All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy Th' extensive blessing of his luxury, That very life his learned hunger craves, He faves from famine, from the savage faves; 65 And, 'till he ends the being, makes it bleft; ༡༠ 75 II. Whether with Reafon, or with Inftinct bleft, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which fuits them beft; 80 To blifs alike by that direction tend, And find the means proportion'd to their end. NOTES. VER. 68. Than favour'd Man, &c.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals fince, efteemed those who were ftruck by lightning as facred perfons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. P. F Say, where full Inftinct is th' unerring guide, While ftill too wide or short is human Wit; 85 90 95 Who taught the nations of the field and wood To fhun their poison, and to chufe their food? 100 Prefcient, the tides or tempefts to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the fand? VARIATIONS. After ver. 84. in the MS. While Man, with op'ning views of various ways Who made the fpider parallels defign, Sure as De-moivre, without rule or line? 105 Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before? And creature link'd to creature, man to man. 120 Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace; The link diffolves, each feeks a fresh embrace, A longer care man's helpless kind demands, 130 At once extend the int'reft, and the love; And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise, Still as one brood, and as another rofe, These natʼral love maintain'd, habitual thofe: 140 [trods IV. Nor think, in NATURE'S STATE they blindly The ftate of Nature was the reign of god: Self-love and focial at her birth began, Union the bond of all things, and of Man. Pride then was not; nor Arts, that pride to aid; Man walk'd with beaft, joint tenant of the shade; NOTES. 150 VER. 152. Man walk'd with beaft, joint tenant of the Shade:] The poet ftill takes his imagery from Platonic The fame his table, and the fame his bed; NOTES. 155 ideas for the reafon given above. Plato had faid from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in ufe was common to man and beafts. Moral inftructors took advantage of the popular fenfe of this tradition, to convey their precepts under those fables, which give fpeech to the whole brute creation. The naturalifts understood the tradition to fignify, that, in the first Ages, Men used inarticulate founds, like beafts, to exprefs their wants and fenfations; and that it was by flow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic. and Gregory of Nyff. VER. 156. All vocal beings, &c.] This may be well explained by a fublime paffage of the pfalmift, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of the great ideas of those O Chains of Love, Combining all below, and all above, Which to one point and to one center bring Beast, Man, or Angel, Servant, Lord, or King; breaks out into this rapturous and divine apostrophe, to call back the devious creation to its priftine rectitude (that very state our author defcribes above): "Praise the Lord, "all his angels; praise him, all ye hofts. Praise ye him, "fun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light. Let "them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded, "and they were created. Praise the Lord, from the "earth, ye dragons, and all deeps; fire and hail, fnow "and vapour, ftormy wind fulfilling his word: Moun |