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See dying vegetables life fuftain,
See life diffolving vegetate again:

All forms that perifh other forms fupply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath and die)
Like bubbles on the fea of matter born,

They rife, they break, and to that sea return *.

POPE has again copied Shaftesbury so clofely in this paffage, as to use almost his very words. "Thus in the feveral orders of terreftrial forms, a refignation is required, a facrifice and mutual yielding of natures one to another. The vegetables by their death, fuftain the animals; and the animal bodies diffolved, enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world. The numerous infects are reduced by the superior kinds of birds and beafts: And these again are checked by man; who in his turn fubmits to other natures, and refigns his form a facrifice in common to the reft of things. And if in natures fo little exalted. or pre-eminent above each other, the facrifice of interest can appear fo juft; how much more reasonably may all inferior na

VOL. II.

* Ep. 3. v. 13.
H

tures

tures be fubjected to the fuperior nature of the world* !”

35. Has God, thou fool! work'd folely 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 afcends and fings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings †.

66

THE poetry of thefe lines is as beautiful, as the philofophy is folid. They who imagine that all things in this world were made for the immediate ufe of man alone, run themselves into inextricable difficulties. Man indeed is the head of this lower part of the creation, and perhaps it was defigned to be abfolutely under his command. that all things here tend directly to his own ufe is, I think, neither eafy nor neceflary to be proved. Some manifeftly serve for

But

The Moralifts, pag. 130. After borrowing fo largely from this treatise, our author should not methinks have ridiculed it, as he does, in the Fourth Book of the Dunciad;

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Or that bright image to our fancy draw,

Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw.

+ Ver. 27.

I

the

the food and support of others, whofe fouls may be neceffary to prepare and preferve their bodies for that purpose, and may at the fame time be happy in a consciousness of their own existence. 'Tis probable they are intended to promote each others good reciprocally: Nay, man himfelf contributes to the happiness *, and betters the condition of the brutes in fęveral refpects, by cultivating and improving the ground, by watching the feafons, by protecting and providing for them, when they are unable to protect and provide for themselves." Thefe 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 fome extracts from it, when he firft wrote his famous article of the Paulicians, in his

* That very life his learned hunger craves,
He faves from famine, from the favage faves;
Nay, feafts the animal he dooms his feast
And till he ends the being makes it bleft.

H 2

Ep. iii, v. 63
Dictionary,

Dictionary, where he has artfully employed all that force and acuteness of argument, which he certainly poffeffed, in promoting the gloomy and uncomfortable scheme of Scepticism or Manicheism.

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

THERE is a fine obfervation of Montefquieu, concerning the condition of brutes. They are deprived of the high advantages we enjoy; but they have fome which we want. They have not our hopes, but then they are without our fears; they are fubject like us to death, but it is without knowing it; most of them are even

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+ We ought not to be blind to the faults of this fine writer, whatever applause he deserves in general. But it must be confeffed, that his ftyle is too fhort, abrupt, and epigrammatic; he tells us himself, he was fond of Lucius Florus ; and he believed 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. If Shaftesbury, said the great Bishop Butler, had lived to fee the candor and moderation of the present times, in difcuffing religious fubjects, he would have been a good christian.

more

more attentive than we are to self-prefervation; and they do not make fo bad a use of their paffions. B. i. c. 1.

37. Who taught the nations of the field and wood To fhun their poison, and to chufe their food? Prefcient, the tides or tempefts to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the fand * ?

THIS paffage is highly finished; fuch objects are more fuited to the nature of poetry than abstract ideas. Every verb and epithet has here a defcriptive force. We find more imagery from thefe lines to the end of the epiftle, than in any other parts of this Effay. The origin of the connexions in focial life, the account of the state of nature, the rise and effects of superftition and tyranny, and the restoration of true religion and just government, all these ought to be mentioned as paffages that deferve high applaufe, nay as fome of the most exalted pieces of English poetry.

38. Man walk'd with beaft, joint tenant of the shade t.

+ Ver. 152.

* Ver. 99.

II.3

LUCRE

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