A mightier Pow'r the strong direction sends, And sev'ral Men impels to sev'ral ends: Like varying winds, by other paffions toft, This drives them constant to a certain coaft. Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please, Or (oft more ftrong than all) the love of ease; 170 Thro' life 'tis follow'd, ev'n at life's expence; The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence, The monk's humility, the hero's pride, All, all alike, find Reason on their fide. Th' Eternal Art educing good from ill, Grafts on this Paffion our best principle: 'Tis thus the Mercury of Man is fix'd, Strong grows the Virtue with his nature mix'd; The dross cements what else were too refin'd, And in one interest body acts with mind.
direct, and restrain, but not to overthrow it. To regulate the passion of Avarice, for instance, into a parfimonious dispensation of
the public revenues; to direct the passion of Love, whose object is worth and beauty,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair, τὸ καλόν τ ̓ ἀγαθὸν, as his master | strain Spleen to a contempt Plato advises; and to re
As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care, On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear; The surest Virtues thus from Paffions shoot, Wild Nature's vigor working at the root. What crops of wit and honesty appear From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear! See anger, zeal and fortitude supply; Ev'n av'rice, prudence; floth, philofophy; Luft, thro' some certain strainers well refin'd, Is gentle love, and charms all womankind; Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a flave, Is emulation in the learn'd or brave; Nor Virtue, male or female, can we name, But what will grow on Pride, or grow on Shame.
How oft, with Passion, Virtue points her Charms ! Then shines the Hero, then the Patriot warms. Peleus' great Son, or Brutus, who had known, Had Lucrece been a Whore, or Helen none ? But Virtues oppofite to make agree, That, Reason! is thy task; and worthy Thee. Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak. -Make it a point, dear Marquess! or a pique, Once, for a whim, perfuade yourself to pay A debt to reafon, like a debt at play.
Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride) The virtue nearest to our vice ally'd : Reason the byas turns to good from ill, And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. The fiery foul abhorr'd in Catiline, In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine: The fame ambition can destroy or fave, And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.
This light and darkness in our chaos join'd, What shall divide? The God within the mind.
For right or wrong have mortals suffer'd more ? B- for his Prince, or ** for his Whore ? Whose self-denials nature most controul ? His, who would save a Sixpence or his Soul ? Web for his health, a Chartreux for his Sin, Contend they not which foonest shall grow thin? What, we resolve, we can; but here's the fault, We ne'er refolve to do the thing we ought.
VER. 203. This light, pass of things upon what&c.] A Platonic phrafe for ever principles we chance to Confcience; and here em- have; and then it is only ployed with great judgment Opinion, a very unable judge and propriety. For Con- and divider. Or else it figfcience either fignifies, spe- nifies, practically, the apculatively, the judgment we | plication of the eternal rule
Extremes in Nature equal ends produce, In Man they join to some mysterious use; Tho' each by turns the other's bound invade, As, in some well-wrought Picture, light and shade, And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice Where ends the Virtue, or begins the Vice. Fools! who from hence into the notion fall, That Vice or Virtue there is none at all. If white and black blend, soften, and unite A thousand ways, is there no black or white? Afk your own heart, and nothing is so plain; 'Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain. Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be feen; Yet feen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
After y 220. in the 1st Edition, followed thefe,
A Cheat! a Whore! who starts not at the name, In all the Inns of Court or Drury-lane ?
of right (received by us as the law of God) to the regulation of our actions; and then it is properly Conscience, the God (or the law
But where th' Extreme of Vice, was ne'er agreed: Afk where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there, At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where. No creature owns it in the first degree, But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he; Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone, Or never feel the rage, or never own; What happier natures shrink at with affright, The hard inhabitant contends is right.
Virtuous and vicious ev'ry Man must be, Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree; The rogue and fool by fits, is fair and wife; And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise.
'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;
For, Vice or Virtue, Self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;
But HEAV'N's great view is One, and that the
The Col'nel swears the Agent is a dog, The Scriv'ner vows th' Attorney is a rogue. Against the Thief th' Attorney loud inveighs, For whose ten pound the County twenty pays. The Thief damns Judges, and the Knaves of State; And dying, mourns small Villains hang'd by great.
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