"confidered as parts of a general system, wherein the most minute

66

are neceffary to make the whole complete, compofe an end "worthy of them." Bolingbroke, Frag. 49.

"The fceming imperfection of the parts is neceffary to the real perfection of the whole." Frag. 50.

Ver. 53. In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain,

A thousand movements fearce one purpose gain :
In God's, one fingle can its end produce,
Yet ferves to fecond too fome other use.
So Man, who here feems principal alone,
Perhaps acts fecond to fome sphere unknown,
Touches fome wheel, or verges to fome goal;

'Tis but a part we fee, and not a whole.

We labour hard, we complicate various means to arrive at one end; and several systems of conduct are often employed by us to « bring about fome one paultry purpose: but God neither contrives, "nor executes like man. His means are fimple, his purposes e various; and the fame fyftem, that anfwers the greateft, anfwers the leaft." Bolingbroke, Frag. 43.-Again, in Frag.63. In the works of men, the most complicated fchemes produce, "very hardly and very uncertainly, one fingle effect in the works of God, one fingle fcheme produces a multitude of different effects, and anfwers an immenfe variety of purposes."

And in Frag. 43. "We ought to confider the world we inhabit no otherwise than as a little wheel in our folar fyftem; nor our folar fyftem any otherwise than as a little but larger wheel in "the immenfe machine of the univerfe; and both the one and the "other neceffary, perhaps, to the motion of the whole, and to the "pre-ordained revolutions in it."

Ver. 267. All are but parts of one ftupendous whole,
Whofe body Nature is, and God the foul;

That (chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the fame;
Great in the earth, as in th' æthereal frame)

Warms in the fun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the ftars, and bloffoms in the trees,

Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unfpent.

The fentiments of this paffage are not original: but such a pregnant concentration of them into poetic numbers of the most beau

tiful

tiful embellishment was not to be achieved but by the powers of our unrivalled artist.

A paffage from Clemens Alexandrinus will not be unfeasonable here, Strom. ii. fect. 19. ed. Oxon. "The Stoics affert, that "Nature, meaning God, extends even to plants, and feeds, and "trees, and ftones." And our Poet is certainly indebted to the following verfes of Mrs. Chandler, on Solitude:

Earth's verdant fcenes, the all-furrounding fkies,

Employ my wond'ring thoughts, and feaft my eyes;
Nature in ev'ry object points the road,
Whence Contemplation wings my foul to God.
He's all in all his wisdom, goodness, pow'r,
Spring in each blade, and bloom in ev'ry flow'r;
Smile o'er the meads, and bend in ev'ry hill,
Glide in the stream, and murmur in the rill:
All Nature moves obedient to his will:

Heav'n fhakes, earth trembles, and the forests nod,
When awful thunders speak the voice of God.

}

In this paffage there are some lines after the very best manner of Pope himself. Dryden, in the State of Innocence, where he imitates fome well-known lines of the fixth Æneid, was probably also in our Poet's recollection: A&t v.

Where'er thou art, he is; th' eternal mind
Acts thro' all places, is to none confin'd;
Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above,

And thro' the univerfal mass does move.

These fublime sentiments were derived from the Greek philofophers, and may be found in Cicero, Virgil, Lucan, Apuleius, and many others.

Ver. 285. Submit.-In this, or any other sphere,

Secure to be as bleft as thou canst bear:

Safe in the hand of one difpofing pow'r,

Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

"If death translate us, we change our state, but we are still the 66 creatures of the fame God. He made us to be happy here; he

66

may make us happy in another system of being." Bolingbroke, Fragm. 51. And again foon after: "Let the tranquillity "of my mind reft on this immoveable rock, that my future, as "well as my present, ftate is ordered by an almighty and all-wife

"Creator."

"Creator." And in Fragm. 67. "Be there two worlds, or "be there twenty, the fame God is the God of all; and, where66 ever we are, we are equally in his power."

EPISTLE II. P. 63.

Ver. 3. Plac'd on this ifthmus of a middle state;
A being darkly wife, and rudely great.

This is a pleafing variation from the fimilitude of his preceptor; which, however, might probably fuggeft the former claufe of the fecond verfe. "This is the condition of humanity. We are placed "as it were, in an intellectual twilight, where we discover but few "things clearly, and none entirely; and yet fee juft enough to "tempt us with the hope of making better and more discoveries.” Bolingbroke's Letters to Pape.

