[1403] Bolingbroke, Fragment 51: "A due use of our reason makes self-love and social coincide, or even become in effect the same."—Wakefield.

[1404] Happiness is with Pope the sole end of life, and virtue is only a means. The means cannot be more binding than the end, and happiness is not obligatory and virtue is. A certain contempt, again, for pain and privation is heroic, but indifference to moral worth is degradation. Thus virtue is plainly an end in itself, and is superior, not subordinate, to happiness.

[1405] Overlooked in the things which would yield it, and in other things magnified by the imagination, as is happily expressed by Young, when he says, Universal Passion, Sat. i., 238:

None think the great unhappy but the great.

[1406] Pope personified happiness at the beginning, but seems to have dropped that idea in the seventh line, where the deity is suddenly transformed into a plant, from whence this metaphor of a vegetable is carried on through the eleven succeeding lines till he suddenly returns to consider happiness again as a person, in the eighteenth line.—Warton.

The change from a person to a thing commences at the third verse, where Pope calls happiness "that something," and he changes back to the person in the eighth verse, where he addresses happiness as "thou."

[1407] MS.:

[1408] "Is there," asks Mr. Croker, "any other authority for shine as a noun?" The noun is found in Milton, and Locke, and in much earlier writers, but Johnson says, "it is a word, though not unanalogical, yet ungraceful, and little used."

[1409] "Flaming" is not an appropriate epithet for mines. The line calls up a false idea of splendour, and not a vision of subterranean gloom and desolation.

[1410] Dryden, Æn. xii. 963:

An iron harvest mounts, and still remains to mow.—Wakefield.

Pope's image is not sufficiently distinctive. There is only one word, the epithet "iron," to indicate that he is speaking of military renown, and this epithet, drawn from the material of which swords are made, is also applicable to the sickle.

[1411] "Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow," is the invocation addressed by Pope to Happiness. He now strangely answers his own inquiry in a tone of rebuke, as though it were preposterous to ask the question. "Where grows! where grows it not?"

[1412] These lines follow in the MS.:

A sentence in Hooker's Eccl. Pol., Book i. Chap. viii. Sect. 7, will explain Pope's idea in the last four lines: "If I cannot but wish to receive all good at every man's hand, how should I look to have any part of my desire satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire in other men?"

[1413] "Sincere" in its present use is the opposite of "disingenuous," "deceptive," and has always a moral signification. Formerly it had the sense, which Pope gives it here, of "pure," "unadulterated," without any necessary ethical meaning. Thus Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii.

And none can boast sincere felicity.

Philemon Holland talks of "sincere vermillion," Arbuthnot of "sincere acid," and Hooker speaks of keeping the Scriptures "entire and sincere."

[1414] This was flattery. Bolingbroke was notoriously a prey to factious rancour, and the pangs of disappointed ambition.

[1415] Epicureans.—Pope.

[1416] Stoics.—Pope.

Pope's account of the epicureans is the exact opposite of the truth. He says they "placed bliss in action," whereas Seneca tells us, Benef. iv. 4: "Quæ maxima Epicure felicitas videtur, nihil agit." The poet's account of the stoics is equally wrong. Instead of placing "bliss in ease" they inculcated the sternest self-denial, and untiring efforts to fulfil all virtue.

[1417] Epicureans.—Pope.

[1418] Stoics.—Pope.

The true stoic did not, as Pope asserts, "confess virtue vain." He contended that it was all-sufficient. Till the edition of 1743 this couplet was as follows:

The two lines which conclude the paragraph, and which first appeared in the edition of 1743, were written at Warburton's suggestion. The object of the addition was to represent the credulous man who trusted everything as equally deceived with the sceptic who trusted in nothing. Of the last line there is a second version:

One trusts the senses, and one doubts of all.

[1419] Sceptics.—Pope.

Pyrrho and his followers held that we can only know things as they appear, and not as they are. Thence they maintained that appearances must be absolutely indifferent, and that we could be equally happy in all conditions,—in sickness, for instance, Cicero, Fin. ii. 13, as in health. The one reality which Pyrrho admitted was virtue, and this he said (Cicero, Fin. iv. 16), was the supreme good which he who possessed had nothing left to desire.

[1420] Pope's complaint, that the directions of the ancient moralists amounted to no more than that "happiness is happiness," arose from his ignorance of their tenets. The stoics and sceptics placed the supreme good in unconditional virtue, and the epicureans taught the precise doctrine of Pope himself, that pleasure is the goal, and virtue the road. The admonition, "take nature's path," which Pope would substitute for the teaching of these sects, was the maxim on which they all insisted.

