NOTES.

was a

POPE,' says Sir W. Hamilton (Life, by Veitch, p. 335, note), curious reader.' It might be added that he invented little, but borrowed the germ of a thought anywhere, and then set himself to elaborate and embroider it. He lets us himself into the secret of his art when he says, ' in Beaumont's Psyche are a great many flowers well worth gathering; and a man who has the art of stealing wisely will find his account in it.' The argument and illustration of the Essay on Man may be divided into two classes: (1) So much as is the common property of the poets-a vocabulary, or Thesaurus Poeticus, which any one was at liberty to use, a liberty which Pope has not always disdained; (2) Peculiar illustrations, drawn from a desultory, perhaps lazy, but curious reading. In the first class of allusion, we may compare Pope's handling with that of less dexterous writers. The other class, viz. illustration peculiar to Pope, throws greater light on his method of composition-an exquisite mosaic work.

Gilbert Wakefield had undertaken the task of collecting parallel passages and illustrations. He published one volume of an edition of Pope in 1794, and a volume of 'Observations' in 1796. He was driven out of the field by the superior reputation of Joseph Warton, whose edition appeared in 1797. What Warton did in the way of tracing Pope's obligations to earlier writers was only to make a beginning. The Notes which follow have no pretension to be an exhaustive collection of references. It is hoped that they may serve to introduce the young student of our literature into a track of research which, if pursued, would bring him acquainted at least with the names and general character of a wide variety of English writers.

EPISTLE I.

1. 1. St. John. Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, who had returned from exile in 1723, and was now (1732) residing at Dawley, near Uxbridge. 'Pope's room, in which he was said to have written the Essay on Man, was still shewn [? at Battersea] in Bolingbroke's house. It was a parlour of brown polished oak.' Sir Richard Philips; Morning's Walk from London to Kew. In the first ed. (1732) the name was not given, and the poem commenced, 'Awake, my Lælius!' The sweetness of studious retirement, and the superiority of the philosophic life to the pursuit of low ambition,"

See his Essay

was at this time a favourite theme of Lord Bolingbroke's.
On the true use of Retirement and Study, Works, 4. 162 (ed. 1809).
1. 3.
life can little more supply

Than just to look about us and to die.

The complaint of Theophrastus, Aristotle's successor, that 'human life ended just when the insight into its problems was beginning;' Cic. Tusc. Quæst. 3. 28, Querebatur se tum, cum illa videre caepisset, extingui.'

2. IO:

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.'

Cf. inf. Ep.

1. 6. maze, Johnson, Dict., ‘a labyrinth, or place of perplexity and winding.' Dr. Ducarel, Tour through Normandy, describes 'a maze or labyrinth about ten feet in diameter, so artfully contrived, that were we to suppose a man following all the intricate meanders of its volutes, he would not travel less than a mile before he got from the one end to the other.' Milton, Hymn on Nature:

The yellow-skirted Fayes

Leaving their moon-lov'd maze.'

Cf. Henry King, Poems, p. 16 (ed. 1843):

Life is a crooked labyrinth, and we

Are daily lost in that obliquity.'

1. 9. beat this ample field. Metaphors drawn from field sports abound in our earlier writers, both in prose and verse, even on the most serious topics; e.g. Henry King, Poems, p. 17 (ed. 1843):

"O guide my faith! and by thy grace's clew
Teach me to hunt that kingdom at the view.'

Francis Quarles, Cattermole's Selections, I. 209:

In the discovery of the chiefest good,
Keenly they hunted, beat in every brake,
Forwards they went, on either hand, and back
Return'd they counter; but their deep-mouth'd art,

Though often challeng'd scent, yet ne'er could start
In all the enclosures of philosophy

That game, from squat, they term felicity.'

It is a species of metaphor very familiar to Bolingbroke; e g. his celebrated saying of the House of Commons, they grow, like hounds, fond of the man who shews them game.'

1. 10. covert. Fr. couvert, thicket affording a shelter to game.' Parnell uses the word as an adjective, Health, An Eclogue, 1. 45:

·

The fox unkennell'd flies to covert grounds.'

1. 12. who blindly creep or sightless soar. Imitated by Gray, Ode to Spring, 33:

To contemplation's sober eye

Such is the race of man;

And they that creep and they that fly

Shall end where they began.'

sightless soar. Bolingbroke is constantly insisting on (Works, vol. 8, p. 156) the danger we run whenever we soar in the vague of abstract reasoning too far from the phenomena of our system. To be real, our knowledge must rise in it. To be useful, it must be applicable to it.'