Ver. 23. Go, foar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,

To the first good, firft perfect, and first fair. It was the opinion of Plato and his followers, that every thing excellent or great in man and the univerfe, and even the universe itself, were but adumbrations of the perfect archetypes of excellence, previously exifting in the divine mind, and emanations from it. The reader will find some pleasing illustrations of this doctrine in Spencer's Hymn to Heavenlie Beauty, and in the eighteenth fong of Drummond's Poems, part ii. but the paffages are too long for quotation in this place. This notion will reflect light on Milton's Par. Loft, vii. 557. where the expreffion derives it's colouring from that Platonic theory:

Thence to behold this new created world,

Th' addition of his empire; how it show'd

In profpect from his throne, how good, how fair:
Anfwering his great idea.

my ufe !"

Ver. 45. While man exclaims," See all things for
See man for mine!" exclaims a pamper'd goofe.

Cowley, in his Plagues of Egypt, ftanza i.

All creatures the Creator faid were thine :
No creature but might fince fay, "Man is mine!"

a paffage

a paffage, which our poet might have in view; as well as Gay, in fable 49. part i. where the fentiment itfelf is happily illuftrated throughout:

When with huge figs the branches bend,
When clusters from the vine depend,
The Snail looks round on flow'r and tree,

And cries," All these were made for me!"

"The hypothefis, that affumes the world made for man, and man "folely to be happy, is not founded in reason, and is contradicted "by experience." Bolingbroke, Fragm. 43.

Ver. 112. On mutual wants built mutual happiness.

"We are defigned to be focial, not folitary creatures. Mutual "wants unite us: and natural benevolence and political order, on "which our happiness depends, are founded in them." Bolingbroke, Fragm. 51. So Gray, very beautifully, in his unfinished Effay: "While mutual wifhes, mutual woes, endear;

The focial fmile, and fympathetic tear.”

Ver. 124. They love themselves, a third time, in their race. "As our parents loved themselves in us, fo we love ourselves in our "children, and in those to whom we are most nearly related by "blood. Thus far inftin&t improves felf-love. Reason improves it "further. We love ourselves in our neighbours and in our "friends. We love ourselves in loving the political body whose "members we are; and we love ourselves, when we extend our "benevolence to all mankind." Bolingbroke, Fragm. 51. with which compare below, ver. 134.

VER. 249. She, 'midft the lightning's blaze, and thunder's found,

When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the

ground,

She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To Pow'r unfeen, and mightier far than they.

This is exactly Lucretius, v. 1217.

Prætereà, cui non animus formidine Divûm
Contrahitur, cui non conrepunt membra pavore,
Fulminis horribili cùm plagâ torrida tellus
Contremit, et magnum percurrunt murmura cœlum ?
Non populi gentesque tremunt, regesque superbi-?
Denique, fub pedibus tellus cùm tota vacillat,

Concuffæque

Concuffseque cadunt urbes, dubiæque minantur;
Quid mirum, fi fe temnunt mortalia fæcia,
Atque poteftates magnas mirafque relinquunt
In rebus vireis Divûm, quæ cuncta gubernent ?
What bofom fhrinks not with an awe divine,
Whose flesh with terrour creeps not, when the ground,
Smit with the ftroke of thunder, flaming, shakes,
And murmurs roll through the long vault of heaven?
Quake not whole nations with their haughty kings?
When Earth's broad furface rocks beneath our feet,
When crashing cities fall, or tottering threat,
What wonder, if frail man himself despise ;
If wond'rous powers, and vaft, to Gods he give,
To guide this univerfe with boundless fway?

EPISTLE IV. P. 145.

Ver. 107. Why drew Marfeilles' 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?

Archbishop Sheldon, and others, muft fhare in this praife of the good bishop of Marseilles ; fee Pennant's London, p. 328. and the two minifters of Tidefwell in Derbyshire; see Dr. Aikin's Environs of Manchefter, p. 485. And in the former couplet our poet might profit from fome anonymous verses in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 76.

When Nature fickens, and with fainting breath
Struggles beneath the bitter pangs of death:

as the third verse is a palpable imitation of Virgil, Æn. x. 861.
Rhoebe, diù, res fi qua diù mortalibus ulla eft,
Viximus.

O Rhœbus, we have liv'd too long for me,
If life and long were terms that could agree.

Dryden.

Ver. 289. In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay,
How happy thofe to ruin, these betray!
Mark by what wretched fteps their glory grows,
From dirt and fea-weed as proud Venice rofe;
In each how guilt and greatness equal ran,
And all that rais'd the Hero, funk the Man.

Now