[1421] Pope has here adopted the sentiments of the Grecian sage who said, "That if we live according to nature we shall never be poor, and if we live according to opinion we shall never be rich."—Ruffhead.

For opinion creates the fantastic wants of fashion and luxury.

[1422] He means that happiness does not "dwell" in any "extreme" of wealth, rank, talent, etc., but that all "states," or classes of men "can reach it."

[1423] MS.:

The man who always "thinks right" is infallible in wisdom, and if he always "means well" he must act in obedience to his infallible convictions, when he will also be impeccable. There needs but this, says Pope, to secure happiness. He scoffs at the vague definitions of philosophers, and substitutes the luminous direction that we should be infallible in our views, and impeccable in our conduct.

[1424] "The common sense" and "common ease" of which all the world have an equal share, cannot exceed the measure of sense and ease which falls to the lot of the most foolish and suffering of mankind. This is the same sort of equality that there is between the income of a pauper and a millionaire, since both have half-a-crown a week.

[1425] The MS. adds:

"Good" and "wisdom" in the last line might be supposed to mean something that was not true wisdom and goodness if Pope had not argued, ver. 259-268, that real wisdom was injurious to happiness. He would have the "right thinking" alloyed with error, and the "meaning well" with evil.

[1426] That is, all which can "justly" or rightly be termed happiness.

[1427] The image is drawn from a person leaning towards another, and listening to what he says. Pope took the expression from the simile of the compasses in Donne's Songs and Sonnets:

[1428] The MS. goes on thus:

[1429] This couplet follows in the MS.:

[1430] MS.:

[1431] After ver. 66 in the MS.

There is still another couplet in the MS.:

[1432] The exemplification of this truth, by a view of the equality of happiness in the several particular stations of life, was designed for the subject of a future Epistle.—Pope.

"Heaven's just balance" is made "equal," says this writer, because men are harassed with fears in proportion to their elevation, and amused with hopes in a state of distress. But a man may be good either in high or low rank; and God does not, to make the happiness of mankind equal, fill the heart of one with idle fears, and of the other with chimerical hopes.—Crousaz.

[1433] Sir W. Temple, Works, vol. iii. p. 531: "Whether a good condition with fear of being ill, or an ill with hope of being well, pleases or displeases most." Pope's MS. goes on thus:

[1434] He had in his mind Virgil's description, borrowed from Homer, of the attempt made by the giants, in their war against the gods, to scale the heavens by heaping Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa. Pope took the expressions "sons of earth," and "mountains piled on mountains," from Dryden's translation, Geor. i. 374.

[1435] "Still" is repeated to give force to the remonstrance. "Attempt still to rise, and Heaven will still survey your vain toil with laughter."

[1436] An allusion to Psalm ii. 1, 4: "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."—Wakefield.

[1437] MS.:

[1438] "Nature" is a name for the second causes, or instruments, by which God works. Pope speaks as if nature's meaning was distinct from the meaning of God.

[1439] By "mere mankind" Pope means man in his present earthly condition, and not the generality of mankind as distinguished from favoured mortals, for he says, ver. 77, that individuals can no more attain to any greater good than mankind at large.

[1440] From Bolingbroke, Fragment 52: "Agreeable sensations, the series whereof constitutes happiness, must arise from health of body, tranquillity of mind, and a competency of wealth."

[1441] The MS. adds,

[1442] The sense of this ill-expressed line is, that bad men taste the gifts of fortune less than good men, in proportion as they obtain them by worse means. The couplet was originally thus in the MS.:

[1443] "That" is put improperly for "those that."

[1444] MS.:

[1445] But are not the one frequently mistaken for the other? How many profligate hypocrites have passed for good?—Warton.

Men not intrinsically virtuous have often had the good opinion of the world; the happiness they want is a good conscience.

[1446] After ver. 92 in the MS.:

[1447] That is, "who fancy bliss allotted to vice."

[1448] Lord Falkland was killed by a musket ball at the battle of Newbury, Sept. 20, 1643. Turenne was killed by a cannon ball, near Sassback, July 26, 1675. Sir Philip Sidney was mortally wounded by a bullet at Zutphen, Sept. 22, 1586, and died a few days afterwards. Sidney was 32 years of age at his death, Falkland 33, and Turenne 64.

