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A Wild, where weeds and flow'rs promifcuous fhoot; Or Garden, tempting with forbidden Fruit.

NOTES.

Paffions and Affection, both selfish and focial; and the wrong purfuits of Power, Pleasure, and Hapinefs. The 10th, 11th, 12th, &c. have relation to the subjects of the books intended to follow, viz. the Characters and Capacities of Men, and the Limits of Science, which once tranfgreffed, ignorance begins, and error follows. The 13th and 2 th, to the Knowledge of Mankind, and the various Manners of the age. Next, in line 16, he tells us with what defign he wrote, viz.

To vindicate the ways of God to Man.

The Men he writes againft, he frequently informs us, are fuch as weigh their opinion against Providence (ver. 114.) fuch as cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjuft (ver. 118.) or such as fall into the notion, that Vice and Virtue there is none at all, (Ep. ii. ver. 212.) This occafions the poet to divide his vindication of the ways of God into two parts. In the first of which he gives direct answers to thofe objections which libertine Men, on a view of the disorders arifing from the perverfity of the human will, have intended against Providence. And in the fecond, he obviates all those objections, by a true delineation of human Nature; or a general, but exa&t, map of Man. The first epiftle is employed in the management of the first part of this difpute; and the three following in the difcuffion of the fecond. So that this whole book constitutes a complete Essay on Man, written for the best purpose, to vindicate the ways of

God.

VER. 7, 8. A Wild,-or Garden,] The Wild relates to the human paffions, productive (as he explains in the fecond epiftle) both of good and evil. The Garden, to human reafon, fo often tempting us to tranfgrefs the bounds God has fet to it, and wander in fruitless enquiries.

Together let us beat this ample field,

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Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The laten tracts, the giddy heights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or fightless foar;
Eye Nature's walks, fhoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; 15
But vindicate the ways of God to Man.

I. Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reafon, but from what we know?
Of Man, what fee we but his station here,
From which to reafon, or to which refer?

NOTES.

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VER. 12. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i. e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their Paffions; or those who leave behind them common fenfe and fober reafon, in their high flights through the regions of Metaphyfies. Both which follies are exposed in the fourth epistle, where the popular and philofophical errors concerning Happinefs are detected. The figure is taken from animal Life.

VER. 15. Laugh where we must, &c.] Intimating that human follies are fo ftrangely abfurd, that it is not in the power of the most compaffionate, on fome occafions, to reftrain their mirth: And that human crimes are fo flagitious, that the most candid have seldom an opportunity, on this fubject, to exercife their virtue.

VER.

R. 19, 20, Of Man, what fee we but his ftation here, From which to reason, or to which refer?] the fenfe is, We fee nothing of Man, but as he ftands at prefent in his flation here: From which station, all our reasonings on his nature and end must be drawn; and to this flation they

Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,

'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro' vaft immenfity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compofe one universe,
Obferve how system into fyftem runs,

What other planets circle other funs,

What vary'd Being peoples ev'ry star,
May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading foul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn fupports, upheld by God, or thee?

NOTES.

25

30

muß be all referred. The confequence is, all our reasonings on his nature and end muft needs be very imperfect. VER. 21. Thro' worlds unnumber'd, &c.] Hunc cognof cimus folummodo per Proprietates fuas & Attributa, & per fapientiffimas & optimas rerum ftructuras & caufas finales. Newtoni Princ. Schol. gen. fub fin.

VER. 30. The ftrong connexions, nice dependencies,] The thought is very noble, and expreffed with great philofophic beauty and exactness. The fyftem of the Universe is a combination of natural and moral Fitneffes, as the human fyftem is, of body and fpirit. By the ftrong connexions, therefore, the Poet alluding to the natural part; and by the nice dependencies to the moral. For the Essay on man is not a fyftem of Naturalism, but of natural Religion. Hence it is, that, where he fuppofes diforders may tend to fome greater

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II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, Why form'd fo weak, fo little, and so blind?

36

First, if thou canft, the harder reason guess,

Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less.

Afk of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they fhade? 40 Or ask of yonder argent fields above,

Why Jove's Satellites are lefs than Jove?

Of Systems poffible, if 'tis confeft

That Wisdom infinite muft form the beft,

Where all muft full or not coherent be,

45

And all that rises, rife in due degree;

NOTES.

good in the natural world, he supposes they may tend likewife to fome greater good in the moral, as appears from thefe fublime images in the following lines,

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's defign, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline?

Who knows, but he, whose hand the light'ning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the ftorms: Pours fierce ambition in a Cæfar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge Mankind?

VER. 35 to 42.] In these lines the poet has joined the beauty of argumentation to the fublimity of thought; where the fimilar inftances, propofed for his adverfaries examination, fhew as well the abfurdity of their complaints against Order, as the fruitleness of their enquiries into the arcana of the Godhead.

Then in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,
There must be, fomewhere, fuch a rank as Man:
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has plac'd him wrong?

Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce 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 some sphere unknown,
Touches fome wheel, or verges to fome goal;
Tis but a part we fee, and not a whole.

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55

60

When the proud fteed shall know why Man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er plains;
'When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod,
Is now a victim, and now Ægypt's God:
Then fhall Man's pride and dulness comprehend 65
His actions', paffions', being's, use and end ;

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In the former Editions, ver. 64.

Now wears a garland, an Ægyptian God: altered as above for the reafon given in the note.

NOTES.

VER. 64. Egypt's God] Called fo, because the God Apis was worshiped univerfally over the whole land.

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