Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, O'erlook'd, feen double, by the fool, and wise. COMMENTARY. ..5 Plant to be more delighted than others; and confequently to be then most propitious when invoked by the favourite name and place: Hence we find, the hymns of Homer, Orpheus, and Callimachus, to be chiefly employed in reckoning up the feveral titles and habitations by which the patron God was known and distinguished. Our Poet hath made these two circumftances ferve to introduce his fubject. His purpofe is to write of Happiness: method, therefore, requires that he first define what Men mean by Happiness; and this he does in the ornament of a poetic Invocation; in which the feveral names, that Happiness goes by, are enumerated: "Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim ! Good, Pleasure, Eafe, Content! whate'er thy NAME." After the DEFINITION, that which follows next, is the PROPOSITION, which is, that human Happiness confifls not in external Advantages, but in Virtue. For the subject of this epistle is to detect the falje notions of Happiness, and to fettle and explain the true; and this the Poet lays down in the next fixteen lines. Now the enumeration of the several situations where Happiness is supposed to refide, is a fummary of falfe Happiness placed in Externals: "Plant of celeftial feed! if dropt below, Say, in what mortal foil thou deign'st to grow? NOTES. Fair and various places of abode of this goddefs. He has undoubtedly perfonified her at the beginning, but he feems to have dropped that idea in the feventh line, where the deity is fuddenly transformed into a plant; from thence this metaphor of a vegetable is carried on diftinctly through the eleven fucceeding lines, till he fuddenly returns to confider Happiness again as a person, in the eighteenth line, "And fled from Monarchs, ST. JOHN ! dwells with thee!" For to fly and to dwell, cannot justly be predicated of the fame fubject, that immediately before was defcribed as twining with laurels, and being reaped in harvests. Of the numberlefs treatises that have been written on Happi. ness, one of the most fenfible is that of Fontenelle, in the third volume of his works. WARTON. Plant of celestial feed! if dropt below, Say, in what mortal foil thou deign'st to grow? 10 Where grows?-where grows it not? If vain our toil, 15 'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where: 'Tis COMMENTARY. Fair op'ning to fome Court's propitious fhine, The fix remaining lines deliver the true notion of Happiness, and fhew that it is rightly placed in Virtue. Which is fummed up in these two: "Fix'd to no fpot is Happiness fincere ; 'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where.” The Poet, having thus defined his terms, and laid down his propofition, proceeds to the fupport of his Thefis; the various arguments of which make up the body of the Epistle. NOTES. WARBURTON. VER. 16. 'Tis no where to be found, c.] There is fomething very ftriking and poetical in Herbert's little hymn, who inquires, like our Author, where he fhall find the abode of Peace and Happinefs. The firft ftanza is particularly beautiful: "Sweet Peace, where doft thou dwell, I humbly crave? Let me once know: I fought thee in a fecret place, And afk'd if Peace were there. A hollow Wind did feem to anfwer, “No; I did; and going, did a rainbow note," &c. 'Tis never to be bought, but always free, And fled from Monarchs, ST. JOHN! dwells with thee. Afk of the Learn'd the way? The Learn'd are blind; This bids to ferve, and that to fhun mankind; COMMENTARY. 20 Some VER. 19. Ak of the Learn'd, &c.] He begins (from ver. 18 to 29.) with detecting the falfe notions of Happiness. These are of two kinds, the Philofophical and Popular: The Popular he had recapitulated in the Invocation, when Happinefs was called upon, at her feveral fuppofed places of abode: the Philofophical only remained to be delivered: "Afk of the Learn'd the way? The Learn'd are blind; This bide to ferve, and that to fhun mankind: 'Some place the blifs in action, fome in ease; Thofe call it Pleasure, and Contentment thefe." They differed as well in the means, as in the nature of the end. Some placed Happiness in Action, fome in Contemplation; the first called it Pleasure, the fecond Ease. Of those who placed it in Action and called it Pleasure, the route they purfued either funk them into fenfual Pleafures, which