essay life of a great man

I T IS NATURAL to believe in great men. If the companions of our childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal it would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth and found it deliciously sweet.

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and, actually or ideally, we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.

The search after the great man is the dream of youth and the most serious occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find his works,- if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off with fortune instead. You say, the English are practical; the Germans are hospitable; in Valencia the climate is delicious; and in the hills of the Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel to find comfortable, rich and hospitable people, or clear sky, or ingots that cost too much. But if there were any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all and buy it, and put myself on the road today.

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge that in the city is a man who invented the railroad, raises the credit of all the citizens. But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like moving cheese, like hills of ants or of fleas,- the more, the worse.

If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive from others, let us be warned of the danger of modern studies, and begin low enough. We must not contend against love, or deny the substantial existence of other people. I know not what would happen to us. We have social strengths. Our affection toward others creates a sort of vantage or purchase which nothing will supply. I can do that by another which I cannot do alone. I can say to you what I cannot first say to myself. Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the otherest. The stronger the nature, the more it is reactive. Let us have the quality pure. A little genius let us leave alone. A main difference betwixt men is, whether they attend their own affair or not. Man is that noble endogenous plant which grows, like the palm, from within outward. His own affair, though impossible to others, he can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy to sugar to be sweet and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal of pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall into our hands. I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open his eyes to see things in a true light and in large relations, whilst they must make painful corrections and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error. His service to us is of like sort. It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men. And every one can do his best thing easiest. "Peu de moyens, beaucoup d'effet." He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others.

But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise of explanation. I cannot tell what I would know; but I have observed there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions which I have not skill to put. One man answers some question which none of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The past and passing religions and philosophies answer some other questions. Certain men affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their times,- the sport perhaps of some instinct that rules in the air;- they do not speak to our want. But the great are near; we know them at sight. They satisfy expectation and fall into place. What is good is effective, generative; makes for itself room, food and allies. A sound apple produces seed,- a hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he is constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose, which is thus executed. The river makes its own shores, and each legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome,- harvests for food, institutions for expression, weapons to fight with and disciples to explain it. The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own shoes.

Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service from superior men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men; direct giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth, fine senses, arts of healing, magical power and prophecy. The boy believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we have from others is mechanical compared with the discoveries of nature in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect remains. Right ethics are central and go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving others is serving us. I must absolve me to myself. "Mind thy affair," says the spirit:- "coxcomb, would you meddle with the skies, or with other people?" Indirect service is left. Men have a pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in the intellect. Behmen *(1) and Swedenborg saw that things were representative. Men are also representative; first, of things, and secondly, of ideas.

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton; the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer; the engineer; the musician,- severally make an easy way for all, through unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is by secret liking connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he is; as Linnaeus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons, of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of fluxions.

A man is a centre for nature, running out threads of relation through every thing, fluid and solid, material and elemental. The earth rolls; every clod and stone comes to the meridian: so every organ, function, acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the brain. It waits long, but its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite, and each created thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been done to steam, to iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine, to corn and cotton; but how few materials are yet used by our arts The mass of creatures and of qualities are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each waited, like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human deliverer. Each must be disenchanted and walk forth to the day in human shape. In the history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to have fashioned a brain for itself. A magnet must be made man in some Gilbert *(2) , or Swedenborg , or Oerstad, before the general mind can come to entertain its powers.

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages, a sober grace adheres to the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which, in the highest moments, comes up as the charm of nature,- the glitter of the spar, the sureness of affinity, the veracity of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold, hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid and gas, circle us round in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile the day of life. The eye repeats every day the first eulogy on things,- "He saw that they were good." We know where to find them; and these performers are relished all the more, after a little experience of the pretending races. We are entitled also to higher advantages. Something is wanting to science until it has been humanized. The table of logarithms is one thing, and its vital play in botany, music, optics and architecture, another. There are advancements to numbers, anatomy, architecture, astronomy, little suspected at first, when, by union with intellect and will, they ascend into the life and reappear in conversation, character and politics.

But this comes later. We speak now only of our acquaintance with them in their own sphere and the way in which they seem to fascinate and draw to them some genius who occupies himself with one thing, all his life long. The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial side; has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary sphere where it plays a part as indestructible as any other. And to these, their ends, all things continually ascend. The gases gather to the solid firmament: the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows; arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at the man, and thinks. But also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is not only representative, but participant. Like can only be known by like. The reason why he knows about them is that he is of them; he has just come out of nature, or from being a part of that thing. Animated chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, of zinc. Their quality makes his career; and he can variously publish their virtues, because they compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason. Unpublished nature will have its whole secret told. Shall we say that quartz mountains will pulverize into innumerable Werners, Von Buchs and Beaumonts, and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution I know not what Berzeliuses and Davys?

Thus we sit by the fire and take hold on the poles of the earth. This quasi omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our condition. In one of those celestial days when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once: we wish for a thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense beauty in many ways and places. Is this fancy? Well, in good faith, we are multiplied by our proxies. How easily we adopt their labors! Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every novel is a debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves with a fore-plane borrows the genius of a forgotten inventor. Life is girt all round with a zodiac of sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist, theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any science,- is a definer and map-maker of the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. These roadmakers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a new property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

We are too passive in the reception of these material or semi-material aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step,- we are better served through our sympathy. Activity is contagious. Looking where others look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the charm which lured them. Napoleon said, "You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." Talk much with any man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of looking at things in the same light, and on each occurrence we anticipate his thought.

Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. Other help I find a false appearance. If you affect to give me bread and fire, I perceive that I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves me as it found me, neither better nor worse: but all mental and moral force is a positive good. It goes out from you, whether you will or not, and profits me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution. We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter Raleigh, "I know that he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. So are Clarendon's portraits,- of Hampden, "who was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts";- of Falkland, "who was so severe an adorer of truth, that he could as easily have given himself leave to steal, as to dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch without a tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius: "A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined."

This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed men to touch the quick like our own companions, whose names may not last as long. What is he whom I never think of? Whilst in every solitude are those who succor our genius and stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is a power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the railroad will not again shame us.

Under this head too falls that homage, very pure as I think, which all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from Coriolanus and Gracchus down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in the street! The people cannot see him enough. They delight in a man. Here is a head and a trunk! What a front! what eyes! Atlantean shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to guide the great machine! This pleasure of full expression to that which, in their private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs also much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary genius. Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse the mountain of ore. Shakespeare's principal merit may be conveyed in saying that he of all men best understands the English language, and can say what he will. Yet these unchoked channels and floodgates of expression are only health or fortunate constitution. Shakespeare's name suggests other and purely intellectual benefits.

Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals, swords and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being thoughts out of a certain height, and presupposing his intelligence. This honor, which is possible in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius perpetually pays; contented if now and then in a century the proffer is accepted. The indicators of the values of matter are degraded to a sort of cooks and confectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the power and beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure and a higher benefit from witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as feats of memory, of mathematical combination, great power of abstraction, the transmutings of the imagination, even versatility and concentration,- as these acts expose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond, member for member, to the parts of the body. For we thus enter a new gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with Plato, "to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes or any other sense, proceed to truth and to being." Foremost among these activities are the summersaults, spells and resurrections wrought by the imagination. When this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a thousand times his force. It opens the delicious sense of indeterminate size and inspires an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book, or a word dropped in conversation, sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the Pit. And this benefit is real because we are entitled to these enlargements, and once having passed the bounds shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we were.

The high functions of the intellect are so allied that some imaginative power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of the first class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive habit of thought. This class serve us, so that they have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg , Goethe , never shut on either of these laws. The perception of these laws is a kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little through failure to see them.

Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason degenerates into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a mind of powerful method has instructed men, we find the examples of oppression. The dominion of Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of Locke;- in religion the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the sects which have taken the name of each founder, are in point. Alas! every man is such a victim. The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to blind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If a wise man should appear in our village he would create, in those who conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as every one would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their resources.

But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her remedy. The soul is impatient of masters and eager for change. Housekeepers say of a domestic who has been valuable, "She had lived with me long enough." We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but now a great salesman, then a road-contractor, then a student of fishes, then a buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage Western general. Thus we make a stand against our rougher masters; but against the best there is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate is not theirs. When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which also Plato was debtor.

I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class. Life is a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of our great men are wide intervals. Mankind have in all ages attached themselves to a few persons who either by the quality of that idea they embodied or by the largeness of their reception were entitled to the position of leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of primary nature,- admit us to the constitution of things. We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is a sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, "Let there be an entrance opened for me into realities; *(3) I have worn the fool's cap too long." We will know the meaning of our economies and politics. Give us the cipher, and if persons and things are scores of a celestial music, let us read off the strains. We have been cheated of our reason; yet there have been sane men, who enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they know, they know for us. With each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can the Bible be closed until the last great man is born. These men correct the delirium of the animal spirits, make us considerate and engage us to new aims and powers. The veneration of mankind selects these for the highest place. Witness the multitude of statues, pictures and memorials which recall their genius in every city, village, house and ship:-

"Ever their phantoms arise before us, Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; At bed and table they lord it o'er us With looks of beauty and words of good."

How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind?- I am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. If I work in my garden and prune an apple-tree, I am well enough entertained, and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. But it comes to mind that a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. I go to Boston or New York and run up and down on my affairs: they are sped, but so is the day. I am vexed by the recollection of this price I have paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the peau d'ane on which whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for every wish. I go to a convention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body,- that man liberates me; I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore relation to persons. I am healed of my hurts. I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition of rich and poor. We live in a market, where is only so much wheat, or wool, or land; and if I have so much more, every other must have so much less. I seem to have no good without breach of good manners. Nobody is glad in the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets, envies and hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields there is room: here are no self-esteems, no exclusions.

I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for thoughts; I like rough and smooth, "Scourges of God," and "Darlings of the human race." I like the first Caesar; and Charles V, of Spain; and Charles XII, of Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in France. I applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his office; captains, ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm on legs of iron, wellborn, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the world. But I find him greater when he can abolish himself and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons, this subtilizer and irresistible upward force, into our thought, destroying individualism; the power so great that the potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch who gives a constitution to his people; a pontiff who preaches the equality of souls and releases his servants from their barbarous homages; an emperor who can spare his empire.

But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points of service. Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe, but wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life, ignorant of the ruin and incapable of seeing it, though all the world point their finger at it every day. The worthless and offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries. Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contrivance that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed? Altogether independent of the intellectual force in each is the pride of opinion, the security that we are right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of absurdity. Not one has a misgiving of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought that made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes by which Thersites too can love and admire. This is he that should marshal us the way we were going. There is no end to his aid. Without Plato we should almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book. We seem to want but one, but we want one. We love to associate with heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with the great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. We are all wise in capacity, though so few in energy. There needs but one wise man in a company and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion.

Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from egotism and enable us to see other people and their works. But there are vices and follies incident to whole populations and ages. Men resemble their contemporaries even more than their progenitors. It is observed in old couples, or in persons who have been housemates for a course of years, that they grow like, and if they should live long enough we should not be able to know them apart. Nature abhors these complaisances which threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such maudlin agglutinations. The like assimilation goes on between men of one town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas of the time are in the air, and infect all who breathe it. Viewed from any high point, this city of New York, yonder city of London, the Western civilization, would seem a bundle of insanities. We keep each other in countenance and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. The shield against the stingings of conscience is the universal practice, or our contemporaries. Again, it is very easy to be as wise and good as your companions. We learn of our contemporaries what they know without effort, and almost through the pores of the skin. We catch it by sympathy, or as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral elevations of her husband. But we stop where they stop. Very hardly can we take another step. The great, or such as hold of nature and transcend fashions by their fidelity to universal ideas, are saviors from these federal errors, *(4) and defend us from our contemporaries. They are the exceptions which we want, where all grows like. A foreign greatness is the antidote for cabalism.

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in which he leads us. What indemnification is one great man for populations of pigmies! Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the excess of influence of the great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We have become underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our help;- other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he said of the good Jesus, even, "I pray you, let me never hear that man's name again." They cry up the virtues of George Washington,- "Damn George Washington!" is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and confutation. But it is human nature's indispensable defence. The centripetence augments the centrifugence. We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of the state depends on the see-saw.

There is however a speedy limit to the use of heroes. Every genius is defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness. They are very attractive, and seem at a distance our own: but we are hindered on all sides from approach. The more we are drawn, the more we are repelled. There is something not solid in the good that is done for us. The best discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It has something unreal for his companion until he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues and powers not communicable to other men, and sending it to perform one more turn through the circle of beings, wrote, "Not transferable" and "Good for this trip only," on these garments of the soul. There is somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds. The boundaries are invisible, but they are never crossed. There is such good will to impart, and such good will to receive, that each threatens to become the other; but the law of individuality collects its secret strength: you are you, and I am I, and so we remain.

