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ALEXANDER POPE.

1688-1744.

ESSAY ON MAN.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.

Epistle i. Line 1.

Together let us beat this ample field,
Try what the open, what the covert yield.

Epistle i. Line 9.

Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can,
But vindicate the ways of God to man.1

Epistle i. Line 13.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate. Epistle i. Line 77.

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. Epistle i. Line 83.

Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Epistle i. Line 87.

1 See Milton, Paradise Lost, Book i. Line 26.

[Essay on Man continued.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul, proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky way.

Epistle i. Line 95.

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Epistle i. Line 111.

In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blessed abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Epistle i. Line 123.

Die of a rose in aromatic pain.

Epistle i. Line 200.

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.1
Epistle i. Line 217.

1 Much like a subtle spider which doth sit,
In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;
If aught do touch the utmost thread of it,
She feels it instantly on every side.

Sir John Davies (1570-1626), The Immortality of the Soul.
Our souls sit close and silently within,

And their own web from their own entrails spin;
And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such,
That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch.

Dryden, Mariage à la Mode, Act ii. Sc. I.

Essay on Man continued.]

Remembrance and reflection how allied!

What thin partitions sense from thought divide!1 Epistle i. Line 225.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. Epistle i. Line 267.

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
Epistle i. Line 271.

As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all !
Epistle i. Line 277.

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood;

All partial evil, universal good;

And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."

Epistle i. Line 289.

1 Compare Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, Part i. Line 163.

"Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiæ fuit." Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, xvii. 1o, quotes this from Aristotle, who gives as one of his Problemata (χχχ. 1), Διὰ τί πάντες ὅσοι περιττοὶ γεγόνασιν άνδρες ἢ κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν ἢ πολιτικὴν ἢ ποίησιν ἢ τέχνας φαίνονται μελαγχολικοὶ ὄντες.

? Whatever is, is in its causes just.

Dryden, Edipus, Act iii. Sc. 1.

[Essay on Man continued.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.1

Epistle ii. Line 1.

Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world !2

Epistle ii. Line 13.

Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot.

Epistle ii. Line 63.

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.

Epistle ii. Line 107.

And hence one master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest.
Epistle ii. Line 131.

The young disease, that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his
strength.
Epistle ii. Line 135.

1 La vraye science et le vray étude de l'homme c'est l'homme. - Charron, De la Sagesse, Lib. i. Ch. i.

2 Quelle chimère est-ce donc que l'homme ! quelle nou. veauté, quel chaos, quel sujet de contradiction! Juge de toutes choses, imbécile ver de terre, dépositaire du vrai, amas d'incertitude, gloire et rebut de l'univers. - Pascal, Systèmes des Philosophes, xxv.

Essay on Man continued.]

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,1
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Epistle ii. Line 217.
Ask where's the North? at York'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland at the Orcades: and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where.
Epistle . Line 222.

Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree.
Epistle ii. Line 231.

Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law, Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite ;

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age, Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before, Till tir'd he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er. Epistle ii. Line 275.

Learn of the little nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. Epistle iii. Line 177.

Th' enormous faith of many made for one.

Epistle iii. Line 242.

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."
Epistle iii. Line 303.

1 See Dryden, The Hind and Panther, Line 33.
? Compare Cowley, On the Death of Crashaw.

2

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