Yet fimple Nature to his hope has giv'n, Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n; Some happier island in the wat❜ry waste, Where flaves once more their native land behold, He asks no Angel's wing, no Seraph's fire; IV. Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense, Call imperfection what thou fancy'st such, 105 110 115 Destroy VARIATIONS. After ver. 108. in the first Ed. But does he fay the Maker is not good, Alone made happy when he will, and where? COMMENTARY. VER. 113. Go, wifer thou! &c.] He proceeds with these accufers of Providence (from ver. 112 to 123.), and fhews them, that complaints against the established order of things begin in the highest abfurdity, from mifapplied reason and power; and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade the God of heaven, and to affume his place : "Alone made perfect here, immortal there :" That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality : to which sense the lines immediately following confine us : "Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his juftice, be the God of God.” NOTES. VER. 104. Behind the cloud-top't hill,] "Cloud-top'd hill," is from Milton. WARBURTON, Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, 120 COMMENTARY. Pride VER. 123. In Pride, in reas'ning Pride, our error lies ; &c.] From these men, the Poet now turns to his friend; and (from ver. 122 to 131.) remarks, that the ground of all this extravagance is Pride; which, more or less, infects the whole reasoning Tribe; fhews the ill effects of it, in the cafe of the fallen Angels; and obferves, that even wifhing to invert the laws of Order, is a lower species of their crime: he then brings an inftance of one of the effects of Pride, which is the folly of thinking every thing made folely for the ufe of Man, without the leaft regard to any other of the creatures of God. "Afk for what end the heav'nly bodies fhine," &c. The ridicule of imagining the greater portions of the material fyftem to be folely for the ufe of Man, true Philofophy has fufficiently exposed: and Common Senfe, as the Poet observes, inftructs us to conclude, that our fellow-creatures, placed by Providence as the joint inhabitants of this Globe, are defigned to be joint fharers with us of its bleffings: "Has God, thou fool! work'd folely for thy good, Thy joy, thy paftime, thy attire, thy food? Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, NOTES. Epistle iii. Ver. 27. VER. 120. Alone made perfect here,] It is a fingular fact, that neither the ancient philofophers nor poets, though they abound in complaints of the unequal distribution of good and evil at present, yet Pride still is aiming at the bleft abodes, 125 Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods. Afpiring to be Gods, if Angels fell, Afpiring to be Angels, Men rebel : NOTES. And yet do not ever infer or draw any arguments, from this supposed inequality, for the neceffity of a future life, where such inequality will be rectified, and Providence vindicated. WARTON. VER. 126. Men would be Angels,] Verbatim from Bolingbroke, vol. v. p. 465.; as are many other passages. WARTON. VER. 127. If Angels fell,] Milton, in book v. copics from the Rabbinical writers, from the fathers, and fome of the fchoolmen, the caufes of the rebellion of Satan and his affociates, but feems more particularly to have in view an obfcure Latin poem written by Odoricus Valmarana, and printed at Vienna in 1627, intitled, "Dæmonomachiæ, five de Bello Intelligentiarum fuper Divini Verbi Incarnatione ;" in which the revolt of Satan, or Lucifer, is exprefsly afcribed to his envy at the exaltation of the Son of God. See Newton's Milton, vol. i. p. 407. But the commentators on Milton have not observed that there is ftill another poem which he feems to have copied, "L'Angeleida di Erafmo di Valvafone," printed at Venice, in quarto, in 1590, defcribing the battle of the Angels against Lucifer, and which Gordon de Porcel, in his Library of Romances, tom. ii. p. 190. thought related to Angelica, the heroine of Boiardo and Ariofto. I beg leave to add, that Milton feems alfo to have attended to a poem of Tafso, not much noticed, on the Creation, "Le Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato," in 1607. WARTON. VER. 128. Afpiring to be Angels,] One of the moft pernicious tenets of Hobbes, was the debafing and difparaging human nature, attempting, in the language of Cudworth, to "villanife mankind." We know it has fallen from its original beauty and perfection : but "Intellectual Fride," the subject of so continued an invective through this Effay, being confined to a few, cannot be fo dangerous to general morality, as the contrary extreme. This observation, however, does not affect the general fenfe in which Pope employs the idea, that it is from prefumption we pretend to judge, of what we can fee and know fo little. "Cœlum ipfum petimus, ftultitia." And who but wifhes to invert the laws Of ORDER, fins against th' Eternal Cause. 130 V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, Earth for whose use? Pride anfwers, ""Tis for mine: "For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow'r, "Suckles each herb, and fpreads out ev'ry flow'r; "Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew, "The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew ; "For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; "For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; "Seas roll to waft me, funs to light me rise; 66 My foot-ftool earth, my canopy the skies." But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning funs when livid deaths defcend, COMMENTARY. 135 140 When VFR. 141. But errs not Nature from this gracious end,] The author comes next to the confirmation of his Thefis, That partial moral Evil is univerfal Good; but introduceth it with an allowed instance in the natural world, to abate our wonder at the phenomenon of moral evil; which he forms into an argument on a conceffion of his adverfaries. If we afk you, fays he (from ver. 140 to 151.), whether Nature doth not err from the gracious purpose of its Creator, when plagues, earthquakes, and tempefts unpeople whole regions at a time; you readily anfwer, No: for that God acts by general, and not by particular laws; and that the course of matter and motion must be neceffarily subject to some irregularities, because nothing is created perfect. I then afk, why you should expec this perfection in Man? If you own that the great end of God (notwithstanding all this deviation) be general happiness, then it is Nature, NOTES. VER. 141. But errs not Nature] "Whence evil in the universe, and why? Some things, perhaps, which thou thinkelt such, are not When earthquakes fwallow, or when tempefts fweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? COMMENTARY. " No Nature, and not God, that deviates; and do you expect greater conftancy in Man? "Then Nature deviates; and can Man do lefs? That is, if Nature, or the inanimate fyftem (on which God hath impofed his laws, which it obeys, as a machine obeys the hand of the workman) may in course of time deviate from its first direction, as the best philofophy fhews it may; where is the wonder that Man, who was created a free Agent, and hath it in his every moment to tranfgrefs the eternal rule of Right, should sometimes go out of Order? WARBURTON. NOTES. power not evil, but in appearance. Where the whole is vaftly great, the connections will be innumerable. When, therefore, a part only is feen, many of thefe connections will be inexplicable. Being inexplicable, they will often exhibit appearances of evil, where yet in fact is no evil, but only good not understood. Again, throughout the whole, there is more good than evil : for in the system of the heavens we know of no evil at all. The fame perhaps is true in many other parts of the whole. And with respect even to men, 'tis their intereft to be good, if it be true that by Nature they are rational and focial. So that if, by vice of any kind, they chance to introduce evil, 'tis by deviating from Nature, and thwarting her original purpose. Indeed, all evil in general appears to be of the casual kind; not fomething intended by the Maker of the world, (for all his preparations plainly tend towards good,) but fomething which follows, without being intended, and that perhaps neceffarily, from the nature and effence of things. Indeed, the nature and effence of every being is immutable; and, while it exists itself, all its attributes will exift likewife. To fay, therefore, a thing fhould be, without its infeparable and conftitutive attributes, is the fame as to say, it should be, and not be. A miller works in his mill, and becomes white; a collier works in his mine, and becomes black: yet were neither of these incidents intended by either; but other and better ends being purposed to be answered, they were neceffarily attended by thefe |