Thus she dresses green and gay,
To disperse our cares away.

Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys, warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky;
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm;
Each give each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arm.

See on the mountain's southern side,
Where the prospect opens wide,
Where the evening gilds the tide,
How close and small the hedges lie!
What streaks of meadows cross the eye!
A step methinks may pass the stream,
So little distant dangers seem:
So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through hope's deluding glass,
As yon summits soft and fair
Clad in colours of the air,
Which to those who journey near,
Barren, brown, and rough appear;
Still we tread the same coarse way,
The present's still a cloudy day.

O may I with myself agree, And never covet what I see; Content me with an humble shade, My passions tamed, my wishes laid: For while our wishes wildly roll, We banish quiet from the soul; "Tis thus the busy beat the air, And misers gather wealth and care. Now, even now, my joys run high, As on the mountain-turf I lie, While the wanton Zephyr sings, And in the vale perfumes his wings; While the waters murmur deep; While the shepherd charms his sheep; While the birds unbounded fly, And with music fill the sky; Now, even now, my joys run high!

Be full, ye courts, be great who will,
Search for Peace with all your skill,
Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor,

In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads and mountain-heads,
Along with Pleasure, close allied,
Ever by each other's side:

And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill.

CHAPTER XVI.

110

120

130

140

150

REIGN OF GEORGE II. POPE, JOHNSON, GRAY, COLLINS, AND OTHERS.-A.D. 1727 TO A.D. 1760. THE reign of Louis XIV. in France ended just after the close of the reign of Queen Anne in England.

Anne died on the 1st of August, 1714, Louis on the 1st of September, 1715. Louis XV. came to the throne a child of five, and France was under the regency of the Duke of Orleans, a man of corrupt life, until 1726. The young King of France had just come of age, and begun to govern in his own right, at the time when George II. became King of England. Voltaire was then a young man, thirty-one years old, and Jean Jacques Rousseau a boy of fifteen. That movement of thought which, by the end of George II.'s reign, would bring Voltaire and Rousseau to the front as leaders, each in his own way, of a reaction against formalism had been slowly gathering strength, in France and elsewhere, since the date of the English Revolution. From the English Revolution of 1688-9 to the French Revolution of 1788-9 is a perio of just a hundred years, full of significance for students of the present age. The essence of the eighteenth century does not lie in the fact that it was an age of shams and windy sentimentalism. There were many shams and there was much windy sentimentalism; but the work of the century is to be studied in the rise of protest against shams, the ever-growing sense that human society had fallen into a way of life unworthy of the aims and powers of true men. Corrupt forms of truth stood for the truth itself. Religion rested on authority of men who sought church offices corruptly, and disgraced them by their lives. Liberty in France rested upon the will of a sovereign with a seraglio in the Parc aux Cerfs, and whose whole machinery of government showed the political system to be rotten to the core. At the same time there had been developed in France a thriving middle class that became bold of thought, and the audacity of French speculation carried many on into a desire to act the multiplying dreams of their best thinkers. Of the rising of this tide of opinion there is abundant indication in the later poetry of Pope. His "Dunciad," published in its first form in three books at the beginning of George II's reign in 1728, was still writing about writing. It did for the petty critics and poets of that time what Boileau had done for their fraternity in France by his satires begun in the year 1660. Lewis Theobald was made the hero of the "Dunciad" in this its first form because he had dealt cavalierly with Pope's editing of Shakespeare. But with the "Dunciad" Pope swept from himself the world of petty writing upon petty themes, and turned to essentials of life, to poems that represented the advancing tide of thought, which occupied all the rest of his life as a poet; except that in 1741-three years before his death-the "Dunciad" was re-issued in a second form, with Colley Cibber substituted for Theobald in the place of hero, and a fourth book added.

In 1697 Pierre Bayle first published at Rotterdam his "Historical and Critical Dictionary." Its discussions raised grave doubts of the justice of God's rule in human affairs, if indeed God ruled at all. The book was able and rich in interest; bold questioning was taken up by others, who saw church authority too commonly represented by the mandates of ignorant self-seeking men, in whom there was not the spirit of religion. Bayle's Dictionary was

