His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to day is as completely so,,

75

As who began a thousand years ago.

III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,

All but the page prescrib'd, their present state:

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:

Or who could suffer Being here below?

80

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
(Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n:
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall1,
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.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that Hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest 2:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

1

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n;
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac'd,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold 3.
To Be, contents his natural desire,

He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire;

ΓΙΟ

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense,

115

Weigh thy Opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such,
Say, here he gives too little, there too much:

1 After v. 88. in the MS.

'No great, no little; 'tis as much decreed That Virgil's Gnat should die as Cæsar bleed.' Warburton. [Vergil's gnat is the Culex, the hero of the poem formerly ascribed to Vergil.]

2 [Johnson's strange commentary on this passage has only a biographical value. See Boswell

ad ann. 1775.]

3 After v. 108. in the first Ed. But does he say the maker is not good, 'Till he's exalted to what state he wou'd: Himself alone high Heav'n's peculiar care, Alone made happy when he will, and where?' Warburton.

Destroy all Creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If Man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD.
In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies;:
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,

Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell,
Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel:

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of ORDER, sins against th' Eternal Cause.

120

125

139

V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, ""Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial Pow'r,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me,. the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies'.'

135

140

But errs not Nature from this gracious end2,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,

When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
"No, ('tis reply'd) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;

145

Th' exceptions few; some change since all began:
And what created perfect?"-Why then Man?
If the great end be human Happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less1?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show'rs and sun-shine, as of Man's desires;

150

2

1 Warburton compares Ep. III. v. 27. Bayle was the person who, by stating the difficulties concerning the Origin of Evil, in his Dictionary, 1695, with much acuteness and ability, revived the Manichean controversy that had been long dormant. He was soon answered by Le Clerc in his Parrhasiana, and by many articles in his Bibliothèques. But by no writer was Bayle so powerfully attacked, as by the excellent Archbishop King, in his Treatise De Origine Mali, 1702.... Lord Shaftesbury... in 1709, wrote the famous Dialogue, entitled The Moralists, as a direct confutation of the opinions of Bayle... In 1710, Leibnitz wrote his famous Theodicée... In 1720, Dr John Clarke published his Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil, a work full of sound reasoning; but almost every argument on this most difficult of all subjects had been urged many years before any of the above-named treatises appeared, viz. 1678, by that truly great

scholar and divine, Cudworth, in that inestimable treasury of learning and philosophy, his Intellectual System of the Universe, to which so many authors have been indebted, without owning their obligations. Warton.

3 [Such doubts arose in the mind of Goethe, in his sixth year, at the very time when they were being agitated by Voltaire, on the occasion of the great earthquake at Lisbon. See Lewes' Life of Goethe, Bk. 1. chap. 3.]

4 Ver. 150. Then Nature deviates &c.] "While comets move in very eccentric orbs, in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric; some inconsiderable irregularities excepted, which may have risen from mutual actions of comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, 'till this system wants a reformation." Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Quest. ult. Warburton.

As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,

As Men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

155

Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms;
Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind1?
From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we Heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit.

165

165

Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos'd the mind.
But ALL subsists by elemental strife2;
And Passions are the elements of Life.
The gen'ral ORDER, since the whole began,

170

Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man..

VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he soar,

And little less than Angel3, would be more;

Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears

175

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd;
Each seeming want compensated of course,

180

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force1;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:

185

Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)

Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

190

No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,

But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye 5?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,

[Alexander the Great, who was saluted as of divine origin by the priests of the Libyan Zeus Ammon; cf. Temple of Fame, v. 154.]

2 But all subsists &c.] See this subject extended in Ep. ii. from v. 90 to 112, 155, &c. Warburton.

3 And little less than Angel, &c.] Thou hast made him a little lower than the Angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Psalm viii. 9. Warburton.

195

4 Here with degrees of swiftness, &c.] It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that in proportion as they are formed for strength, their swiftness is lessened; or as they are formed for swiftness, their strength is abated. P.

5 That particular expression, microscopic eye, and the whole reasoning of this astonishing piece of poetry, is taken from Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Bk. 11. chap. 3. sec. 12. Wakefield.

And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres 1,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him still
The whisp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:*
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between2,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the Flood,
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood:
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?
How Instinct varies in the grov'lling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier3,.
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;

200

205

210

215

220

225

What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide1:.

And Middle natures, how they long to join,,
Yet never pass th' insuperable line!

Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?

230

The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,

Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?

VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!

235

stunn'd him with the music of the spheres,] This instance is poetical and even sublime, but misplaced. He is arguing philosophically in a case that required him to employ the real objects of sense only: And what is worse, he speaks of this as a real object. Warburton.

2 the headlong lioness] The manner of the Lions hunting their prey in the deserts of Africa is this: At their first going out in the night-time they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the nostril. It is

Vast chain of Being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man1,

Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing.-On superior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,

240

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd:
From Nature's chain whatever link you strike 3,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.-
And, if each system in gradation roll

245

Alike essential to th' amazing Whole,

The least confusion but in one, not all

That system only, but the Whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky;

250

Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd *,,
Being on Being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature tremble to the throne of God.
All this dread ORDER break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm-Oh Madness! Pride! Impiety!

255

IX.

What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread,

260

Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains",
The great directing MIND of ALL ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul7;
That, chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;

1 Ver. 238, Ed. 1,
'Ethereal essence, spirit, substance, man.'
Warburton.

2 Warton compares:
'Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From infinite Perfection, to the brink
Of dreary Nothing, desolate abyss!
From which astonished Thought recoiling turns?
Thomson [Seasons, Summer).
[The whole of this passage was added by Thom-
son in the second edition of his poem.]

3 Almost the words of Marcus Aurelius, 1. v. c. 8; as also v. 265 from the same. Warton.

Let ruling angels &c.] The poet, throughout this poem, with great art uses an advantage, which his employing a Platonic principle for tae

265

270

foundation of his Essay had afforded him; and that is the expressing himself (as here) in Platonic notions; which, luckily for his purpose, are highly poetical, at the same time that they add a grace to the uniformity of his reasoning. Warburton.

5 What if the foot, &c.] This fine illustration in defence of the System of Nature, is taken from St. Paul, who employed it to defend the System of Grace [1 Cor. xii. 15-21].

6 Just as absurd, &c.] See the Prosecution and application of this in Ep. iv. P.

7 [Warburton has a long and ingenious note on this passage, intended to vindicate Pope from the charge of having given vent to a pantheistical and 'Spinozist' conception, by adducing other passages from the Essay in which a personal God is acknowledged.]