For nature wishes every thing to remain itself; and whilst every individual strives to grow and exclude and to exclude and grow, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature, Nature steadily aims to protect each against every other. Each is self-defended. Nothing is more marked than the power by which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world where every benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor only by continuation of his activity into places where it is not due; where children seem so much at the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are too social and interfering. We rightly speak of the guardian angels of children. How superior in their security from infusions of evil persons, from vulgarity and second thought! They shed their own abundant beauty on the objects they behold. Therefore they are not at the mercy of such poor educators as we adults. If we huff and chide them they soon come not to mind it and get a self-reliance ; and if we indulge them to folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere.

We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth. Compromise thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism: the devotion may easily be greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be another: not thyself, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian; not a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shakespearean. In vain, the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of inertia, fear, or of love itself hold thee there. On, and forever onward! The microscope observes a monad or wheel-insect among the infusories circulating in water. Presently a dot appears on the animal, which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. The ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all thought and in society. Children think they cannot live without their parents. But, long before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared and the detachment taken place. Any accident will now reveal to them their independence.

But great men:- the word is injurious. Is there caste? Is there fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth laments the superfoetation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the dawn of history down, food for knives and powder? The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred;- but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be as low as that we should be low; for we must have society.

Is it a reply to these suggestions to say, Society is a Pestalozzian school: all are teachers and pupils in turn? We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about. As to what we call the masses, and common men,- there are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play and an open field and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.

The heroes of the hour are relatively great; of a faster growth; or they are such in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is then in request. Other days will demand other qualities. Some rays escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great man if there be none greater. His companions are; and not the less great but the more that society cannot see them. Nature never sends a great man into the planet without confiding the secret to another soul.

One gracious fact emerges from these studies,- that there is true ascension in our love. The reputations of the nineteenth century will one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. The genius of humanity is the real subject whose biography is written in our annals. We must infer much, and supply many chasms in the record. The history of the universe is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No man, in all the procession of famous men, is reason or illumination or that essence we were looking for; but is an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities. Could we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant *(5) points compose! The study of many individuals leads us to an elemental region wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all touch by their summits. Thought and feeling that break out there cannot be impounded by any fence of personality. This is the key to the power of the greatest men,- their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of mind travels by night and by day, in concentric circles from its origin, and publishes itself by unknown methods: the union of all minds appears intimate; what gets admission to one, cannot be kept out of any other; the smallest acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to the commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of talent and position vanish when the individuals are seen in the duration which is necessary to complete the career of each, even more swiftly the seeming injustice disappears when we ascend to the central identity of all the individuals, and know that they are made of the substance which ordaineth and doeth.

The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. The qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow. No experience is more familiar. Once you saw phoenixes: they are gone; the world is not therefore disenchanted. The vessels on which you read sacred emblems turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred, and you may still read them transferred to the walls of the world. For a time our teachers serve us personally, as metres or milestones of progress. Once they were angels of knowledge and their figures touched the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means, culture and limits; and they yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names remain so high that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and comparison have not robbed them of a ray. But at last we shall cease to look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their social and delegated quality. All that respects the individual is temporary and prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending out of his limits into a catholic existence. We have never come at the true and best benefit of any genius so long as we believe him an original force. In the moment when he ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect. Then he appears as an exponent of a vaster mind and will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the light of the First Cause.

Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we may say great men exist that there may be greater men. The destiny of organized nature is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? It is for man to tame the chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the germs of love and benefit may be multiplied. *(6)

Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson became one of America's best known and best-loved 19th-century figures. More About Emerson

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What Is the Great Man Theory of Leadership?

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Amy Morin, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and international bestselling author. Her books, including "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do," have been translated into more than 40 languages. Her TEDx talk,  "The Secret of Becoming Mentally Strong," is one of the most viewed talks of all time.

• Contemporary Views

The great man theory of leadership suggests that some individuals are born with characteristics that naturally make them skilled leaders. According to this view, leaders are born, not made. It also suggests that leaders assume authority when their leadership traits are needed.

Have you ever heard the phrase, "Great leaders are born, not made"? This quote sums up the basic tenet of the great man theory of leadership, which suggests that leadership capacity is innate. According to this theory, you're either a natural-born leader or not.

The term "great man" was used because, at the time, ​ leadership was thought of primarily as a male quality, especially in terms of military leadership.

Origins of the Great Man Theory of Leadership

The great man theory of leadership became popular during the 19th century. The mythology behind some of the world's most famous leaders, such as Abraham Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Alexander the Great, helped contribute to the notion that great leaders are born and not made.

Carlyle's Views on Leadership

In many examples, it seems as if the right man for the job seems to emerge almost magically to take control of a situation and lead a group of people into safety or success. Historian Thomas Carlyle also had a major influence on this theory of leadership. He stated, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men."

According to Carlyle, effective leaders are those gifted with divine inspiration and the right characteristics.

Early Leadership Reasearch

Some of the earliest research on leadership looked at people who were already successful leaders. These individuals often included aristocratic rulers who achieved their position through birthright. Because people of a lesser social status had fewer opportunities to practice and achieve leadership roles, it contributed to the idea that leadership is an inherent ability.

Even today, people often describe prominent leaders as having the right qualities or personality for the position. This implies that inherent characteristics are what make these people effective leaders.

Nature vs. Nurture

The great man theory of leadership is an example of using 'nature' to explain human behavior. The nature vs. nurture debate in psychology suggests that some skills are innate while others are acquired through learning and experience. In this case, great man theory suggests that nature plays the dominant role in leadership ability.

Examples of the Great Man Theory of Leadership

Some examples of famous historical figures who are often cited as examples of "great men" include:

• Abraham Lincoln : The 16th president of the United States shepherded the Union through the Civil War and signed the Emancipation Proclamation. His leadership through this tumultuous period is often seen as an example of how great leaders seem to be born with specific skills that make them destined to lead.
• Martin Luther King, Jr .: The civil rights leader was influential in the fight for civil rights during the 1960s. His leadership characteristics, including his persuasive abilities and charisma, are often cited as examples of how innate traits contribute to leadership ability.
• Mahatma Gandhi : The spiritual and political leader who led the successful movement for India's independence from British rule advocated non-violent resistance. His resilience, wisdom, and vision made him an inspiration in the fight for freedom in India and across the globe.

Other leaders often used as examples of the great man theory of leadership include George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Nelson Mandela. Carlyle cited other figures in his book "Heroes and Hero-Worship," including Odin, Muhammad, William Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Napoleon Bonaparte.  

Criticisms of the Great Man Theory of Leadership

The great man theory of leadership has been the subject of considerable debate and criticism. The following are some of the major critiques of this approach to explaining leadership.

Herbert Spencer's Response

Sociologist Herbert Spencer suggested that the leaders were products of the society in which they lived. In "The Study of Sociology," Spencer wrote:

"You must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown…Before he can remake his society, his society must make him."

Incomplete Account of Leadership

One of the critical problems with the Great Man theory of leadership is that not all people who possess the so-called natural leadership qualities become great leaders. If leadership were simply an inborn quality, all people who possess the ​ necessary traits would eventually find themselves in leadership roles.

Ignores Situational Factors

Research has instead found that leadership is a surprisingly complex subject and numerous factors influence how successful a particular leader may or may not be. Characteristics of the group, the leader in power, and the situation all interact to determine what type of leadership is needed and the effectiveness of this leadership.

Neglects Skill Development

The great man theory of leadership also fails to explain how leadership skills can be developed. It oversimplifies leadership and focuses on a very narrow set of skills that may not be effective or appropriate in every context or situation. Modern views emphasize that leadership abilities can be learned and honed with practice.

The psychologist William James defended Carlyle's ideas, suggesting that it is the innate characteristics of individuals that then shape their environments. The theory was critiqued by others in literary form, including in Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." 

Contemporary Views of the Great Man Theory

The great man theory was an influential early theory of leadership, but it has fallen out of favor in modern leadership research. Contemporary ideas take a more nuanced and complex view of the many factors that influence leadership, including the characteristics of group members and the role of the situation .

While the great man theory has been largely replaced by other ideas, elements of it are still relevant today. The theory does not fully explain or account for the many aspects of leadership, but the existence of specific traits that contribute to great leadership is still of interest to contemporary researchers.

Today, experts recognize that leadership is complex and that innate traits alone do not account for how and why some leaders are successful.

Halaychik CS. Leadership theories . In: Lessons in Library Leadership . Elsevier; 2016:1-56. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-100565-1.00001-7

Spector BA. Carlyle, Freud, and the Great Man Theory more fully considered .  Leadership . 2015;12(2):250-260. doi:10.1177/1742715015571392.

Carlyle T. On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History. Fredrick A. Stokes & Brother, 1988.

Spencer, H. The Study of Sociology . Appleton, 1874.​

Yukl G. Effective leadership behavior: What we know and what questions need more attention .  Acad Manag Perspect . 2012;26(4):66-85. doi:10.5465/amp.2012.0088.

James W. Great men, great thoughts, and the environment . The Atlantic .

Kets de Vries M, Cheak-Baillargeon A. Leadership in organizations, sociology of . In: International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences . Elsevier; 2015:664-669. doi:10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.73080-7

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

The Great Man Theory of History

Jan 17, 2020 | Articles

(This essay was originally written as a chapter in my book, Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters , and is an outtake from that book.)

Do specific geniuses or “great men” drive forward the events of history?   Is profound impact on social history the criterion of such great men or heroes?

This idea, known as “the great man theory of history,” was extensively argued during the 19th century, when Western support  for heroism was still pronounced.

Despite a fascinating philosophic debate among serious thinkers, the theory is fatally flawed.

The Great Man Theory

The essence of the hypothesis is that certain great men or heroes, by virtue of their genius, charisma, and/or military-political acumen, are the primary causal agents of historic events. Society does not shape great individuals; rather, great individuals shape society.

Napoleon—who, in accordance with this speculation, can be interpreted as seizing control of the French Revolution and imposing it on sundry European monarchs—is often advanced as an exemplar.

Thomas Carlyle, in his book, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, And The Heroic In History, analyzes writers, priests, and prophets as authentic examples of heroes, but definitively proclaims rightful rulers the greatest of the great. “The Commander over Men; he to whose wills our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men.” [i]

It is Carlyle’s fervent exhortation that we: “Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him….The Ablest Man; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man: what he tells us to do must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere, anyhow learn;–the thing which it will in all ways behoove US, with right loyal thankfulness and nothing doubting, to do.” [ii]

Drawn from history, Carlyle’s principal examples of proper commanders over men are Cromwell and Napoleon who, presumably, he believes, will provide us guidance “the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere, anyhow learn.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, although aphoristic and metaphoric in style—and hardly systematic—is a thinker vastly more profound; who mocks the “insipid muddleheaded Carlyle,” and who provides trenchant if brutal argumentation in support of his vision.

Ironically, Nietzsche, despite his devout atheism, holds a quasi-religious metaphysics, in which “will”—a feature of spirit or mind or consciousness—is presented as the impelling drive of reality itself.  He repudiates the mechanistic, “billiard ball” vision of the universe, which posits, in effect, a world composed of material entities moving, totally and unconditionally, in accord with the laws of physics; and does so, because such a view wrongly models human life and society, actuated as they are by passion and desire.

Nietzsche, rejecting dualism, and seeking a unified world view, resists a projection of inanimate matter’s form of causation onto man—and rather, projects man’s form of causation onto inanimate matter: “Let us assume that nothing is ‘given’ as real except our world of desires and passions….Would we not be allowed to experiment with the question whether these ‘givens’ are not sufficient for understanding the so-called mechanistic (or material) world?…To understand the material world as a pre-form of life?” [iii]

“Will-causality” is the sole form of causality he recognizes.  What are the will(s) composing reality willing? In some primordial sense, a drive to power, about which he works out no detailed theory applied to the universe, but does so applied to life. He writes:  “Life itself is essential assimilation, injury, violation of the foreign and the weaker, suppression, hardness, the forcing of one’s own forms upon something else, ingestion and—at least in its milder form—exploitation.” [iv]

For human beings, as for all organisms, the ultimate good is mastery, domination, subjugation.

(It is not to be overlooked that, for Nietzsche, the paradigm examples of the superior person or Overman were, most likely, such creative artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Goethe; who harness the passion, the turbulence, the raw, burgeoning power of their frenzied souls, and, having gained self-mastery, project order onto the world’s intractable materials, bringing forth in structured, stylized beauty, a momentous work of art. “One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” [v] )

Nevertheless, the most frequent examples of the exuberantly hard, indomitably self-assertive, world-bursting individuals he extols are generals, politicians, ruthless leaders of men—Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. These individuals topple city-states, overturn republics, crush freedom, not as wantonly destructive nihilism but so they may establish empire.

