If Calvin feel Heaven's blessing, or its rod,
This cries, There is, and that, There is no God.
What shocks one part will edify the rest,
Nor with one system can they all be blessed.
The very best will variously incline,

And what rewards your virtue, punish mine.
Whatever is, is right.-This world, 'tis true,
Was made for Cæsar-but for Titus too;1
And which more blessed? who chained his country, say,
Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day? 2

135

140

"But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed."

145

What then? is the reward of virtue bread?
That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil;
The knave deserves it when he tills the soil,
The knave deserves it when he tempts the main,

Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain.
The good man may be weak, be indolent;
Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.
But grant him riches, your demand is o'er?

150

155

"No-shall the good want health, the good want power?"
Add health and power, and every earthly thing:
"Why bounded power? why private? why no king? 3
Nay, why external for internal given?

Why is not man a god, and earth a heaven?”
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while He has more to give ;
Immense the power, immense were the demand;
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?

3

160

1 Cæsar is the type of the bad, and Titus (see Note 3, p. 78) of the good. The allusion is to Addison's Cato, v. i.

2 Suetonius (Life of Titus, § 8) relates that, recollecting at supper that he had conferred no favor on any one during the day, Titus exclaimed: “ My friends, I have lost a day!"

3 " Why private," etc. Why is he a private person? Why is he not a king?

VI. What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy,1

Is virtue's prize. A better would you fix?
Then give humility a coach and six,
Justice a conqueror's sword, or truth a gown,
Or public spirit its great cure, a crown.2

165

Weak, foolish man! will Heaven reward us there

With the same trash 3 mad mortals wish for here?

170

The Boy and Man an individual makes,4

Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes?
Go, like the Indian, in another life 5

Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife;
As well as dream such trifles are assigned,
As toys and empires, for a godlike mind.
Rewards, that either would to virtue bring
No joy, or be destructive of the thing:
How oft by these at sixty are undone
The virtues of a saint at twenty-one!
To whom can Riches give repute, or trust,
Content, or pleasure, but the good and just?
Judges and senates have been bought for gold,
Esteem and love were never to be sold.

175

180

O fool! to think God hates the worthy mind,

185

The lover and the love of humankind,

Whose life is healthful and whose conscience clear,

Because he wants 6 a thousand pounds a year.

Honor and shame from no condition rise:

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

1 Cf. Gray's Ode on Eton College, line 44.

190

2" Public spirit" seems to be here used in the sense of ambition. Desire

for a crown is cured by its possession.

3 " Trash," i.e., coach and six, sword, gown, crown.

of affectation.

4 "Makes," i.e., becomes; rightly singular.

5 Cf. Epistle I. line 99.

6 Lacks.

The passage savors.

Fortune in men has some small difference made,
One flaunts1 in rags, one flutters 1 in brocade;1
The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned,
The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.

194

“What differ more" (you cry) "than crown and cowl?"

I'll tell you, friend! a wise man and a fool.

You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk,

Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk,

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow :

The rest is all but leather 2 or prunella.2

Go! if your ancient but ignoble blood

200

Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,
Go! and pretend your family is young;

Nor own your fathers have been fools so long.
What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.3
Look next on Greatness; say where Greatness lies.
Where, but among the heroes and the wise?'
Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed,
From Macedonia's madman to the Swede;5

1 "Flaunts

first wrote:

205

210

flutters," for exactness should be interchanged. Pope

"Oft of two brothers, one shall be surveyed
Flutt'ring in rags, one flaunting in brocade."

2 "Leather" and "prunella" suggest the cobbler and the parson. gown of the latter was made of stuff called prunella.

The

3 Henry Howard (1517-1547), earl of Surrey, was a soldier, scholar, and poet. He was beheaded on a false charge of treason.

4" Macedonia's madman," i.e., Alexander the Great (B.C. 356–323), king of Macedon. "Truth is here sacrificed to alliteration. The overthrow of the Persian empire was not the enterprise of a madman. Pope, however, was not peculiar in forming this erroneous estimate" (PATTISON).

5“The epithet ‘madman,' which has adhered to Alexander the Great, ought to have been joined to the Swede.' The instance of Charles XII. (1682-1718), king of Sweden, is more appropriate than most of the historical examples pitched upon by Pope in the Essay. Charles XII.'s extraordinary career was still recent; he was killed at Frederikshald, 1718" (PATTISON).

The whole strange purpose of their lives, to find,
Or make an enemy of all mankind!

Not one looks backward, onward still he goes,
Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.1
No less alike the politic and wise;
All sly slow things, with circumspective eyes:
Men in their loose unguarded hours they take,
Not that themselves are wise, but others weak.
But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat;
'Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great:
Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave,
Is but the more a fool, the more a knave.2
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,

Like good Aurelius 3 let him reign, or bleed

4

Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.

What's Fame? A fancied life in others' breath,

215

220

225

A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.

Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown,
The same (my Lord) if Tully's, or your own.

230

All that we feel of it begins and ends

In the small circle of our foes or friends;
To all beside as much an empty shade

An Eugene 5 living, as a Cæsar dead;

1 If Pope endeavored to express contempt, he succeeded only in being vulgar. Alexander was a man of farseeing political sagacity.

2 The wickedly wise" is "the more a knave; " the "madly brave" is "the more a fool."

3 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (A.D. 121–180), emperor of Rome from 161 to his death. "Whatever may have been the errors of judgment into which he was led, his character remains one of the purest and noblest in the history of the empire of which he witnessed the first decline " (WARD).

66

4 Socrates did not "bleed. " What was the manner of his death?

5 Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), a celebrated Austrian general. 'He was the commander of the imperial armies in the War of the Spanish Succession, and the joint hero with Marlborough of Blenheim and Malplaquet" (WARD).

Alike or when, or where they shone, or shine,

235

Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine.

A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod;1

An honest man's the noblest work of God.2

Fame but from death a villain's name can save,3

As Justice tears his body from the grave;

240

When what to oblivion better were resigned,

Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.

All fame is foreign, but of true desert;

Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart:

One self-approving hour whole years outweighs

245

Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas;

And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels,
Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.

In Parts 5 superior what advantage lies?
Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise?
'Tis but to know how little can be known;
To see all others' faults, and feel our own:

66

250

1 "Alluding to the pen with which the wit writes, and the baton which was the symbol of authority of the general" (PATTISON). Elwin gives a different interpretation. He says: Pope is deriding fame in general, and divides famous men into two classes, -' heroes and the wise.' The wise are compared to feathers, which are flimsy and showy; and the heroes, who are the scourges of mankind, are compared to rods." The line, though often quoted, is too condensed to be clear.

2 This line is copied by Burns in The Cotter's Saturday Night. It is one of a multitude of sayings which, because of their striking form, are mistakenly accepted for truth.

3 Lines 239-242 allude to Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton, whose bodies were disinterred and hanged on a gibbet, January 30, 1661. It may well be believed that Pope hated them.

4" M. Marcellus, one of the most determined opponents of Julius Cæsar, had fled to Mitylene after the battle of Pharsalus; and as he dared not himself solicit pardon, it was asked of the dictator by his friends, Cicero making in his behalf an oration conceived in a very different spirit from that which Pope attributes to the orator's client. Its genuineness has, however, been doubted. Marcellus was assassinated at Athens on his way home" (WARD). 5་ Parts," i.e., intellectual acquirements.