Observe how system into system runs, 25 May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are. 30 But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee? II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, 35 Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind? In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain1, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; Yet serves 40 45 50 55 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 60 When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains: When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod, 65 Is now a victim, and now Egypt's God": Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault; [Warton quotes the Platonic, The part is created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part.'] [Satellites is here a tetrasyllable, as in the original Latin.] 70 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? 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? So The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play? And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar'; Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold 3. He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; ΠΙΟ But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense, 115 Weigh thy Opinion against Providence; 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, Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods. Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel: 120 125 And who but wishes to invert the laws Of ORDER, sins against th' Eternal Cause. V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, But errs not Nature from this gracious end 2, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep 145 Th' exceptions few; some change since all began: 150 I Warburton compares Ep. III. v. 27. 2 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. 3.1 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, 155 Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms, 165 Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind1? Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear, 165 170 The gen'ral ORDER, since the whole began, 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. 182 Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force1; 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. [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 A 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. T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain, If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres1, VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends, What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide*: 200 205 210 215 220 225 230 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. 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 |