w

See some

e fui Paforon every Age supply. Hope travels through norquis u. when we die

.

Efoay on Mantil

E P I S T L E III.

HER

TERE then we rest : « The Universal Cause

Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.". In all the madness of fuperfluous health, The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth, Let this great truth be present night and day; 5 But most be present, if we preach or pray.

Look round our World; behold the chain of Love Combining all below and all above. See plastic Nature working to this end, The single atoms each to other tend,

lo Attract, attracted to, the next in place Form'd and impelld its neighbour to embrace.

WE are now come to the third epiftle of the Effay oa Man. It having been shewn, in explaining the origin, use, and end of the Paffions, in the second epiftle, that Man kath focial as well as selfish paffions, that doctrine natutally introduceth the third, which treats of Man as a SOCIAL animal ; and connects it with the second, which considered him as an INDIVIDUAL.

Ver. 12. Form'd and impelld, etc.) To make Matter to cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insentible parts, is as necessary as that

VARIATIONS.

Ver, I. In several Edit. in 4to.

Learn, Dulness, learn! “ The Universal Cause, etc., Vol. III.

E

20

See Matter next, with various life endu'd,
Press to one centre still, the gen’ral Good.
See dying vegetables life fustain,

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See life diffolving vegetate again :
All forms that perith other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign ; Parts relate to whole ;
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least ;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All serv’d, all serving : nothing stands alone ; 25
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

Has God, thou fool, work’d solely for thy gcod, Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food ? Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, For him as kindly spread the flow'ry lawn:

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quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called Attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our. Author says formd ; and to express the latter, impelld.

Ver. 22. One all-extending, all-preserving Soul] Which, in the language of Sir Isaac Newton, is, “ Deus omnipræsens “ est, non per virtutem folam, sed etiam per subftantiam :

nam virtus fine fubftantia subfiftere non potest.” Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. sub finem.

Ver. 23. Greates with the least ;] as acting more strongly and immediately in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man say, with great elegance, “ Deus eft anima brutorum:

In this 'cis God directs

Is it for thee the lark afcends and fings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat ?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously beftride,

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Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the feed that frews the plain?
The birds of heav'n fhall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year ?
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer :
The hog, that plows not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

Know, Nature's children shall divide her care ; The fur that warms a monarch, warm’d a bear. While Man exclaims, “ See all things for my use!” " See man for mine!” replies a pamper'd goose : And just as short of reason He must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Grant that the pow'rful still the weak controul ; Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole :

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Ver. 45. See all things for my use! ] On the contrary, the wise man hath said, The Lord bath made all things for himself, Prov. xvi. 4.

VARIATION S.
After ver.

46. in the former Editions,
What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat him !
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him.
As far as Goose could judge, he reason'd right;
But as to Man, mistook the matter quite,

Nature that Tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove !
Admires the jay the infect's gilded wings? 55
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Man cares for all : to birds he gives his woods,
To beafts his pastures and to fith his floods ;
For some his intrest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride : 60
All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury,
That very life his learned hunger cravés,
He saves from famine, from the favage faves ;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, 6;
And, till he ends the being, makes it bleft:
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd Man by touch etherial slain.
The creature had his feast of life before ;
Thou too muft perish, when thy feast is o'er! 70

To each unthinking being, Heav'n a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end:
To Man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:

VIR. 68. Than favourd Man, etc.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals fince, efteemed those who were struck by lightning as facred persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven.