47. When nature ficken'd, and each gale was death *. THIS is a verse of a marvellous comprehenfion and expreffiveness. The direfulnefs 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 phyfical 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 folid and fcriptural folution of that grand and difficult question, which in vain hath puzzled and bewildered the fpeculatifts of fo many ages, ποθεν το xaxov. Milton, in one of his fmaller and neglected poems, has left us a fublime paffage founded on the Chriftian doctrine. of the Fall, and of the preceding harmony of all things. κακον. * Ver. 108. † Ταυθ' ότι μεν εςιν ισχυρα, και σιβαρα, και αξιωματ Tina. He elsewhere commends a writer, on account of his, πυκνότητος, και σεμνότητος. Dionyf. Halicarnaff. περι συνθέσεως. τμ. κβ. 1 Ver. 111. That 49. That we on earth with undifcording voice Jarr'd against Nature's chime, and with harsh din To their great Lord, whofe love their motion sway'd In firit obedience, and their state of good *: A better wou'd you fix? Then give Humility a coach and fix f. Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow; Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, In a work of fo ferious and fevere a caft, in a work of reafoning, in a work of theology, defigned to explain the most interesting fubject that can employ the mind of. man, furely fuch ftrokes of levity, of fatire, of ridicule, however poignant and witty, are ill placed and disgusting, are vio lations of that propriety which POPE in general fo ftrictly obferved. Lucretius preferves throughout, the dignity he at first affumed; even his farcafms and irony on the fuperftitious, have fomething auguft, and a noble haughtiness in them; as in particular where he asks how it comes to pass that Jupiter fometimes ftrikes his own temples with his thunderbolts; whether he employs himself in casting them in the deferts for the fake of exercifing 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 He has turned the infult into a magni. ficent 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 * Lib. ii. ver. 1100. 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. He left a name, at which the world grew pale, Two fucceeding paffages, in this fourth epiftle, the first, at line 237, on the emptinefs of Fame; the fecond, at line 259, on the inconveniences that attend fuperior parts and talents, are replete with strong fense, and a penetrating knowledge of men and things, expreffed with vigour and concifenefs. 51. Self-love but ferves the virtuous mind to wake, As the fmall pebble ftirs the peaceful lake +. *Dodfley's Mifcellanies, vol. iv. The Vanity of Human Wishes, by Mr. Johnson. + Ver. 363. Ir is obfervable that this fimilitude, which is to be found in Silius Italicus, 1. xiii. v. 24, and also in Du Bartas, and in Shakespear's Henry VI. hath been used twice more in the writings of our poet; in the Temple of Fame in the four hundred and thirty-fixth 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 firft is, where he compares man to the vine, that gains its strength from the embrace it gives the fecond 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; * Should it not be actuate, or act upon? He has used this expreffion again, Illiad xv. v. 487, That fix'd as fate, this acted by a God. † Ep. iii. ver. 301. 52. Come |