aftes

through nature to nature's God, which was Bolingbroke's main tenet.... The tendency' [of the leading sentiments of the Essay], 'so far as they have a tendency, is undoubtedly to that blind fatalism and naturalism, which Bolingbroke called pure theism. His condemnation of metaphysics really meant everything that is called theology.' Characters Chanadi Eyen, therefore, if Pope (as had been concluded from certain passages which prove him to have been acquainted with parts at least of these works,) had read the Theodicée of Leibnitz, whose optimism is that of the first Epistle, Archbishop King's Origin of Evil, and other metaphysical treatises, it is in the Essays of Bolingbroke that the germ of Pope's argument is to be found. These Essays (which their author had not the courage to publish before his death) attempt to apply the inductive method to that part of philosophy which concerns the relations between God and man; and, assuming that all human knowledge is derived through the medium of the senses, to shew that it is only from a study of the works of God that a knowledge of his character is attainable by us. This is, in one word, the natural theology of Bolingbroke, which regards all other theology not only as superfluous, but as futile and vain.

Делай

Pope, as Bolingbroke on one occasion roundly said of him, though in a
different connexion, was 6
a very great wit, and a very indifferent philosopher.'
The consequence is, that although as the development of a doubtful system by
one who imperfectly understood it, the Essay on Man is without permanent value
as a philosophical treatise, it has many unquestionable merits of its own. Beattie
(see Forbes' Life of B. vol. I. p. 120) appears to characterise it very justly in
describing 'its sentiments' as 'noble and affecting'; 'its images and allusions' as
'apposite, beautiful and new'; its wit as 'transcendently excellent?; but the 'scien-
tific part' as 'very exceptionable.' If the Essay on Man were shivered into frag-
ments, it would not lose its value; for it is precisely its details which constitute
its moral so well as literary beauties. Nowhere has Pope so abundantly dis-
played his incomparable talent of elevating truisms into proverbs, in his mastery
over language and poetic form. It is particularly in the fourth Epistle, where
the poet undertakes to prove the incontestable truth that all men may be happy,
if they will take the right road to happiness, that he is thoroughly in his element;
and demonstrates so palpable a truism by a brilliant series of arguments and illus-
trations which beguile the reader into a belief that he needed to be convinced.

The Moral Essays, which at Warburton's suggestion were pressed into the
service of the general scheme, appear to explain themselves. The idea of the
Master-Passion, which swallows all the rest (Essay on Man, II. 131), if carried
to its logical consequences, results, as Johnson points out, in a kind of moral
predestination; if taken cum grano, is sufficiently trite and commonplace. As
illustrated by the first and second of these Epistles, it resembles that which
suggested the title and subject of Young's Universal Passion. Young, however,
treats the Love of Fame as the Universal Passion in either sex. The third and
fourth are on a subject familiar to all satirists, ancient and modern; the fifth is
only perforce included in the series, although it may, in the place which it occupies,
be regarded as a kind of corollary to the fourth, as Warburton desired.]

تو

HA

AN ESSAY ON MAN.

ΤΟ

H. ST JOHN LORD BOLINGBROKE1.

THE DESIGN.

AVING proposed to write some pieces on Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression2) come home to Men's Business and

! [Henry St John, afterwards Viscount Boling broke, was born about the year 1678. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, he commenced a life of dissipation in the metropolis towards the close of the century, manifesting however literary tastes by poetical productions, which neither Swift nor Pope could ever bring themselves to praise. In 1701 he took his seat in Parliament, as member for the family borough of Wootton Bassett, which he afterwards exchanged for the family county of Wilts. In politics, he at once became a Tory of the Tories, and a High Churchman of the High Churchmen; soon raising himself by the fire of his oratory, the bitterness of his sarcasm, and the cruel unscrupulousness of his invective, to a distinguished position. Such different judges as Pitt and Brougham agree in concluding him to have been one of the most consummate orators of any age. In 1704 he became Secretary-at-war in the so-called Compromise ministry, and followed Harley out of office in 1708. Though he had, according to his avowal, done for ever with politics and ambition, he returned into office as Secretary of State, when the famous intrigue of 1710 brought the Tories into power. It was this ministry which resolved upon the termination of the war with France; and the famous Examiner contained no bitterer and more effective onslaughts upon Marlborough, than those written by his former protégé St John. He was at this time on intimate terms with Prior and Swift, with whom he founded the Brothers' Club; but at the same time this literary minister was one of the most determined enemies of the freedom of the press, and the author of the Stamp Act, from which, in the end, as might have been expected, the Tory publications suffered more than the Whig. In 1712, he was created Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St John; and his rivalry with Harley (now Earl of Oxford) was fast rising into open enmity. They held out together long enough to ensure the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht in 1713, to further which Bolingbroke had in 1712 visited Paris, when he was reported to have had an interview with the Pretender. At all events, it is certain that with the latter Bolingbroke was, from 1713, engaged in secret intrigues; and had involved himself so deeply, that after the death of Queen Anne, a prosecution threatened him, from which he saved himself by flight to Paris, in March 1715. In

