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the prefent depends. Which laft is thus beautifully expreffed.

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prefcrib'd, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know;
Or who could fuffer being here below?

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the laft, he crops the flow'ry food
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by heav'n :
Who fees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a fparrow fall;
Atoms or fyftems into ruin hurl'd,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions foar
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future blifs, he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy bleffing now.
Hope fprings eternal in the human breaft :
Man never is, but always to be bleft:
The foul, uneafy, and confin'd, from home,
Refts and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo! the poor Indian, whofe untutor❜d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His foul proud fcience never taught to stray
Far as the folar walk, or milky way;
Yet fimple nature to his hope has giv'n,
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav'n,
Some fafer world in depth of woods embrac❜d,
Some happier island in the watry waste,
Where flaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no chriftians thirst for gold.
To be content's his natural defire,

He afks no angel's wing, no feraph's fire ;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

He then proceeds to prove that the pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, is the cause of man's error and mifery; and fhews the impiety of his presuming to judge of the fitness or unfitness,

perfection or imperfection, juftice or injuftice, of the difpenfations of the Almighty. He reprefents the abfurdity of man's conceiting himself the final caufe of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural. He fhews the unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he craves the perfections of angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of brutes; tho' to poffefs any of the fenfitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him miferable; as he has thus proved.

The blifs of man (could pride that bleffing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;

No pow'rs of body or of foul to share,
But what his nature and his ftate can bear.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, man is not a fly.
Say what the ufe, were finer optics giv'n,
T'infpect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,
To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?
Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain,
Die of a rofe in aromatic pain?
If nature thunder'd in his op'ning ears,
And ftunn'd him with the mufic of the fpheres,
How would he wish that heav'n had left him ftill
The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?
Who finds not Providence all good and wife,
Alike in what it gives, and what denies ?

He obferves that throughout the whole vifible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties may be feen, which caufes a fubordination of He then creature to creature, and of all creatures to man. treats of the gradations of fenfe, inftinct, thought, reflection, and reason; and obferves that reafon alone countervails all the other faculties. He enquires how far this order and fubordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroy'd ; and thus beautifully reprefents the extravagance, madnefs, and pride, of man's defiring to be other than what he is.

What if the foot, ordain'd the duft to tread,
Or hand to toil, afpir'd to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?
Juft as abfurd for any part to claim
To be another, in this gen'ral frame:
Juft as abfurd, to mourn the tasks or pains,
The great directing Mind of All ordains.

All are but parts of one ftupendous whole,
Whose body. Nature is, and God the foul;
That chang'd thro' all, and yet in all the fame,
Great in the earth, as in th' æthereal frame.
Warms in the fun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and bloffoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unfpent;
Breathes in our foul, informs our mortal part,
All full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt feraph that adores and burns:
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

And this first epiftle he concludes by fhewing that absolute fubmiffion is due to Providence, both as to our present and future ftate.

Ceafe then, nor order imperfection name:
Our proper blifs depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weaknefs, Heav'n beftows on thee.
Submit. In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bleft as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one difpofing pow'r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.

All Nature is but Art,

unknown to thee;

All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not fee;
All Difcord, Harmony, not understood;

All partial Evil, universal Good:

And, fpite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.

In his fecond epistle he treats of the nature and state of man with respect to himself as an individual; and tells us

that the bufinefs of man is not to pry into God, but to ftudy himself. He speaks of his middle nature, his powers, frailties, and the limits of his capacities; obferves that the two principles by which he is govern'd, are self-love and reason, which are both neceffary, but that felf-love is the ftrongeft, and the reason why it is so he has given us in the following lines.

Two principles in human nature reign; Self-love, to urge, and Reason to restrain: Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call, Each works its end, to move or govern all : And to their proper operation ftill,

Afcribe all Good; to their Improper, ill.

Self-love, the fpring of motion, acts the foul;
Reafon's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end;
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar fpot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot:
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Deftroying others, by himself destroy'd.

Moft ftrength the moving principle requires ;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, infpires.
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,
Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advife.
Self-love ftill ftronger, as its object's nigh;
Reason's at diftance, and in profpect lie:
That fees immediate good by prefent sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At beft more watchful this, but that more ftrong.
The action of the ftronger to fufpend,
Reason ftill use, to reafon ftill attend:
Attention, habit and experience gains,
Each ftrengthens reason, and felf-love reftrains..
Self-love and reafon to one end aspire,
Pain their averfion, pleasure their defire:
But greedy that its object would devour,
This tafte the honey, and not wound the flow'r :
Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

He then fpeaks of the paffions. and their use, and more efpecially of the predominant or ruling paffion; of its neceffity, in directing men to different purfuits, and its providential use, in fixing our principles, and ascertaining our virtue.

Paffions, like elements, tho' born to fight,
Yet, mix'd and foften'd, in his work unite:
These, 'tis enough to temper and employ ;
But what composes man, can man destroy?
Suffice that reafon keep to nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain;
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
The lights and fhades, whofe well-accorded ftrife
Gives all the ftrength and colour of our life.
Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes,
And when in act they ceafe, in prospect rise :
Prefent to grafp, and future ftill to find,
The whole employ of body and of mind.
All spread their charms, but charm not all alike;
On diff'rent Senfes diff'rent objects strike;
Hence diff'rent paffions more or less enflame,
As ftrong or weak, the organs of the frame
And hence one mafter-paffion in the breast,
Like Aaron's ferpent, swallows up the reft.

;

As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, Receives the lurking principle of death; The young disease, that must fubdue at length, Grows with his growth, and ftrengthens with his ftrength: So caft, and mingled with his very frame,

The mind's difeafe, its ruling paffion came;

Each vital humour which fhould feed the whole,

Soon flows to this, in body and in foul:
Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head,
As the mind opens, and its functions spread,
Imagination plies her dang'rous art,

And

pours it all upon the peccant part.

Virtue and vice, he observes, are joined in our mixt nature, and their limits are near, tho' separate and evident.

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