“Most of the overmen whom Nietzsche mentioned by name were politicians and generals whose creativity often expressed itself in the conquest of alien peoples or the subjugation of their fellow citizens.” [vi]

Such giants of history were “beyond good and evil” precisely because, in overturning the old political order among men, and imposing a new, they flouted, violated, shattered conventional moral codes and thrust upon society rules, guidelines, commandments inherently  their own.

“The History of the world is but the Biography of great men,” stated Carlyle in perfect, pithy expression of this view. [vii]

Nineteenth Century Criticisms of the Theory

Today, it is generally held that the great man theory was logically devastated by the withering critique of Herbert Spencer. Spencer, arguing for the causal role of society in shaping an individual, famously observed: “You must admit that the genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown…Before he can re-make his society, his society must make him.” [viii]

William James, from a distinctively biological standpoint, critiqued Spencer’s critique. James pointed out, in terms of causation, a reciprocal relationship between geniuses (or great men) and society; comparing these to the mutual impact on each other of organism and physical environment, as elucidated in Darwinian theory.

“The causes of production of great men lie in a sphere wholly inaccessible to the social philosopher. He must simply accept geniuses as data, just as Darwin accepts his spontaneous variations…these data being given, how does the environment affect them, and how do they affect the environment? …the relation of the visible environment to the great man is in the main exactly what it is to the ‘variation’ in the Darwinian philosophy. It chiefly adopts or rejects, preserves or destroys, in short selects him. And whenever it adopts and preserves the great man, it becomes modified by his influence in an entirely original and peculiar way.” [ix]

For James, biological—not social—factors produce a great man: “Physiological forces, with which the social, political, geographical…conditions have just as much…to do as the condition of the crater of Vesuvius…with the flickering of this gas by which I write, are what make him.” [x]

Presumably, for James, expressed in contemporary terms, a genius arises due predominantly (perhaps exclusively) to genetic causation—either matches his environment or not—and by it is either accepted or rejected, embraced or crushed. When an individual’s genius matches his society, it welcomes him, and he becomes, for it, a driving catalyst of change. “The mutations of societies, then, from generation to generation, are in the main due directly or indirectly to the acts or the examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment…” [xi]

Or, as James puts it, writing in the late 19 th century: “Not every ‘man’ fits every ‘hour’…A given genius may come either too early or too late. Peter the Hermit [an 11 th century priest who helped incite the First Crusade] would now be sent to a lunatic asylum…Cromwell and Napoleon need their revolutions, Grant his civil war…” [xii]

There are a constellation of errors permeating this debate, some committed by this thinker, others by that.

These are: 1. Impact on historic events is not a primary criterion of heroism. 2. Mistakes regarding the complex relationship between an individual and society. 3. Failure to apprehend a fundamental aspect of a great individual’s greatness. 4. The critical error that everyman should obey the commands of heroes, who properly should hold political and legal dominion.

Let’s examine these one at a time.

Critiquing the Great Man Theory

One: Impact on social history: Regarding heroism, an individual’s impact on history is the wrong question to ask. Vivid counter-examples form the start of a counter argument; principles extracted from them, its culmination.

Attila and earlier Hun chieftains had an incalculable impact on social history. Their invasions of Eastern and Central Europe swept before them Germanic tribes, who, fleeing, burst the boundaries of the Roman Empire; catalyzing a series of migrations and battles that, decades later, contributed to the collapse of civilization and triumph of barbarism. Attila ravaged extensive portions of northern Italy and even threatened Rome itself.

Attila and prior Hun leaders were a powerful force in early medieval European history. Is this sufficient to make them heroes? No. Blood-drenched barbarians who dramatically augment the destruction of civilization are, no doubt, mighty villains—but, by virtue of this alone, are excluded from the ranks of heroes.

Epistemologically, the concept “hero” refers to the identification that, in real life, some rare individuals achieve goals that substantially advance human life; that support construction and life, not destruction and death. If a powerful Roman emperor had arisen—a latter-day Augustus—had selected skilled commanders, rallied his troops, defeated the invaders, saved Rome, restored and upheld some degree of intellectual freedom, thereby promoting a revival of civilization, and had continued to protect it against barbarians—this would be a hero.

A different example on the same theme: If impact on history is a prime criterion of heroism, then few can lay better claim to the title than Hitler. But, in truth, one of history’s most egregious mass murderers has even less claim to the title of “hero” than does Attila.

There is a fundamental flaw in the great man theory of history: It asks the wrong question.

The proper criterion of heroism is not impact on society—but benefit to human life. The individual who discovers new knowledge—or applies it to such life-promoting fields as music, agriculture, medicine, electrical engineering, or numerous others—the person who creates material or intellectual wealth—or who effectively protects the creators—the men and women responsible for originating civilization, for raising mankind out of the caves and the jungles, for immensely increasing living standards, life expectancies, leisure time, and for creating art, entertainment, and consequent immeasurable  enhancement of men’s ability to enjoy their earthly time—these are mankind’s heroes.

Heroes, by this measure, do greatly impact social history—but such influence is not the fundamental criterion of heroism. If we employ the Carlyle-Nietzsche definition of “great men,” then, in truth, all (epic)heroes are great men—but not all great men are heroes. Unfortunately, heroes are not as widespread a phenomenon as “great men;”  worse, “hero worship” has been too often directed at “great men” unworthy of it.

Two: The relationship between the great individual and society :  Looked at from one perspective—viewing society as an immense but nonetheless single entity, composed of an incalculable number of components—a reciprocal influence upon each other of great man and society is undeniably true.

Napoleon certainly shook European monarchies to their foundations.

But the causal factors animating such momentous events stretched back through centuries; including, most obviously, the French Revolution; but also the long-unchallenged power of the ancien regime —the thoughts, values, and actions of various Bourbon monarchs, their families, foes, and advisors—the teachings and actions of the Catholic Church, its popes, cardinals, and theologians; the writings of various philosophes, supporting the freedom of man’s mind, opposing the ancient regime; the influence, especially on Voltaire, of Britain’s gradual movement away from absolute monarchy in the direction of increased individual liberties; the prevalence across the Continent of oppressive hereditary monarchies, and the opposition of many to the ideals and goals of the Revolution; and so on, in incessant litany of causes and conditioning persons and events, that could not be exhaustively recounted in a dozen lifetimes by a regiment of Will Durants.

Napoleon was acted upon, by society, in ways too numerous to catalogue.

But viewing society as a single super-organism that thinks and acts and influences an individual is worse than a fiction of lazy minds unwilling to examine its multitude of constituent parts. It is the fallacy of reification writ large. “Reification…is the hypostatizing [thing-making] of entities, that is, the making of abstractions into substances.” [xiii]

That, in some sense, society exists, is not to be doubted. But in what sense? Surely, “American society” does not exist in the sense that, for example, Clint Eastwood—American citizen—exists. One could meet face-to-face with Eastwood, converse, dine, and tipple with him—might visually observe, on the silver screen, his impressively manly squint—applaud (or not) as he garners “Best Director” awards—and so on. Can one engage in such activities vis-à-vis “American society?” One cannot.

American society, or any other, is an amalgam of such an immense quantity of individuals—their thoughts, values, emotions, actions, and swirling interactions—as to be, in a literal sense, incalculable. One could not encounter all such social components, never mind remember, during the latter stage of encountering, those antecedently encountered; much less keep track—in the time elapsed during these subsequent encounters—of the further doings of those initially encountered.

The concept “society” is a mental construct subsuming an immeasurable quantity of data, much, although not all of it, observational.  To state the point simply: Society is a collection of individuals who act upon each other.

Whose actions impinge most heavily on others?

Napoleon exerted more influence—for better or worse—on far more individuals than the vast majority of other individuals exerted on him. Although it is true, in some sense, to say that “society” significantly influenced (but not “made” or “molded”) Napoleon, the conventional understanding of this claim is—including by many philosophers—at best, woozy.

The sense in which it is true is that many members of human society—individuals—exerted some influence on Napoleon, and that some members exerted much; this latter includes more than the usual suspects of parents, family, peers, teachers, and so on; but also some of history’s other “great men,”  including a wide array of diverse artists, philosophers, scientists, and statesmen who helped create both the relatively-advanced Western society in which Napoleon was educated and the opportunities it afforded.

James succinctly expresses the point: “…the important thing…is that what makes a certain genius now incompatible with his surroundings is usually…that some previous genius of a different strain has warped the community away from the sphere of his possible effectiveness. After Voltaire, no Peter the Hermit…” [xiv]

Regarding the exertion of influence, not all human beings are created equal.  A few exert substantially—in some cases vastly—more on other individuals than do other individuals on them (or than these other individuals do on the still other individuals composing the rest of society). A critically important question is: Is such influence for good or ill—or is it mixed? To make such a judgment, of course, requires a standard.

That Napoleon exerted enormous impact on European society is clear. Further, numerous of his policies effectively supported human life. He ended feudalism, abolished serfdom, and annulled the Inquisition. He advanced religious freedom in Europe, even for the long-oppressed Jews. Across the continent, he so weakened the ancient regime that it would not long survive his own demise.

But the blood, the guts, the enormous cost in human life, in service of his dreams of conquest and power, cannot be sanctioned. Although certainly not a scourge of civilization a la Attila, much less a monster, the countless youthful lives snuffed out, in endless procession of gory battles, to fulfill his imperial designs renders unconscionable an overwhelming preponderance of his career.

It is definitely tragic, and possibly criminal that we, the human race, have so often glorified conquerors. Stendhal, as but one example, praised Napoleon as “the greatest man to appear in the world since Caesar.” [xv] Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, despite some noble qualities and beneficent policies, shed such an ocean of innocent blood as to dwarf their life-giving achievements. It is the creators and their protectors, not power-seekers and warmongers that deserve our respect and emulation. Nietzsche, in his best moments, understood this; unfortunately, his best moments were rare.

Three: The overlooked cause of a great man’s greatness: James, in effect, argues that geniuses or great men are born, not made. Presumably, the biological causes of a hero’s gifts are operative whether his society is ready or not for them; whether, to these gifts, it offers nurture or opposition; whether, for them, it provides outlet or stone wall.

In response to his chief opponent, he wrote: “Can it be that Mr. Spencer holds the convergence of sociological pressures to have so impinged on Stratford-upon-Avon about the 26 th of April, 1564, that a W. Shakespeare, with all his mental peculiarities, had to be born there, –as the pressure of water outside a certain boat will cause a stream of a certain form to ooze into a particular leak?  And does he mean to say that if the aforesaid W. Shakespeare had died of cholera infantum, another mother at Stratford-upon-Avon would needs have engendered a duplicate copy of him, to restore the sociologic equilibrium,–just as the same stream of water will reappear, no matter how often you pass a sponge over the leak, so long as the outside level remains unchanged?” [xvi]

Presumably, Spencer meant no such thing. What he most likely meant was a more conventional claim that, once born, a future genius receives from society nurturing, education, religious training, stable political environment, friendship, love, human intimacy, and much more, all of which contribute to the eventual great man; or, in Spencer’s overstated terms, are what “make him.”

One assumes Spencer does not mean what James ascribes to him: that society—its cultural evolution, educational system, government, and so forth —necessitates, at precisely that moment, the birth of a man with the vigorous brain activity of a Shakespeare; but merely, that once such an individual is born, society trains that brain to cognize, to value, to feel, in specific forms.  James is here guilty of a straw man fallacy.

Aside from the reification already described—and the realization that the education, cultural accomplishments, and so forth, provided the germinating genius proceed from other individuals and institutions founded, run, and supported by individuals—both disputants overlook a cardinal principle necessary to understand the gestation of any person’s thinking and values, including those of a genius: volition. (This is an oversight especially puzzling in the case of James, strong advocate of free will that he is.)

Do Spencer and James differ over no more than variants of determinism, with the former advocating a social—and the latter a biological—version? If so, this writer disagrees.

That a Shakespeare is born with a robust brain (and nervous system) generating rich, diverse, quick, multiple neural firings—or however 21 st century neuro-biology understands such functions—seems clear. Who doubts that the brain of a genius is pre-eminently active?

In a form analogous to how the coordinated muscle structure of an Olympic champion facilitates athletic accomplishments, just so the vigorous brain functioning of a Shakespeare is a necessary condition of  intellectual ones.  A certain type of brain and the neural activity it actuates are, presumably, foundations of the “one percent inspiration” of genius properly invoked by Edison.

Further, if an individual of prodigious cerebral endowment, such as a Shakespeare, is born to a primitive nomadic tribe, which has yet to formulate written language, the education, values, and training afforded by such a society provide scant opportunity for the potential Bard to actualize his surpassing literary gifts. (Although, he might be exactly the individual, in that society, who pioneers written language; the earlier absence of which itself provides opportunity). That the history, culture, education, political system, and so forth, of a given society emphatically affects the germination of a great individual’s intellect and values—on what basis can such a proposition be doubted?

