The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs afcends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 210
What modes of fight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between,
And hound sagacious on the tainted green:
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, 215
To that which warbles thro' the vernal wood:
The spider's touch, how exquifitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true
From pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew? 220
How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,

Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine!
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier;
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!

VER. 213. The headlong | by the ear, and not by the nostril. It is probable the story of the jackal's hunting for the lion, was occafioned by observation of this defect of scent in that terrible animal. P.

lioness] The manner of the Lions hunting their prey in the deferts of Africa is this: At their first going out in the night-time they set up a loud roar, and then listen to the noise made by the beasts in their flight, pursuing them

VER. 224. For ever sep'rate, &c.] Near, by the

Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass th' infuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?

NOTES.

225

230

fimilitude of the operations; | sensible triangle in his mind, separate, by the immenfe which is sense; yet notwithdifference in the nature of standing, he must needs have the powers. the notion or idea of an intellectual triangle likewife, which is thought; for this plain reason, because every image or picture of a triangle must needs be obtufangular, or rectangular, or acutangular; but that which, in his mind, is the subject of his proposition is the ratio of a triangle, undetermined to any of these species. On this account it was that Aristotle faid, Νοήμαλα τινὶ διοίσει, τῷ μὴ φαντάσμαῖα εἶναι, ἢ ἐδὲ ταῦτα φαντάσμαλα, ἀλλ ̓ ἐκ ἄνευ φανΠασμάτων. The conceptions of the mind differ somewhat from sensible images; they are not fenfible images, and yet not quite free or disengaged from fenfible images.

VER. 226. What thin partitions, &c.] So thin, that the Atheistic philosophers, as Protagoras, held that thought was only sense; and from thence concluded, that every imagination or opinion of every man was true : Πᾶσα φαντασία ἐςὶν ἀληθής. But the poet determines more philosophically; that they are really and essentially different, how thin foever the partition is by which they are divided. Thus (to illustrate the truth of this | observation) when a geometer considers a triangle, in order to demonftrate the equality of it's three angles to two right ones, he has the picture or image of some

B

235

The pow'rs of all fubdu'd by thee alone,
Is not thy Reafon all these pow'rs in one?
VIII. See, thro' this air, this ocean, and this earth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high, progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of Being! which from God began,
Natures æthereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can fee,
No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing. -On fuperior pow'rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,

240

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd: From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, 245 Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. And, if each system in gradation roll

Alike effential to th' amazing Whole,

VARIATIONS.

VER. 238. Ed. ist.

Ethereal effence, spirit, substance, man.

NOTES.

VER. 243. Or in the full | full and void here meant, creation leave a void, &c.] | relating not to Matter, but This is only an illustration, ❘ to Life.

alluding to the Peripatetic

VER. 247. And, if each

plenum and vacuum; the system in gradation roll] The

250

The leaft confufion but in one, not all
That system only, but the Whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc'd from her orbit fly,
Planets and Suns run lawless thro' the sky;
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl'd,
Being on Being wreck'd, and world on world;
Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 255
And Nature trembles to the throne of God.
All this dread ORDER break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm! - oh Madness! Pride! Impiety!
IX. What if the foot, ordain'd the duft to tread,
Or hand, to toil, aspir'd to be the head?

NOTES.

260

tonic principle for the foundation of his Essay had afforded him; and that is the expressing himself (as here) in Platonic notions; which, luckily for his purpose, are highly poetical, at the fame time that they add a grace to the uniformity of his reafoning.

VER. 259. What if the foot, &c.] This fine illu

stration in defence of the System of Nature, is taken

VER. 253. Let ruling Angels, &c.] The poet, from St Paul, who employthroughout this poem, with ed it to defend the System of great art uses an advantage, Grace.

which his employing a Pla

What if the head, the eye, or ear repin'd
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim

To be another, in this gen'ral frame:

Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, 265 The great directing MIND of ALL ordains.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

NOTES.

writing on the same subject, namely the omniprefence of God in his Providence, and in his Substance. In him we live, and move, and have our being; i. e. we are parts of him, his offspring, as the Greek poet, a pantheist quoted by the Apostle, obferves: And the reason is, because a religious theist, and an impious pantheist, both profess to believe the omnipresence of God. But would Spinoza, as Mr Pope does, call God the great directing Mind of all, who hath intentionally created a perfect Universe? Or would a Spinozist have told us,

The workman from the work distinct was known,