From brutes what men, from men what spirits know, The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore. COMMENTARY. 80 85 90 Ver. 91. Hope humbly then; &c.] But now an Objector is supposed to put in, and say, "You tell us, indeed, that all things shall terminate in good; but we see ourselves surrounded with present evil; yet you forbid us all inquiry into the manner how we are to be extricated from it, and, in a word, leave us in a very disconsolate condition." Not so, replies the Poet; you may reasonably, if you please, receive much comfort from the HOPE of a happy futurity; a hope implanted in the human breast by God himself for this very purpose, as an earnest of that bliss, which, always flying from us here, is reserved for the good man hereafter. The reason why the Poet chooses to insist on this proof of a future state, in preference to others, is in order to give his system (which is founded in a sublime and improved Platonism) the greater grace of uniformity. For HOPE was Plato's peculiar argument for a future state; and the words here employed -The soul uneasy, &c. his peculiar expression. The Poet in this place, therefore, says in express terms, that GOD GAVE US HOPE TO SUPPLY THAT FUTURE BLISS, WHICH HE AT PRESENT KEEPS HID FROM US. In his second epistle, ver. 274, he goes still further, and says, this HOPE quits us not even at Death, when every thing mortal drops from us : 66 Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die." And, in the fourth epistle, he shows, how the same HOPE is a proof of a NOTES. and say, "that the knowledge of God is very different from the knowledge of Man, which implies succession, and seeing objects one after another; but the existence and the attributes of the Deity can have no relation to time; for that all things, past, present, and to come, are all at once present to the Divine Mind."-Warton. Ver. 87. Who sees with equal eye, &c.] Matt. x. 29.-Warburton. After ver. 88, in the MS. VARIATIONS. No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed, That Virgil's Gnat should die, as Cæsar bleed.-Warburton. What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, COMMENTARY. 95 future state, from the consideration of God's giving his creatures no appetite in vain, or what he did not intend should be satisfied: "He sees, why Nature plants in Man alone Hope of known bliss, and Faith in bliss unknown: Àre giv❜n in vain, but what they seek they find.)" It is only for the good man, he tells us, that Hope leads from goal to goal, &c. It would then be strange indeed, if it should prove an illu sion. NOTES. Ver. 93. What future bliss, &c.] It hath been objected, that "the System of the best weakens the other natural arguments for a future state; because, if the evils which good men suffer, promote the benefit of the whole, then every thing is here in order: and nothing amiss that wants to be set right nor has the good man any reason to expect amends, when the evils he suffered had such a tendency." To this it may be replied, 1. That the Poet tells us, (Ep. iv. ver. 361,) that God loves from whole to parts. Therefore, if, in the beginning and progress of the moral System, the good of the Whole be principally consulted, yet, on the completion of it, the good of Particulars will be equally provided for. 2. The system of the best is so far from weakening those natural arguments, that it strengthens and supports them. For if those evils, to which good men are subject, be mere disorders, without any tendency to the greater good of the whole; then, though we must, indeed, conclude that they will hereafter be set right, yet this view of things, representing God as suffering disorders for no other end than to set them right, gives us too low an idea of the Divine wisdom. But if those evils (according to the system of the best) contribute to the greater perfection of the Whole, such a reason may be then given for their permission, as supports our idea of divine wisdom to the highest religious purposes. Then, as to the good man's hopes of a retribution, these still remain in their original force for our idea of God's justice, and how far that justice is engaged to a retribution, is exactly and invariably the same on either hypothesis. For though the system of the best supposes that the evils themselves will be fully compensated by the good they produce to the Whole, yet this is so far from supposing that Particulars shall suffer for a general good, that it is essential to this system, that, at the completion of things, when the Whole is arrived to the state of utmost perfection, particular and universal good shall coincide, "Such is the World's great harmony, that springs Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made Epistle iii. ver. 295. Which coincidence can never be, without a retribution to each good man for the evils he has suffered here below.-Warburton. VARIATIONS. Ver. 93, 94.] In the first Fol. and Quarto : What bliss above he gives not thee to know, But gives that Hope to be thy bliss below.-Warburton. The soul, uneasy and confin'd, from home, Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor❜d mind Where slaves once more their native land behold, 100 105 COMMENTARY. Ver. 99. Lo! the poor Indian, &c.] The Poet, as we said, having bid Man comfort himself with expectation of future happiness; having shown him that this HOPE is an earnest of it; and put in one very necessary caution, Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; provoked at those miscreants whom he afterwards (Ep. iii. ver. 263) describes 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 state, yet he is so far from excluding any part of his own species (a vice which could proceed only from the pride of false Science), that he humanely, though simply, admits even his faithful dog to bear him company. NOTES. Ver. 97. from home,] The construction is,-The soul, uneasy and confined, being from home, expatiates, etc. By which words, it was the Poet's purpose to teach, that the present life is only a state of probation for another, more suitable to the essence of the soul, and to the free exercise of its qualities.