Nevertheless, an individual is not the crafted outcome of what other individuals molded him to be; as many parents have ruefully discovered. He/she is not the sum total of the thoughts, appraisals, beliefs, emotions, and actions of the myriad individuals who have, to greater or lesser degree, impacted him. He is influenced; he is not molded.

If individuals are molded, who or what molded the original molders? (Or, in Spencer’s overstated terms, if society “make[s]” an individual, who makes the makers?) Somewhere in time, the process of molding began; otherwise, no process. Who initiated it? And what were the culture’s determining influence(s) on him (or them)? Or are we to assume that the human race’s progenitors made fundamental choices of which their descendants are incapable? If so, what principle explains the volition possessed by some members of humanity, as distinct and apart from the rest?

In short, the thesis that some individuals “make” an individual, is hopelessly entangled in an infinite regress of causes. For, the individuals that made Napoleon were themselves “made” by antecedent individuals, who, of course, were “made” by individuals prior to them, and so forth, ad infinitum. Positing such an infinite regress of causation is a more egregious logical error even than reification.

Further, does the super-charged brain activity of a Shakespeare necessitate its direction into literature? Was it neither neurologically nor socially possible for a man of such intellectual gifts to spark interest in mathematics or medicine or art? Indeed, was it necessary that he pursue an intellectual career at all? Many a time, honest observers have witnessed the sad spectacle of supremely gifted individuals squandering immense intellectual inheritance, as do some of their unfortunate counterparts regarding material ones.

As a striking example, Shakespeare’s brilliant contemporary, poet/dramatist, Christopher Marlowe, was, aged twenty-nine, stabbed to death under mysterious circumstances that might never be entirely understood.

Nevertheless, tragically, for the claim that Marlowe was as much a genius of low-living as he was of theater arts, there is abundant supporting evidence. An anonymous 16 th century contemporary wrote of him: “Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell, Wit lent from Heaven, but vices sent from hell.”

That a man possesses active brain and brilliant acumen provides no assurance that he values either—that he will doggedly pursue serious intellectual interests, literary or otherwise—or, so  doing, that he will not simultaneously court dissipation or early demise in riotous hedonism, gratuitous violence, or one or another of self-destruction’s myriad seductive forms.

Marlowe manifested a short but brilliant career. How many others, with equally potent brains and similarly powerful vices, manifested careers only short—or non-existent? The graveyards, one sadly suspects, are filled with skeletons of potential geniuses that, for one or another reason, were never heard from.

The truth is that Shakespeare was born with a vibrantly active brain that enabled prodigious intellectual achievement—that he appeared in a 16 th century English culture that prized theater and literature, providing thereby encouragement and opportunity—and that he chose an intellectual career and chose one distinctively in the field of literature.   

Choice, as a real aspect of human life, is known via direct introspective awareness–and the flaws of determinism, in any of its forms, are intellectually fatal.   (See Appendix B: “A Challenge to Determinism.”)

Four: Heroes possess no moral authority to command obedience:  Why do purveyors of the Great Man theory claim that a hero should rightfully possess unlimited political power?

Is it because he/she embodies a will to dominance that forms the core of metaphysical reality, is thereby incarnation of it, and entitled—as, in effect, reality’s certified deputy—to shunt, bestride, or trample lesser men? Or is it because the great individual possesses wisdom and judgment lacking in mere mortals, whose otherwise lost souls call out desperately for his guidance?

Is his/her rule justified by brute power—as, according to the most radical Greek Sophists—force was the final arbiter of right and wrong? [xvii] Or is it sanctioned by paternalism, similar to that of Plato’s vision of a Socrates-like Philosopher King? Is it the great person’s rightful destiny to overthrow societies, and, living “beyond” the conventional moral codes they embody, crush sniveling weaklings strewn athwart his path? Or, under the burden of noblesse oblige, must his/her reign embody not merely a material generosity to those less prosperous but, as well, a spiritual guidance to those less wise?

Clearly, for Nietzsche, the propositions contained in the former questions constitute his reasons; nor is it a matter of guesswork that, for Carlyle, those in the latter.

In his 1849 essay, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” Carlyle is brutally clear regarding the reasons of paternalism’s rectitude. It is here that Carlyle first applied his now-famous epithet “the dismal science” to economics. What is “dismal” regarding economics? The economists’ commitment to individuals making unfettered choices in free markets, unguided by their intellectual and/or moral superiors.

To be blunt, Carlyle regarded certain human beings—blacks, European serfs, Irishmen, low-born workers—as unqualified for self-governing. The principles of individualism, individual rights, and political-economic liberty cut asunder such persons from a hierarchical society that bestowed upon them a sustaining  guidance from their superiors.  For this reason, Carlyle fervently supported race-based slavery—and excoriated the economists because they did not. [xviii]   In the end, in politics, Carlyle embodies a bastardized version of Platonism.

In truth, however, to the extent that authoritarian rulers are upheld as heroes, and hero worship is held to be unreserved reverence for and unquestioning obedience to them, they are dangerous figures; properly, human beings should be fearful of such beliefs.  In the “Prologue” to her book, Heroes, Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen: A History of Hero Worship, Lucy Hughes Hallett warns against human willingness to “hand over their political rights to a glorious superman.” [xix]    Regarding this aspect of the complex issue, she is quite right.

Why? The answer can be succinctly stated: Rational beings possess the wherewithal, and must accept the responsibility, to govern their own lives. To surrender this right is not merely to threaten political liberty, and enshrine statism, but to undermine the role of the mind in each individual’s life. Did nature endow us with a mind to surrender it to a fatherly despot? When we are children, we need the loving supervision of our parents. Does it follow that, as adults, we yet require such supervision from the state?

Epistemologically, psychologically, morally—despite our years, experience, and wisdom attained—do we perennially remain akin to children? Do the vast majority of persons—healthy, able-bodied, possessing a human brain—require Political Big Daddy or Super Nanny to guide them? “An exaggerated veneration for an exceptional individual poses an insidious temptation. It allows worshippers to abnegate responsibility, looking to great men for salvation or for fulfillment which they more properly should be working to accomplish for themselves.” [xx]

A healthy adult living in a free society can and will deploy his/her intelligence to choose the education he receives, the field of study in which he specializes, the career he pursues, the locale of his residence, and so forth regarding the myriad values of human life.

Could the state, for example,  know for Jenny Smith—better than she could know—what is best for her regarding a single one of these values, much less the totality? By what means? Jenny Smith, let us say, chooses to study biology—but the state deems architecture a field for her better suited. What evidence could the state adduce to support its claim? Since Carlyle (and many others) assumes paternalism, the kinship of a benevolent state to a loving parent, the sought-after outcome must include the well-being of the individual citizen.

By what means could the state know that architecture, rather than biology, will best ensure Ms. Smith’s fulfillment? Will it administer a battery of sophisticated aptitude tests? Will it hire expert psychologists to interview and examine her? Will it coerce her—as a trial run—to spend x amount of time studying architecture?

And what if, after all of the state’s noblest efforts, Ms. Smith persists in obdurate commitment to biology? Will the state coerce her into its preferred field? If so, is it reasonable to expect that, under conditions of forced labor, Ms. Jenny Smith will achieve career fulfillment?

Further, once this aspect of Ms. Smith’s drama is resolved, the state is yet faced with guiding her life regarding other significant human values. Multiply this dilemma by the fifty million citizens (or greater) populating a given society, and the insuperable epistemological difficulties faced by a paternalistic state become manifest.

Or, if it is assumed that the state need concern itself only with the best interest of society as a whole—rather than the fulfillment of individual citizens—how is this achieved? Under individual rights and freedom, individuals pursue their own values. But the impelling premise of paternalism is that the wise political rulers know what is best for each citizen—more ably than he/she can know for himself/herself.

If the state “guides,” that is, can coerce a person toward the end it—but not he/she—cherishes, how many members of society will be fulfilled? How many will work conscientiously, as opposed to resentfully and half-heartedly? How many will commit suicide? How is the best interest of society—a composite of millions of individuals—served by the enforced frustration of countless of those individuals?

Thus far, we have discussed only education and career. Throw in the values of friendship, romantic love, marriage, and children, and the prescription for state-dominated misery becomes irresistible.

Related: Nietzsche, in his best moments and moods, recognizes that the greatest individuals or most perfected heroes are not conquerors or kings, but creative artists and intellectual geniuses. About this, he is correct. What of such creative minds under paternalism? Are we to believe the wise rulers those most capable of identifying and nurturing such nascent talent? And what ensues if the germinating genius seeks independence from the state, as do teen-agers from parents, and dares disagree with its edicts and policies?

What occurs if he/she persists in such disagreement into adulthood, using his creative gifts to convey his message to the public? Stripped of the right to govern his/her life by application of his own intelligence, and obligated to—in all matters—accept the state’s superior wisdom, is he inevitably faced with the brutal alternative: Kowtow or die? How thick is the irony when Plato’s politics, embodied, results in the execution of a future Socrates?

Politically, this form of hero worship necessitates state worship. Ironically, in its milder form, it makes life exceedingly difficult for the great creative minds that constitute mankind’s grandest heroes; in its most virulent form, it crushes them.

The great man theory of heroism, as debated in the 19th century, is fatally flawed. Impact on society or on history is not a proper criterion of heroism; nor are many of the individuals hero-worshipped worthy of it. Heroes are “made” by neither genetic inheritance nor social conditioning nor a combination of the two; although these are impactful factors, they do not cover the waterfront; additionally, heroes choose to perform the life-enhancing feats they do, often under great duress and against social opposition; such courageous choices are part of what make them heroes. Heroes, as earlier discussed, are to be worshiped and emulated; not blindly obeyed.

Get your copy of Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters today!

[i] Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, And The Heroic In History (Middlesex, England: Echo Library, 2007), p. 123.

[ii] Ibid.,  p. 123.

[iii] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, tr. M. Cowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955), pp. 42-43.

[iv] Ibid. , p. 201.

[v] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufman (New York: Viking, 1954), p. 129.

[vi] W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy, vol. 4, “Kant and the Nineteenth Century” (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1975), p. 257.

[vii] Carlyle, op. cit., p. 21.

[viii] Herbert Spencer, The Study of Sociology (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1896), p. 34.

[ix] William James, “Great Men and their Environment” in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956), pp. 225-26.

[x] Ibid., pp. 234-35.

[xi] Ibid., p. 227.

[xii] Ibid., p. 230.

[xiii] Ward Fearnside and William Holther, Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1959), p. 43.

[xiv] James, op. cit., p. 230.

[xv] Quoted in Will and Ariel Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 11, “The Age of Napoleon” (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 773.

[xvi] Ibid., p. 235.

[xvii] W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy, Volume One, “The Classical Mind” (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969), pp. 68-71.

[xviii] Carlyle, “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question,” www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/carlyle/occasion.htm . Retrieved July 16, 2016. David Levy, How The Dismal Science Got Its Name (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), pp. xiii-xv, 3-28, 41-57, 147, 158-197, and passim. Levy, “150 years and Still Dismal!”  www.fee.org/articles/150-years-and-still-dismal/. Retrieved July 16, 2016.

[xix] Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Heroes, Saviors, Traitors, and Supermen: A History of Hero Worship (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), p. 14.

[xx] Ibid., p. 5

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Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words: A Story Of Hard Work And Perseverance

Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words: A great man is someone who has achieved remarkable things in his life, and whose legacy lives on long after he is gone. From historical figures like Albert Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi, to modern-day heroes like Bill Gates and Elon Musk, the world is filled with great men who have made significant contributions to society. In this essay, we will explore the life of a great man in 100 words, covering his early life, education and career, personal life, and legacy.

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Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words

In this blog Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words, we include About Life Of A Great Man Essay, in 100, 200, 250, and 300 words. Also cover Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words for classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and up to the 12th class and also for kids, children, and students. You can read more  Essay Writing in 10 lines about sports, events, occasions, festivals, etc… Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words is also available in different languages. In this Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words, the following features are explained in the given manner.

Our great man was born in a small town in rural America. He came from humble beginnings and was raised in a working-class family. Despite the challenges he faced, he was determined to make something of himself and worked hard to achieve his goals. From an early age, he demonstrated a natural curiosity and a love of learning, which would serve him well throughout his life.

Education And Career

After completing high school, our great man went on to pursue higher education. He studied hard and eventually graduated with a degree in engineering. He then went on to work for a large tech company, where he quickly rose through the ranks due to his talent and dedication. Over the years, he made significant contributions to the field of technology, and his innovations helped to shape the way we live our lives today.

