See SIDNEY bleeds amid the martial strife! NOTES. 105* the great man to whom it is applied not being distinguished from other generals, for any of his superior qualities, so much as for his providential care of those whom he led to war; in which he was so intent, that his chief purpose in taking on himself the command of armies, seems to have been the preservation of mankind. In this god-like care he was more remarkably employed throughout the whole course of that famous campaign in which he lost his life.-Warburton. Ver. 100. See god-like TURENNE] This great general was killed July 27, 1675, by a cannon-shot, near the village of Saltyback, in going to choose a place whereon to erect a battery. "No one," says Voltaire, "is ignorant of the circumstances of his death; but we cannot here refrain a review of the principal of them, for the same reason that they are still talked of every day. It seems as if one could not too often repeat, that the same bullet which killed him, having shot off the arm of St. Hilaire, lieutenant-general of the artillery, his son came and bewailed his misfortune with many tears; but the father, looking towards Turenne, said, 'It is not I, but that great man, who should be lamented.' These words may be compared with the most heroic sayings recorded in all history, and are the best eulogy that can be bestowed upon Turenne. It is uncommon under a despotic government, where people are actuated only by private interests, for those who have served their country to die regretted by the public. Nevertheless, Turenne was lamented both by the soldiers and people; and Louvois was the only one who rejoiced at his death. The honours which the king ordered to be paid to his memory are known to every one; and that he was interred at St. Denis, in the same manner as the constable du Guesclin." But how much is the glory of Turenne tarnished by his cruel devastation of the Palatinate!-Warton. Ver. 101. See SIDNEY bleeds] Among the many things related of the life and character of this all-accomplished person, it does not seem to be much known, that he was the intimate friend and patron of the famous atheist Giordano Bruno; was in a secret club with him and Sir Fulk Greville, held in London in 1587; and that the Spaccio della Bestia Triomfante was at that time composed and printed in London, and dedicated to Sir Philip. See General Dictionary, vol. iii. p. 622.-Warton. Ver. 107. Why drew] M. de Belsance, bishop of Marseilles. This illustrious prelate was of a noble family in Guienne. In early life he took the vows, and belonged to a convent of Jesuits. He was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate, of his flock, whilst that horrid calamity prevailed. Louis XV. in 1723, offered him a more considerable bishopric (to which peculiar feudal honours Or why so long (in life if long can be) There deviates Nature, and here wanders will. : COMMENTARY. 110 Ver. 111. What makes all physical or moral ill?] 2. He exposes their folly (from ver. 110 to 131) by considerations drawn from the system of Nature and these twofold, natural and moral. You accuse God, says he, because the good man is subject to natural and moral evil. Let us see whence these proceed. Natural evil is the necessary consequence of a material world so constituted. But that this constitution was best, we have proved in the first Epistle. Moral evil ariseth from the depraved will of Man. Therefore neither one nor the other from God. But you say (adds the Poet, to these impious complainers) that though it be fit Man should suffer the miseries which he brings upon himself, by the commission of moral evil; yet it seems unfit that his innocent posterity should bear a share of the burden. To this, says he, I reply, "We just as wisely might of heaven complain That righteous Abel was destroy'd by Cain, When his lewd father gave the dire disease." But you will still say, Why doth not God either prevent or immediately repair these evils? You may as well ask, why he doth not work NOTES. were annexed) that of Laon in Picardy. He refused, however, to quit that of Marseilles, giving for a reason, that he could not desert a flock which had been so endeared to him by their misfortunes and his own exertions. The king, however, insisted upon his accepting of the privilege of appealing, in all his own causes, either temporal or spiritual, to the Parliament of Paris. The Pope sent him from Rome an ornament called Pallium, worn only by archbishops. He died at a very advanced age, in the year 1755, after having founded a college in Marseilles, which bears his name, and after having written the History of the Lives of his Predecessors in that See. When he was grand vicar of Agen, he published the life of a female relation of his, who was eminent for her piety, with this title, "Vie de Susanne Henriette de Foix Candale." Vaniere has finely celebrated him. Lib. iii. of the Prædium Rusticum.