1. 13. shoot folly as it flies. Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, pt. 2: 'Observes and shoots their treasons as they fly.'

Arbuthnot, Works, 1. 199:

How well he arches and shoots flying,

Let no man think that we mean lying.'

Pope's writings,' says Bowles,

1. 16. vindicate the ways of God to man. 'are strewed with Miltonic phrases.' The young scholar will recognise in this line Milton's Par. Lost, I. 26:

'Justify the ways of God to man.'

This is a better description of the subject of the Essay than that of the title, Essay on Man.

1. 17. What can we reason, but from what we know. The principle of analogical reasoning in theology is the assumption that the universe being regulated by uniform laws, those laws which we can trace in that part of it which falls under our observation, extend also to that part of it which we cannot see. Cf. Milton, Par. Lost, 5. 574:

What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein

Each to other like more than on earth is thought?'

On the application of analogical reasoning to the doctrine of a future life, see Dugald Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, Works, vol. 7, p. 200 (ed. 1855). 1. 23. He, who through vast immensity can pierce. The immensity of the material world forces us to conclude that there must be some scheme of Providence vast in proportion to it.' Butler, Analogy, pt. 1. ch. 3.

1. 26. circle other suns. Circling' is a favourite epithet with Milton, but generally intransitive. It is, however, occasionally (as here) transitive, e.g. Par. Lost, 6. 742:

Then shall thy saints circling thy holy mount
Unfeigned hallelujahs to Thee sing.'

6

So the Greeks use KUKλev, and Scaliger wished to restore the verb 'circo' to classical Latin, reading circat stagna' for the vulgar circum.' Tibull. 1. 3. 1. 28. this frame : the universe considered as an arranged system' = Gr. Kóσμos. Bacon, Essays, 16: I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.'

1. 35. Presumptuous man, &c. Voltaire, Dict. Philos. t. 4, p. 211: 'J'ai été flatté de voir qu'il (Pope) s'est rencontré avec moi dans une chose que j'avais dite il y a plusieurs années. Vous vous étonnez que Dieu ait fait l'homme si borné, si ignorant, si peu heureux. Que ne vous étonnez vous pas qu'il ne l'ait pas fait plus borné, plus ignorant, et plus malheureux ?' 1. 37. barder reason. Harder is perhaps intended to suggest the demerit of man, who makes a worse use of his higher faculties than the inferior animals of theirs.

1. 41. argent.

1. 42. Satellités. Cf. Desaguliers, ap. P. 186:

Milton, Par. Lost, 3, 460, Those argent fields.'

Not a false accent, but the pronunciation of the time.
Southey, Specimens of the Later English Poets, vol. 2,

'By his example in their endless race

The primaries lead their satellités.'

In the lapse of time the English usage, by which the accent is thrown as far back as possible, has prevailed over the Latin pronunciation, in this as in other words adopted from foreign languages. So Essay, 1. 223, barrier.

Jove's Satellités, &c. The four satellites which revolve round Jupiter were discovered by Galileo, January 7, 1610. The mass of the largest of the four, as calculated by Struve, is 0.000088, the mass of the planet itself being taken as unity. In a rough mode of comparison it may be said that Jupiter is 338 times as great as our Earth, and that his smallest satellite is about the size of our Moon.

Of systems possible if 'tis confest

1. 43. That wisdom infinite must form the best. Conington, Essay on Pope, Oxford Essays, 1858 p. 45: 'Pope did not generally condescend to the artificial inversion which places the adjective after the substantive. Here we have systems possible followed by wisdom infinite, combinations which have the effect of producing a disagreeable monotony, occurring in the same part of the lines to which they respectively belong.'

1. 44. That wisdom infinite must form the best. Pope begins his argument by assuming this axiom from Leibnitz, Théodicée, 1. 8: Cette supréme sagesse, jointe à une bonté qui n'est pas moins infinie qu'elle, n'a pu manquer de choisir le meilleur.'

Optimism, as defined by Leibnitz, does not mean the affirmation that of all systems possible God has chosen the absolutely best, but the best as conducive to the end intended in the creation. This is the received doctrine of the schools. P. Lombard, Sentent. I. dist. 44, 2: Deposco cur dicunt rerum universitatem...non posse esse meliorem quam est ?'