translated into English in 1710, and the religious Addison made constant use of it, delighting in the stores of information it contained. In the same year (1710) the philosopher Leibnitz published in Paris and in French a book called "Theodicée" (from two Greek words meaning God's justice), in which his purpose was to confront the doubts of Bayle. Bayle, he said (for he was then dead), is now in heaven, and sees Truth at its source. What was dark to him here is clear to him there: and Leibnitz argued that wherever God's ways seem unequal and ours equal, it is because our field of view is too limited to take in the whole design of God in His creation. If we saw all we should understand all, and know that, as Milton expressed it, "All is best, though we oft doubt what the unsearchable dispose of Highest Wisdom brings about, and ever best found in the close," or as Pope more weakly worded it, in accord with the adopted French method of phrase-making, "Whatever is, is right." Pope meant only what Milton meant, and what Leibnitz, from whom he took his reasoning, had said; but he suffered for his fault of style the penalty of a complete misconstruction of his meaning. The chief religious doubts of Pope's day were not, as in Milton's, upon the consonance of Calvinistic or other tenets of theology with God's goodness and justice. The question was whether Man and Nature were not evidences against the justice or against the very existence of a Supreme Being. Parnell we have seen touching it in the "Hermit;" Thomson referred to it often in his "Seasons." In Pope's "Satires," "Moral Essays," and "Essay on Man," produced between 1731 and 1738, there is continued dwelling upon social questions, with incidental vindications of Divine justice in pieces not written, like the Essay on Man," for the direct purpose of meeting doubt. It is a significant fact that Pope, then the chief living English poet, was from 1732 to 1734 publishing the four epistles of his "Essay on Man" to meet, according to the measure of his knowledge and his skill, the same form of doubt which in 1736 the ablest English divine of the day, Joseph Butler, sought to meet in his "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature." Let us follow Pope's argument on the relation of man to society in

66

THE THIRD EPISTLE OF THE ESSAY ON MAN."

Here then we rest: "The Universal Cause
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws."
In all the madness of superfluous health,
The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,
Let this great truth be present night and day;
But most be present 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 single atoms each to other tend,

10

Attract, 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.

See dying vegetables life sustain,

See life dissolving vegetate again:

All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die,)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign: Parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All serv'd, all serving: nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flow'ry lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heav'n shall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year?

Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer:
The hog, that ploughs not nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

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

Grant that the pow'rful still the weak control; Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole: 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? Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods, To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods; For some his int'rest prompts him to provide, For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride: All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy Th' extensive blessing of his luxury. That very life his learned hunger craves, He saves from famine, from the savage saves; Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, And, till he ends the being, makes it blest; Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain, Than favour'd Man by touch ethereal slain. The creature had his feast of life before: Thou too must perish when thy feast is o'er! To each unthinking being Heav'n, a friend, Gives not the useless knowledge of its end: To Man imparts it; but with such a view As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too: The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear, Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. Great standing miracle! that Heav'n assign'd Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.

Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best, To bliss alike by that direction tend,

And find the means proportion'd to their end.

Say, where full Instinct is th' unerring guide, What Pope or Council can they need beside? Reason, however able, cool at best,

Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays till we call, and then not often near;
But honest Instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit;
While still too wide or short is human Wit;
Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier Reason labours at in vain.
This too serves always, Reason never long:
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And Reason raise o'er Instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.

Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line?
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before:
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?

1

God in the nature of each being founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he fram'd a Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness,
So from the first, eternal Order ran,
And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quick'ning æther keeps,

Or breathes thro' air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not Man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;
They love themselves, a third time, in their race.
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismiss'd to wander earth or air,
There stops the Instinct, and there ends the care;
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.

90

100

110

120

130

Mem'ry and forecast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combin'd,
Still spread the int'rest, and preserv'd the kind.

Nor think, in Nature's state they blindly trod; The state of Nature was the reign of God: Self-love and Social 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 beast, joint tenant of the shade; The same his table, and the same his bed; No murder cloth'd him, and no murder fed.

In the same temple, the resounding wood,

All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God,

The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undrest,
Unbrib'd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heav'n's attribute was Universal Care,
And Man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to Nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds;
The Fury-passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on Man a fiercer savage, Man.

See him from Nature rising slow to Art!
To copy Instinct then was Reason's part;
Thus then to Man the voice of Nature spake—
"Go, from the Creatures thy instructions take:
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. Here too all forms of social union find

And hence let Reason, late, instruct Mankind :
Here subterranean works and cities see;
There towns aerial on the waving tree.
Learn each small People's genius, policies,
The Ant's republic, and the realm of Bees;
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And Anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, tho' a Monarch reign,
Their sep'rate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as Nature, and as fix'd as Fate.
In vain thy Reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle Justice in her net of Law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,

Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;

And, for those Arts mere Instinct could afford,
Be crown'd as Monarchs, or as Gods ador'd.

