But Heav'n's just balance equal will appear, 'While those are plac'd in Hope, and these in Fear: Not present good or ill, the joy or curse, But future views of better, or of worse. 71. By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies? Heav'n ftill with laughter the vain toil furveys, 75 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 confifts with Temperance alone; 81 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. NOTES. VER. 79. Reafon's whole | iffue of Virtue; or, in his pleasure, &c.] This is a own emphatic words, Peace beautiful paraphrafis for is all thy own; a conclufive Happiness; for all we feel obfervation in his argument, of good is by fenfation and which stands thus: Is Hapreflection. piness rightly placed in ExVER.82.And Peace, &c.]ternals? No; for it confifts Confcious Innocence (fays the in Health, Peace, and Compoet) is the only fource of petence. Health and Cominternal Peace; and known petence are the product of Innocence, of external; Temperance, and Peace of therefore, Peace is the fole perfect Innocence. Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, 85 Who risk the moft, that take wrong means, or right? 90 Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, Who fancy Bliss to Vice, to Virtue Woe! Who fees and follows that great scheme the best, 95 Best knows the bleffing, 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 juft! See god-like TURENNE proftrate on the duft! 100 VARIATIONS. After VER. 92. in the MS. Let fober Moralifts correct their speech, NOTES. VER. 100. See god-like | Turenne] This epithet has a peculiar juftnefs; the great man to whom it is applied not being distinguished, from other generals, for any of his fuperior qualities fo much as for his providential care of those whom he led to war; which was fo extraordinary, that his chief purpose in taking on him See SIDNEY bleeds amid the martial ftrife! 105 Was this their Virtue, or Contempt of Life? Lent Heav'n a parent to the poor and me? What makes all phyfical or moral ill? Or partial Ill is univerfal Good, Or Change admits, or Nature lets it fall; Short, and but rare, till Man improv'd it all. VARIATION S. After 116. in the MS. Of ev'ry evil, fince the world began, NOTES. 115 felf the command of armies, of that famous campaign in feems to have been the Pre-which he loft his life. fervation of Mankind. In VER. 110. Lent Heav'n this god-like care he was more diftinguishably employed throughout the whole courfe a parent, &c.] This laft inftance of the poet's illuftration of the ways of Pro We juft as wifely might of Heav'n complain. When his lewd father gave the dire disease. 120 Think we, like fome weak Prince, th'Eternal Caufe, Prone for his fav'rites to reverse his laws? On air or fea new motions be impreft, Oh blameless Bethel! to relieve thy breaft? 125 When the loose mountain trembles from on high, Shall gravitation ceafe, if you go by? NOTES. vidence, the reader fees, has | Providence of Heaven, në a peculiar elegance; where a tribute of piety to a parent is paid in a return of thanks to, and made fubfervient of, his vindication of, the Great Giver and Father of all things. The Mother of the author, a perfon of great piety and charity, died the year this poem was finished, viz. 1733. VER. 121. Think we, like fome weak Prince, &c.] Agreeably hereunto, holy Scripture, in its account of things under the common F ver reprefents miracles as wrought for the fake of him who is the object of them, but in order to give credit to fome of God's extraordinary difpenfations to Mankind. VER. 123. Shall burning Etna, &c.] Alluding to the fate of those two great Naturalifts, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an approach to Etna and Vefuvius, while they were exploring the caufe of their eruptions. Or fome old temple, nodding to its fall, For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall? 130 But still this world (fo fitted for the knave) If Calvin feel Heav'n's bleffing, or its rod, 135 This cries there is, and that, there is no God. 140 What shocks one part will edify the rest, Nor with one system can they all be bleft. And what rewards your Virtue, punish mine. 146 And which more bleft? who chain'd his country, fay, Or he whose Virtue figh'd to lose a day? "But fometimes Virtue starves, while Vice is fed." What then? Is the reward of Virtue bread? 150 VARIATIONS. After VER. 142. in fome Editions, Give each a System, all must be at strife; |