-Warton. Ver. 108. When Nature sicken'd,] A verse of marvellous comprehension and expressiveness, adopted from Dryden's Miscellanies, ver. 6. The effects of this pestilence are more emphatically set forth in these few words, than in forty such Odes as Sprat's on the Plague at Athens. fine example of what Dion. Halicarnassus calls Πυκνότητος καὶ σεμνότητος. -Warton. A Ver. 110. Lent heaven a parent, &c.] This last instance of the Poet's illustration of the ways of Providence, the reader sees, has a peculiar elegance; where a tribute of piety to a parent is paid in return of thanks to, and made subservient of his vindication of, the great Giver and Father of all things. The mother of the author, a person of great piety and charity, died the year this poem was finished, viz. 1733.— Warburton. Ver. 112. There deviates Nature,] How can Nature be said to deviate, when we before have been told, that the general" Order has been kept, since the whole began." And as to the wandering of the will, God sends not ill; if rightly understood, Or change admits, or Nature lets it fall; 115 COMMENTARY. continual miracles, and every moment reverse the established laws of Nature: "Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires," &c. This is the force of the Poet's reasoning; and these the men to whom he addresseth it; namely, the libertine cavillers against Providence. NOTES. objectors persist in saying, that it is precisely the same thing, whether a God of infinite power and knowledge created beings originally wicked and miserable, or gave them a power to make themselves so; foreknowing that they would employ that power to their own destruction. This is the objection for ever repeated by Bayle, and which our limited understandings cannot fully answer, "But find no end in wandering mazes lost."-Warton. The first of these objections is answered by observing that the general order is preserved, notwithstanding deviations in particular instances; which, both in the natural and moral world, are occasional and temporary. Thus, we are told, Storms and tempests break not heaven's design, and Heaven disappoints th' effect of every vice. And as to the second, it may be sufficient to remark, that a doctrine which represents the Creator as having formed beings either for the express purpose, or with a foreknowledge, of their being consigned to eternal torments, is irreconcileable with his goodness, as exemplified in all we know of him, and therefore CANNOT POSSIBLY BE TRUE. Ver. 115. Or change admits,] How change can admit, or Nature let fall any evil, however short and rare it may be, under the government of an all-wise, powerful, and benevolent Creator, is hardly to be understood, The reasons assigned for the Origin of Evil, in these two lines, are surely not solid and satisfactory, and the doctrine is expressed in obscure and equivocal terms. These six lines are perhaps the most exceptionable in the whole Poem, in point both of sentiment and expression.-Warton. On this it may be observed, that all imperfection is evil, and imperfection is unavoidable in all created beings, unless they were made equal to their Creator, which it is absurd to suppose. The only question then is, whether such evil is greater than is indispensable to the quantity of good produced. This the poet has endeavoured to show is not the case, and that partial ill is universal good. In the Creator alone good is positive and absolute; in the created, it is only relative; and as we know light only from darkness, and harmony from discord, so we know virtue only from vice, and are thereby placed in a state of moral discipline, particularly suited to a responsible and improveable being. After ver. 116 in the MS. VARIATIONS. Of every evil, since the world began, The real source is not in God, but man-Warburton. We just as wisely might of heaven complain Cause Prone for his favourites to reverse his laws? 120 Eternal Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires, Or some old temple, nodding to its fall, For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall? NOTES. 125 130 Ver. 121. Think we, like some weak prince, &c.] Agreeable hereunto, Holy Scripture, in its account of things under the common Providence of Heaven, never represents miracles as wrought for the sake of him who is the object of them, but in order to give credit to some of God's extraordinary dispensations to Mankind.