Personal Life

Despite his busy career, our great man always made time for his family and loved ones. He was a devoted husband and father, and he worked hard to provide for his family. In his free time, he enjoyed pursuing hobbies like reading and playing sports. He also gave back to his community by volunteering and donating to charitable causes.

Today, our great man is remembered for his many achievements and contributions to society. His innovations and inventions have revolutionized the tech industry, and his legacy continues to inspire new generations of innovators and entrepreneurs. He is a role model to many, and his life serves as a reminder of what is possible when one sets their mind to something and works hard to achieve it.

Conclusion On Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words

In conclusion, the life of a great man is a fascinating and inspiring story that deserves to be told. From humble beginnings to worldwide fame, our great man’s journey is a testament to the power of hard work, dedication, and perseverance. His legacy continues to inspire us all, and we can all learn valuable lessons from his life. Whether we are striving to achieve greatness in our own lives, or simply looking for inspiration and motivation, the life of a great man is a story that we can all learn from and be inspired by.

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FAQ’s On Life Of A Great Man Essay 100 Words

Question 1. Who is the great man of India?

Answer: It’s difficult to pinpoint just one great man of India, As the country has produced many leaders, thinkers, and saints of high renown. From Mahatma Gandhi, who led the movement for Indian independence, To Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel laureate who enriched literature and art with his contributions.

Question 2. Who is great personality in India?

Answer: India has many great personalities, both past and present, From leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, and Indira Gandhi, To contemporary figures like Narendra Modi, Sachin Tendulkar, and A.R. Rahman, Each contributing their unique talents and accomplishments to Indian society and culture.

Question 3. Who is known as the great man?

Answer: There have been many figures throughout history who have been called “the great man,” From military leaders like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, To philosophers and statesmen like Aristotle and Winston Churchill, Each known for their exceptional talents and contributions to their respective fields.

Question 4. Which personality type is most rare in India?

Answer: It is difficult to determine the rarest personality type in India. As there is no definitive data on the distribution of personality types. However, some studies suggest that the INFJ (Introverted-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging) type may be rarer in India. As it is considered to be one of the rarest types globally, making up only about 1-2% of the population.

Question 5. What are the five great personalities?

• Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian independence leader and advocate for nonviolent resistance.
• Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who dedicated her life to serving the poor and sick in India.
• Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights leader who fought for racial equality and justice.
• Albert Einstein, a German physicist who revolutionized modern science with his theories.
• William Shakespeare, an English playwright who created some of the greatest literary works in the English language.

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Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope

Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by Les Bowler.

An Essay on Man . moral essays and satires

By ALEXANDER POPE.

CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited : london , paris & melbourne . 1891.

INTRODUCTION.

Pope’s life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough to the three reigns in which he worked.  Under Queen Anne he was an original poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he was chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the French-classical taste with versions of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”  Under George I. he also edited Shakespeare, but with little profit to himself; for Shakespeare was but a Philistine in the eyes of the French-classical critics.  But as the eighteenth century grew slowly to its work, signs of a deepening interest in the real issues of life distracted men’s attention from the culture of the snuff-box and the fan.  As Pope’s genius ripened, the best part of the world in which he worked was pressing forward, as a mariner who will no longer hug the coast but crowds all sail to cross the storms of a wide unknown sea.  Pope’s poetry thus deepened with the course of time, and the third period of his life, which fell within the reign of George II., was that in which he produced the “Essay on Man,” the “Moral Essays,” and the “Satires.”  These deal wholly with aspects of human life and the great questions they raise, according throughout with the doctrine of the poet, and of the reasoning world about him in his latter day, that “the proper study of mankind is Man.”

Wrongs in high places, and the private infamy of many who enforced the doctrines of the Church, had produced in earnest men a vigorous antagonism.  Tyranny and unreason of low-minded advocates had brought religion itself into question; and profligacy of courtiers, each worshipping the golden calf seen in his mirror, had spread another form of scepticism.  The intellectual scepticism, based upon an honest search for truth, could end only in making truth the surer by its questionings.  The other form of scepticism, which might be traced in England from the low-minded frivolities of the court of Charles the Second, was widely spread among the weak, whose minds flinched from all earnest thought.  They swelled the number of the army of bold questioners upon the ways of God to Man, but they were an idle rout of camp-followers, not combatants; they simply ate, and drank, and died.

In 1697, Pierre Bayle published at Rotterdam, his “Historical and Critical Dictionary,” in which the lives of men were associated with a comment that suggested, from the ills of life, the absence of divine care in the shaping of the world.  Doubt was born of the corruption of society; Nature and Man were said to be against faith in the rule of a God, wise, just, and merciful.  In 1710, after Bayle’s death, Leibnitz, a German philosopher then resident in Paris, wrote in French a book, with a title formed from Greek words meaning Justice of God, Theodicee, in which he met Bayle’s argument by reasoning that what we cannot understand confuses us, because we see only the parts of a great whole.  Bayle, he said, is now in Heaven, and from his place by the throne of God, he sees the harmony of the great Universe, and doubts no more.  We see only a little part in which are many details that have purposes beyond our ken.  The argument of Leibnitz’s Theodicee was widely used; and although Pope said that he had never read the Theodicee, his “Essay on Man” has a like argument.  When any book has a wide influence upon opinion, its general ideas pass into the minds of many people who have never read it.  Many now talk about evolution and natural selection, who have never read a line of Darwin.

In the reign of George the Second, questionings did spread that went to the roots of all religious faith, and many earnest minds were busying themselves with problems of the state of Man, and of the evidence of God in the life of man, and in the course of Nature.  Out of this came, nearly at the same time, two works wholly different in method and in tone—so different, that at first sight it may seem absurd to speak of them together.  They were Pope’s “Essay on Man,” and Butler’s “Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature.”

Butler’s “Analogy” was published in 1736; of the “Essay on Man,” the first two Epistles appeared in 1732, the Third Epistle in 1733, the Fourth in 1734, and the closing Universal Hymn in 1738.  It may seem even more absurd to name Pope’s “Essay on Man” in the same breath with Milton’s “Paradise Lost;” but to the best of his knowledge and power, in his smaller way, according to his nature and the questions of his time, Pope was, like Milton, endeavouring “to justify the ways of God to Man.”  He even borrowed Milton’s line for his own poem, only weakening the verb, and said that he sought to “vindicate the ways of God to Man.”  In Milton’s day the questioning all centred in the doctrine of the “Fall of Man,” and questions of God’s Justice were associated with debate on fate, fore-knowledge, and free will.  In Pope’s day the question was not theological, but went to the root of all faith in existence of a God, by declaring that the state of Man and of the world about him met such faith with an absolute denial.  Pope’s argument, good or bad, had nothing to do with questions of theology.  Like Butler’s, it sought for grounds of faith in the conditions on which doubt was rested.  Milton sought to set forth the story of the Fall in such way as to show that God was love.  Pope dealt with the question of God in Nature, and the world of Man.

Pope’s argument was attacked with violence my M. de Crousaz, Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics in the University of Lausanne, and defended by Warburton, then chaplain to the Prince of Wales, in six letters published in 1739, and a seventh in 1740, for which Pope (who died in 1744) was deeply grateful.  His offence in the eyes of de Crousaz was that he had left out of account all doctrines of orthodox theology.  But if he had been orthodox of the orthodox, his argument obviously could have been directed only to the form of doubt it sought to overcome.  And when his closing hymn was condemned as the freethinker’s hymn, its censurers surely forgot that their arguments against it would equally apply to the Lord’s Prayer, of which it is, in some degree, a paraphrase.

The first design of the Essay on Man arranged it into four books, each consisting of a distinct group of Epistles.  The First Book, in four Epistles, was to treat of man in the abstract, and of his relation to the Universe.  That is the whole work as we have it now.  The Second Book was to treat of Man Intellectual; the Third Book, of Man Social, including ties to Church and State; the Fourth Book, of Man Moral, was to illustrate abstract truth by sketches of character.  This part of the design is represented by the Moral Essays, of which four were written, to which was added, as a fifth, the Epistle to Addison which had been written much earlier, in 1715, and first published in 1720.  The four Moral essays are two pairs.  One pair is upon the Characters of Men and on the Characters of Women, which would have formed the opening of the subject of the Fourth Book of the Essay: the other pair shows character expressed through a right or a wrong use of Riches: in fact, Money and Morals.  The four Epistles were published separately.  The fourth (to the Earl of Burlington) was first published in 1731, its title then being “Of Taste;” the third (to Lord Bathurst) followed in 1732, the year of the publication of the first two Epistles on the “Essay on Man.”  In 1733, the year of publication of the Third Epistle of the “Essay on Man,” Pope published his Moral Essay of the “Characters of Men.”  In 1734 followed the Fourth Epistle of the “Essay on Man;” and in 1735 the “Characters of Women,” addressed to Martha Blount, the woman whom Pope loved, though he was withheld by a frail body from marriage.  Thus the two works were, in fact, produced together, parts of one design.

Pope’s Satires, which still deal with characters of men, followed immediately, some appearing in a folio in January, 1735.  That part of the epistle to Arbuthnot forming the Prologue, which gives a character of Addison, as Atticus, had been sketched more than twelve years before, and earlier sketches of some smaller critics were introduced; but the beginning and the end, the parts in which Pope spoke of himself and of his father and mother, and his friend Dr. Arbuthnot, were written in 1733 and 1734.  Then follows an imitation of the first Epistle of the Second Book of the Satires of Horace, concerning which Pope told a friend, “When I had a fever one winter in town that confined me to my room for five or six days, Lord Bolingbroke, who came to see me, happened to take up a Horace that lay on the table, and, turning it over, dropped on the first satire in the Second Book, which begins, ‘Sunt, quibus in satira.’  He observed how well that would suit my case if I were to imitate it in English.  After he was gone, I read it over, translated it in a morning or two, and sent it to press in a week or a fortnight after” (February, 1733).  “And this was the occasion of my imitating some others of the Satires and Epistles.”  The two dialogues finally used as the Epilogue to the Satires were first published in the year 1738, with the name of the year, “Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-eight.”  Samuel Johnson’s “London,” his first bid for recognition, appeared in the same week, and excited in Pope not admiration only, but some active endeavour to be useful to its author.

The reader of Pope, as of every author, is advised to begin by letting him say what he has to say, in his own manner to an open mind that seeks only to receive the impressions which the writer wishes to convey.  First let the mind and spirit of the writer come into free, full contact with the mind and spirit of the reader, whose attitude at the first reading should be simply receptive.  Such reading is the condition precedent to all true judgment of a writer’s work.  All criticism that is not so grounded spreads as fog over a poet’s page.  Read, reader, for yourself, without once pausing to remember what you have been told to think.

POPE’S POEMS.

An essay on man. to h. st. john lord bolingbroke., the design..

Having proposed to write some pieces of Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon’s expression) come home to Men’s Business and Bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; since, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

The science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: there are not many certain truths in this world.  It is therefore in the anatomy of the Mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation.  The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice more than advanced the theory of Morality.  If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.

This I might have done in prose, but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons.  The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: the other may seem odd, but is true, I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness.  I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: if any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.

What is now published is only to be considered as a general Map of Man, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, and leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow.  Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament.  I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage.  To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.  P.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

Of the Nature and State of Man, with respect to the Universe.

Of Man in the abstract.  I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, v.17, etc.  II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the Creation, agreeable to the general Order of Things, and conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown, v.35, etc.  III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, v.77, etc.  IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfection, the cause of Man’s error and misery.  The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of His dispensations, v.109, etc.  V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the Creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, v.131, etc.  VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the Brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, v.173, etc.  VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man.  The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason alone countervails all the other faculties, v.207.  VIII. How much further this order and subordination 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 destroyed, v.233.  IX.  The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v.250.  X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, v.281, etc., to the end.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us and to die) Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan; A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit. Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies, And catch the manners living as they rise; Laugh where we must, be candid where we can; But vindicate the ways of God to man.

I.  Say first, of God above, or man below What can we reason, but from what we know? Of man, what see we but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer? Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known, ’Tis ours to trace Him only in our own. He, who through vast immensity can pierce, See worlds on worlds compose one universe, Observe how system into system runs, What other planets circle other suns, What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are. But of this frame, the bearings, and the ties, The strong connections, nice dependencies, Gradations just, has thy pervading soul Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?    Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

II.  Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find, Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind? First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less; Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? Or ask of yonder argent fields above, Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove?    Of systems possible, if ’tis confest That wisdom infinite must form the best, Where all must full or not coherent be, And all that rises, rise in due degree; Then in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man: And all the question (wrangle e’er so long) Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?    Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all. In human works, though laboured on with pain, A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; In God’s one single can its end produce; Yet serves to second too some other use. So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; ’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.    When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains: When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s god: Then shall man’s pride and dulness comprehend His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end; Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity.    Then say not man’s imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather man’s as perfect as he ought: His knowledge measured to his state and place; His time a moment, and a point his space. If to be perfect in a certain sphere, What matter, soon or late, or here or there? The blest to-day is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.

