ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE IV.

Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to HAPPINESS.

I. FALSE Notions of Happiness, Philosophical and Popular, answered from v. 19 to 77. II. It is the End of all Men, and attainable by all, v. 30. God intends Happiness to be equal; and to be so, it must be social, since all particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not particular Laws, v. 37. As it is necessary for Order, and the peace and welfare of Society, that external goods should be unequal, Happiness is not made to consist in these, v. 51. But, notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of Happiness among Mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two Passions of Hope and Fear, v. 70. III. What the Happiness of Individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good Man has here the advantage, v. 77. The error of imputing to Virtue what are only the calamities of Nature, or of Fortune, v. 94. IV. The folly of expecting that God should alter his general Laws in favour of particulars, v. 121. V. That we are not judges who are good; but that, whoever they are, they must be happiest, v. 133, &c. VI. That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of Virtue, v. 165. That even these can make no Man happy without Virtue: Instanced in Riches, v. 183. Honours, v. 191. Nobility, v. 203. Greatness, v. 215. Fame, v. 235. Superior Talents, v. 257. &c. With pictures of human Infelicity in Men possessed of them all, v. 267, &c. VII. That Virtue only constitutes a Happiness, whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal, v. 307, &c. That the perfection of Virtue and Happiness consists in a conformity to the ORDER of PROVIDENCE here, and a Resignation to it here and hereafter, v. 326, &c.

Ο

EPISTLE IV.

H HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim1!

Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content! whate'er thy name:

That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live, or dare to die,
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'er-look'd, seen double2, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below,

Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some Court's propitious shine3,
Or deep with di'monds in the flaming mine?
Twin'd with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reap'd in iron harvests of the field?

Where grows?-where grows it not? If vain our toil,

1 Oh Happiness! &c.] in the MS. thus, 'Oh happiness! to which we all aspire, Wing'd with strong hope, and borne by full desire;

That ease, for which in want, in wealth we sigh; That ease, for which we labour and we die.' Warburton. [The same editor points out how the lines afterwards substituted for these successfully imitate the classical mode of invoking a Deity by his several names and places of abode, as in the Homeric Hymns (or in several Odes of Horace). Eudaimonia, Harmonia, Hygieia, Paidia, Pandaisia and others were often repre

sented by the Greeks as daughters, or as handmaids, of Aphrodite.]

2 O'erlook'd, seen double,] O'erlook'd by those who place Happiness in any thing exclusive of Virtue; seen double by those who admit any thing else to have a share with Virtue in procuring Happiness; these being the two general mistakes that this epistle is employed in confuting. Warburton.

3 [shine, a substantive; so used in Spenser F. Q. Bk. 1. Canto x. st. 67; and in the Prayerbook Psalms, xcvii. 4: 'his lightnings gave shine into the world.']

же

We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fix'd to no spot is Happiness sincere1,
'Tis nowhere to be found, or ev'rywhere;
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,

And fled from monarchs, ST. JOHN! dwells with thee.

Ask of the Learn'd the way? The Learn'd are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;
Some place the bliss in action2, some in ease,
Those call it Pleasure, and Contentment these;
Some sunk to Beasts, find pleasure end in pain;
Some swell'd to Gods, confess ev'n Virtue vain;
Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,
To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that Happiness is Happiness?

Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave;
All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;
Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;
There needs but thinking right, and meaning well;
And mourn our various portions as we please,
Equal is Common Sense, and Common Ease.
Remember, Man, "the Universal Cause
"Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;"
And makes what Happiness we justly call
Subsist not in the good of one, but all.
There's not a blessing Individuals find,

But some way leans and hearkens to the kind:
No Bandit fierce, no Tyrant mad with pride,
No cavern'd Hermit, rests self-satisfy'd:

Who most to shun or hate Mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend:
Abstract what others feel, what others think,
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has his share; and who would more obtain,
Shall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain.
ORDER is Heav'n's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest3,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense*.
Heav'n to Mankind impartial we confess,
If all are equal in their Happiness:

[sincere, i.e. pure, unalloyed.]

Some place the bliss in action,-Some sunk to Beasts, &c.] 1. Those who place Happiness, or the summum bonum, in Pleasure, such as the Cyrenaic sect. 2. Those who place it in a certain tranquillity or calmness of Mind, such as the Democritic sect. 3. The Epicurean. 4. The Stoic.

5. The Protagorean, which held that Man was the measure of all things; for that all things which appear to him are, and those things which appear not to any Man are not; so that every imagination or opinion of every man was true. 6. The Sceptic. Warburton.

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But mutual wants this Happiness increase;
All Nature's diff'rence keeps all Nature's peace.
Condition, circumstance is not the thing;
Bliss is the saine in subject or in king,
In who obtain defence, or who defend,

In him who is, or him who finds a friend:
Heav'n breathes thro' ev'ry member of the whole
One common blessing, as one common soul.
But Fortune's gifts if each alike possest,
And each were equal, must not all contest?
If then to all Men Happiness was meant,
God in Externals could not place Content.
Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy call'd, unhappy those;
But Heav'n's just balance equal will appear,

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While those are plac'd in Hope, and these in Fear:
Nor present good or ill, the joy or curse,

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But future views of better, or of worse.

Oh sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains pil'd on mountains, to the skies1?
Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Know, all the good that individuals find,
Or God and Nature meant to mere Mankind,
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,
Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence 2.

But Health consists with Temperance alone;

And Peace, oh Virtue! Peace is all thy own.

The good or bad the gifts of Fortune gain;

But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,

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Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right?
Of Vice or Virtue, whether blest or curst,

Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all th' advantage prosp'rous Vice attains,
'Tis but what Virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good3.

