Attract, attracted to, the next in place

Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace.
See Matter next, with various life endu'd,

Press to one centre still, the gen'ral Good.

COMMENTARY.

traction, from the economy of the material world; where there is a general confpiracy in all the particles of Matter to work for one end; the use, beauty, and harmony of the whole mass.

VER. 13. See Matier next, &c.] The second argument (from y 12 to 27.) is taken from the vegetable and animal world; whose Beings serve mutually for the production, support, and fuftentation of each other.

But this part of the argument, in which the Poet tells us, that God

"Connects each being, greatest with the leaft; "Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast; " All ferv'd, all ferving

awaking again the old pride of his adversaries, who cannot bear that man should be thought to be ferving as well

NOTES.

tion of its creation; and so translates it,

"Voi du fein du Chaos eclater la lumiere,

Chaque atome ebranlé courir pour s'embrasser, &c. This destroys the Poet's fine analogical argument, by which he proves, from the circumstance of mutual attraction in matter, that man, while he seeks Society, and thereby promotes the good of his Species, co-operates with God's general dispensation, whereas the circumstance of a creation proves nothing but a Creator.

VER. 12. Form'd and impell'd, &c.] To make Matter fo cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts, is as necessary as

See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life diffolving vegetate again:

All forms that perish other forms supply,

(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)

Like bubbles on the fea of Matter born,

15

They rise, they break, and to that fea return. 20

Nothing is foreign; Parts relate to whole;

One all-extending, all-preferving Soul

COMMENTARY.

as ferved; he takes this occafion again to humble them (from 26 to 49.) by the same kind of argument he had so successfully employed in the first epiftle, and which the comment on that epistle hath confidered at large.

NOTES.

that quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called Attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our Author says form'd; and to express the latter, impell' d. VER. 19, 20. Like bubbles, &c.] Mr. Du Refnel, tranflates these two lines thus,

"Sort du neant y réntre, et reparoit au jour. He is here indeed consistently wrong: for having (as we faid) mistaken the Poet's account of the preservation of Matter for the creation of it, he commits the very same mistake with regard to the vegetable and animal systems; and so talks now, tho' with the latest, of the production of things out of nothing. Indeed, by his speaking of their returning into nothing, he has fubjected his Author to M. Du Crousaz's cenfure. "Mr. Pope descends to the most vul

gar prejudices, when he tells us that each being returns " to nothing: the Vulgar think that what difappears is an" nihilated." &c. Comm. p. 221.

VER.22. One all-extending, all-preserving Soul] Which, in the language of Sir Isaac Newton, is, " Deus omnipræfens

25

30

Connects each being, greatest with the leaft;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All serv'd, all ferving: nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
Has God, thou fool! work'd folely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flow'ry lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and fings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompoufly bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the feed that strews the plain?
The birds of Heav'n shall vindicate their grain.

35

Thine the full harvest of the golden year?
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer :
The hog, that plows not nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

40

NOTES.

" est, non per virtutem solam, fed etiam per substantiam: " nam virtus sine substantia subsistere non potest." Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. fub fin.

VER. 23. Greatest with the least;] As acting more strongly and immediately in beafts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man say, with great elegance, " Deus est anima brutorum:"

In this 'tis God directs

Know, Nature's children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear. While Man exclaims, "See all things for my use !" 45 " See man for mine!" replies a pamper'd goose: And just as short of reason He must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all. Grant that the powerful still the weak controul; Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole:

VARIATIONS.

After 46. in the former Editions,

50

What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat him!
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him.
As far as Goose could judge, he reason'd right;
But as to Man, mistook the matter quite.

COMMENTARY.

VER. 49. Grant that the pow'rful ftill the weak controul ;] However, his adverfaries, loth to give up the question, will reason upon the matter; and we are now to suppose them objecting against Providence in this manner.- We grant, say they, that in the irrational, as in the inanimate creation, all is ferved, and all is ferving: But, with regard

NOTES.

VER. 45. See all things for my use!] On the contrary, the wife man hath said, The Lord hath made all things for bimself, Prov. xvi. 4.

VER. 50. Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole ; ] Alluding to the witty system of that Philosopher, which made Animals mere Machines, insensible of pain or pleafure; and so encouraged Men in the exercise of that Tyranny over their fellow-creatures, consequent on such a principle,

Nature that Tyrant checks; He only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,

Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?

COMMENTARY.

to Man, the case is different; he standeth single. For his reafon hath endowed him both with power and address sufficient to make all things serve him; and his Self-love, of which you have fo largely provided for him, will indifpofe him, in his turn, to serve any: Therefore your theory is imperfect.-Not so, replies the Poet (from 48 to 79.) I grant that Man, indeed, affects to be the Wit and Tyrant of the whole, and would fain shake off

"-that chain of love,

Combining all below and all above:

But Nature, even by the very gift of Reason, checks this tyrant. For Reason endowing Man with the ability of fetting together the memory of the past with his conjectures about the future; and past misfortunes making him apprehenfive of more to come, this disposeth him to pity and relieve others in a state of fuffering. And the paffion growing habitual, naturally extendeth its effects to all that have a fenfe of fuffering. Now as brutes have neither Man's Reason, nor his inordinate Self-love, to draw them from the system of beneficence; so they wanted not, and therefore have not, this human sympathy of another's misery: By which passion, we fee those qualities, in Man, balance one another; and so retain him in that orderly connexion, in which Providence hath placed its whole creation. But this is not all; Man's intereft, amusement, vanity, and luxury, tie him ftill closer to the system of beneficence, by obliging him to provide for the fupport of other animals; and though it be, for the most part, only to devour them with the greater guft, yet this does not abate the proper happiness of the animals so preserved, to