III.  Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. Oh, blindness to the future! kindly given, That each may fill the circle, marked by Heaven: Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, And now a bubble burst, and now a world.    Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore. What future bliss, He gives not thee to know, But gives that hope to be thy blessing now. Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest: The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.    Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds, or hears Him in the wind; His soul, proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky way; Yet simple Nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. To be, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel’s wing, no seraph’s fire; But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company.

IV.  Go, wiser thou! and, in thy scale of sense, Weigh thy opinion against providence; Call imperfection what thou fanciest such, Say, here He gives too little, there too much; Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, Yet cry, if man’s unhappy, God’s unjust; If man alone engross not Heaven’s high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there: Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge His justice, be the God of God. In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell, Aspiring to be angels, men rebel: And who but wishes to invert the laws Of order, sins against the Eternal Cause.

V.  Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use?  Pride answers, “’Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings; For me, health gushes from a thousand springs; Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.”    But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? “No, (’tis replied) the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by general laws; The exceptions few; some change since all began; And what created perfect?”—Why then man? If the great end be human happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can man do less? As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of man’s desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven’s design, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline? Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms; Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar’s mind, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account for moral, as for natural things: Why charge we heaven in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right is to submit.    Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind; That never passion discomposed the mind. But all subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elements of life. The general order, since the whole began, Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

VI.  What would this man?  Now upward will he soar, And little less than angel, would be more; Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears Made for his use all creatures if he call, Say what their use, had he the powers of all? Nature to these, without profusion, kind, The proper organs, proper powers assigned; Each seeming want compensated of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?    The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, man is not a fly. Say what the use, were finer optics given, To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er, To smart and agonize at every pore? Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? If Nature thundered in his opening ears, And stunned him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies?

VII.  Far as Creation’s ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends: Mark how it mounts, to man’s imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: What modes of sight 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, To that which warbles through the vernal wood: The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew? How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! ’Twixt that, and reason, what a nice barrier, For ever separate, yet for ever near! Remembrance and reflection how allayed; What thin partitions sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never passed the insuperable line! Without this just gradation, could they be Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all these powers in one?

VIII.  See, through 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 ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach; from Infinite to thee, From thee to nothing.  On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed: From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike, Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.    And, if each system in gradation roll Alike essential to the amazing whole, The least confusion but in one, not all That system only, but the whole must fall. Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky; Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, Being on being wrecked, and world on world; Heaven’s whole foundations to their centre nod, And nature tremble 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, ordained the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another, in this general frame: Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, The great directing Mind of All ordains.    All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; That, changed through all, and yet in all the same; Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame; Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, Lives through all life, extends through all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent; Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart: As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, As the rapt seraph that adores and burns: To him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.

X.  Cease, then, nor order imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee. Submit.  In this, or any other sphere, Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: Safe in the hand of one disposing Power, Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. All nature is but art, unknown to thee; All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good: And, spite of pride in erring reason’s spite, One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II.

Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to Himself, as an Individual.

I. The business of Man not to pry into God, but to study himself.  His Middle Nature; his Powers and Frailties, v.1 to 19. The Limits of his Capacity, v.19, etc.  II. The two Principles of Man, Self-love and Reason, both necessary, v.53, etc. Self-love the stronger, and why, v.67, etc.  Their end the same, v.81, etc.  III. The Passions, and their use, v.93 to 130.  The predominant Passion, and its force, v.132 to 160.  Its Necessity, in directing Men to different purposes, v.165, etc.  Its providential Use, in fixing our Principle, and ascertaining our Virtue, v.177.  IV. Virtue and Vice joined in our mixed Nature; the limits near, yet the things separate and evident: What is the Office of Reason, v.202 to 216.  V. How odious Vice in itself, and how we deceive ourselves into it, v.217.  VI. That, however, the Ends of Providence and general Good are answered in our Passions and Imperfections, v.238, etc.  How usefully these are distributed to all Orders of Men, v.241.  How useful they are to Society, v.251.  And to the Individuals, v.263.  In every state, and every age of life, v.273, etc.

EPISTLE II.

I.  Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic’s pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little, or too much: Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused, or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled: The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!    Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, Correct old time, and regulate the sun; Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere, To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; Or tread the mazy round his followers trod, And quitting sense call imitating God; As Eastern priests in giddy circles run, And turn their heads to imitate the sun. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule— Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!    Superior beings, when of late they saw A mortal man unfold all Nature’s law, Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape And showed a Newton as we show an ape.    Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind, Describe or fix one movement of his mind? Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, Explain his own beginning, or his end? Alas, what wonder! man’s superior part Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art; But when his own great work is but begun, What reason weaves, by passion is undone. Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide; First strip off all her equipage of pride; Deduct what is but vanity or dress, Or learning’s luxury, or idleness; Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain, Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain; Expunge the whole, or lop th’ excrescent parts Of all our vices have created arts; Then see how little the remaining sum, Which served the past, and must the times to come!

II.  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 still, Ascribe all good; to their improper, ill. Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole. Man, but for that, no action could attend, And but for this, were active to no end: Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot; Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, Destroying others, by himself destroyed. Most strength the moving principle requires; Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. Sedate and quiet the comparing lies, Formed but to check, deliberate, and advise. Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh; Reason’s at distance, and in prospect lie: That sees immediate good by present sense; Reason, the future and the consequence. Thicker than arguments, temptations throng. At best more watchful this, but that more strong. The action of the stronger to suspend, Reason still use, to reason still attend. Attention, habit and experience gains; Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains. Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight, More studious to divide than to unite; And grace and virtue, sense and reason split, With all the rash dexterity of wit. Wits, just like fools, at war about a name, Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. Self-love and reason to one end aspire, Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire; But greedy that, its object would devour, This taste the honey, and not wound the flower: Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

III.  Modes of self-love the passions we may call; ’Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all: But since not every good we can divide, And reason bids us for our own provide; Passions, though selfish, if their means be fair, List under Reason, and deserve her care; Those, that imparted, court a nobler aim, Exalt their kind, and take some virtue’s name.    In lazy apathy let stoics boast Their virtue fixed; ’tis fixed as in a frost; Contracted all, retiring to the breast; But strength of mind is exercise, not rest: The rising tempest puts in act the soul, Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale; Nor God alone in the still calm we find, He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.    Passions, like elements, though born to fight, Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite: These, ’tis enough to temper and employ; But what composes man, can man destroy? Suffice that Reason 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 mixed with art, and to due bounds confined, Make and maintain the balance of the mind; The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife Gives all the strength and colour of our life. Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; And when in act they cease, in prospect rise: Present to grasp, and future still to find, The whole employ of body and of mind. All spread their charms, but charm not all alike; On different senses different objects strike; Hence different passions more or less inflame, As strong or weak, the organs of the frame; And hence once master passion in the breast, Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest.    As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath Receives the lurking principle of death; The young disease that must subdue at length, Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength: So, cast and mingled with his very frame, The mind’s disease, its ruling passion came; Each vital humour which should feed the whole, Soon flows to this, in body and in soul: Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head, As the mind opens, and its functions spread, Imagination plies her dangerous art, And pours it all upon the peccant part.    Nature its mother, habit is its nurse; Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse; Reason itself but gives it edge and power; As Heaven’s blest beam turns vinegar more sour.    We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway, In this weak queen some favourite still obey: Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules, What can she more than tell us we are fools? Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend, A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend! Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade The choice we make, or justify it made; Proud of an easy conquest all along, She but removes weak passions for the strong; So, when small humours gather to a gout, The doctor fancies he has driven them out.    Yes, Nature’s road must ever be preferred; Reason is here no guide, but still a guard: ’Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow, And treat this passion more as friend than foe: A mightier power the strong direction sends, And several men impels to several ends: Like varying winds, by other passions tossed, This drives them constant to a certain coast. Let power or knowledge, gold or glory, please, Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease; Through life ’tis followed, even at life’s expense; The merchant’s toil, the sage’s indolence, The monk’s humility, the hero’s pride, All, all alike, find reason on their side.    The eternal art, educing good from ill, Grafts on this passion our best principle: ’Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed, Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed; The dross cements what else were too refined, And in one interest body acts with mind.    As fruits, ungrateful to the planter’s care, On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear; The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, Wild nature’s vigour working at the root. What crops of wit and honesty appear From spleen, from obstinacy, hate, or fear! See anger, zeal and fortitude supply; Even avarice, prudence; sloth, philosophy; Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, Is gentle love, and charms all womankind; Envy, to which th’ ignoble mind’s a slave, Is emulation in the learned or brave; Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame.    Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride) The virtue nearest to our vice allied: Reason the bias turns to good from ill And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine: The same ambition can destroy or save, And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.    This light and darkness in our chaos joined, What shall divide?  The God within the mind.    Extremes in nature equal ends produce, In man they join to some mysterious use; Though each by turns the other’s bound invade, As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade, And oft so mix, the difference is too nice Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.    Fools! who from hence into the notion fall, That vice or virtue there is none at all. If white and black blend, soften, and unite A thousand ways, is there no black or white? Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; ’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.    Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. But where th’ extreme of vice, was ne’er agreed: Ask where’s the north? at York, ’tis on the Tweed; In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there, At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where. No creature owns it in the first degree, But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he; Even those who dwell beneath its very zone, Or never feel the rage, or never own; What happier nations shrink at with affright, The hard inhabitant contends is right.    Virtuous and vicious every man must be, Few in th’ extreme, but all in the degree, The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise; And even the best, by fits, what they despise. ’Tis but by parts we follow good or ill; For, vice or virtue, self directs it still; Each individual seeks a several goal; But Heaven’s great view is one, and that the whole. That counter-works each folly and caprice; That disappoints th’ effect of every vice; That, happy frailties to all ranks applied, Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride, Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief, To kings presumption, and to crowds belief: That, virtue’s ends from vanity can raise, Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise; And build on wants, and on defects of mind, The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.    Heaven forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all. Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally The common interest, or endear the tie. To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, Each home-felt joy that life inherits here; Yet from the same we learn, in its decline, Those joys, those loves, those interests to resign; Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, To welcome death, and calmly pass away.    Whate’er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pelf, Not one will change his neighbour with himself. The learned is happy nature to explore, The fool is happy that he knows no more; The rich is happy in the plenty given, The poor contents him with the care of Heaven. See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, The sot a hero, lunatic a king; The starving chemist in his golden views Supremely blest, the poet in his muse.    See some strange comfort every state attend, And pride bestowed on all, a common friend; See some fit passion every age supply, Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.    Behold the child, by Nature’s kindly law, Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw: Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite: Scarves, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age: Pleased with this bauble still, as that before; Till tired he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er.    Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays Those painted clouds that beautify our days; Each want of happiness by hope supplied, And each vacuity of sense by pride: These build as fast as knowledge can destroy; In folly’s cup still laughs the bubble, joy; One prospect lost, another still we gain; And not a vanity is given in vain; Even mean self-love becomes, by force divine, The scale to measure others’ wants by thine. See! and confess, one comfort still must rise, ’Tis this, though man’s a fool, yet God is wise.

ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE III.

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

I. The whole Universe one system of Society, v.7, etc.  Nothing made wholly for itself, nor yet wholly for another, v.27.  The happiness of Animals mutual, v.49.  II. Reason or Instinct operate alike to the good of each Individual, v.79.  Reason or Instinct operate also to Society, in all Animals, v.109.  III. How far Society carried by Instinct, v.115.  How much farther by Reason, v.128.  IV. Of that which is called the State of Nature, v.144.  Reason instructed by Instinct in the invention of Arts, v.166, and in the Forms of Society, v.176.  V. Origin of Political Societies, v.196.  Origin of Monarchy, v.207.  Patriarchal Government, v.212.  VI. Origin of true Religion and Government, from the same principle, of Love, v.231, etc.  Origin of Superstition and Tyranny, from the same principle, of Fear, v.237, etc.  The Influence of Self-love operating to the social and public Good, v.266.  Restoration of true Religion and Government on their first principle, v.285.  Mixed Government, v.288.  Various forms of each, and the true end of all, v.300, etc.

EPISTLE III.

Here, then, we rest: “The Universal Cause Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.” In all the madness of superfluous health, The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth, Let this great truth be present night and day; 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, Attract, attracted to, the next in place Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace. See matter next, with various life endued, Press to one centre still, the general good. See dying vegetables life sustain, See life dissolving vegetate again: All forms that perish other forms supply (By turns we catch the vital breath, and die), Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne, 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 served, all serving: nothing stands alone; The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.    Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy Thy good, Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food? Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, For him as kindly spread the flowery lawn: Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? 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 bestride, Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain? The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain. Thine the full harvest of the golden year? Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer: The hog, that ploughs not nor obeys thy call, Lives on the labours of this lord of all.    Know, Nature’s children all divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warmed a bear. While man exclaims, “See all things for my use!” “See man for mine!” replies a pampered goose: And just as short of reason he must fall, Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.    Grant that the powerful still the weak control; Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole: 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 insect’s gilded wings? Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings? Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods, To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods; For some his interest prompts him to provide, For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride: All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy The extensive blessing of his luxury. That very life his learned hunger craves, He saves from famine, from the savage saves; Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, And, till he ends the being, makes it blest; Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain, Than favoured man by touch ethereal slain. The creature had his feast of life before; Thou too must perish when thy feast is o’er!    To each unthinking being, Heaven, 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; The hour concealed, and so remote the fear, Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. Great standing miracle! that Heaven assigned Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.

