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.
Oh fons of earth! attempt ye ftill to rise,

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?
Of Vice or Virtue, whether bleft or curft,
Which meets contempt, or which compaffion first?
Count all th'advantage profp'rous Vice attains,
'Tis but what Virtue flies from and difdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they wou'd,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good.

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,
No bad man's happy: he is great or rich.

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?
Say, was it Virtue, more tho' Heav'n ne'er gave,
Lamented DIGBY! funk thee to the grave?
Tell me, if Virtue made the Son expire,
Why, full of days and honour, lives the Sire?
Why drew Marseille's good bishop purer breath,
When Nature ficken'd, and each gale was death!
Or why fo long (in life if long can be)

Lent Heav'n a parent to the poor and me?

What makes all phyfical or moral ill?
There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will.
God fends not ill; if rightly understood,

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,
The real fource is not in God, but man.

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.
That righteous Abel was destroy'd by Cain,`·
As that the virtuous fon is ill at ease

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?
Shall burning Ætna, if a fage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?

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)
Contents us not. A better fhall we have?
A kingdom of the Just then let it be :
But firft confider how those Just agree.
The good muft merit God's peculiar care;
But who, but God, can tell us who they are?
One thinks on Calvin Heav'n's own spirit fell;
Another deems him inftrument of hell;

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.
The very beft will variously incline,

And what rewards your Virtue, punish mine.
WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.-This world, 'tis true,
Was made for Cæfar-but for Titus too:

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;
What different Systems for a Man and Wife ?