Great Nature spoke; observant Men obey'd; Cities were built, Societies were made. Here rose one little state; another near Grew by like means, and join'd, thro' love or fear. Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend, And there the streams in purer rills descend? What War could ravish, Commerce could bestow, And he return'd a friend who came a foe.

Converse and Love mankind might strongly draw,

When Love was Liberty, and Nature Law.

Thus States were form'd; the name of King unknown,

Till common int'rest placed the sway in one.

"Twas Virtue only or in arts or arms,

Diffusing blessings, or averting harms; The same which in a Sire the Sons obey'd,

A Prince the Father of a People made.

Till then, by Nature crown'd, each Patriarch sate, King, priest, and parent of his growing state; On him, their second Providence, they hung, Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. He from the wond'ring furrow call'd the food, Taught to command the fire, control the flood, Draw forth the monsters of th' abyss profound, Or fetch th' aerial eagle to the ground. Till drooping, sick'ning, dying, they began Whom they rever'd as God to mourn as Man: Then, looking up from sire to sire, explor'd One great First Father, and that first ador'd. Or plain tradition that this All begun, Convey'd unbroken faith from sire to son: The Worker from the Work distinct was known, And simple Reason never sought but one. Ere Wit oblique had broke that steady light, Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right, To Virtue in the paths of Pleasure trod, And own'd a Father when he own'd a God. Love all the faith, and all th' allegiance then; For Nature knew no right divine in Men, No ill could fear in God; and understood A sov'reign being but a sov'reign good. True faith, true policy, united ran,

210

220

230

251

Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shar'd the Tyranny, then lent it aid;
And Gods of Conqu'rors, Slaves of Subjects made.
She 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,
When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground,
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To Pow'r unseen, and mightier far than they;
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw Gods descend, and fiends infernal rise;
Here fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her Devils, and weak Hope her Gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were Rage, Revenge, or Lust,
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide,
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride;
Then sacred seem'd th' ethereal vault no more;
Altars grew marble then, and reck'd with gore;
Then first the Flamen tasted living food;
Next his grim idol smear'd with human blood;
With Heav'n's own thunders shook the world below,
And play'd the God an engine on his foe.

So drives Self-love, thro' just and thro' unjust,
To one Man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust:
The same Self-love, in all, becomes the cause
Of what restrains him, Government and Laws.

260

270

For what one likes, if others like as well,
What serves one will, when many wills rebel,
How shall he keep,-what, sleeping or awake,
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?
His safety must his liberty restrain :
All join to guard what each desires to gain.
Forc'd into virtue thus by Self-defence,
Ev'n Kings learn'd justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursu'd,
And found the private in the public good.
'Twas then, the studious head or gen'rous mind,
Follower of God or friend of human-kind,

Poet or Patriot, rose but to restore

The Faith and Moral Nature gave before;
Re-lum'd her ancient light, not kindled new;
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
Taught Pow'r's due use to People and to Kings,
Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings,
The less, or greater, set so justly true,

That touching one must strike the other too;
Till jarring int'rests, of themselves create

Th' according music of a well-mix'd State.

Such is the World's great harmony, that springs From Order, Union, full Consent of things:

280

Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade,-
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,

And, in proportion as it blesses, blest,-
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring
Beast, Man, or Angel, Servant, Lord, or King.
For Forms of Government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best :
For Modes of Faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
But all Mankind's concern is Charity:

All must be false that thwart this One great End;
And all of God that bless Mankind or mend.

Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives.
On their own axis as the Planets run,

Yet make at once their circle round the Sun:

So two consistent motions act the Soul;

And one regards Itself, and one the Whole.

Thus God and Nature link'd the gen'ral frame, And bade Self-love and Social be the same.

300

310

漿

Montesquieu, born in the year when William III. came to the English throne, was in England when, in 1733, this "Third Epistle of the Essay on Man' was published. He was studying English institu tions, looking to reforms at home, and dwelling on the needs of his own country. He went home in 1734, and wrote a book on "The Causes of the Grandeur and Declension of the Romans," then set himself to fourteen years' work at his book on the "Spirit of the Laws," based on his studies of the foundations of English liberty. This book, published in 1748, was followed in 1751 by the first volume of the famous French Encyclopédie, planned by Denis Diderot, who was born towards the close of Queen Anne's reign in 1712. This work was in course of production during the next fourteen years, and was still in course of issue at the close of George II's reign. It dealt with the whole round of knowledge in the boldest way, and marked the surging of the

tide of thought during the rise of the great storm then gathering.