II.  Whether with reason, or with instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that power which suits them best; To bliss alike by that direction tend, And find the means proportioned to their end. Say, where full instinct is the unerring guide, What pope or council can they need beside? Reason, however able, cool at best, Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed, Stays till we call, and then not often near; But honest instinct comes a volunteer, Sure never to o’er-shoot, but just to hit; While still too wide or short is human wit; Sure by quick nature happiness to gain, Which heavier reason labours at in vain, This too serves always, reason never long; One must go right, the other may go wrong. See then the acting and comparing powers One in their nature, which are two in ours; And reason raise o’er instinct as you can, In this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis man.    Who taught the nations of the field and wood To shun their poison, and to choose their food? Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand? Who made the spider parallels design, Sure as Demoivre, without rule or line? Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before? Who calls the council, states the certain day, Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?

III.  God in the nature of each being founds Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds: But as He framed a whole, the whole to bless, On mutual wants built mutual happiness: So from the first, eternal order ran, And creature linked to creature, man to man. Whate’er of life all-quickening ether keeps, Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps, Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds. Not man alone, but all that roam the wood, Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood, Each loves itself, but not itself alone, Each sex desires alike, till two are one. Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace; They love themselves, a third time, in their race. Thus beast and bird their common charge attend, The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend; The young dismissed to wander earth or air, There stops the instinct, and there ends the care; The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, Another love succeeds, another race. A longer care man’s helpless kind demands; That longer care contracts more lasting bands: Reflection, reason, still the ties improve, At once extend the interest and the love; With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn; Each virtue in each passion takes its turn; And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise. That graft benevolence on charities. Still as one brood, and as another rose, These natural love maintained, habitual those. The last, scarce ripened into perfect man, Saw helpless him from whom their life began: Memory and forecast just returns engage, That pointed back to youth, this on to age; While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined, Still spread the interest, and preserved the kind.

IV.  Nor think, in Nature’s state they blindly trod; The state of nature was the reign of God: Self-love and social at her birth began, Union the bond of all things, and of man. Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid; Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade; The same his table, and the same his bed; No murder clothed him, and no murder fed. In the same temple, the resounding wood, All vocal beings hymned their equal God: The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed, Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest: Heaven’s attribute was universal care, And man’s prerogative to rule, but spare. Ah! how unlike the man of times to come! Of half that live the butcher and the tomb; Who, foe to nature, hears the general groan, Murders their species, and betrays his own. But just disease to luxury succeeds, And every death its own avenger breeds; The fury-passions from that blood began, And turned on man a fiercer savage, man.    See him from Nature rising slow to art! To copy instinct then was reason’s part; Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake— “Go, from the creatures thy instructions take: Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield; Learn from the beasts the physic of the field; Thy arts of building from the bee receive; Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave; Learn of the little nautilus to sail, Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. Here too all forms of social union find, And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind: Here subterranean works and cities see; There towns aërial on the waving tree. Learn each small people’s genius, policies, The ant’s republic, and the realm of bees; How those in common all their wealth bestow, And anarchy without confusion know; And these for ever, though a monarch reign, Their separate cells and properties maintain. Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state, Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate. In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw, Entangle justice in her net of law, And right, too rigid, harden into wrong; Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. Yet go! and thus o’er all the creatures sway, Thus let the wiser make the rest obey; And, for those arts mere instinct could afford, Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods adored.”

V.  Great Nature spoke; observant men obeyed; Cities were built, societies were made: Here rose one little state: another near Grew by like means, and joined, through love or fear. Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend, And there the streams in purer rills descend? What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, And he returned a friend, who came a foe. Converse and love mankind might strongly draw, When love was liberty, and Nature law. Thus States were formed; the name of king unknown, ’Till common interest placed the sway in one. ’Twas virtue only (or in arts or arms, Diffusing blessings, or averting harms) The same which in a sire the sons obeyed, A prince the father of a people made.

VI.  Till then, by Nature crowned, each patriarch sate, King, priest, and parent of his growing state; On him, their second providence, they hung, Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. He from the wondering furrow called the food, Taught to command the fire, control the flood, Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound, Or fetch the aërial eagle to the ground. Till drooping, sickening, dying they began Whom they revered as God to mourn as man: Then, looking up, from sire to sire, explored One great first Father, and that first adored. Or plain tradition that this all begun, Conveyed unbroken faith from sire to son; The worker from the work distinct was known, And simple reason never sought but one: Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light, Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right; To virtue, in the paths of pleasure, trod, And owned a Father when he owned a God. Love all the faith, and all the allegiance then; For Nature knew no right divine in men, No ill could fear in God; and understood A sovereign being but a sovereign good. True faith, true policy, united ran, This was but love of God, and this of man.    Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone, The enormous faith of many made for one; That proud exception to all Nature’s laws, To invert the world, and counter-work its cause? Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law; Till superstition taught the tyrant awe, Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid, And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made: She, ’midst the lightning’s blaze, and thunder’s sound, When rocked the mountains, and when groaned the ground, She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, To power unseen, and mightier far than they: She, from the rending earth and bursting skies, Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise: Here fixed the dreadful, there the blest abodes; Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods; Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust; Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. Zeal then, not charity, became the guide; And hell was built on spite, and heaven on pride, Then sacred seemed the ethereal vault no more; Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore; Then first the flamen tasted living food; Next his grim idol smeared with human blood; With heaven’s own thunders shook the world below, And played the god an engine on his foe.    So drives self-love, through just and through unjust, To one man’s power, ambition, lucre, lust: The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause Of what restrains him, government and laws. For, what one likes if others like as well, What serves one will when many wills rebel? How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake, A weaker may surprise, a stronger take? His safety must his liberty restrain: All join to guard what each desires to gain. Forced into virtue thus by self-defence, Even kings learned justice and benevolence: Self-love forsook the path it first pursued, And found the private in the public good.    ’Twas then, the studious head or generous mind, Follower of God, or friend of human-kind, Poet or patriot, rose but to restore The faith and moral Nature gave before; Re-lumed her ancient light, not kindled new; If not God’s image, yet His shadow drew: Taught power’s due use to people and to kings, Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings, The less, or greater, set so justly true, That touching one must strike the other too; Till jarring interests, of themselves create The according music of a well-mixed state. Such is the world’s great harmony, that springs From order, union, full consent of things: Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade; More powerful each as needful to the rest, And, in proportion as it blesses, blest; Draw to one point, and to one centre bring Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.    For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administered is best: For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right: In faith and hope the world will disagree, But all mankind’s concern is charity: All must be false that thwart this one great end; And all of God, that bless mankind or mend.    Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives. On their own axis as the planets run, Yet make at once their circle round the sun; So two consistent motions act the soul; And one regards itself, and one the whole.    Thus God and Nature linked the general frame, And bade self-love and social be the same.

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, etc.  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, etc.  With pictures of human Infelicity in Men possessed of them all, v.267, etc.  VII. That Virtue only constitutes a Happiness, whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal, v.307, etc.  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, etc.

EPISTLE IV.

Oh, happiness, our being’s end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate’er thy name: That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die, Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, O’erlooked, seen double, by the fool, and wise. Plant of celestial seed! if dropped below, Say, in what mortal soil thou deign’st to grow? Fair opening to some Court’s propitious shine, Or deep with diamonds in the flaming mine? Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield, Or reaped in iron harvests of the field? Where grows?—where grows it not?  If vain our toil, We ought to blame the culture, not the soil: Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere, ’Tis nowhere to be found, or everywhere; ’Tis never to be bought, but always free, And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee.    Ask of the learned the way?  The learned are blind; This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind; Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, Those call it pleasure, and contentment these; Some, sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain; Some, swelled to gods, confess even virtue vain; Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, To trust in everything, 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 opinions 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 general 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 caverned hermit, rests self-satisfied: 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 Heaven’s first law; and this confest, Some are, and must be, greater than the rest, More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence That such are happier, shocks all common sense. Heaven to mankind impartial we confess, If all are equal in their happiness: But mutual wants this happiness increase; All Nature’s difference keeps all Nature’s peace. Condition, circumstance is not the thing; Bliss is the same in subject or in king, In who obtain defence, or who defend, In him who is, or him who finds a friend: Heaven breathes through every member of the whole One common blessing, as one common soul. But fortune’s gifts if each alike possessed, 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 called, unhappy those; But Heaven’s just balance equal will appear, While those are placed in hope, and these in fear: Nor present good or ill, the joy or curse, But future views of better or of worse,    Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies, Heaven 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. 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, Who risk the most, that take wrong means, or right; Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed, Which meets contempt, or which compassion first? Count all the advantage prosperous 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 good.    Oh, blind to truth, and God’s whole scheme below, Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe! 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 Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just! See god-like Turenne prostrate on the dust! See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife! Was this their virtue, or contempt of life? Say, was it virtue, more though Heaven 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 Marseilles’ good bishop purer breath, When Nature sickened, and each gale was death? Or why so long (in life if long can be) Lent Heaven 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 improved it all. We just as wisely might of Heaven complain That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain, As that the virtuous son is ill at ease When his lewd father gave the dire disease. Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause Prone for His favourites 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, Oh, blameless Bethel! 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 wall?    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 Heaven’s own spirit fell; Another deems him instrument of hell; 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 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: And which more blest? who chained his country, say, Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day?    “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, 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? “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?” 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?    What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, The soul’s calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, 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. Weak, foolish man! will heaven reward us there With the same trash mad mortals wish for here? The boy and man an individual makes, Yet sighest thou now for apples and for cakes? Go, like the Indian, in another life Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife: As well as dream such trifles are assigned, As toys and empires, for a God-like 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. Oh, fool! to think God hates the worthy mind, The lover and the love of human kind, Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear, Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.    Honour and shame from no condition rise; Act well your part, there all the honour lies. Fortune in men has some small difference made, One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade; The cobbler aproned, and the parson gowned, The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned, “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 or prunella.    Stuck o’er with titles and hung round with strings, That thou mayest be by kings, or wh***s of kings. Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race, In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece; But by your fathers’ worth if yours you rate, Count me those only who were good and great. Go! if your ancient, but ignoble blood 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.    Look next on greatness; say where greatness lies? “Where, but among the heroes and the wise?” Heroes are much the same, the points agreed, From Macedonia’s madman to the Swede; 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 farther than his nose. 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. Who noble ends by noble means obtains, Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed Like Socrates, that man is great indeed.    What’s fame? a fancied life in others’ breath, A thing beyond us, even before our death. Just what you hear, you have, and what’s unknown The same (my Lord) if Tully’s, or your own. 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 living, as a Cæsar dead; Alike or when, or where, they shone, or shine, Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine. A wit’s a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man’s the noblest work of God. Fame but from death a villain’s name can save, As justice tears his body from the grave; When what the 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 Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas; And more true joy Marcellus exiled feels, Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.    In parts 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; Condemned in business or in arts to drudge, Without a second or without a judge; Truths would you teach or save a sinking land, All fear, none aid you, and few understand. Painful pre-eminence! yourself to view Above life’s weakness, and its comforts too.    Bring, then, these blessings to a strict account; Make fair deductions; see to what they mount; How much of other each is sure to cost; How each for other oft is wholly lost; How inconsistent greater goods with these; How sometimes life is risked, and always ease; Think, and if still the things thy envy call, Say, would’st thou be the man to whom they fall? To sigh for ribands if thou art so silly, Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy: Is yellow dirt the passion of thy life? Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus’ wife; If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind: Or ravished with the whistling of a name, See Cromwell; damned to everlasting fame! If all, united, thy ambition call, From ancient story learn to scorn them all. There, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great, See the false scale of happiness complete! In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay, How happy! those to ruin, these betray. Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, From dirt and seaweed as proud Venice rose; In each how guilt and greatness equal ran, And all that raised the hero, sunk the man: Now Europe’s laurels on their brows behold, But stained with blood, or ill exchanged for gold; Then see them broke with toils or sunk with ease, Or infamous for plundered provinces. Oh, wealth ill-fated! which no act of fame E’er taught to shine, or sanctified from shame; What greater bliss attends their close of life? Some greedy minion, or imperious wife. The trophied arches, storeyed halls invade And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. Alas! not dazzled with their noontide ray, Compute the morn and evening to the day; The whole amount of that enormous fame, A tale, that blends their glory with their shame;    Know, then, this truth (enough for man to know) “Virtue alone is happiness below.” The only point where human bliss stands still, And tastes the good without the fall to ill; Where only merit constant pay receives, Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives; The joy unequalled, if its end it gain, And if it lose, attended with no pain; Without satiety, though e’er so blessed, And but more relished as the more distressed: The broadest mirth unfeeling folly wears, Less pleasing far than virtue’s very tears: Good, from each object, from each place acquired For ever exercised, yet never tired; Never elated, while one man’s oppressed; Never dejected while another’s blessed; And where no wants, no wishes can remain, Since but to wish more virtue, is to gain.    See the sole bliss Heaven could on all bestow! Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know: Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, The bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find; Slave to no sect, who takes no private road, But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God; Pursues that chain which links the immense design, Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine; Sees, that no being any bliss can know, But touches some above, and some below; Learns, from this union of the rising whole, The first, last purpose of the human soul; And knows, where faith, law, morals, all began, All end, in love of God, and love of man.    For Him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, And opens still, and opens on his soul! Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined, It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind He sees, why Nature plants in man alone Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown: (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind Are given in vain, but what they seek they find) Wise is her present; she connects in this His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss; At once his own bright prospect to be blest, And strongest motive to assist the rest.    Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, Gives thee to make thy neighbour’s blessing thine. Is this too little for the boundless heart? Extend it, let thy enemies have part: Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense, In one close system of benevolence: Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree, And height of bliss but height of charity.    God loves from whole to parts: but human soul Must rise from individual to the whole. Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake! The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads; Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace; His country next; and next all human race; Wide and more wide, the o’erflowings of the mind Take every creature in, of every kind; Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest, And Heaven beholds its image in his breast.    Come, then, my friend! my genius! come along; Oh, master of the poet, and the song! And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends, To man’s low passions, or their glorious ends, Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, To fall with dignity, with temper rise; Formed by thy converse, happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe; Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Oh! while along the stream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale? When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, Shall then this verse to future age pretend Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? That urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart; From wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light; Showed erring pride, whatever is, is right; That reason, passion, answer one great aim; That true self-love and social are the same; That virtue only makes our bliss below; And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know.

