Self-love and social at her birth began,

150

Union the bond of all things, and of man.
Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid;
Man walk'd with beast, joint-tenant of the shade;
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder clothed him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:
The shrine. with gore unstain'd, with gold un-
dress'd,

155

Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:

152 Man walk'd with beast, joint-tenant of the shade. The Platonic tradition was, that in the first ages brutes shared the language of men; the Lucretian theory was, that men possessed only the language of brutes. The shrine with gore unstain'd,' is contrary to the highest authority; for sacrifice was among the earliest observances of man. Pope falls into the ascetic fantasy of attributing the crimes of the succeeding generations to the use of animal food; an use perhaps rendered necessary by the increase of population, and of which the natural alliance with crime is undiscoverable. But the evident fact is, that the use of animal food actually tends to the general advantages of the animal creation; for on that use depends the care of man in multiplying animal life, in providing for its support, and in increasing its security. The millions of sheep and oxen, &c., which now live under the care of man, would have had no existence but for their services to him: their death, it is true, is one of pain; but it is their only suffering, and the suffering of a moment. Pope reasons more consequentially in the earlier lines :

Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods :
For some his interest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, till he ends the being, makes it bless'd.

160

165

Heaven's attribute was universal care;
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to nature, hears the general groan;
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds;
The fury-passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on man a fiercer savage, man.
See him from nature rising slow to art!
To copy instinct then was Reason's part:
Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake :—
'Go, from the creatures thy instructions take:
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field:
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;

170

175

171 Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake. This bold personification of Nature is evidently adopted from the celebrated passage of Lucretius:

Quid tibi tantopere est, mortalis, quod nimis ægris
Luctibus indulges?

It is unfortunate for the wisdom of a passage equally eloquent in the English poet and the Roman, that human experience has so totally disregarded the lessons for which Pope directs us to instinct. Perhaps there is no instance in which man has followed the guidance of the bird in his food, or of the beast in his physic: his building certainly owes nothing to the mechanical dexterity of the bee; and if he waited to learn his ploughing from the mole, his weaving from the worm, his navigation from the nautilus, or his arts of government from the pismire, he might wait for ever. Some tradition of the Indian discovery of the Jesuit's bark, and some fables of the adoption of antidotes to the poison of serpents, are almost the only remaining groundwork of this poetic phantasm.

POPE

I.

D

Learn of the little nautilus to sail;

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale: Here too all forms of social union find,

186

And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind: 180
Here subterranean works and cities see;
There towns aerial on the waving tree:
Learn each small people's genius, policies,
The ants' republic, and the realm of bees;
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, though a monarch reign,
Their separate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state;-
Laws wise as nature, and as fix'd as fate.
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw;
Entangle justice in her net of law;

And right, too rigid, harden into wrong,

190

Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway; 195 Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;

And for those arts mere instinct could afford, Be crown'd as monarchs, or as gods adored.' v. Great Nature spoke; observant men obey'd; Cities were built, societies were made: Here rose one little state; another near Grew by like means, and join'd through love or fear.

200

Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend, And there the streams in purer rills descend? What war could ravish, commerce could bestow; And he return'd a friend, who came a foe. Converse and love mankind may strongly draw, When love was liberty, and nature law:

206

Thus states were form'd; the name of king un

known,

in one.

Till common interest placed the sway
'Twas Virtue only, or in arts or arms,
Diffusing blessings, or averting harms;
The same which in a sire the sons obey'd,
A prince the father of a people made.

210

VI. Till then, by Nature crown'd, each patriarch

sate,

215

King, priest, and parent of his growing state;
On him, their second Providence, they hung;
Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue.
He from the wondering furrow call'd the
food;

225

Taught to command the fire, control the flood; 220
Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound,
Or fetch the aerial eagle to the ground;
Till drooping, sickening, dying, they began
Whom they revered as god to mourn as man;
Then, looking up from sire to sire, explored
One great first Father, and that first adored.
Or plain tradition that this all begun,
Convey'd unbroken faith from sire to son;
The worker from the work distinct was known,
And simple reason never sought but one:
Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light,
Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right;
To virtue in the paths of pleasure trod,
And own'd a father when he own'd a God.
Love all the faith and all the allegiance then; 235
For nature knew no right divine in men,
No ill could fear in God; and understood
A sovereign being but a sovereign good.

230

True faith, true policy, united ran;

That was but love of God, and this of man.

240

Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone,

The enormous faith of many made for one;

That proud exception to all Nature's laws,
To invert the work, and counterwork its cause?
Force first made conquest, and that conquest law;
Till superstition taught the tyrant awe;

246

242 The enormous faith of many made for one. This popular line is the commencement of a description in which Pope has excelled himself; the graphic force, and picturesque power of his sketch of superstition are of the first order. But the philosophy is inferior to the poetry. In ascribing the deepest possible evils of society to religious extravagance, atheism, a much more capacious, active, and envenomed instrument of guilt, is forgotten. It is true, that Bacon, in contradiction to Plutarch, thinks that to have a wrong opinion of God is worse than to have no opinion of him at all.'-Essays. But the great philosopher has here done injustice to the question: he considers atheism simply in the light of indifference. If he had lived to later times, he would have seen it capable of assuming a portentous and desperate activity, to which superstition was anile and feeble; joining the fury of popular passion to the sullen malignity of scepticism; and summoning from the hovel a fiend that threw into darkness and oblivion all the follies and vices of the cloister.

Bowles, with the feeling of a poet, adverts to the fine force of Milton's epithets, in describing the rites of idolatry :

In urns and altars round

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the flamens at their service quaint:

And sullen Moloch fled,

Hath left in shadows dread

His burning idol, all of blackest hue.
In vain with cymbals' ring

They call the grisly king,

In dismal dance about the furnace blue.

Hymn on the Nativity.