Did Nature's pencil ever blend such rays,
Such varied light in one promiscuous blaze?
Now prostrate! dead! behold that Caroline :
No maid cries, charming! and no youth, divine!
And lo, the wretch! whose vile, whose insect
lust

Laid this gay daughter of the spring in dust.
Oh, punish him, or to th' Elysian shades
Dismiss my soul, where no carnation fades.'
He ceased, and wept. With innocence of mien,
Th' accused stood forth, and thus address'd the
queen :

"Of all th' enamell'd race, whose silvery wing
Waves to the tepid zephyrs of the spring,
Or swims along the fluid atmosphere,
Once brightest shined this child of heat and air.
I saw, and started, from its vernal bower,
The rising game, and chased from flower to
flower;

4.11

420

It fled, I follow'd; now in hope, now pain;
It stopp'd, I stopp'd; it moved, I moved again.
At last it fix'd; 'twas on what plant it pleased,
And where it fix'd, the beauteous bird I seized: 430
Rose or carnation was below my care;
I meddle, goddess! only in my sphere.
I tell the naked fact without disguise,
And, to excuse it, need but show the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye,
Fair ev'n in death! this peerless butterfly.'
'My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your
parts:

Live happy both, and long promote our arts.
But hear a mother, when she recommends
To your fraternal care our sleeping friends.

440

The common soul, of Heaven's more frugal make, 441
Serves but to keep fools pert and knaves awake:
A drowsy watchman, that just gives a knock,
And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock.
Yet by some object every brain is stirr'd;
The dull may waken to a humming-bird;
The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find
Congenial matter in the cockle-kind;
The mind in metaphysics at a loss,
May wander in a wilderness of moss; 1
The head that turns at super-lunar things,

Poised with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings.2

450

'Oh! would the sons of men once think their eyes And reason given them but to study flies! See nature in some partial narrow shape,

And let the Author of the whole escape:
Learn but to trifle; or, who most observe,
To wonder at their Maker, not to serve.'

'Be that my task' (replies a gloomy clerk,
Sworn foe to mystery, yet divinely dark;
Whose pious hope aspires to see the day
When moral evidence shall quite decay,
And damns implicit faith, and holy lies,
Prompt to impose, and fond to dogmatise :)

460

Moss' of which the naturalists count I can't tell how many hundred species.-P. W.-2 Wilkins' wings:' one of the first projectors of the Royal Society, who, among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the moon; which has put some volatile geniuses upon making wings for that purpose.-P. W.- Moral evidence :" alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some mathematicians in calculating the gradual decay of moral evidence by mathematical proportions; according to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable that Julius Cæsar was in Gaul, or died in the senate-house.—P. W.

VARIATIONS.

VER. 441. The common soul, &c. In the first edition, thus

Of souls the greater part, Heaven's common

make,

Serve but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake;

And most but find that sentinel of God,.

A drowsy watchman in the land of
Nod.

Let others creep by timid steps and slow,
On plain experience lay foundations low,
By common sense to common knowledge bred,
And last, to Nature's cause through Nature led:
All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,
Mother of arrogance, and source of pride!
We nobly take the high priori road,1
And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make Nature still2 encroach upon his plan
And shove him off as far as e'er we can:
Thrust some mechanic cause into his place;
Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space.3
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God man's image, man the final cause,
Find virtue local, all relation scorn,

See all in self, and but for self be born:
Of naught so certain as our reason still,

Of naught so doubtful as of soul and will.

O hide the God still more! and make us see,
Such as Lucretius drew, a God like thee:
Wrapt up in self, a God without a thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.

465

470

480

1 The high priori road :' those who, from the effects in this visible world, deduce the eternal power and Godhead of the First Cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him as enables them to see the end of their creation, and the means of their happiness; whereas they who take this high priori road (such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, and some better reasoners) for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in mists, or ramble after visions, which deprive them of all right of their end, and mislead them in the choice of the means.-P. W.-2Make Nature still :' this relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere mechanic cause, and yet unwilling to forsake it entirely, have had recourse to a certain plastic nature, elastic fluid, subtile matter, &c.-P. W.

