The good must merit God's peculiar care; If Calvin feel Heav'n's blessing, or its rod, 135 This cries, there is, and that, there is no God. 140 Nor with one system can they all be blest. And what rewards your Virtue, punish mine. 146 And which more blest? who chain'd his country? say, Or he whose Virtue sigh'd to lose a day! "But sometimes Virtue starves, while Vice is fed." What then? Is the reward of Virtue bread? That, Vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil; The knave deserves it, when he tills the soil, 150 VARIATIONS. After Ver. 142 in some Editions, Give each a System, all must be at strife; What diff'rent Systems for a Man and Wife? The joke, though lively, was ill plac'd, and therefore struck out of the text. NOTES. Ver. 136. tell us who they are?] This again is exactly copied from Wollaston, section v. p. 110, who quotes Virgil on the occasion, -Cadit et Ripheus, justissimus unus Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus æqui: Dis aliter visum. Ver. 138. instrument of hell;] The hard fate of Servetus will remain for ever as an indelible mark of the violence, cruelty, and intolerance, of Calvin. The knave deserves it when he tempts the main, 155 But grant him Riches, your demand is o'er? "No-shall the good want Health, the good want Pow'r?" Add Health, and Pow'r, and ev'ry earthly thing. Nay, why external for internal giv'n? Why is not Man a God, and Earth a Heav'n? NOTES. 160 Ver. 157. But grant him Riches,] It does by no means follow, that because he should want riches, wealth, and power, he should want every thing, and never know where to stop. Ver. 162. Why is not Man a God,] The manner in which Ramsay endeavours, but in vain, to explain the doctrine of the Essay, is as follows: "Pope is far from asserting, that the present state of Man is his primitive state, and is conformable to Order: His design is to shew, that since the Fall, all is proportioned with weight, measure, and harmony, to the condition of a degraded Being, who suffers, and who deserves to suffer, and who cannot be restored but by sufferings; that physical evils are designed to cure moral evil; that the passions and the crimes of the most abandoned men are confined, directed, and governed, by infinite wisdom, in such a manner as to make order emerge out of confusion, light of darkness, and to call out innumerable advantages from the transitory inconveniences of this life; that this so gracious Providence conducts all things to its own ends, and without either causing or approving the effects of their deliberate malice; that all is ordained in the physical order, as all is free in the moral; that these two orders are connected closely without fatality, and are not subject to that necessity which renders us virtuous without merit, and vicious without crime; that we see at present but a single wheel of the magnificent machine of the universe; but a small link of the great chain; and but an insignificant part of that immense plan which will one day be unfolded. Then will Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, 166 170 VARIATIONS. After Verse 172 in the MS. Say, what rewards this idle world imparts, NOTES. God justify all the incomprehensible proceedings of his wisdom and goodness, and will vindicate himself, as Milton speaks, from the rash judgment of mortals." But there are too many passages in this Essay to suffer us to admit of the forced interpretation here given by Ramsay. Ver. 170. Then give Humility] In a work of so serious and severe a cast, in a work of reasoning, in a work of theology, designed to explain the most interesting subject that can employ the mind of man, surely such strokes of levity, of satire, of ridicule, as also lines 204. 224. 276. however poignant and witty, are ill placed and disgusting, are violations of that propriety which Pope in general so strictly observed. Lucretius preserves throughout, the dignity he at first assumed; even his sarcasms and irony on the superstitious, have something august, and a noble haughtiness in them; as in particular where he asks, "How it comes to pass that Jupiter sometimes strikes his own temples with his thunderbolts; whether he employs himself in casting them in the deserts for the sake of exercising his arm; and why he hurls them in places where he cannot strike the guilty, "Tum fulmina mittat, et ædes Justice a Conqu'ror's sword, or Truth a gown, 175 180 185 Oh fool! to think God hates the worthy mind, NOTES. Ver. 173. Weak, foolish Man!] These eight succeeding lines were not in former editions; and indeed none of them, especially lines 177 and 179, do any credit to the Author, and rather make us wish they had been suppressed. Ver. 185. give Repute, or Trust,] We see in the world, alas! too many examples of riches giving repute and trust, content and pleasure, to the worthless and profligate. Ver. 189. God hates the worthy mind,] The ground of the complaint is, not that the worthy man does not possess a large and ample fortune, but because he sometimes wants even necessaries. Honour and shame from no Condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies. NOTES. Ver. 194. Act well your part,] The Ancients were very fond of this comparison of human life with a drama. Epictetus uses it in a well-known passage, chapter 27, and Arrian also recites it: it is repeated twice or thrice in Stobæus; and Antoninus finishes his meditations with an allusion to it. Ivie has given it from Epictetus in a manner so truly Horatian, that I cannot forbear repeating it : "Nos sumus in scena; quin et, mandante magistro, Incedam, pannis seu veler squalidus, imo In triviis rogitem æra; placet lex” But our Author found the same illustration in his friend's Essay. See Bolingbroke, vol. v. p. 79. "The whole world, nay, the whole universe, is filled with Beings which are all connected in one immense design. The sensitive inhabitants of our globe, like the dramatis personæ, have different characters, and are applied to different purposes of action in every scene. The several parts of the material world, like the machines of a theatre, were contrived not for the actors, but for the action: and the whole order and system of the drama would be disordered and spoiled, if any alteration was made in either. The nature of every creature, his manner of being, is adapted to his state here, to the place he is to inhabit, and, as we may say, to the part he is to act. If man was a creature inferior or superior to what he is, he would be a very preposterous creature in this system. Gulliver's horses made a very absurd figure in the place of men, and men would make one as absurd in the place of horses. I do not think that philosophers have shewn in every instance why every thing is what it is, and as it is, or that nothing could be, in any one case, otherwise than it is, without producing a greater inconveniency to the whole than the particular inconveniency that would be removed. But I am sure this has been proved in so many instances, that it is trifling, as well as profane, to deny it in any. We complain often of our senses, and sometimes of our reasoning faculties: both are defective, weak, fallible and yet if the former were more extensive, more acute, |