passions in society and in domestic life, he comes in the last place [from 1. 250 to the end] to shew their use to the individual, even in their illusions; the imaginary happiness they present helping to make the real miseries of life less insupportable. And this is his third general division: -Opinion gilds with varying rays Those painted clouds that beautify our days: These build as fast as knowledge can destroy: Which must needs vastly raise our idea of God's goodness, who hath not only provided more than a counterbalance of real happiness to human miseries, but hath even, in his infinite compassion, bestowed on those, who were so foolish as not to have made this provision, an imaginary happiness; that they may not be quite overborne with the load of human miseries. This is the Poet's great and noble thought, as strong and solid as it is new and ingenious. But so strangely perverse is his Commentator, that he will suppose him to mean any thing rather than what the obvious drift of his argument requires; yet, to say truth, cares not much in what sense you take it, so you will believe him that Mr. Pope's general design was to represent human life as one grand illusion fatally conducted. But if the rules of logic serve for any other purpose than to countenance the passions and prejudices of such writers, it may be demonstrated, that what the Poet here teaches is only this, "That these "illusions are the follics of men, which they wilfully "fall into, and through their own fault; thereby depriving themselves of much happiness, and exposing them"selves to equal misery: But that still God (according "to his universal way of working) graciously turns these "follies so far to the advantage of his miserable creatures, as to be the present solace and support of their distresses," 66 66 -Tho' Man's a fool, yet God is wise. LETTER LETTER III. WE are now got to the Third Epistle of the Essay on Man. Mr. Pope, in explaining the origin, use, and end of the passions, in the second Epistle, having shewn that Man has social as well as selfish passions; that doctrine naturally introduceth the third, which treats of Man as a SOCIAL animal; and connects it with the second, which considered him as an INDIVIDUAL. And as the conclusion from the subject of the First Epistle made the Introduction to the Second, so here again, the conclusion of the Second, Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine, The scale to measure others wants by thine, makes the Introduction to the Third: Here then we rest; the Universal Cause The reason of variety in those laws, all which tend to one and the same end, the good of the whole, generally, is, because the good of the individual is likewise to be provided for; both which together make up the good of the whole universally. And this is the cause, as the Poet says elsewhere, that Each individual seeks a several goal. Ep. ii. 1. 227. But to prevent their resting there, God has made each need the assistance of another: and so, On mutual wants, built mutual happiness. Ep. iii. I. 112. It was necessary to explain these two first lines, the better to see the pertinency and force of what follows [from 1. 2 to 7] where the Poet warns such to take notice of this truth, whose circumstances placing then in an imaginary station of independence, and a real one of insensibility to mutual wants (from whence general happiness results) make them but too apt to overlook the true system of things; such as those in full health and opulence. This caution was necessary with regard to society; 1 society; but still more necessary with regard to religion: therefore he especially recommends the memory of it both to clergy and laity, when they preach or pray; because the preacher who does not consider the First Cause under this view, as a Being consulting the good of the whole, must needs give a very unworthy idea of him: And the supplicant, who prays as one not related to a whole, or as disregarding the happiness of it, will not only pray in vain, but offend his Maker, by an impious attempt to counterwork his dispensation: In all the madness of superfluous health, The Translator, not seeing into the admirable purposes of this caution, hath quite dropt the most material circumstances contained in the last line; and, what is worse, for the sake of a foolish antithesis, hath destroyed the whole propriety of the thought, in the first and second, and so, between both, hath left his Author neither sense nor system, Dans le sein du bonheur, ou de l'adversité, Now, of all men, those in adversity have the least need of this caution, as being the least apt to forget that God consults the good of the whole, and provides for it, by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants: Because such as yet retain the smart of any fresh calamity are most compassionate to others labouring under the same misfortunes, and most prompt and ready to relieve them. The Poet then introduceth his system of human sociability [1.7, 8] by shewing it to be the dictate of the Creator, and that Man, in this, did but follow the example of general nature, which is united in one close system of benevolence: Look round our world; behold the chain of love This he proves, first [from 1. 8 to 13] (on the noble theory of attraction) from the oeconomy of the material world; where there is a general conspiracy in all the parti cles cles of matter to work for one end; the use, beauty, and harmony of the whole mass. I. See plastic Nature working to this end, Form'd and impell'd it's neighbour to embrace. Formed and impelled, says he. These are not words of a loose undistinguished meaning, thrown in to fill up the verse. This is not our Author's way, they are full of sense; and of the most philosophical precision. For to make matter so cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts is as necessary as that quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called attraction. But here again the Translator, mistaking this description of the preservation of the material universe by the principle of attraction, for a description of its creation, has quite destroyed the Poet's fine analogical argument, by which he proves, from the circumstance of mutual attraction in matter, that man, while he seeks society, and thereby promotes the good of his species, cooperates with God's general dispensation. For the circumstance of a creation proves nothing but a Creator: Voi du sein du chaos eclater la lumiere, Chaque atome ebranlé courir pour s'embrasser, &c. The Poet's second argument [from 1. 12 to 27] is taken from the vegetable and animal world; whose beings serve mutually for the production, support, and sustentation of each other. II. See matter next, with various life endued, They rise, they break, and to that sea return, &c. One One would wonder what should have induced Mr. l'Abbé to translate the two last lines, thus: Sort du neant y rentre, et reparoit au jour. Comes out of nothing, and enters back again into nothing. But he is generally as consistently wrong as his author is right. For having, as we observed, mistaken the Poet's account of the preservation of the material world, for the creation of it; he makes the very same mistake with regard to the vegetable and animal; and so comes in here (indeed rather of the latest) with his production of things out of nothing. 66 I should not have taken notice of this mistake, but for Mr. De Crousaz's ready remark. "Mr. Pope, says he, "descends even to the most vulgar prejudices; when he "tells us, that each being comes out of nothing, the common' people think that that which disappears is "annihilated. The atoms, the smallest particles, the roots of terrestrial bodies subsist*," &c. But who it is that descends to the worst vulgar prejudices, the reader will see when he is told that Mr. De Crousaz knew very well that Mr. Pope said not one word of each being's going back into nothing; both from his not finding it in the prose Translator, and from Resnel's confession in his preface, that he had taken great liberties with his original. But this part of the argument, in which the Poet tells us, that God Connects each Being, greatest with the least; Made beast in aid of Man, and Man of beast; awaking again the old pride of his adversaries, who cannot bear that Man should be thought to be serving as well as served; he takes this occasion again to humble them [from 1. 26 to 53] by the same kind of argument he had so successfully employed in the first Epistle, and which our first Letter has considered at large. However, his adversaries, loth to give up the question, * Commentaire, p. 221. |