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Where flaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Chriftians thirst for gold.
To Be, contents his natural defire,

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

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115

IV. Go, wifer thou! and, in thy scale of fenfe, Weigh thy Opinion against Providence ; Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such, Say, here he gives too little, there too much : Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, If Man's unhappy, God's unjust; If Man alone ingrofs not Heav'n's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there : Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his juftice, be the GoD of GOD. In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies; All quit their fphere, and rufh into the skies. Pride ftill is aiming at the bleft abodes, Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods. Afpiring to be Gods, if Angels fell, Afpiring to be Angels, Men rebel:

VARIATIONS.

After ver. 108. in the first Edition ;

But does he fay the maker is not good,
Till he's exalted to what ftate he wou'd:
Himself alone high Heav'n's peculiar care,
Alone made happy when he will, and where ?

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125

And who but wishes to invert the laws

Of ORDER, fins against th' Eternal Caufe.

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V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies fhine, Earth for whofe ufe? Pride answers, ""Tis for mine: "For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, “Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev'ry flow'r ; "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, funs to light me rife;

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My foot-ftool earth, my canopy the skies." But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning funs when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes fwallow, or when tempefts fweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No ('tis reply'd) the first Almighty Cause "Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;

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145

"Th' exceptions few; fome change fince all began: "And what created perfect?" Why then Man? If the great end be human Happiness,

Then Nature deviates; and can Man do lefs? 150

VER. 131. Ask for what end, etc.] If there be any fault in thefe lines, it is not in the general fentiment, but a want of exactness in expreffing it.-It is the highest absurdity to think that Earth is man's foot-ftool, his canopy the Skies, and the beavenly bodies lighted up principally for his ufe; yet not fo, to fuppofe fruits and minerals given for this end. VER. 150. Then Nature deviates, etc.] "While comets "move in very eccentric orbs, in all manner of pofitions, blind

As much that end a conftant course requires

Of fhow'rs and fun-fhine, as of Man's defires;
As much eternal fprings and cloudless skies,
As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wife.
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's defign,
Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline ?
156
Who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms,
Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the ftorms;
Pours fierce Ambition in a Cæfar's mind,

159 Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs; Account for moral as for natʼral things:

Why charge we Heav'n in thofe, in these acquit ?
In both, to reafon right, is to fubmit.

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind,
That never paffion difcompos'd the mind.
But all fubfifts by elemental flrife;
And paffions are the elements of Life.
The gen'ral ORDER, fince the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

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170

"Fate could never make all the planets move one and the "fame way in orbs concentric; fome inconfiderable irregula"rities excepted, which may have rifen from the mutual ac"tions of comets and planets upon one another, and which "will be apt to increafe, 'till this fyftem wants a reforma❝tion." Sir Ifaac Newton's Optics, Queft. ult.

VER. 169. But all fubfifis, etc.] See this fubject extended in E. ii. from ver. 9o. to 112, 155, etc.

VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he foar,

180

And little lefs than Angel, would be more ;
Now looking downwards, just as griev'd appears 175
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his ufe all creatures if he call,
Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all;
Nature to thefe, without profufion, kind,
The proper organs, proper pow'rs affign'd;
Each feeming want compenfated 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 beaft, each infect, happy in its own :
Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleas'd with nothing, if not bleft with all ?
The blifs of Man (could Pride that blefling find)

Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No pow'rs of body, or of foul to fhare,
But what his nature and his ftate can bear.
Why has not Man a microfcopic eye?

For this plain reafon, man is not a Fly.

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190

VER. 174. And little less than Angel, etc.] Thou haft made bim a little lower than the Angels, and baft crowned him with glory and boncur. Pfalm viii. 9.

VER. 182. Here with degrees of fwiftnefs, etc.] It is a certain axiom in the anatomy of creatures, that, in proportion as they are formed for ftrength, their fwiftnefs is leffened; or as they are formed for fwiftnefs, their ftrength is abated.

Say what the use, were finer optics giv❜n,

T'infpect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n ?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To fmart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,
Die of a rofe in aromatic pain?

If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,

And stunn'd him with the mufic of the fpheres,
How would he wish that Heav'n had left him ftill
The whifp'ring Zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wife;
Alike in what it gives, and what denies ?

VII. Far as Creation's ample range extends,
The scale of fenfual, mental pow'rs afcends:
Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass:
What modes of fight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam :
Of smell, the headlong lionefs between,
And hound fagacious on the tainted green :

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200

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VER, 202. Stunn'd him with the mufic of the fpheres,] This inftance is poetical and even fublime, but misplaced. He is arguing philofophically in a cafe that required him to employ the real objects of fenfe only: and, what is worse, he speaks of this as a real object. If NATURE thunder'd, etc. The cafe is different where (in ver. 253.) he speaks of the motion of the heavenly bodies under the fublime Imagery of ruling Angels: For whether there be ruling Angels or no, there is real motion, which was all his argument wanted; but if there be no mufic of the Spheres, there was no real found, which his argument was obliged to find.

VER. 213. The Leadlong linefs] The manner of the lions

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