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In all the madness of fuperfluous health,
The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,

COMMENTARY.

But to prevent our refting there, God hath made each need the assistance of another; and so

"On mutual wants built mutual happiness."

It was necessary to explain the two first lines, the better to fee the pertinency and force of what followeth (from Ver. 2 to 7.) where the Poet warns such to take notice of this truth, whose circumstances placing them in an imaginary station of Independance, and a real state of insensibility to mutual wants (from whence general Happiness results) make them but too apt to overlook the true system of things; viz. men in full health and opulence. This caution was necessary with regard to Society; but ftill more necessary with regard to Religion: Therefore he especially recommends the memory of it as well to Clergy as Laity, when they preach or pray; because the preacher, who doth not confider the first Cause under this view, as a Being confulting the good of the whole, must needs give a very unworthy idea of him; and the supplicant, who prayeth as one not related to a whole, or as difregarding the happiness of it, will not only pray in vain, but offend his Maker by an impious attempt to counter-work his dispensation.

NOTES.

VER. 3.- fuperfluous health,] Immoderate labour and immoderate study are equally the great impairers of health: They, whose station sets them above both, must needs have an abundance of health, which not being employed in the common service, but wasted in Luxury, the Poet properly calls a fuperfluity.

•VER. 4.-impudence of wealth,] Because wealth pretends to be wisdom, wit, learning, honesty, and, in short, all the virtues in their turns,

Let this great truth be present night and day; 5 But most be prefent, if we preach or pray.

Look round our World; behold the chain of

Love

Combining all below and all above.
See plastic Nature working to this end,
The fingle atoms each to other tend,

COMMENTARY,

10

VER. 7. Look round our World, &c.] Next he introduceth his system of human Sociability (Ver. 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.

.

VER.9. See plastic Nature working to this end,] This he proveth, first (from Ver. 8 to 13) on the noble theory of At

NOTES.

VER. 3, 4, 5, 6. M. Du Resnel not feeing into the admirable purpose of the caution, contained in these four lines, hath quite dropt the most material circumstances contained in the last of them; and, what is worse, for the fake of a foolifh antithesis, hath deftroyed the whole propriety of the thought in the two first: and fo 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 least need of this caution, as being leaft apt to forget, That God confults the good of the whole, and provides for it by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants; because those who yet retain the fmart of any fresh calamity, are most compaffionate to others fabouring under distresses, and most prompt and ready to relieve them.

VER. 9. See plastic Nature, &c.] M. Du Resnel mifAttract, attracted to, the next in place Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace. See Matter next, with various life endu'd,

Press to one centre still, the gen'ral Good.

COMMENTARY.

traction, from the economy of the material world; where there is a general conspiracy in all the particles of Matter to work for one end; the use, beauty, and harmony of the whole mass.

VER. 13. See Matter next, &c.] The second argument (from Ver. 12 to 27) is taken from the vegetable and animal world; whose Beings serve mutually for the production, support, and fuftentation of each other.

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;
" All serv'd, all serving"-

awaking again the old pride of his adversaries, who cannot bear that man should be thought to be ferving as well as

NOTES.

took this description of the preservation of the material Universe, by the equality of attraction, for a defcription of its creation; and so translates it

"Voi du sein du Chaos eclater la lumiere,

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Chaque atome ebranlé courir pour s'embrasser," &c. This destroys 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, co-operates with God's general dispensation; whereas the circumftance of a creation proves nothing but a Creator.

VER. 12. Form'd and impell'd, &c.] To make Matter fo cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts, is as necessary as that

Know, Nature's children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear. While Man exclaims, " See all things for my

"ufe!"

45

" See man for mine!" replies a pamper'd goose: And just as short of reafon he must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Grant that the pow'rful still the weak controul; Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole: 50

VARIATIONS.

After Ver. 46. in the former Edition,

What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat him!
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him.
As far as Goose could judge, he reason'd right;
But as to Man, mistook the matter quite.

COMMENTARY.

VER. 49. Grant that the pow'rful till the weak controul] However, his adversaries, loth to give up the question, will reafon upon the matter; and we are now to suppose them objecting against Providence in this manner. - We grant, say they, that in the irrational, as in the inanimate creation, all is ferved, and all is ferving: But, with regard to Man, the

NOTES.

VER. 45. See all things for my use!] On the contrary, the wife man hath said, The Lord hath made all things for bimself, Prov. xvi. 4.

VER. 50. Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole:] Alluding to the witty system of that Philosopher, which made Animals mere Machines, insensible of pain or pleasure; and fo encouraged Men in the exercise of that Tyranny over their fellow-creatures, confequent on such a principle.

Nature that Tyrant checks; He only knows, And helps, another creature's wants and woes. Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,

Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?

COMMENTARY.

cafe is different; he standeth single. For his reason hath endowed him both with power and address sufficient to make all things ferve him; and his Self-love, of which you have fo largely provided for him, will indispose him, in his turn, to ferve any: Therefore your theory is imperfect.-Not so, replies the Poet (from Ver. 48 to 79.) I grant that Man, indeed, affects to be the Wit and Tyrant of the whole, and would fain shake off

"that chain of love,

" Combining all below and all above :"

But Nature, even by the very gift of Reason, checks this tyrant. For Reafon endowing Man with the ability of fetting together the memory of the past with his conjectures about the future; and past misfortunes making him apprehenfive of more to come, this disposeth him to pity and relieve others in a state of fuffering. And the passion growing habitual, naturally extendeth its effects to all that have a sense of fuffering. Now as brutes have neither Man's Reason, nor his inordinate Self-love, to draw them from the system of beneficence; so they wanted not, and therefore have not, this human sympathy of another's misery: By which paffion, we fee, those qualities, in Man, balance one another; and so retain him in that orderly connexion, in which Providence hath placed its whole creation. But this is not all; Man's interest, amusement, vanity, and luxury, tie him still closer to the system of beneficence, by obliging him to provide for the support of other animals; and though it be, for the most part, only to devour them with the greater gust, yet this does not abate the proper happiness of the animals so preferved, to

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