"The English Garden," and "Life and Letters

WILLIAM MASON.-1725-1797.

of Gray."

THOMAS PERCY.-1728-1811. Collected "Reliques of English Poetry."
ERASMUS DARWIN. 1731-1802. "The Botanic Garden," a poem.

WILLIAM FALCONER.-1732-1769. "The Shipwreck;" and was himself shipwrecked on 66 The Aurora."

JOHN WESLEY.-1703-1791. The most eminent of the founders of Methodism. "Journal" and "Hymns."

THOMAS REID.-1710-1796. Metaphysician. "Inquiry into the Human Mind," and "Essays on the Intellectual and Active Powers of Man."

LAURENCE STERNE.-1713-1768. "Tristram Shandy" and "The Sentimental Journey." Uncle Toby, Widow Wadman, Corporal Trim, and Dr. Slop, are imperishable characters.

DAVID GARRICK.-1716-1779. The famous actor. "The Lying Valet," "The Miss in her Teens," and other plays.

SAMUEL FOOTE.-1721-1777. Celebrated actor. "The Minor," "The Mayor of Garratt," and many others.

Sir WILLIAM BLACKSTONE.-1723-1780. "Commentaries on the Laws of England."

ADAM SMITH.- 1723-1790.

Moral Sentiments."

"The Wealth of Nations," and "The Theory of

ADAM FERGUSON. -1724-1816. "History of Civil Society," and " History of the Roman Republic."

JAMES BOSWELL. — 1740–1795. WILLIAM PALEY.-1743-1805. ology," and other religious works.

"Life of Samuel Johnson;" a model biography. "Evidences of Christianity," "Natural The

ALEXANDER POPE.

1688-1744.

The great didactic poet of the language, called "the prince of the artificial school of English poetry." His most celebrated productions are "The Rape of the Lock, "The Dunciad," 99 66 Essay on Criticism," and "Essay on Man." Translated

the "Iliad" and "Odyssey."

ESSAY ON MAN.

EPISTLE I.

AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man, -
A mighty maze, but not without a plan;
A wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot,
Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit:
Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert, yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy hights, explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.

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

Through worlds unnumbered, though the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are :
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,

And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less;
Ask of thy mother-earth why oaks were made
Taller or weaker than the weeds they shade;
Or ask of yonder argent fields above
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.
Of systems possible, if 'tis confest
That Wisdom Infinite must form the best,
Where all must fall, or not coherent be,
And all that rises rise in due degree,
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain
There must be somewhere such a rank as man;
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, If God has placed him wrong?
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call
May, must be, right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labored on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain :
In God's, one single can its end produce,
Yet serves to second, too, some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal:
'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,

Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god,

Then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault:

Say, rather, man's as perfect as he ought;

His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter soon or late, or here or there?
The blest to-day is as completely so

As who began a thousand years ago.

III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits, know;
Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,

And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly given,

That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven,
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher, Death; and God adore.
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be, blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind!
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky-way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has given,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, a humbler heaven, -
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold:
To be contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence ;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such;
Say here He gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust;
Yet say, if man's unhappy, God's unjust :
If man alone engross not Heaven's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there,
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice; be the god of God!

In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies :
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes :
Men would be angels; angels would be gods.
Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel;

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of order sins against the Eternal Cause.

V. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use. Pride answers, ""Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew The juice nectareous and the balmy dew; For me the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies."

But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?

66

No," 'tis replied: "the first Almighty Cause

Acts not by partial, but by general laws :

The exceptions few; some change since all begun :
And what created perfect?" Why, then, man?
If the great end be human happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of showers and sunshine as of man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design,
Why, then, a Borgia or a Catiline?

Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms,
Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind ?
From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs;
Account for moral as for natural things:

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air nor ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind:
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The general order, since the world 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 downward, just as grieved, appears

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.

Made for his use all creatures, if he call,
Say what their use, had he the powers of all?
Nature to these, without profusion, kind,
The proper organs, proper powers, assigned;
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 insect, happy in its own.
Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call,

Be pleased with nothing if not blessed with all?
The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind ;

No

powers of body or of soul to share

But what his nature and his state can bear.