Forced into virtue thus by self-defence,
Even kings learned justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursued,
And found the private in the public good.
"Twas then, the studious head or generous mind,
Follower of God or friend of human kind,
POET or PATRIOT, rose but to restore
The faith and moral, Nature gave before;
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new;
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
Taught pow'r's due use to people and to kings,
Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings,
The less, or greater, set so justly true,
That touching one must strike the other too;
Till jarring int'rests, of themselves create
The according music of a well-mixed state.
Such is the world's great harmony that springs
From order, union, full consent of things:
Where small and great, where weak and mighty made
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,
And, in proportion as it blesses, blest;
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right;
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is Charity:
All must be false that thwart this one great end;
And all of God, that bless mankind or mend.
Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives.
On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions åct the soul;
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and Nature linked the general frame,
And bade Self-love and Social be the same.
OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO
I. False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular, answered from ver. 19 to 27.-II. It is the end of all men, and attainable by all, ver. 30. God intends happiness to be equal; and to be so, it must be social, since all particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not particular laws, ver. 37. As it is necessary for order, and the peace and welfare of society, that external good should be unequal, happiness is not made to consist in these, ver. 51. But, notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two passions of hope and fear, ver. 70.—III. What the happiness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good man has here the advantage, ver. 77. The error of imputing to virtue what are only the calamitiesof nature, or of fortune, ver. 94.-IV. The folly of expecting that God should alter his general laws in favour of particulars, ver. 121. -V. That we are not judges who are good; but that, whoever they are, they must be happiest, ver. 133, &c.-VI. That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of virtue, ver. 165. That even these can make no man happy without virtue: instanced in riches, ver. 183. Honours, ver. 191. Nobility, ver. 203. Greatness, ver. 215. Fame, ver. 235. Superior talents, ver. 257, &c. With pictures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all, ver. 267, &c.-VII. That virtue only constitutes a happiness, whose object is universal, and whose pros pect eternal, ver. 307 &c. That the perfection of virtue and happiness consists in a conformity to the order of Providence here, and a resignation to it here and hereafter, v. 326, &c.
O HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim!
Good, pleasure, ease, content, whate'er thy name?
That something still which prompts the eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some Court's propitious shine,
Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine?
Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reaped in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows?-where grows it not? If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere,
"Tis nowhere to be found, or ev'rywhere:
"Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.
Ask of the learned the way? The learned are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;
Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some swelled to gods, confess e'en virtue vain;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in every thing, or doubt of all.1
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
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 please,
Equal is common sense, and common ease.
Remember, man, "the Universal Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws;"
And makes what happiness we justly call
Subsist not in the good of one, but all.
There's not a blessing individuals find,
But some way leans and hearkens to the kind:
No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,
No cavern hermit, rests self-satisfied:
Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or who would fix a friend:
Abstract what others feel, what others think,
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has its share; and who would more obtain,
Shall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain.
Order is heaven's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense.
Heav'n to mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their happiness:
But mutual wants this happiness increase;
All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace.
Condition, circumstance is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king,
In who obtain defence, or who defend,
In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
Heav'n breathes through ev'ry member of the whole
One common blessing, as one common soul.
But fortune's gifts if each alike possest,
And each were equal, must not all contest?
If then to all men happiness was meant,
God in externals could not place content.
Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy called, unhappy those;
But Heav'n's just balance equal will appear,
While those are placed in hope, and these in fear:
Not present good or ill, the joy or curse,
But future views of better, or of worse.
Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Know, all the good that individuals find,
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind,
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words, health, peace and competence.
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, oh Virtue! peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right?
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all the advantage prosp'rous vice attains,
"Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
Oh, blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.
But fools the good alone unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all..
See, Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just!
See god-like Turenne prostrate on the dust?2
1 The genius and patriotism of Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, ary immortalised by both Clarendon and Cowley. He fell fighting on the royal side at the battle of Newbury, 1643.
2 Turenne, the famous French general and marshal, was second son of the Duc de Bouillon, and Elizabeth, daughter of William I. of
See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife!1
Was this their virtue, or contempt of life?
Say, was it virtue, more though Heaven ne'r gave,
Lamented Digby!' sunk thee to the grave?
Tell me, if virtue made the son expire,
Why, full of days, and honour, lives the sire?
Why drew Marseilles' good bishop purer breath,
When nature sickened, and each gale was death?
Or why so long (in life if long can be)
Lent Heaven a parent to the poor and me?
What makes all physical or moral ill?
There deviates Nature, and there wanders Will.
God sends not ill; if rightly understood,
Or partial ill is universal good,
Or change admits, or nature lets it fall;
Short, and but rare, till Man improved it all.
We just as wisely might of Heaven complain
That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain,
As that the virtuous son is ill at ease
When his lewd father gave the dire disease.
Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause
Prone for his fav'rites to reverse his laws?
Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
On air or sea new motions be imprest,
Oh, blameless Bethel!" to relieve thy breast?
Nassau, Prince of Orange. He was killed by a cannon ball at Sassbach in 1675, his soldiers crying out, "Our father is dead," when the fatal result of the shot was perceived.
1 Sir Philip Sidney, one of our greatest countrymen, was shot at Zutphen, 1586, and died a few days afterwards. His unselfish gift of the cup of cold water to the dying soldier, when wounded and thirsting himself, will never be forgotten.
2 The Honourable Robert Digby, who died 1724. See in " taphs," one on himself and his sister.
3 M. de Belsance was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate of his flock, whilst that horrid calamity prevailed.- Warton. Louis XV., in 1723, offered him a more considerable bishopric, to which great feudal privileges belonged, but he refused to leave the flock endeared to him by suffering. He lived to a great age, and died in 1755.
4 Edith Pope, the mother of the poet, died at the age of 91 or 92, the year this poem was finished, 1733 The filial piety of Pope was remarkable.
5 Alluding to the fate of those two great naturalists, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an approach to Etna and Vesuvius, while they were exploring the cause of the eruptions.Warburton.
6 Mr. Bethel was a friend of Pope's. The poet alluded to this line
|