1. 46.

Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,

There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man.

The supposition of a scale of beings gradually descending from perfection to nonentity, and complete in every intermediate rank and degree, if not first introduced by Leibnitz, was popularised by him. It is the consequence of the principle which Leibnitz called 'lex continui.' See Théodicée, § 14 (ed. 1710), and Sur le principe de vie, Opp. Philos. (ed. Erd.) p. 431: 'Il est raisonnable qu'il y ait des substances capables de perception au dessous de nous comme il y en a au dessus; et que notre âme bien loin d'être la dernière de toutes se trouve dans un milieu, dont on puisse descendre et monter; autrement ce serait un défaut d'ordre, que certains philosophes appellent 66 vacuum formarum."' From Leibnitz the hypothesis was adopted generally. See Law, Origin of Evil, p. 117, note (ed. 1758); Addison. Spectator, No. 519; Bolingbroke, Works, vol. 5, p. 79. Wieland also has it, Die

Natur der Dinge, 5. 205:

'O sage lieber gleich der Mensch soll gar nicht seyn! Soll in der ewigen Reih der Möglichen allein, Nur er, diess einz'ge Glied der ganzen Kette fehlen.' Lessing, Werke, 5. 19, shews that the idea of a full creation' as expressed in Pope's lines, is only a partial rendering of the conception of Leibnitz. The lines of Pope speak only of the extant species of organised beings; Leibnitz' conception was much more extended, and regarded the whole of space and the whole of time as an unbroken chain of mutually related existences and occurrences.

1. 53. In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain, &c. Leibnitz, Sur le principe de vie, Opp. Philos. p. 432 (ed. Erd.): Les lois de la nature sont faites et appliquées avec tant de sagesse, qu'elles servent à plus d'un fin.' Bolingbroke follows Leibnitz, fragm. 43, Works, vol. 8. p. 179: 'We labour hard, we complicate various means to arrive at one end; and several systems of conduct are often employed by us to bring about some paltry purpose. But God neither contrives nor executes like man. His means are simple, his purposes various; and the same system that answers the greatest answers the least.'

1. 56. Yet serves to second too some other use. Hooker, Eccl. Pol. 1. 9. 1: For we see the whole world, and each part thereof so compacted that as long as each thing performeth only that work which is natural unto it, it thereby preserveth both other things and also itself.'

li. 60-68. On this passage see Introd. p. 14.

1. 64. Egypt's God, the sacred bull kept at Memphis, and called Apis by the Greeks.

1. 70. man's as perfect as he ought. A principle of the Cartesian school. Regis, Metaphysique, 2. 2. 29: Il est très facile de concevoir que Dieu a pu rendre l'homme plus parfait; mais si l'on veut considérer l'homme, non en lui-même, et séparément du reste des créatures, mais comme un membre de l'Univers, et une partie qui est soumise aux loix générales des mouvemens, on sera obligé de reconnoître que l'homme est aussi parfait qu'il a pu l'être.' Cf. Leibnitz, Théodicée, § 341.

1. 71. His knowledge measur'd to his state and place. Leibnitz, ubi sup.: 'La place que Dieu a assignée à l'homme dans l'espace et dans le temps borne les perfections qu' il a pu recevoir.'

1. 72. Cf. M. Aurelius, Meditations, Collier's Transl. (1701): 'Remember what an atom your person stands for in respect of the universe, what a minute of time comes to your share, and what a small concern you are in the empire of fate.'

1. 73. If to be perfect in a certain sphere. This is one of the obscure passages which have been complained of in all Pope's poems. Gray says of The Dunciad (Letter to West), 'The metaphysician's part is to me the worst; here and there are a few ill-expressed lines, and some hardly intelligible.'

11. 73-76. If to be perfect

years ago. These four lines were in the first edition of 1732 after 1. 98. They are irrelevant to the argument, and Pope struck them out accordingly in the edition revised by himself in 1740. Warburton replaced them in the quarto of 1743, in their present position.

1. 75. The blest to-day is as completely so, &c. Bayle, Dict. Hist. et Crit., art. 'Pauliciens,' note (E): 'Si la douleur ou la joie nous étoient communiquées selon le même dégre cent ans de suite, nous serions aussi malheureux, ou aussi heureux, la centième année que le premier jour.' But Pope's immediate source was probably Dryden, Transl. of Lucretius; (Dryden's Works, vol. 12, p. 326):

The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago.'