his absence he was attainted of treason, and his name erased from the roll of peers. Before the attainder, he had accepted at the hands of the Pretender the seals of the Secretary of State. The death of Louis XIV. in September put an end to the Pretender's chances, and the rising in Scotland with which the the year closed, was undertaken against the express opinion of Bolingbroke. Scotch, Irish, Jesuit and female intrigues caused him to be rejected by the Pretender; and he remained a total exile from politics till 1725. In his retirement at La Source near Orleans, he composed his affected Reflexions on Exile, and his celebrated Letter to Sir William Windham (not published till 1753), the latter an elaborate vindication of his political conduct. He also occupied himself with the philosophical studies which resulted in the Essays published after his death by Mallet. In 1723, he obtained a pardon, but not a reversal of his attainder; in 1725, on his return to England, he recovered his property and was thus, to use his own expression,

two-thirds restored.' During the years from 1725 to 1735, he resided at Dawley near Uxbridge, in the immediate neighbourhood of Twickenham, the abode of his friend and admirer Pope. In the year 1727 he again commenced political writing, with the hope of overthrowing the influence of Walpole. But the death of George I. failing to overthrow that minister, Bolingbroke continued his hopeless attacks, in the vain hope of influencing the mind of the heir to the throne of George II., Frederick prince of Wales. His letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and the Idea of a Patriot King were political bids concealed under the pretence of a philosophy above parties. In 1744, after his father's death, he settled down for the remainder of his life in his ancestral home at Battersea, where he died in 1751, confident that posterity would do justice to his memory when acquainted with the fulness of his genius from his posthumous writings. Patriotism and philosophy were ideas with which he had been wont to make free throughout his life; selfishness, which is consonant with neither, was the motive of all his actions and the spirit which dictated all his works. The national instinct was sure enough to recognise his philosophy as dangerous, and his patriotism as rotten.]

2 [See Bacon's Dedication of his Essays to the Duke of Buckingham.]

Eden

Bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

The science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: There are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the Anatomy of the mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory of Morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly un"intelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.

This I might have done in prose, but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: The other may seem odd, but is true, I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions, depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandring from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: If any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.

What is now published, is only to be considered as a general Map of MAN, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, and leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable. P.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the UNIVerse.

OF Man in the abstract. I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, v. 17, &c. II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a Being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general Order of things, and conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown, v. 35, &c. III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, v. 77, &c. IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfection, the cause of Man's error and misery. The

impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or un-
fitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of his dispensations, v. 109, &c.
V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting
that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, v. 131, &c. VÌ.
The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand
he demands the Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications
of the Brutes; though, to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree,
would render him miserable, v. 173, &c. VII. That throughout the whole visible
world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is
observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures
to Man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason
alone countervails all the other faculties, v. 207. VIII. How much further this
order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were
any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must
be destroyed, v. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire,
v. 250.
X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence,
both as to our present and future state, v. 281, &c. to the end.

AW

EPISTLE I.

WAKE, my ST. JOHN! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.

Let us (since Life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man;

A mighty maze! but not without a plan1;

A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot Folly as it flies 2,
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man3.

I. Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

[This line originally read thus: 'A mighty maze of walks without a plan.' The emendation was not superfluous, since, as Dr Johnson remarks, if there were no plan, it was in vain to describe or to trace the maze'.]

2 Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, part II.: 'and shoots their treasons as they fly.' Wakefield.

ΙΟ

15

20

3 Milton's phrase, judiciously altered, who says JUSTIFY the ways of God to Man. Milton was addressing himself to believers,... Pope...to unbelievers...; he, therefore, more fitly employs the word vindicate, which conveys the idea of a confutation attended with punishment. Warburton.

[There is no question of punishment, only of a decisive and final confutation.]

Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,

May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole1?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

40

II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, 35
Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than JOVE?
Of Systems possible, if 'tis confest
That Wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be3,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,

45

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 shall Man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suff'ring, check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not Man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault;
Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought:
His knowledge measur'd to his state and place;

[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.]