The Rev. William Broome, of St. John's College, Cambridge, who became vicar of Eye, in Suffolk, and died in 1745, shared with Elijah Fenton half the work of the translation of the "Odyssey," produced by Pope in 1725 and 1726. Broome, who had contributed notes to the "Iliad," translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 12th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books of the "Odyssey," and compiled the notes. He was a fair poet, and some of his verse bears witness to warm friendship between him and Fenton. These lines are by William Broome :

COURAGE IN LOVE.

"My eyes with floods of tears o'erflow,
My bosom heaves with constant woe;
Those eyes, which thy unkindness swells,
That bosom, where thy image dwells.

How could I hope so weak a flame
Could ever warm that matchless dame,
When none Elysium must behold,
Without a radiant bough of gold?

The books of the "Odyssey" translated by Fenton were the 1st, 4th, 19th, and 20th, but Pope revised the work of his fellow-labourers. Pope paid his fellow-translators £700 or £800, and took for his own share about £3,700, since it was his reputation Few that produced the large sale of the work. readers have been critical enough to observe in Pope's "Odyssey" when they are reading Broome or

Fenton and when Pope.

Another minor poet of those days, like Broome a clergyman, was Christopher Pitt, a man of high character, with natural good taste, who held the living of Pimperne, in Dorsetshire. He published in 1740 a good translation of Virgil's "Eneid," and he translated also the "Art of Poetry," written in Latin by the Italian poet Girolamo Vida, in the days of Leo X. Pitt was prompted to this translation by Pope's reference to Vida in his "Essay on Criticism." Among Pitt's original poems is an unfinished imitation of Horace that applies half playfully to the art of writing sermons, in which he took a professional interest, the art of writing about writing, in which he was interested as a poet of his time :

--

ON THE ART OF PREACHING.

"Tis hers, in distant spheres to shine,

At distance to admire, is mine:

Doom'd, like the enamour'd youth, to groan For a new goddess form'd of stone."

While thus I spoke, Love's gentle power

Descended from th' ethereal bower;

A quiver at his shoulder hung,

A shaft he grasp'd, and bow unstrung.
All nature own'd the genial god,

And the spring flourish'd where he trod:
My heart, no stranger to the guest,
Flutter'd, and labour'd in my breast;
When, with a smile that kindles joy
Ev'n in the gods, began the boy:

"How vain these tears! Is man decreed, By being abject, to succeed?

Hop'st thou by meagre looks to move?

Are women frighten'd into love?

He most prevails who nobly dares,

In love a hero, as in wars:

Ev'n Venus may be known to yield,
But 'tis when Mars disputes the field.
Sent from a daring hand my dart
Strikes deep into the fair one's heart:
To winds and waves thy cares bequeath,
A sigh is but a waste of breath.
What though gay youth, and every grace
That beauty boasts, adorn her face,
Yet goddesses have deign'd to wed,
And take a mortal to their bed:
And heaven, when gifts of incense rise,
Accepts it, though it cloud their skies.
Mark! how this marigold conceals
Her beauty, and her bosom veils,
How from the dull embrace she flies
Of Phoebus, when his beams arise:
But when his glory he displays,
And darts around his fiercer rays,
Her charms she opens, and receives
The vigorous god into her leaves."

And there just hatch'd, and breaking from his egg; While monster crowds on monster through the piece,

Who could help laughing at a sight like this?

Or as a drunkard's dream together brings

A court of cobblers, and a mob of kings;

Such is a sermon, where, confus'dly dark,

10

Join Hoadly, Sharp, South, Sherlock, Wake, and Clarke. So eggs of different parishes will run

To batter, when you beat six yolks to one;

So six bright chemic liquors if you mix,

In one dark shadow vanish all the six.

This license priests and painters ever had,
To run bold lengths, but never to run mad;
For those can't reconcile God's grace to sin,
Nor these paint tigers in an ass's skin;
No common dauber in one piece would join
A fox and goose,-unless upon a sign.

Some steal a page of sense from Tillotson,
And then conclude divinely with their own;
Like oil on water mounts the prelate up,
His grace is always sure to be at top;
That vein of mercury its beams will spread,
And shine more strongly through a mine of lead.
With such low arts your hearers never bilk,
For who can bear a fustian lined with silk?
Sooner than preach such stuff, I'd walk the town,
Without my scarf, in Whiston's draggled gown;
Ply at the Chapter, and at Child's, to read
For pence, and bury for a groat a head.

Some easy subject choose, within your power,
Or you will ne'er hold out for half an hour.
Still to your hearers all your sermons sort;
Who'd preach against corruption at a court?
Against church power at visitations bawl?
Or talk about damnation at Whitehall?

20

20

30

40