A

WAKE, my ST. JOHN ! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.

Let us (fince 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 plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

COMMENTARY.

THE Opening of this poem, [in fifteen lines] is taken up in giving an account of the Subject; which, agreeably to the title, is an ESSAY ON MAN, or a Philofophical Enquiry into his Nature and End, his Passions and Pursuits.

The Exordium relates to the whole work, of which the Effay on Man was only the first book. The 6th, 7th, and 8th lines allude to the subjects of this Effay, viz. the general Order and Design of Providence; the Conftitution of the human Mind; the origin, use, and end of the Paffions and Affections, both felfish and social; and the wrong pursuits of Power, Pleasure, and Happiness. The 10th, 11th, 12th, &c. have relation to the subjects of the books intended to follow, viz the Characters and Capa

NOTES.

VER. 7,8. A Wild,-Or Garden,] The Wild relates to the human paffions, productive (as he explains in the second epiftle) both of good and evil. The Garden, to human reason, fo often tempting us to trangress the bounds God has fet to it, and to wander in fruitless enquiries.

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,
And catch the Manners living as they rife;

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; 15 But vindicate the ways of God to Man.

COMMENTARY.

cities of Men, and the Limits of Science, which once tranfgreffed, ignorance begins, and errors without end fucceed. The 13th and 14th, to the Knowledge of Mankind, and the various Manners of the age.

The Poet tells us next (line 16th] with what design he wrote, viz.

To vindicate the ways of God to Man.

The Men he writes against, he frequently informs us, are fuch as weigh their opinion against Providence (114.) fuch

NOTES.

VER. 12. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i. e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their Paffions; or those who leave behind them common sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of Metaphyfics. Both which follies are exposed in the fourth epistle, where the popular and philosophical errors concerning Happiness are detected. The figure is taken from animal life.

VER. 15. Laugh where we must, &c.] Intimating that human follies are so strangely absurd, that it is not in the power of the most compassionate, on fome occafions, to restrain their mirth: And that it's crimes are so flagitious, that the most candid have feldom an opportunity, on this subject, to exercise their virtue,

I. Say first, of God above, or Man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of Man, what fee we but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer?

COMMENTARY.

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as cry, if Man's unhappy, God's unjust (* 118.) or fuch as fall into the notion, that Vice and Virtue there is none at all (Ep. ii. y 212.) This occasions the poet to divide his vindication of the ways of God, into two parts. In the first of which he gives direct answers to those objections which libertine Men, on a view of the disorders arising from the perversity of the human will, have intended against Providence. And in the second, he obviates all those objections, by a true delineation of human Nature; or a general, but exact, map of Man. The first epistle is employed in the management of the first part of this dispute; and the three following in the discussion of the second. So that this whole book conftitutes a complete Essay on Man, written for the best purpose, to vindicate the ways of God.

VER. 17. Say first, of God above, or Man below, &c.] The poet having declared his Subject; his End of writing; and the Quality of bis Adversaries; proceeds (from 16 to 23.) to instruct us, from whence he intends to draw his arguments; namely, from the visible things of God in this system, to demonstrate the invisible things of God, his eter

NOTES.

VER. 19, 20. Of Man, what fee we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?]

The sense is, “ we fee nothing of Man, but as he stands at present in his station here: From which station, all our reasonings on his nature and end must be drawn;

" and to this station they must all be referred." The con

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sequence is, that our reasonings on his nature and end

must needs be very imperfect.

Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known, 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who thro' vast immenfity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other funs,
What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,

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May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,

30

COMMENTARY.

nal Power and God-head: And why? because we can reaSon only from what we know; and as we know no more of Man than what we fee of his station here; so we know no more of God than what we fee of his dispensations in this station; being able to trace him no further than to the limits of our own system. This naturally leads the poet to exprobrate the miferable Folly and Impiety of pretending to pry into, and call in question, the profound dispensations of Providence: Which reproof contains (from 22 to 43.) a fublime description of the Omniscience of God, and the miferable Blindness and Presumption of Man.

NOTES.

1

VER. 21. Thro' worlds unnumber'd, &c.] Hunc cognofcimus folummodo per Proprietates fuas & Attributa, & per sapientissimas & optimas rerum structuras & caufas finales. Newtoni Princ. Schol. gen. fub fin.

VER. 30. The strong connections, nice dependencies,] The thought is very noble, and expressed with great beauty, and philofophic exactness. The system of the Universe is a combination of natural and moral Fitnesses, as the human

Gradations just, has thy pervading foul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn fupports, upheld by God, or thee?

II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find,

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 ?

Afk of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade!

NOTES.

35

40

system is, of body and spirit. By the strong connections, therefore, the Poet alluded to the natural part; and by the nice dependencies to the moral. For the Ejay on Man is not a system of NATURALISM but of NATURAL RELIGION. [See the View of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy.) Hence it is, that, where he supposes disorders may tend to some greater good in the natural world, he supposes they may tend likewife to some greater good in the moral, as appears from these sublime images in the following lines,

" If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,
"Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline ?
"Who knows, but he, whose hand the light'ning forms,
"Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms;
"Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæfar's mind,

"Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge Mankind? VER.35 to 42.] In these lines the poet has joined the beauty of argumentation to the fublimity of thought; where the fimilar instances, proposed for his adverfaries examination, shew as well the absurdity of their complaints against Order, as the fruitlessness of their enquiries into the arcana of the Godhead.