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,

425

The rising game, and chased from flower to flower.

1

431

It fled, I followed; ' now in hope, now pain;
It stopped, I stopped; it moved, I moved again.
At last it fixed, 'twas on what plant it pleased,
And where it fixed, the beauteous bird I seized:
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 shew the prize;
Whose spoils this paper offers to your eye, 435
Fair even in death! this peerless Butterfly."

66

My sons!" (she answered) "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.2 440
The common Soul, of Heaven's more frugal
make,

445

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 o'clock.
Yet by some object every brain is stirred:
The dull may waken to a humming-bird;
The most recluse, discreetly opened, find
Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind;
The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss,

1

I started back,

It started back; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon."-Milton.-P.

2 Of whom, see verse 345 above.-P. W.

1

450

May wander in a wilderness of Moss; The head that turns at super-lunar things, Poised with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. "O! would the Sons of Men3 once think their Eyes

66

455

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,*

1 Of which the Naturalists count I cannot tell how many hundred species.-P. W.

2 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.

Dr. John Wilkins, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Chester. He wrote a book entitled "The Discovery of a New World; or a discourse tending to prove that 'tis probable there may be another habitable World in the Moon; with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither," published in 1638.

3 This is the third speech of the Goddess to her Supplicants, and completes the whole of what she had to give in instruction on this important occasion, concerning Learning, Civil Society, and Religion. In the first speech, verse 119, to her Editors and conceited Critics, she directs how to deprave Wit and discredit Fine Writers. In her second, verse 175, to the Educators of Youth, she shows them how all civil duties may be extinguished, in that one doctrine of Divine hereditary Right. And in this third, she charges the Investigators of Nature to amuse themselves in trifles, and rest in second causes, with a total disregard of the first. This being all that Dulness can wish, is all she needs to say; and we may apply to her (as the Poet hath managed it) what hath been said of true Wit, that She neither says too little, nor too much.-P. W.

The Epithet gloomy in this line may seem the

2

460

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 dogmatize :)
"Let others creep by timid steps, and slow, 465
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! 470
We nobly take the high Priori Road,2

same with that of dark in the next. But gloomy relates to the uncomfortable and disastrous condition of an irreligious Sceptic; whereas dark alludes only to his puzzled and embroiled Systems.-P. W.

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. See Craig's Theologiæ Christiana Principia Mathematica. But as it seems evident that facts of a thousand years old, for instance, are now as probable as they were five hundred years ago, it is plain that if in fifty more they quite disappear, it must be owing, not to their Arguments, but to the extraordinary power of our Goddess; for whose help therefore they have reason to pray.-P. W.

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, Des Cartes, and some better Reasoners), for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in Mists, or ramble after Visions, which deprive them of all sight of their end, and mislead them in the choice of wrong means.-P. W.

An oblique censure of Dr. S. Clarke's "Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God."— Wakefield.

And reason downward, till we doubt of God;
Make Nature still' encroach upon his plan;
And shove him off as far as e'er we can :
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place; 475
Or bind in Matter, or diffuse in Space,2
Or, at one bound o'erleaping all his laws,
Make God Man's Image, Man the final Cause,
Find Virtue local, all Relation scorn,

480

See all in Self,3 and but for self be born:
Of nought so certain as our Reason still,*
Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will,
Oh hide the God still more! and make us

see,

Such as Lucretius drew,' a God like Thee :

1 This relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere Mechanic Cause, and yet unwilling to forsåke it entirely, have had recourse to a certain_Plastic Nature, Elastic Fluid, Subtile Matter, &c.-P. W.

2 The first of these Follies is that of Des Cartes; the second of Hobbes; the third of some succeeding philosophers.-P. W.

3 Here the Poet, from the errors relating to a Deity in natural Philosophy, descends to those in moral. Man was made according to God's Image; this false Theology, measuring his attributes by ours, makes God after Man's Image. This proceeds from the imperfection of his Reason. The next, of imagining himself the final Cause, is the effect of his Pride: as the making Virtue and Vice arbitrary, and Morality the imposition of the Magistrate, is of the Corruption of his heart. Hence he centres everything in himself. The Progress of Dulness herein differing from that of Madness; one ends in seeing all in God, the other in seeing all in Self.-P. W.

4 Of which we have most cause to be diffident. Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will: two things the most self-evident, the existence of our Soul, and the freedom of our Will.-P. W.

5 Lib. i. ver. 57:

"Omnis enim per se Divam natura necesse est Immortali ævo summa cum pace fruatur,

Wrapped up in Self, a God without a Thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.

Or that bright Image to our fancy draw,1
Which Theocles in raptured vision saw,2
While through Poetic scenes the GENIUS roves,
Or wanders wild in Academic Groves;
That NATURE our Society adores,

Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores.'

490

4

Roused at his name, up rose the bousy Sire, And shook from out his Pipe the seeds of fire ;* Then snapped his box, and stroked his belly down:

495

Rosy and reverend, though without a Gown.
Bland and familiar to the throne he came,
Led up the Youth, and called the Goddess
Dame:

Then thus: "From Priest-craft happily set free,
Lo! every finished Son returns to thee:
500
First slave to Words, then vassal to a Name,

Semota ab nostris rebus, summotaque longeNec bene pro meritis capitur, nec tangitur ira;" from whence the two verses following are translated, and wonderfully agree with the character of our Goddess.-Scriblerus.-P. W.

1

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 "AUTOTтоv Ayaλμa, or the Self-seen Image, i.e. seen by its own light.-Scriblerus.-Warburton.

Referring to Shaftesbury's "Characteristics." 3 Silenus was an Epicurean Philosopher, as appears from Virgil, Eclog. vi., where he sings the principles of that philosophy in his drink.—P. W.

By Silenus he means Thomas Gordon, the translator of Tacitus, who published the Independent Whig. -Warton.

The Epicurean language, Semina rerum, or Atoms. Virg. Eclog. vi., Semina ignis-semina flammæ.— P. W.

5 A recapitulation of the whole Course of modern