[1449] The Hon. Robert Digby, who died, aged 40, April 19, 1726. Pope wrote his epitaph.

[1450] MS.:

The Arbuthnot mentioned here was Charles, a clergyman, and son of the celebrated physician. His death in 1732 was supposed to have been occasioned by the lingering effects of a wound he received in a duel he fought while at Oxford with a fellow-collegian, his rival in love. James Craggs died of the small-pox Feb. 14, 1721, aged 35. Virtue had certainly no share in his death, for he was licentious in private life, and in his public capacity accepted a bribe from the South Sea directors. Walsh died in 1708, at the age of 49. His virtue may be estimated by his confession that he had committed every folly in love, except matrimony. Lady Scudamore, widow of Sir James Scudamore, and daughter of the fourth Lord Digby, died of the small-pox, May 3, 1729, aged 44. She left only a daughter, who married, and hence Pope's expression, "Scud'more ends her name." The many Digbys united in one grave were the children of the fifth Lord, the father of the poet's friend, Robert. I do not know what is meant by the "fierce love" which was Falkland's "doom," nor can I identify the Louisa who died of grief.

[1451] William, fifth Lord Digby, was 74 when this fourth Epistle was published in 1734, and he lived to be 92. He died December 1752.

[1452] M. de Belsunce, was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city in 1720 he distinguished himself by his activity. He died at a very advanced age in 1755.—Warton.

[1453] Some anonymous verses in Dryden's Miscellanies, vi. p. 76:

[1454] Dryden, Virg. x. 1231:

[1455] MS.:

Pope's mother died June 7, 1733. She was said by the poet to be 93, but was only 91, if the register of her baptism, June 18, 1642, gives the year of her birth, which is doubtless the case, since an elder sister was baptised in 1641, and a younger in 1643.

[1456] How change can admit, or nature let fall any evil, however short and rare it may be, under the government of an all-wise, powerful, and benevolent Creator, is hardly to be understood. These six lines are perhaps the most exceptionable in the whole poem in point both of sentiment and expression.—Warton.

Pope's justification of the partial ill which is not a general good is, in substance, that Providence has not supreme dominion over his physical laws, that change and nature act independently of him, and vitiate his work. In place of ver. 113-16 the earlier editions have this couplet:

The notion that the disturbing operations of "chance" could explain the existence of evil was intrinsically absurd, and inconsistent with Ep. i., ver. 290, where Pope says that "all chance is direction." Chance is, in strictness, a nonentity, and merely signifies that the cause of an effect is unknown to us, or beyond our control. Neither supposition could apply to the Almighty. Warburton quotes a couplet from the MS., which could not be retained without a glaring contradiction, when Pope had discovered two other evil-doers besides man,—nature and chance:

[1457] This comparison of the favourites of the Almighty to the favourites of a weak prince is fallacious and revolting. Weak princes select their favourites from weak or vicious motives. The favourites of heaven are the righteous.

[1458] Warburton says that Pope alluded to Empedocles. The story ran that he pretended to be a divinity, and threw himself into the crater of Ætna, that nobody might know what had become of him, and might conclude that he had been carried up into heaven. All the circumstances of his death are doubtful, and whether he was a calumniated sage, or a conceited madman, legends are not a proper illustration of God's dealings with mankind. Pope had originally written,

At the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, Pliny, the naturalist, was commanding the Roman fleet in the Gulf of Naples. He made for the coast in the neighbourhood of the volcano, till checked by the falling stones and ashes, he sailed to Stabiæ, and landed. In a few hours the tottering of the houses, shaken by the earthquake, warned him to fly, and according to his nephew he was overtaken by flames and sulphurous vapours, and suffocated. Stabiæ is ten miles from Vesuvius, and the flame and vapour could hardly have been propelled from the mountain.

[1459] The forgetfulness to thunder supposes unconscious obliviousness, the recalling the fires conscious activity. The mountain would not at the same moment forget to keep up the irruption, and remember to restrain it.

[1460] Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: "If a man's safety should depend upon winds or rains, must new motions be impressed upon the atmosphere?"

[1461] Warton tells us in a note on one of Pope's letters to Bethel, that the latter was "celebrated in two fine lines in the Essay on Man on account of an asthma with which he was afflicted." I find in Ruffhead's Life a quotation from a letter of Pope's to Bethel, "then in Italy," and we may conclude that Bethel, being troubled with an asthma, visited Italy for relief, but that in crossing the sea the "motions of the sea and air" disagreed with him, as they do with most people.—Croker.

