future happiness; having fhewn him that this HOPE is an earnest of it; and put in one very neceffary caution, 66 Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions foar ;" provoked at those miscreants whom he afterwards (Ep.iii. ver. 263.) defcribes as building Hell on spite, and Heaven on pride, he upbraids them (from ver. 98 to 113.) with the example of the poor Indian, to whom also Nature hath given this common HOPE of Mankind: but though his untutored mind had betrayed him into many childish fancies concerning the nature of that future ftate, yet he NOTES. is VER. 99. Lo, the poor Indian ! &c.] Pope has indulged hintfelf in but few digreffions in this piece; this is one of the most poeti cal. WARTON. His foul, proud Science never taught to stray Yet COMMENTARY. is so far from excluding any part of his own fpecies (a vice which could proceed only from the pride of falfe Science), that he humanely, though fimply, admits even his faithful dog to bear him company. WARBURTON. NOTES. VER. 100. Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;] In John Wesley's curious journal, there is a fingular, and not uninterefting, account of his converfation with the Indians. Their religious ideas are literally thofe of " feeing God in clouds, and hearing him in the wind :". "Tuesday, July 20. Five of the Chicafaw Indians came to fee us: they were all warriors. The two chief were Pauftoobee and Mingo Mattaw. Our conference was as follows: Question. Do you believe there is One above, who is over all things? PAUSTOOBEE answered. We believe there are four beloved things above; the Clouds, the Sun, the Clear Sky, and He that lives in the Clear Sky. 2. Do you think He made the Sun, and the other beloved things? A. We cannot tell; who hath feen? Q. Cannot He fave you from your enemies? If I A. Yes; but we know not if he will. We have now fo many enemies round about us, that I think of nothing but death. am to die, I fhall die, and I will die like a Man; but if He will have me live, I fhall live. Though I had ever so many enemies, He can deftroy them all. Q. How do you know that? : A. From what I have feen. When our enemies came against us before, then the beloved Clouds came for us; and often much rain, and fometimes hail, has come upon them, and that in a very hot day and I faw when many French and Choctaws, and other Nations, came against one of our towns, the ground made a noife under them, and the Beloved Ones in the air behind them and they were afraid, and went away, and left the meat, and drink, and guns. I tell no lie. All there faw it too." Yet fimple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n; Some happier island in the wat'ry waste, Where flaves once more their native land behold, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy fcale of fenfe, 105 ΠΟ 115 Destroy VARIATIONS. After ver. 108. in the first Ed. But does he fay the Maker is not good, Alone made happy when he will, and where ? COMMENTARY. VER. 113. Go, wifer thou! &c.] He proceeds with thefe accufers of Providence (from ver. 112 to 123.), and fhews them, that complaints against the established order of things begin in the highest abfurdity, from mifapplied reafon and power; and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade the God of heaven, and to affume his place : "Alone made perfect here, immortal there :" That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality: to which fenfe the lines immediately following confine us : "Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his juftice, be the God of God." NOTES. VER. 104. Behind the cloud-top't hill,] "Cloud-top'd hill," is from Milton. WARBURTON, Destroy all creatures for thy fport or guft, 120 COMMENTARY. Pride VER. 123. In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies; &c.] From these men, the Poet now turns to his friend; and (from ver. 122 to 131.) remarks, that the ground of all this extravagance is Pride; which, more or lefs, infects the whole reasoning Tribe; fhews the ill effects of it, in the cafe of the fallen Angels; and observes, that even wishing to invert the laws of Order, is a lower fpecies of their crime: he then brings an instance of one of the effects of Pride, which is the folly of thinking every thing made folely for the use of Man, without the leaft regard to any other of the creatures of God. "Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine," &c. : The ridicule of imagining the greater portions of the material fyftem to be folely for the use of Man, true Philofophy has fufficiently expofed and Common Senfe, as the Poet obferves, inftructs us to conclude, that our fellow-creatures, placed by Providence as the joint inhabitants of this Globe, are defigned to be joint fharers with us of its bleffings: "Has God, thou fool! work'd folely for thy good, Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, NOTES. Epistle iii. Ver. 27. VER. 120. Alone made perfect here,] It is a fingular fact, that neither the ancient philofophers nor poets, though they abound in complaints of the unequal distribution of good and evil at present, yet Pride ftill is aiming at the bleft abodes, 125 Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods. Afpiring to be Gods, if Angels fell, Afpiring to be Angels, Men rebel: NOTES. And yet do not ever infer or draw any arguments, from this fuppofed inequality, for the neceflity of a future life, where fuch inequality will be rectified, and Providence vindicated. WARTON VER. 126. Men would be Angels,] Verbatim from Bolingbroke, vol. v. p. 465.; as are many other paffages. WARTON. VER. 127. If Angels fell,] Milton, in book v. copies from the Rabbinical writers, from the fathers, and fome of the fchoolmen, the caufes of the rebellion of Satan and his affociates, but feems more particularly to have in view an obfcure Latin poem written by Odoricus Valmarana, and printed at Vienna in 1627, intitled, "Dæmonomachiæ, five de Bello Intelligentiarum fuper Divini Verbi Incarnatione ;" in which the revolt of Satan, or Lucifer, is exprefsly afcribed to his envy at the exaltation of the Son of God. See Newton's Milton, vol. i. p. 407. But the commentators on Milton have not observed that there is ftill another poem which he feems to have copied, “L'Angeleida di Erafmo di Valvafone," printed at Venice, in quarto, in 1590, defcribing the battle of the Angels against Lucifer, and which Gordon de Porcel, in his Library of Romances, tom. ii. p. 190. thought related to Angelica, the heroine of Boiardo and Ariofto. I beg leave to add, that Milton feems alfo to have attended to a poem of Tafso, not much noticed, on the Creation," Le Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato," in 1607. WARTON. VER. 128. Afpiring to be Angels,] One of the most pernicious tenets of Hobbes, was the debafing and disparaging human nature, attempting, in the language of Cudworth, to " villanife mankind.” We know it has fallen from its original beauty and perfection: but "Intellectual Fride," the subject of fo continued an invective through this Effay, being confined to a few, cannot be fo dangerous to general morality, as the contrary extreme. This obfervation, however, does not affect the general fenfe in which Pope employs the idea, that it is from prefumption we pretend to judge, of what we can fee and know fo little. "Cœlum ipfum petimus, ftultitia." |