ended in Pain; or led them in search of imaginary Perfections, unfuitable to their nature and flation (fee Ep. i.), which ended in Vanity. Of those who placed it in Eafe, the contemplative ftation they were fixed in, made fome, for their quiet, find truth in every thing; others, in nothing: "Who thus define it, fay they more or lefs Than this, that Happiness is Happiness?" The confutation of these Philofophic errors he fhews to be very eafy, one common fallacy running through them all; namely this, that instead of telling us in what the happiness of human nature confifts, which was what was afked of them, each bufies himself in explaining in what he placed his own. WARBURTON. NOTES. VER. 18. ST. JOHN! dwells with thee.] Among the many paffages in Bolingbroke's Pofthumous Works that bear a close refem blance Some place the blifs in action, fome in ease, To truft in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all. Who thus define it, fay they more or lefs Than this, that Happiness is Happiness? NOTES. 2.5 Take blance to the tenets of this Effay, are the following: Vol. iv. octavo edition, pp. 223. 324. 388, 389. alfo pp. 49. 316. 328. 336, 337. 339. And in Vol. v. pp. 5, 6. 17. 92. 51. 113. 310. WARTON. VER. 21. 23. Some place the blifs in action, 1. Those who place Happinefs, or the fummum bonum, in Pleasure, Hdov; fuch as the Cyrenaic fect, called, on that account, the Hedonic. 2. Those who place it in a certain tranquillity or calmnefs of Mind, which they call Eibuía; such as the Democritic fect. 3. The Epicurean. 4. The Stoic. 5. The Protagorean, which held that Man was wάvrwy χρηματων μέτρον, the meafure of all things; for that all things which appear to him, are, and those things which appear not to any Man, are not; fo that every imagination or opinion of every Man was true. 6. The Sceptic: Whofe abfolute doubt is, with great judgment, faid to be the effect of Indolence, as well as the abfolute truft of the Protago rean: For the fame dread of labour attending the fearch of truth, which makes the Protagorean prefume it is always at hand, makes the Sceptic conclude it is never to be found. The only difference is, that the laziness of the one is defponding, and the lazinefs of the other fanguine; yet both can give it a good name, and call it HAPPINESS. WARBURTON. VER. 23. Some funk to Beafts, &c.] Thefe four lines added in the last Edition, as neceffary to complete the fummary of the falfe purfuits after Happiness among the Greek Philofophers. WARBURTON. Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave; All states can reach it, and all heads conceive; Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell; There needs but thinking right, and meaning well; And mourn our various portions as we pleafe, Equal is Common Sense, and Common Ease. Remember, Man, "the Universal Cause "Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws :" COMMENTARY. ༢༠ 35 And VER. 29. Take Nature's path, &c.] The Poet then proceeds (from ver. 28 to 35.) to reform their mistakes; and fhews them that, if they will but take the road of Nature, and leave that of mad Opinion, they will foon find Happiness to be a good of the Species, and, like Common Senfe, equally distributed to all mankind. WARBURTON. VER. 35. Remember, Man, &c.] Having expofed the two falfe fpecies of Happiness, the Philofophical and Popular, and denounced the true; in order to establish the last, he goes on to a confutation of the two former. I. He firft (from ver. 34 to 49.) confutes the Philofophical; which, as we faid, makes Happiness a particular, not a general good: And this two ways; 1. From his grand principle, that God acts by general laws; the consequence of which is, that Happinefs, which fupports the well-being of every system, must needs be universal; and not partial, as the Philofophers conceived. 2. From fact, that Man inftinctively concurs with this defignation of Providence, to make Happiness univerfal, by his having no delight in any thing uncommunicated or uncommunicable. NOTES. WARBURTON. VER. 32. There needs but thinking right, &c.] This is a very concise mode of making men wife and virtuous; but it is to be feared this wisdom and virtue is not always to be so easily attained as this verfe fuppofes. VER. 34. Equal is Common Senfe,] The experience of every day and every hour convinces us of the falsehood of this Stoical boaft. WARTON |