before was described as twining with laurels, and being reaped in harvests. 47. When nature ficken'd, and each gale was death *. THIS is a verse of a marvellous comprehenfion and expreffiveness. The direfulness of this peftilence is more emphatically set forth in these few words, than in forty fuch odes as Sprat's on the plague at Athens +. 48. What makes all physical or moral ill?— There deviates Nature, and here wanders will §. POPE here accounts for the introduction of moral evil from the abuse of man's free will. This is the scriptural folution of that grand and difficult question, which in vain hath puzzled and bewildered the fpeculatifts of fo many ages; ποθεν το κακον. Milton, in one of his smaller and neglected poems, has left us a fublime paffage founded on the Christian doc * Ver. 108. + Ταυθ' ότι μεν εσιν ισχυρά, και ribaga, και αξιωματικα. He elsewhere commends a writer, on account of his, Turoτntos, και σεμνότητος. Dionyf. Halicarnaf. περι συνθέσεως. τμ. κιβ. § Ver. 111. tr trine of the Fall, and of the preceding harmony of all things. 49. That we on earth with undifcording voice To their great Lord, whofe love their motion fway'd In first obedience, and their state of good *. A better wou'd you fix? Then give Humility a coach and fix †. Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; Not one looks backward, onward ftill he goes, To figh for ribbands if thou art fo filly, Mark how they grace Lord Umbra or Sir Billy [. In a work of fo ferious and severe a caft, in a work of reafoning, in a work of theology * At a Solemn Mufic. vol. ii. pag. 38. + Ver. 17. || Ver. 276. 1 Ver. 223. defigned defigned to explain the most interesting subject that can employ the mind of man, surely such ftrokes of levity, of fatire, of ridicule, however poignant and witty, are ill placed and disgusting, are violations of that propriety which POPE in general fo ftrictly observed. Lucretius preferves throughout, the dignity he at first affumed; even his farcasms and irony on the fuperftitious, have fomething auguft, and a noble haughtiness in them; as in particular where he asks how it come to pass that Jupiter fometimes ftrikes his own temples with his thunderbolts; whether he employs himself in cafting them in the deferts for the fake of exercising his arm; and why he hurls them in places where he cannot strike the guilty. Tum fulmina mittat; et ædes Sæpe fuas difturbet, et in deferta recedens Sæviat, exercens telum, quod fæpe nocentes * Lib. ii. ver. 1100. He He has turned the infult into a magnificent image. 50. Heroes are much the fame, the point's agreed From Macedonia's madman to the Swede *. THE modern Alexander has been thus characterized by the British Juvenal, in lines as nervous and energetic as are to be found in any part of our author. A frame of adamant, a foul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire; And afterwards of his unexpected death. Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound? A petty fortress and a dubious hand; He left a name, at which the world grew pale, 51. Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble ftirs the peaceful lake †. Ir is obfervable that this fimilitude, originally in Shakespear, hath been used twice more in the writings of our poet; in the Temple of Fame in the four hundred and thirtyfixth line, and in the Dunciad at the four hundred and fifth. This Effay is not decorated with many comparisons; two however ought to be mentioned on account of their aptnefs and propriety. The first is, where he compares man to the vine, that gains its ftrength from the embrace it gives: the second is conceived with peculiar felicity; all Nature does not perhaps afford fo fit and close an application. It is indeed equally new, philofophical, and poetical. On their own axis as the planets run, Yet make at once their circle round the fun; 52. Come then, my Friend! my Genius! come along; Oh mafter of the poet and the fong! |