That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never paflion discompos'd the mind,
But ALL fubfifts by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of Life.

170
The gen’ral ORDER, since the Whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.
VI. What would this Man ! Now upward will he

soar,
And little less than Angel, would be more ?
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

We see, therefore, it would be doing great injustice to our author to suspect that he intended,

by this, to give any encouragement to vice. His system, as all his Ethic Epistles Thew, is this: That the paffions, for the reasons given above, are necessary to the support of Virtue : That, indeed, the Passions in excess produce Vice, which is, in its own Nature, the greatest of all Evils, and comes into the world from the abuse of Man's free-will; but that God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity to the advancement of human happiness, and makes it productive of general Good TH'ETERNAL ART Educes GOOD PROM ILL.

Ep. ii. ver. 175. Ver. 169. But all subfifs, &c.] See this subject ex. tended in Ep. ii. from ver. 90 to 112, 155, &c.

VER. 174. And little less than Angel, &c.] Thou bast made him a little lower than the Angels, and haft crowned bim with glory and honour, Psalm viii. 9.

Made for his use, all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all :
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,

The proper organs, proper pow'rs aflign’d; 180
Each seeming want compensated of course;
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.
Each beast, each infect, happy in its own;

185
Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone;
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bless’d with all?

The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; Igo No pow'rs of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?

NOTES. Ver. 182. Here with degrees of swiftness, &c.] It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that in proportion as they are formed for strength, their swiftness is leffened; or, as they are formed for swiftness, their strength is abated. P.

195!

Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

200
If Nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,
And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him ftill
The whisp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wise, 205
Alike in what it gives, and what denies ?

VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends : Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 210 What modes of fight betwixt each wide extreme, The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam: Of smell, the headlong lioness between, And hound sagacious on the tainted green:

NOTES.

a

Ver. 202. Stunn'd bim with the music of the Spheres.] This instance is poetical, and even sublime, but misplaced. He is arguing philosophically in a case that required him to employ the real objects of sense only; and, what is worse, he speaks of this as a real object. -if NATURB thunder'd, &c. The case is different where (in ver. 253.) he speaks of the motion of the heavenly bodies under the sublime Imagery of ruling Angels : For whether there be ruling Angels or no, there is real motion, which was all his argument wanted; but if there be no music of the Spheres, there was no real sound, which his argument was obliged

Yer.213. The headlong lioness] The manner of the lions

to find.

.

a

Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, 215
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood?
The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine !
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220
How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine !
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier?
For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflexion, how ally'd ; 225
What thịn partition Sense from Thought divide ?

NOTES. hunting their prey in the deserts of Africa is this : At their first going out in the night time they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them by the ear, and not by the poftril

. It is probable the story of the Jackals hunting for the lion, was occasioned by observation of this defect of scent in that terrible animal. P.

VER. 224. for ever sep’rate, &c.] Near, by the fimili. tude of the operation ; separate, by the immense difference in the nature of the powers.

VER. 226. What ihin partitions, &c.] So thin, that the Atheistic philosophers, as Protagoras, held that thought was only sense ; and from thence concluded, that

imagination or opinion of every man was true: Ilāra pavlacis isin canons. But the poet determines more philosophically, that they are really and essentially different, how ihin foever the partition is by which they are divided. Thus (ta illustrate the truth of this observation) when a geometer confiders a triangle, in order to demonstrate the equality

And Middle natures, how they long to join, .
Yet never pass th' insuperable line !
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230
The pow'rs of all subdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one ?
· VIII. See, thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth. .
Above, how high, progressive life may go ! 235
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of Being! which from God began,
Nature æthereal, human, angel, man,

VARIATIONS.
VER. 238. Ed. ift.
Ethereal Effence, spirit, substance, man.

NOTES. of its three angles to two right ones, he has the picture or image of some sensible triangle in his mind, which is Jense; yet notwithstanding, he must needs have the notion or idea of an intellectual triangle in his mind, which is thought; for this plain reason, because every image or picture of a triangle must needs be obtufangular, or rectangular, or acutangular : but that which, in his mind, is the subject of this proposition, is the ratio of a triangle, undetermined to any of these species. On this account it was that Αriftotle faid, Νοήματα τινι διοίσει, τε μη φανάσματα άναι, ή δε ταύτα φαλάσματα αλλ' εκ άνευ φανlασμάτων.

칡 The conceptions of the Mind differ fomewhat from sensible images; they are not sensible images, and yet not quite free or disengaged from sensible images. VER. 237. Vast chain of Being!] Who will not ac