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This naturally leads the poet to lament the weakness and insufficiency of human reason; and the purpose he had in so doing, was plainly to intimate the necessity of a more perfect dispensation to mankind.

P. 41. We, wretched subjects, &c.] St. Paul himself did not chuse to employ other arguments, when disposed to give us the highest idea of the usefulness of Christianity. Rom. vii.

P. 42. 'Tis hers to rectify.] The meaning of this precept is, that as the ruling passion is implanted by nature, it is reason's office to regulate, direct, and restrain, but not to overthrow it.

P. 44. The god within the mind.] A Platonic phrase for conscience.

P. 44. Extremes in nature equal ends produce.] The poet reasons to this effect: that though indeed vice and virtue so invade each other's bounds, that sometimes we can scarcely tell where one ends, and the other begins, yet great purposes are served thereby, no less than the perfecting the constitution of the whole; as lights and shades, which run into one another in a well-wrought picture, make the harmony and spirit of the composition. But, on this account, to say there is neither vice nor virtue, the poet shews, would be just as wise as to say there is neither black nor white, because the shade of that, and the light of this, often run into one another :

Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.

P. 46. Virtuous and vicious every man must be:
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree.

Of this the poet, with admirable sagacity, assigns the cause, in the following line :

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For, vice or virtue, SELF directs it still.

An adherence or regard to what is, in the sense of the world, a man's own interest, making an extreme in either vice or virtue almost impossible. Its effect in keeping a good man from the extreme of virtue, needs no explanation; and in an ill man, self-interest shewing him the necessity of some kind of reputation, the procuring and preserving that, will keep him from the extreme of vice.

P.49. And beads and pray'r-books are the toys of age.] A satire on what is called in popery the opus operatum.

EPISTLE III.

P. 54. See all things for my use! On the contrary the wise man hath said, "the Lord hath made all things for himself." Prov. xvi. 4.

P. 54. Nature that tyrant checks.] Man's interest, amusement, vanity, and luxury, tie him, as it were, to the system of benevolence, by obliging him to provide for the support of other animals; and though it be, for the most part, only to devour them with the greater gust, yet this does not abate the proper happiness of the animals so preserved, to whom Providence hath not imparted the useless knowledge of their end.

P. 55. Than favour'd man by touch etherial slain.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by lightning as sacred persons, and the particular favourites of heaven.

P. 61. All vocal beings, &c.] This may be well explained by a sublime passage of the Psalmist, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of the great ideas of those

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:

chains of love,

Combining all below, and all above,
Which to one point and to one center bring

Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king;

breaks out into this rapturous and divine apostrophe, to call back the devious creation to its prestine rectitude (that very state our author describes above): "Praise the Lord, all his "angels; praise him, all ye hosts. Praise ye him, sun and

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moon; praise him, all ye stars of light," &c. Psa. cxlviii.

P. 61. Unbrib'd, unbloody, &c.] When superstition was become so extreme as to bribe the gods with human sacrifices (see p. 68, 69.) tyranny became necessitated to woo the priest for a favourable answer:

And play'd the god an engine on his foe.

P. 62. Learn from the birds, &c.] It is a caution commonly practised among navigators, when thrown upon a desart coast, and in want of refreshments, to observe what fruit have been touched by the birds, and to venture on these without further hesitation.

P. 62. Learn from the beasts, &c.] Pliny, in his Natural History, relates several instances of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs, by their own use of them, and pointing out to some operations in the art of healing by their own practice.

P. 62. Learn of the little nautilus] Oppian Halieut. lib. i. describes this fish in the following manner: "They swim on "the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which "exactly resemble the hulk of a ship; they raise two feet "like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves

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" as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the "sides. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean."

P. 67. Who first taught souls enslav'd, &c.] The poet informs us, agreeably to his exact knowledge of antiquity, that it was the politician, and not the priest (as our illiterate tribe of free-thinkers would make us believe) who first corrupted religion. Secondly, that the superstition he brought in was not invented by him, as an engine to play upon others (as the dreaming atheist feigns, who would thus miserably account for the origin of religion) but was a trap he first fell into himself.

P. 68. Gods partial, changeful, &c.] The ancient Pagan gods are here very exactly described.

P. 68. ---and heav'n on pride.] This might be very well said of those times, when no one was content to go to heaven without being received there on the footing of a god.

P. 70. 'Twas then, &c.] The poet seems here to mean the polite and flourishing age of Greece; and those benefactors to mankind which he had principally in view were Socrates and Aristotle, who, of all the Pagan world, spoke best of God, and wrote best of government.

P. 71. For forms of government, &c.] These fine lines have been strangely misunderstood: the poet's meaning, however, is this---The happiness of a people does not depend so much upon the form of their government, as upon the integrity of its administration.

P. 71. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;] These latter ages have seen so many scandalous contentions for modes of faith, to the violation of Christian charity, and dishonour of sacred Scripture, that it is not at all strange they should become the object of so wise and benevolent an author's resentment.

P. 71. In faith and hope, &c.] " And now abideth faith, "hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these " is charity." 1 Cor. xiii. 13.

P. 72. Man, like the gen'rous vine, &c.] Having thus largely considered man in his social capacity, the poet, in order to fix a momentous truth in the mind of his reader, concludes the Epistle in recapitulating the two principles which concur to the support of this part of his character, namely, SELF-LOVE and SOCIAL; and shewing, that they are only two different motions of the appetite to good; by which the Author of Nature hath enabled man to find his own happiness in the happiness of the whole. This he illustrates with a thought as sublime as that general harmony he describes :

On their own axis, &c. [See page 72.

EPISTLE IV.

P. 74. O'erlook'd, seen double.] O'erlook'd by those who place happiness in any thing exclusive of virtue; seen double by those who admit any thing else to have a share with virtue in procuring happiness.

P. 76. Order is heav'n's first law;] i. e. The first law made by God relates to ORDER; which is a beautiful allusion to the Scripture history of the creation, when God first appeased the disorders of chaos, and separated light from darkness.

P. 78. And peace, &c.] Conscious innocence (says the poet) is the only source of internal peace; and known innocence, of external; therefore, peace is the sole issue of virtue; or, in his own emphatic words,

Peace, O VIRTUE! peace is all thy own.

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