-Warburton. In the first editions it stood, The soul uneasy and confined at home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come : which is said to have been altered at the recommendation of Warburton, in order to prevent cavils; an effect which, however, it has failed to produce, as already remarked in the introductory note to the present edition. After ver. 108 in the first Ed. VARIATIONS. But does he say the Maker is not good, Alone made happy when he will, and where ?-Warburton. To Be, contents his natural desire, 110 IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense, COMMENTARY. 115 120 Ver. 113. Go, wiser thou! &c.] He proceeds with these accusers of Providence (from ver. 112 to 123), and shows them, that complaints against the established order of things begin in the highest absurdity, from misapplied reason and power; and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade the God of heaven, and to assume his place : "Alone made perfect here, immortal there :" That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality: to which sense the lines immediately following confine us: "Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, NOTES. Ver. 110. He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;] The French translator, M. l'Abbé Du Resnel, has turned the line thus: 66 Il ne désire point cette céleste flamme Qui des purs Seraphins dévore, et nourrit l'ame." i.e. The savage does not desire that heavenly flame, which at the same time that it devours the souls of pure Seraphims, nourishes them. On which Mr. de Crousaz (who, by the assistance of a translation abounding in these absurdities, writ a Commentary on the Essay on Man, in which we find nothing but greater absurdities,) remarks, "Mr. Pope, in exalting the fire of his poetry by an antithesis, throws occasionally his ridicule on those heavenly spirits. The Indian, says the Poet, contents himself without any thing of that flame, which devours at the same time that it nourisheth." Comm. p. 77. But the Poet is clear of this imputation. Nothing can be more grave or sober than his English, on this occasion; nor, I dare say, to do the translator justice, did he aim to be ridiculous. It is the sober, solid theology of the Sorbonne. Indeed, had such a writer as Mr. Pope used this schooljargon, we might have suspected he was not so serious as he should be. The reader, as he goes along, will see more of this translator's peculiarities. And the conclusion of the Commentary on the fourth Epistle will show why I have been so careful to preserve them.-Warburton. Ver. 120. Alone made perfect here, &c.] The obvious meaning is, "Be content with the present life; it is your pride only that makes you think yourself ill-treated, and induces you to look for another and more perfect state. Bolingbroke is for ever repeating the same note, &c.”— Warton. [Whatever VOL. IV. D Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel; COMMENTARY. 125 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 less, infects the whole reasoning tribe; shows the ill effects of it, in the case of the fallen angels; and observes, that even wishing to invert the laws of Order, is a lower species of their crime. He then brings an instance of one of the effects of Pride, which is the folly of thinking every thing made solely for the use of Man, without the least 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 system to be solely for the use of Man, true philosophy has sufficiently exposed: and common sense, as the Poet observes, instructs us to conclude, that our fellow-creatures, placed by Providence as the joint inhabitants of this globe, are designed to be joint sharers with us of its blessings: 66 Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good, Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food? NOTES. Epistle iii. ver. 27. Whatever may be the use that Bolingbroke makes of this doctrine, it is not the object for which it is introduced by Pope; who has no where contended that the present state of being is a perfect system of itself, but on the contrary, that it is a portion of a general system, and that what appears imperfection to us, is necessary to the perfection of the whole, of which as yet we see but a part. This is so obviously the tenor of the Essay, that one cannot but be surprised at these continual misrepresentations of it. Ver. 126. Men would be angels,] Verbatim from Bolingbroke, vol. v. p. 465; as are many other passages.-Warton. The passage referred to is as follows: "Will it not be permitted me to say, that these men seem to be in the kingdom of God, what the ringleaders of faction are in a state? Men would be angels, and we see in MILTON that angels would be Gods.”—A passage which occurs near the termination of Bolingbroke's Essays, and which, notwithstanding the reference to Milton, was most likely occasioned by the passage in Pope. Ver. 127. if angels fell] Milton, in book v. copies from the Rabbinical writers, from the fathers, and some of the schoolmen, the causes of the rebellion of Satan and his associates, but seems more particularly to have in view an obscure Latin poem, written by Odoricus Valmarana,_and printed at Vienna in 1627, intitled, Dæmonomachiæ, sive de Bello 66 |