Mais un esprit sublime en vain veut s' elever,
A ce degré parfait qu' il tache de trouver;
Et toujours mecontent de ce qu'il vient de faire
Il plaist a tout le monde, & ne scauroit se plaire.

When Boileau read these words to his friend Moliere, to whom they are addressed, the latter, squeezing his hand with earnestness, said, "This is one of the best truths you have ever uttered. I am not one of those sublime geniuses of whom you speak; but such as I am, I must declare I have never wrote any thing in my life with which I have been thoroughly satisfied.'

34. See matter next, with various life endu'd, Press to one centre still, the genʼral 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 borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.†

POPE has again copied Shaftesbury so closely in this passage, as to use almost his very words: "Thus in the several orders of terrestrial forms, a resignation

* Sat. 2. 85.

+ Ep. 3. v. 13.

a resignation is required, a sacrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death sustain the animals; and the animal bodies dissolved, enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous insects are reduced by the superior kinds of birds and beasts; and these again are checked by man; who, in his turn, submits to other natures, and resigns his form a sacrifice in common to the rest of things. And if in natures so little exalted or pre-eminent above each other, the sacrifice of interest can appear so just, how much more reasonably may all inferior natures be subjected to the superior nature of the world !”*

35. 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 flowery lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.f

*The Moralists, page 130.

The

After borrowing so largely

from this treatise, our author should not, methinks, have ridiculed it, as he does, in the Fourth Book of the Dunciad, ver.

417.

Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw.

† Ver. 27.

The poetry of these lines is as beautiful as the philosophy is solid. "They who imagine that

be

all things in this world were made for the immediate use of man alone, run themselves into inextricable difficulties. Man, indeed, is the head of this lower part of the creation, and perhaps it was designed to be absolutely under his command. But that all things here tend directly to his own use, is, I think, neither easy nor necessary to be proved. Some manifestly serve for the food and support of others, whose souls may necessary to prepare and preserve their bodies for that purpose, and may at the same time be happy in a consciousness of their own existence. 'Tis probable they are intended to promote each others good reciprocally. Nay, man himself contributes to the happiness,* and betters the condition of the brutes in several respects, by cultivating and improving the ground, by watching the seasons, by protecting and providing for them,

* 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.

Ep. iii. v. 63.

them, when they are unable to protect and provide for themselves." These are the words of Dr. Law, in his learned Commentary on King's Origin of Evil, first published in Latin, 1701; a work of penetration and close reasoning; which, it is remarkable, Bayle had never read, but only some extracts from it, when he first wrote his famous article of the Paulicians, in his Dictionary, where he has artfully employed all that force and acuteness of argument, which he certainly possessed, in promoting the gloomy and uncomfortable scheme of Scepticism or Manicheism.

36. And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.*

There is a fine observation of Montesquieut concerning the condition of brutes. They are deprived

Ep. iii. 97.

We ought not to be blind to the faults of this fine writer, whatever applause he deserves in general. But it must be confessed, that his style is too short, abrupt, and epigrammatic; he tells us himself, he was fond of Lucius Florus; and he be lieved too credulously, and laid too great a stress upon, the relations of voyage-writers and travellers; as, indeed, did Locke, for which he is ridiculed by Shaftesbury, vol. i. p. 344, of the Characteristics,

deprived of the high advantages we enjoy, but they have some which we want. They have not our hopes, but then they are without our fears: they are subject, like us, to death, but it is without knowing it: most of them are even more attentive than we are to self-preservation; and they do not make so bad a use of their passions. B. i. c. 1.

37. Who taught the nations of the field and wood,
To shun their poison, and to chuse their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand ?*

This passage is highly finished; such objects are more suited to the nature of poetry than abstract ideas. Every verb and epithet has here a descriptive force. We find more imagery from these lines to the end of the epistle, than in any other parts of this Essay. The origin of the connexions in social life, the account of the state

VOL. II.

H

of

Characteristics. If Shaftesbury (said the great Bishop Butler) had lived to see the candor and moderation of the present times in discussing religious subjects, he would have been a good Christian.

* Ver. 99.