3 Thrust some mechanic cause into his place,

Or bind in matter, or diffuse in space:'

The first of these follies is that of Descartes; the second, of Hobbes; the third, of some succeeding philosophers.-P. W.

Or that bright image1 to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles2 in raptured vision saw,
While through poetic scenes the genius roves,
Or wanders wild in academic groves;
That Nature our society adores,3

Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.'
Roused at his name, up rose the bousy sire,
And shook from out his pipe the seeds of fire;
Then snapt his box, and stroked his belly down:
Rosy and reverend, though without a gown.
Bland and familiar to the throne he came,

Led up the youth, and call'd the goddess dame.
Then thus: From priestcraft happily set free,

Lo! every finish'd son returns to thee:

First, slave to words,5 then vassal to a name,

Then dupe to party; child and man the same;

487

500

''Bright image: ' bright image was the title given by the later Platonists to that vision of nature which they had formed out of their own fancy, so bright that they called it Aűтоптоv "Ayaλua, or the self-seen image, i. e., seen by its own light. This ignis fatuus has in these our times appeared again in the north; and the writings of Hutcheson, Geddes, and their followers, are full of its wonders. For in this lux borealis, this self-seen image, these secondsighted philosophers see everything else.-Scribl. W. Let it be either the Chance god of Epicurus, or the Fate of this goddess.-W.-Theocles: thus this philosopher calls upon his friend, to partake with him in these visions :

'To-morrow, when the eastern sun

With his first beams adorns the front
Of yonder hill, if you're content

To wander with me in the woods you see,

We will pursue those loves of ours,

By favour of the sylvan nymphs:

and invoking, first, the genius of the place, we'll try to obtain at least some faint and distant view of the sovereign genius and first beauty.' Charact. vol. ii. p. 245.-P. W.

'Society adores:' see the Pantheisticon, with its liturgy and rubrics, composed by Toland.-W.- 'Silenus:' Silenus was an Epicurean philosopher, as appears from Virgil, Eclog. vi., where he sings the principles of that philosophy in his drink. He is meant for one Thomas Gordon.-P. W.'First, slave to words: ' a recapitulation of the whole course of modern education described in this book, which confines youth to the study of words only in schools, subjects them to the authority of systems in the universities, and deludes them with the names of party distinctions in the world,-all equally

1

Bounded by nature, narrow'd still by art,
A trifling head, and a contracted heart;
Thus bred, thus taught, how many have I seen,
Smiling on all, and smiled on by a queen?1
Mark'd out for honours, honour'd for their birth,
To thee the most rebellious things on earth:
Now to thy gentle shadow all are shrunk,
All melted down in pension or in punk!
So K, so B- sneak'd into the grave,
A monarch's half, and half a harlot's slave.
Poor W-2 nipp'd in folly's broadest bloom,
Who praises now? his chaplain on his tomb.
Then take them all, oh, take them to thy breast!
Thy Magus, goddess! shall perform the rest.'
With that, a wizard old his cup extends,
Which whoso tastes forgets his former friends,
Sire, ancestors, himself. One casts his eyes
Up to a star, and like Endymion dies:
A feather, shooting from another's head,
Extracts his brain, and principle is fled;
Lost is his God, his country, everything;
And nothing left but homage to a king! 3
The vulgar herd turn off to roll with hogs,
To run with horses, or to hunt with dogs;
But, sad example! never to escape

Their infamy, still keep the human shape.

503

510

520

concurring to narrow the understanding, and establish slavery and error in literature, philosophy, and politics. The whole finished in modern free-thinking; the completion of whatever is vain, wrong, and destructive to the happiness of mankind, as it establishes self-love for the sole principle of action.P. W.-Smiled on by a queen :' i.e. this queen or goddess of Dulness.-P. - 'Mr Philip Wharton, who died abroad and outlawed in 1791.86 'Nothing left but homage to a king:' so strange as this must seem to a mere English reader, the famous Mons. de la Bruyère declares it to be the character of every good subject in a monarchy; where,' says he, there is no such thing as love of our country; the interest, the glory, and service of the prince, supply its place.'-De la République, chap. x.-P.