—Warburton. Ver. 123. Shall burning Etna, &c.] Alluding to the fate of those two great naturalists, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an approach to Etna and Vesuvius, while they were exploring the cause of their eruptions.-Warburton. Ver. 125. On air or sea] It was observed in the Adventurer, many years before the elegant Letter to Mr. Mason, on the Marks of Imitation, appeared, that this whole passage, and even the expressions, "New motions be impress'd," and Shall gravitation cease," were taken from Wollaston, section v. p. 99. 66 Wollaston, in this section, endeavours to prove, that "It is not impossible, that such laws of nature, and such a series of causes and effects may be originally designed; that not only general provisions may be made for the several species of beings, but even particular cases, at least many of them, may also be provided for, without innovations or alterations in the course of nature." From whence he infers the doctrine of a particular Providence, and the reasonableness and efficacy of prayer; a doctrine for which Bolingbroke, in a variety of passages in his works, is fond of condemning Wollaston, and his Defence of this Duty of Prayer. I have received the most authentic information that Dr. Middleton left behind him a treatise on this subject; which Mrs. Middleton, by the advice of a judicious friend, was prevailed on not to publish, from the offence it might have given. But it was communicated to Lord Bolingbroke at his earnest request, and returned to Mrs. Middleton after he had kept it a considerable time. After Bolingbroke's death, a copy of it was found in his library.-Warton. Ver. 130. the hanging wall?] Eusebius is weak enough to relate, from But still this world, so fitted for the knave, COMMENTARY. Ver. 131. But still this world, &c.] II. But now, so unhappy is the condition of our corrupt nature, that these are not the only complainers. RELIGIOUS men are but too apt, if not to speak out, yet sometimes secretly to murmur against Providence, and say, its ways are not equal. Those especially, who are more inordinately devoted to a sect or party, are scandalized, that the Just, (for such they esteem themselves,) the Just, who are to judge the world, have no better a portion in their own inheritance and dominion. The Poet, therefore, now leaves those more professedly impious, and turns to these less profligate complainers (from ver. 130 to 149): "But still this world, so fitted for the knave," &c. As the former wanted external goods to be the reward of virtue for the moral man, so these want them for the pious, in order to have a kingdom of the Just. To this the Poet holds it sufficient to answer; Pray first agree among yourselves who those Just are. As they are not likely to do this, he bids them to rest satisfied; to remember his fundamental principle, that whatever is, is right; and to content themselves (as their religion teaches them to profess a more than ordinary submission to the will of Providence) with that common answer which he, with so much reason and piety, gives to every kind of complainer. However, though there be yet no kingdom of the Just, there is still no kingdom of the Unjust; both the virtuous and the vicious (whatsoever becomes of those whom every sect calls the Faithful) have their share in external goods; and what is more, the virtuous have infinitely the most enjoyment of their share : "This world, 'tis true, Was made for Cæsar, but for Titus too: And which more blest? who chain'd his country? say! Or he whose virtue sigh'd to lose a day?" I have been the more solicitous to explain this last argument, and to show against whom it is directed, because a great deal depends upon it for the illustration of the sense, and the defence of the Poet's reasoning. For if we suppose him to be still addressing himself to those IMPIOUS COMplainers, confuted in the forty preceding lines, we should make him guilty of a paralogism, in the argument about the Just; and in the illustration of it by the case of Calvin. For then the Libertine asks, Why the Just, that is, the moral man, is not rewarded? The answer is, that none but God can tell, who the Just, that is, the faithful man, is. Where the term is changed, in order to support the argument; for about the truly moral man there is no dispute; about the truly faithful or the orthodox, a great deal. But take the Poet right, as arguing here against RELIGIOUS COMplainers, and the reasoning is strict and logical. They ask, why the truly faithful are not rewarded? He answereth," They may be for aught you know; for none but God can tell who they are." NOTES. the testimonies of Irenæus and Polycarp, that the roof of the building under which Cerinthus the heretic was bathing, providentially fell down and crushed him to death. Lib. iii. cap. 29.-Warton. |