Rose or Carnation was below my care; 435 440 My sons! (she answer'd) both have done your parts: Live happy both, and long promote our arts. But hear a Mother, when she recommends To your fraternal care, our sleeping friends. The common Soul, of Heav'n's more frugal make, Serves but to keep fools pert, and knaves awake : A drowsy Watchman, that just gives a knock, And breaks our rest, to tell us what's a clock. Yet by some object ev'ry brain is stirr’d; The dull may waken to a Humming-bird; The most recluse, discreetly open'd, find Congenial matter in the Cockle-kind; The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss, May wander in a wilderness of Moss; The head that turns at superlunar things, Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. VARIATIONS. Ver. 441. The common Soul, &c.] In the first Edit. thus, Of Souls the greater part, Heav'n's common make, A drowsy Watchman in the land of Nod. REMARKS. 445 450 W. Ver. 440. our sleeping friends.] Of whom see v. 345, above. W. Ver. 450. a wilderness of Moss ;] Of which the naturalists count I cannot tell how many hundred species. P. * Ver. 452. Wilkins' wings] One of the first Projectors of the O! would the sons of men once think their Eyes And Reason giv'n them but to study Flies! See Nature in some partial narrow shape. And let the Author of the whole escape: Be that my task (replies a gloomy clerk, 455 460 REMARKS. Royal Society; who among many enlarged and useful notions, entertained the extravagant hope of a possibility to fly to the Moon; which has put some volatile Geniuses upon making wings for that purpose. P. * Ver. 453. Oh! would the Sons of Men, etc.] This is the third speech of the Goddess to her Supplicants, and completes the whole of what she had to give in instruction on this important occasion, concerning Learning, Civil Society, and Religion. In the first speech, ver. 119, to her Editors and conceited Critics, she directs how to deprave Wit and discredit fine writers. In her second, ver. 175, to the Educators of Youth, she shews them how all civil duties may be extinguished, in that one doctrine of Divine Hereditary Right. And in this third, she charges the investigators of Nature to amuse themselves in trifles, and rest in second causes, with a total disregard of the first. This being all that Dulness can wish, is all she needs to say; and we may apply to her (as the Poet hath managed it) what hath been said of true Wit, that She neither says too little, nor too much. P. * Ver. 459. a gloomy Clerk,] The Epithet gloomy in this line may seem the same with that of dark in the next. But gloomy relates to the uncomfortable and disastrous condition of an irreligious Sceptic; whereas dark alludes only to his puzzled and embroiled Systems. P. * Ver. 462. When Moral Evidence shall quite decay,] Alluding to a ridiculous and absurd way of some Mathematicians, in calculating the gradual decay of Moral Evidence by mathematical pro And damns implicit faith, and holy lies, And reason downward, till we doubt of God: 465 470 REMARKS. portions: according to which calculation, in about fifty years it will be no longer probable, that Julius Cæsar was in Gaul, or died in the Senate House. See Craig's Theologiæ Christianæ Principia Mathematica. -But as it seems evident, that facts of a thousand years old, for instance, are now as probable as they were - five hundred years ago; it is plain that in fifty more they quite disappear, it must be owing, not to their Arguments, but to the extraordinary Power of our Goddess; for whose help therefore they are bound to pray. P. * Ver. 465-68. Let others creep-through Nature led.] In these lines are described the Disposition of the rational Inquirer; and the means and end of Knowledge. With regard to his disposition, the contemplation of the works of God with human faculties must needs make a modest and sensible man timorous and fearful; and that will naturally direct him to the right means of acquiring the little knowledge his faculties are capable of comprehending, namely plain and sure experience; which though it supports only an humble foundation, and permits only a very slow progress, yet it leads surely to the end, the discovery of the God of Nature. W. This note may well remind us of what Lord Bacon finely says on the subject of strained interpretations: "Wines which at the first treading run gently, are pleasanter than those which are forced by the wine-press; for these taste of the stone, and of the husk of the grape. Ver. 471. the high Priori Road,] Those who, from the effects Make Nature still encroach upon his plan; REMARKS. in this visible world, deduce the Eternal Power and Godhead of the First Cause, though they cannot attain to an adequate idea of the Deity, yet discover so much of him, as enables them to see the end of their Creation, and the means of their Happiness: whereas they who take this high Priori Road (such as Hobbes, Spinosa, Des Cartes, and some better Reasoners), for one that goes right, ten lose themselves in Mists, or ramble after Visions, which deprive them of all sight of their end, and mislead them in the choice of the means. P. * He alludes to Dr. Clarke's famous Demonstrations of the Attributes of God, a book which Bolingbroke, who hated Clarke because he was a favourite of Queen Caroline, impotently attacked. In Bolingbroke's works are many passages in ridicule of this Queen's pretences to understand philosophy, and religious controversies, and particularly the controversies relating to the Trinity. Dr. Clarke and Woollaston considered moral obligation as arising from the essential differences and relations of things; Shaftesbury and Hutcheson,as arising from the moral sense; and the generality of divines, as arising solely from the will of God. On these three principles practical morality has been built by these different writers. "Thus has God been pleased (says the Author of the Divine Legation) to give three different excitements to the practice of virtue; that men, as he finely adds, of all ranks, constitutions, and educations, might find their account in one or other of them; something that would hit their palate, satisfy their reason, or subdue their will.-But this admirable provision for the support of virtue, hath been in some measure defeated by its pretended advocates, who have sacrilegiously untwisted this threefold cord, and each, running away with the part he esteemed the strongest, hath affixed that to the throne of God, as the golden chain that is to unite and to draw all to it." Book i. p. 39. first edition. Ver. 473. Make Nature still] This relates to such as, being ashamed to assert a mere Mechanic Cause, and yet unwilling to forsake it entirely, have had recourse to a certain Plastic Nature, Elastic Fluid, Subtile Matter, &c. P. * Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place; Or,.at one bound, o'erleaping all his laws, See all in Self, and but for self be born: Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will. 475 480 REMARKS. Ver. 475. Thrust some Mechanic Cause into its place, The first of these Follies is that of Des Cartes; the second of Ver. 478, &c. Make God Man's Image, Man the final Cause, Find Virtue local, all Relation scorn, See all in Self-] Here the Poet, from the errors relating to a Deity in natural Philosophy, descends to those in moral. Man was made according to God's Image: but this false Theology, measuring his attributes by ours, makes God after Man's Image: this proceeds from the imperfection of his Reason. The next, of imagining himself the final Cause, is the effect of his Pride: as the making Virtue and Vice arbitrary, and Morality the imposition of the Magistrate, is of the Corruption of his heart. Hence he centres every thing in himself. The Progress of Dulness herein differing from that of Madness; this ends in seeing all in God; the other in seeing all in Self. P. * Ver. 481. Of nought so certain as our Reason still,] Of which we have most cause to be diffident. Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will; i. e. the Existence of our Soul, and the Freedom of our Will; the two things most self-evident. P. * Ver. 484. Such as Lucretius drew,] Lib. ii. ver. 648, |