[1462] "You," is Bolingbroke, to whom the epistle is addressed. A writer in the Adventurer, No. 63, quotes Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: "If a good man be passing by an infirm building, just in the article of falling, can it be expected that God should suspend the force of gravitation till he is gone by, in order to his deliverance?" The illustrations and language Pope copied from Wollaston are the objections of those who deny a special Providence, and Wollaston only stated the arguments to refute them.

[1463] MS.:

The last couplet is a direct acknowledgment of a future state, and was probably omitted to avoid contradicting the infidel tenets of Bolingbroke.

[1464] Christians have never raised the objection. They only say that since this world is not a kingdom of the just, reason, as well as revelation, teaches that there must be a kingdom to come.

[1465] Bolingbroke, Fragment 57: "Christian divines complain that good men are often unhappy, and bad men happy. They establish a rule, and are not agreed about the application of it; for who are to be reputed good christians? Go to Rome, they are papists. Go to Geneva, they are calvinists. If particular providences are favourable to those of your communion they will be deemed unjust by every good protestant, and God will be taxed with encouraging idolatry and superstition. If they are favourable to those of any of our communions they will be deemed unjust by every good papist, and God will be taxed with nursing up heresy and schism."

[1466] MS.:

[1467] After ver. 142 in some editions:

[1468] Young, Universal Passion, Sat. iii. 61.

The very best ambitiously advise.

MS.:

The best in habits variously incline.

[1469] MS.:

E'en leave it as it is; this world, etc.

[1470] He alludes to the complaint of Cato in Addison's tragedy, Act iv. Sc. 4:

And Act v. Sc. 1:

This world was made for Cæsar.

"If," says Pope, "the world is made for ambitious men, such as Cæsar, it is also made for good men, like Titus." Extreme cases test principles, and to establish his position, that the virtuous in this life have always a larger share of enjoyments than the worldly, Pope should have dealt with some of the numerous instances in which the good have been condemned to tortures in consequence of their goodness.

[1471] Remembering one evening that he had given nothing during the day, Titus exclaimed, "My friends, I have lost a day."

[1472] Unquestionably it must be one of the rewards if Pope is right in maintaining that present happiness is proportioned to virtue. No more cruel mockery could be conceived than to act on his doctrine, and tell a virtuous mother, surrounded by starving children, that she and her little ones were quite as happy as the families who lived in abundance.

[1473] MS.:

[1474] The MS. has two readings:

In the early editions Pope adopted the first version; in the later the second, with the change of "dives" for "drowns."

[1475] "Why no king?" is equivalent to "why is he not any king?" The proper form would be "why not a king?"

[1476] MS.:

Ver. 162 in the text is inconsistent with ver. 161. Pope supposes the good to rise in their demands until they rebel against receiving external rewards for internal merits, and insist that man should be a god, and earth a heaven, which heaven is one of the externals they have just indignantly repudiated.

[1477] Pope is speaking of the good, and what good man ever did "ask and reason" according to Pope's representation?

[1478] In a work of so serious a cast surely such strokes of levity, of satire, of ridicule, as also lines 204, 223, 276, however poignant and witty, are ill-placed and disgusting, are violations of that propriety which Pope in general so strictly observed.—Warton.

[1479] MS.:

Pope showed his consciousness of the weakness of his cause by raising false issues. Virtue would not be rewarded by swords, gowns, and coaches, but is it rewarded by the cross, the stake, the rack, and the dungeon?

[1480] This sarcasm was directed against George II. When Prince of Wales he quarrelled with his father, and patronised the opposition. On his accession to the throne he abandoned the opposition, to which Pope's friends belonged, and retained the ministers of George I.

[1481] After ver. 172 in the MS.:

[1482] Heaven in this line has either improperly the double sense of a person and a place,—the God of heaven, and the kingdom of the blessed—or else "there" is a clumsy tautological excrescence to furnish a rhyme.

[1483] These eight succeeding lines were not in former editions; and indeed none of them, especially lines 177 and 179, do any credit to the author.—Warton.

From Warton's note it would appear that the lines were first printed in his own edition in 1797, whereas they were published in Pope's edition of 1743. The poet had then renounced Bolingbroke for Warburton, and ventured to admit that there was a heaven reserved for man.

[1484] The "boy and man makes an individual" is not grammar.