Oh blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,

Who fancy Bliss to Vice, to Virtue Woe1!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.
But fools the Good alone unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all.
See FALKLAND5 dies, the

virtuous and the just 5!

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◄ [i.e. that Bliss accompanies Vice, and Woe Virtue.]

5 [Lucius Cary Lord Falkland, who after taking part in the opposition against the oppressive measures of Charles I. and the policy of Strafford, seceded with Hyde and others from the popular party at the time of the Grand Remonstrance,

See god-like TURENNE prostrate on the dust'!
See SIDNEY bleeds amid the martial strife 2!
Was this their Virtue, or Contempt of Life?
Say, was it Virtue, more tho' Heav'n ne'er gave,
Lamented DIGBY! sunk thee to the grave?
Tell me, if Virtue made the Son expire,
Why, full of days and honour, lives the Sire?
Why drew Marseille's good bishop purer breath*,
When Nature sicken'd, and each gale was death?
Or why so long (in life if long can be)
Lent Heav'n a parent to the poor and me"?
What makes all physical or moral ill?
There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will.
God sends not ill; if rightly understood,
Or partial Ill is universal Good,

Or Change admits, or Nature lets it fall;
Short, and but rare, till Man improv'd it all7.
We just as wisely might of Heav'n complain
That righteous Abel was destroy'd by Cain,
As that the virtuous son is ill at ease
When his lewd father gave the dire disease.

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Think we, like some weak Prince, th' Eternal Cause
Prone for his fav'rites to reverse his laws?
Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
On air or sea new motions be imprest,

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was appointed Secretary of State and fell, fighting under the Royal Standard, in the battle of Newbury, Sept. 20, 1643. It is of him that Clarendon, in one of the most eloquent passages of his History, speaks as of that incomparable young man who in the brief span of life allotted to him' (for he fell in his 34th year) 'had so much dispatched the business of life, that the oldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not the world with more innocence. Waller, the most fastidious of English poets, would have gladly welcomed Falkland among their sacred order:

'Ah, noble friend! with what impatience all

That know thy worth, and know how prodigal
Of thy great soul thou art (longing to twist
Bays with that ivy which so early kissed
Thy youthful temples), with what horror we
Think of the blind events of war and thee !']

1 [Henry, Vicomte de Turenne, Marshal of France, after commanding the French armies in the latter part of the Thirty Years' War, raised his military fame to the highest pitch, without preserving it intact from the blot of barbarous conduct, in the Alsatian and Palatinate campaigns developed out of the peace of Westphalia. He was struck dead by a cannon-ball at Salzbach in Baden in 1675; and was buried among the Kings of France at St Denis.]

[Sir Philip Sidney, the author of the Arcadia, who was wounded to the death in the glorious but useless cavalry charge at Zutphen in 1586.]

3 [The Hon. Robert Digby, third son of Lord Digby, who died in 1724. See Epitaph vII. and Note.]

4 Marseille's good bishop.] M. de Belsance was made bishop of Marseilles in 1709. In the plague of that city, in the year 1720, he distinguished himself by his zeal and activity, being the pastor, the physician, and the magistrate of his flock, whilst that horrid calamity prevailed. [After receiving extraordinary distinctions in recognition of his services both from the Pope and King Louis XV.] He died in the year 1755.

Warton.

['I believe your prayers will do me more good than those of all the Prelates in both kingdoms, or any Prelates in Europe except the Bishop of Marseilles.' Swift to Pope, May 12, 1735.]

5 [Warton refers to Dryden's Miscellanies, v. 6.] 6 The mother of the author, a person of great piety and charity, died the year this poem was finished, viz. 1733. Warburton. [For Pope's relations to his mother, see Introductory Memoir.] 7 After v. 116, in the MS.

Oh blameless Bethel1! to relieve thy breast?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?

Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall2?

But still this world (so fitted for the knave)
Contents us not. A better shall we have?
A kingdom of the Just then let it be:
But first consider how those Just agree.
The good must merit God's peculiar care;
But who, but God, can tell us who they are?
One thinks on Calvin Heav'n's own spirit fell;
Another deems him instrument of hell;
If Calvin feel Heav'n'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 blest.
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:

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And which more blest? who chain'd his country, say,
Or he whose Virtue sigh'd to lose a day3?

"But sometimes Virtue starves, while Vice is fed."

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,

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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;

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Nor is his claim to plenty, but content.

But grant him Riches, your demand is o'er?

"No-shall the good want Health, the good want Pow'r?"

Add Health, and Pow'r, and ev'ry earthly thing,

"Why bounded Pow'r? why private? why no king?"

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Nay, why external for internal giv'n?

Why is not Man a God, and Earth a Heav'n?
Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive
God gives enough, while he has more to give:
Immense the pow'r, immense were the demand;
Say, at what part of nature will they stand?
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,

1 Pope seems to hint at this passage in a letter written to Mr Bethel, soon after the death of his mother: 'I have now too much melancholy leisure, and no other care but to finish my Essay on Man. There will be in it but one line that will offend you (I fear), and yet I will not alter it or omit it, unless you come to town and prevent it. It is all a poor Poet can do, to bear testimony to the virtue he cannot reach.' Ruffhead. [Mr Hugh Bethell, a Yorkshire gentleman and one of Pope's intimate friends,

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to whom the Imitation of the Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace is addressed. See note to this Imit.]

2 Eusebius is weak enough to relate, from the testimonies of Irenæus and Polycarp, that the roof of the building under which Cerinthus the heretic was bathing, providentially fell down and crushed him to death. Lib. I. cap. 29. Warton. [For Pope's own sketch of the character of Chartres, see his note to Moral Essays, 111. 20.] 3 [Sueton. Titus, c. 8.]