Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen;' Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.'

But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
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.
No creature owns it in the first degree,

But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;"

The ends of Providence, and general good, answered

in our passions and imperfections. How usefully these are distributed

to all orders of men.

Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,'
Or never feel the rage, or never own ;'
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.'

Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be,
Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree :*
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise;
And ev❜n the best, by fits, what they despise."

'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;

For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;"

Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal;

But heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole.
That counterworks each folly and caprice;

That disappoints th' effect of ev'ry vice;'

The agent of whom the Colonel com-
plained was the army agent. The
scrivener, who drew contracts, and
invested money, hated the attorneys
because they were in part competitors
for the same class of business. Bos-
well, in his Life of Johnson, says,
that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791,
aged 93, was the last of the scriveners.
Their occupation had gradually lapsed
to other professions, legal or mone-
tary. Pope's remaining instances are
forced. The attorney did not pay
more than his neighbours to the
county expenditure for prosecuting
thieves, and as the trials were much
to his own profit, he was the last
son who had an interest in inveighing
against thievery. As little did the
thief at his execution denounce "the
knaves of state," of whom he com-
monly knew nothing. Pope has put
the satire of the Beggar's Opera into
the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets
and highwaymen.

1 MS.:

per

Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.

2 From moral insensibility, that is, they are either unconscious of their

230

235

240

vice, or, being conscious, pretend ignorance.

3 Pope goes too far. The worst men acknowledge that some things are crimes.

4 Addison, Spectator, No. 183: "There was no person so vicious who had not some good in him, nor any person so virtuous who had not in him some evil."

This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS. :

Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,
Nay in a minister, or on a throne.

6 Complete virtue, and complete vice, says Pope, are both hostile to self-interest, a plain confession that his selfish system was incompatible with thorough virtue. He assures us, Epist. iv. ver. 310, that "virtue alone is happiness below," but to be consistent he must have meant virtue seasoned with vice.

7 He is far from saying that good effects naturally rise from vice or folly, and affirms nothing but that God superintends the world in such a manner that they do not produce all those destructive consequences that

That, happy frailties to all ranks applied,'
Shame to the virgin,' to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief:
That virtue's ends from vanity can raise,
Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise ;'
And build on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.

Heav'n forming each on other to depend,

A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,

Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common int'rest, or endear the tie.

To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here;'
Yet from the same we learn, in its decline,
Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign:"

might reasonably be expected from them.-JOHNSON.

MS.:

That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice. Or,

And public good extracts from private vice. The last version is taken from the title of Mandeville's work, "The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits." Johnson's interpretation of the text does not agree with Pope's assertion, that "imperfections are usefully distributed to all orders of men."

1 MS.:

Each frailty wisely to each rank applied. The line is disfigured by the clumsy transition from the present tense to the past for the sake of the rhyme, which is a trifle in comparison with the doctrine that "heaven applies happy frailties to all ranks." If the "frailties" specified by Pope are

245

How useful these are to

250 society in general:

255

"happy," fear must be a recomienda-
tion in a statesman, rashness in a
general, presumption in a king, and
a credulous faith in the presumption
the best condition for the people.

2 The sense of shame in virgins is
not a frailty to be ranked with pride,
rashness, and presumption.

3 There is another side to the picture. The ends of vice are also raised from vanity, which begets wastefulness, debt, slander, and a multitude of evils.

4 That is, "heaven can build," the "can" being supplied from "can raise," ver. 245.

5 Shaftesbury's Moralists: "Is not both conjugal affection and natural affection to parents, love of a common city, community, or country, with the other duties and social parts of life, founded in these very wants?"WARTON.

6 Men, says Pope, are reconciled to death from growing weary of the

And to individuals in particular

in every state:

And in every age of life.

Taught half by reason, half by mere decay,
To welcome death, and calmly pass away.

Whate'er the passion,-knowledge, fame, or pelf,—
Not one will change his neighbour with himself.'

The learn'd is happy nature to explore,2
The fool is happy that he knows no more;
The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n,

The poor contents him with the care of heav'n.
See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king;

The starving chemist in his golden views
Supremely blessed,' the poet in his muse."

See some strange comfort ev'ry state attend,
And pride bestowed on all, a common friend:
See some fit passion ev'ry age supply,

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die."

"wants, frailties, and passions" of life.
"The observation," says Warburton,
"is new, and would in any place be
extremely beautiful, but has here an
infinite grace and propriety." This is
one of the stock forms of Warburton's
adulation. Pope's remark was stale,
and from the nature of the case could
not be new if, as he asserted, it was
generally true, since all men in their
declining years could not, through all
time, have left unexpressed the feeling
which made them all willing to die.
What all men think many men will

say.

The MS. adds this couplet:
What partly pleases, totally will shock;
Nor Ross would be Argyle, nor Toland
I question much if Toland would be Locke.

The Duke of Argyle and General
Ross were both soldiers, both poli-
ticians, and both Scotchmen. Ross
was a member of the House of
Commons. Toland introduced meta-
physics into his infidel works, and
Pope signifies by his couplet that the
inferior in a particular department

260

265

270

would not desire on the whole to change characters with a superior in the same department.

2 MS. :

The learn'd are blessed such wonders to explore.

3 Buoyed up by the expectation that he would hit upon the secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold.

4 MS.:

The chemist's happy in his golden views,
Payn in his madness, Welsted in his muse

5 From La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 36: "Nature seems to have bestowed pride on us, on purpose to save us the pain of knowing our own imperfec tions."-WARTON.

6 Bolingbroke, Frag. 50: "Hope, that cordial drop, which sweetens every bitter potion, even the last.”— WAKEFIELD.

MS.:

With ev'ry age of man new passions rise, Hope travels through nor quits him when he dies.

Behold the child, by nature's kindly law' Pleased 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 pray'r-books are the toys of age:
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before;
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er."
Mean while' opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;