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER. DEO OPT. MAX.

Father of all! in every age,    In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage,    Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou Great First Cause, least understood,    Who all my sense confined To know but this, that Thou art good,    And that myself am blind;

Yet gave me, in this dark estate,    To see the good from ill; And binding Nature fast in fate,    Left free the human will.

What conscience dictates to be done,    Or warns me not to do, This, teach me more than Hell to shun,    That, more than Heaven pursue.

What blessings Thy free bounty gives,    Let me not cast away; For God is paid when man receives,    To enjoy is to obey.

Yet not to earth’s contracted span    Thy goodness let me bound, Or think Thee Lord alone of man,    When thousand worlds are round:

Let not this weak, unknowing hand    Presume Thy bolts to throw, And deal damnation round the land,    On each I judge Thy foe.

If I am right, Thy grace impart,    Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, oh, teach my heart    To find that better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride,    Or impious discontent, At aught Thy wisdom has denied,    Or aught Thy goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another’s woe,    To hide the fault I see; That mercy I to others show,    That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so,    Since quickened by Thy breath; Oh, lead me wheresoe’er I go,    Through this day’s life or death.

This day, be bread and peace my lot:    All else beneath the sun, Thou know’st if best bestowed or not;    And let Thy will be done.

To Thee, whose temple is all space,    Whose altar earth, sea, skies, One chorus let all being raise,    All Nature’s incense rise!

MORAL ESSAYS, IN FOUR EPISTLES TO SEVERAL PERSONS.

Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures: Et sermone opus est modo tristi, sæpe jocoso, Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetæ, Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus, atque Extenuantis eas consultò.— Hor. (Sat. i. x. 9-14.)

EPISTLE I.  TO SIR RICHARD TEMPLE, LORD COBHAM.

Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men.

I. That it is not sufficient for this knowledge to consider Man in the Abstract: Books will not serve the purpose, nor yet our own Experience singly, v.1.  General maxims, unless they be formed upon both, will be but notional, v.10.  Some Peculiarity in every man, characteristic to himself, yet varying from himself, v.15.  Difficulties arising from our own Passions, Fancies, Faculties, etc., v.31.  The shortness of Life, to observe in, and the uncertainty of the Principles of action in men, to observe by, v.37, etc.  Our own Principle of action often hid from ourselves, v.41.  Some few Characters plain, but in general confounded, dissembled, or inconsistent, v.51.  The same man utterly different in different places and seasons, v.71.  Unimaginable weaknesses in the greatest, v.70, etc.  Nothing constant and certain but God and Nature, v.95.  No judging of the Motives from the actions; the same actions proceeding from contrary Motives, and the same Motives influencing contrary actions v.100.  II. Yet to form Characters, we can only take the strongest actions of a man’s life, and try to make them agree: The utter uncertainty of this, from Nature itself, and from Policy, v.120.  Characters given according to the rank of men of the world, v.135.  And some reason for it, v.140.  Education alters the Nature, or at least Character of many, v.149.  Actions, Passions, Opinions, Manners, Humours, or Principles all subject to change.  No judging by Nature, from v.158 to 178.  III. It only remains to find (if we can) his Ruling Passion: That will certainly influence all the rest, and can reconcile the seeming or real inconsistency of all his actions, v.175.  Instanced in the extraordinary character of Clodio, v.179.  A caution against mistaking second qualities for first, which will destroy all possibility of the knowledge of mankind, v.210.  Examples of the strength of the Ruling Passion, and its continuation to the last breath, v.222, etc.

Yes, you despise the man to books confined, Who from his study rails at human kind; Though what he learns he speaks, and may advance Some general maxims, or be right by chance. The coxcomb bird, so talkative and grave, That from his cage cries c**d, w**e, and knave, Though many a passenger he rightly call, You hold him no philosopher at all.    And yet the fate of all extremes is such, Men may be read as well as books, too much. To observations which ourselves we make, We grow more partial for the observer’s sake; To written wisdom, as another’s, less: Maxims are drawn from notions, those from guess. There’s some peculiar in each leaf and grain, Some unmarked fibre, or some varying vein: Shall only man be taken in the gross? Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss.    That each from other differs, first confess; Next, that he varies from himself no less: Add Nature’s, custom’s reason’s passion’s strife, And all opinion’s colours cast on life.    Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds, Quick whirls, and shifting eddies, of our minds? On human actions reason though you can, It may be reason, but it is not man: His principle of action once explore, That instant ’tis his principle no more. Like following life through creatures you dissect, You lose it in the moment you detect.    Yet more; the difference is as great between The optics seeing, as the object seen. All manners take a tincture from our own; Or come discoloured through our passions shown. Or fancy’s beam enlarges, multiplies, Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes.    Nor will life’s stream for observation stay, It hurries all too fast to mark their way: In vain sedate reflections we would make, When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take. Oft, in the passion’s wild rotation tost, Our spring of action to ourselves is lost: Tired, not determined, to the last we yield, And what comes then is master of the field. As the last image of that troubled heap, When sense subsides, and fancy sports in sleep (Though past the recollection of the thought), Becomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought: Something as dim to our internal view, Is thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do.    True, some are open, and to all men known; Others so very close, they’re hid from none (So darkness strikes the sense no less than light), Thus gracious Chandos is beloved at sight; And every child hates Shylock, though his soul Still sits at squat, and peeps not from its hole. At half mankind when generous Manly raves, All know ’tis virtue, for he thinks them knaves: When universal homage Umbra pays, All see ’tis vice, and itch of vulgar praise. When flattery glares, all hate it in a queen, While one there is who charms us with his spleen.    But these plain characters we rarely find; Though strong the bent, yet quick the turns of mind: Or puzzling contraries confound the whole; Or affectations quite reverse the soul. The dull, flat falsehood serves for policy; And in the cunning, truth itself’s a lie: Unthought-of frailties cheat us in the wise; The fool lies hid in inconsistencies.    See the same man, in vigour, in the gout; Alone, in company; in place, or out; Early at business, and at hazard late; Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate; Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball; Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall. Catius is ever moral, ever grave, Thinks who endures a knave is next a knave, Save just at dinner—then prefers, no doubt, A rogue with venison to a saint without.    Who would not praise Patritio’s high desert, His hand unstained, his uncorrupted heart, His comprehensive head! all interests weighed, All Europe saved, yet Britain not betrayed. He thanks you not, his pride is in piquet, Newmarket-fame, and judgment at a bet.    What made (say Montagne, or more sage Charron) Otho a warrior, Cromwell a buffoon? A perjured prince a leaden saint revere, A godless regent tremble at a star? The throne a bigot keep, a genius quit, Faithless through piety, and duped through wit? Europe a woman, child, or dotard rule, And just her wisest monarch made a fool?    Know, God and Nature only are the same: In man, the judgment shoots at flying game, A bird of passage! gone as soon as found, Now in the moon, perhaps, now under ground.    In vain the sage, with retrospective eye, Would from the apparent what conclude the why, Infer the motive from the deed, and show, That what we chanced was what we meant to do. Behold! if fortune or a mistress frowns, Some plunge in business, others shave their crowns: To ease the soul of one oppressive weight, This quits an empire, that embroils a state: The same adust complexion has impelled Charles to the convent, Philip to the field.    Not always actions show the man: we find Who does a kindness, is not therefore kind; Perhaps prosperity becalmed his breast, Perhaps the wind just shifted from the east: Not therefore humble he who seeks retreat, Pride guides his steps, and bids him shun the great: Who combats bravely is not therefore brave, He dreads a death-bed like the meanest slave: Who reasons wisely is not therefore wise, His pride in reasoning, not in acting lies.    But grant that actions best discover man; Take the most strong, and sort them as you can. The few that glare each character must mark; You balance not the many in the dark. What will you do with such as disagree? Suppress them, or miscall them policy? Must then at once (the character to save) The plain rough hero turn a crafty knave? Alas! in truth the man but changed his mind, Perhaps was sick, in love, or had not dined. Ask why from Britain Cæsar would retreat? Cæsar himself might whisper he was beat. Why risk the world’s great empire for a punk? Cæsar perhaps might answer he was drunk. But, sage historians! ’tis your task to prove One action conduct; one, heroic love.    ’Tis from high life high characters are drawn; A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn; A judge is just, a chancellor juster still; A gownman, learn’d; a bishop, what you will; Wise, if a minister; but, if a king, More wise, more learned, more just, more everything. Court-virtues bear, like gems, the highest rate, Born where Heaven’s influence scarce can penetrate: In life’s low vale, the soil the virtues like, They please as beauties, here as wonders strike. Though the same sun with all-diffusive rays Blush in the rose, and in the diamond blaze, We prize the stronger effort of his power, And justly set the gem above the flower.    ’Tis education forms the common mind; Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined. Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire; The next a tradesman, meek, and much a liar; Tom struts a soldier, open, bold, and brave; Will sneaks a scrivener, an exceeding knave: Is he a Churchman? then he’s fond of power: } A Quaker? sly: A Presbyterian? sour: } A smart Freethinker? all things in an hour. }    Ask men’s opinions: Scoto now shall tell How trade increases, and the world goes well; Strike off his pension, by the setting sun, And Britain, if not Europe, is undone.    That gay Freethinker, a fine talker once, What turns him now a stupid silent dunce? Some god, or spirit he has lately found: Or chanced to meet a minister that frowned. Judge we by Nature? habit can efface, Interest o’ercome, or policy take place: By actions? those uncertainty divides: By passions? these dissimulation hides: Opinions? they still take a wider range: Find, if you can, in what you cannot change.    Manners with fortunes, humours turn with climes, Tenets with books, and principles with times.

   Search then the ruling passion: there, alone, The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here. This clue once found, unravels all the rest, The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest. Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate’er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him or he dies; Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke. Shall parts so various aim at nothing new! He’ll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too. Then turns repentant, and his God adores With the same spirit that he drinks and wh***s; Enough if all around him but admire, And now the punk applaud, and now the friar. Thus with each gift of nature and of art, And wanting nothing but an honest heart; Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt; And most contemptible, to shun contempt: His passion still, to covet general praise, His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways; A constant bounty which no friend has made; An angel tongue, which no man can persuade; A fool, with more of wit than half mankind, Too rash for thought, for action too refined: A tyrant to the wife his heart approves; A rebel to the very king he loves; He dies, sad outcast of each church and state, And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great. Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule? ’Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool.    Nature well known, no prodigies remain, Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.    Yet, in this search, the wisest may mistake, If second qualities for first they take. When Catiline by rapine swelled his store; When Cæsar made a noble dame a wh***; In this the lust, in that the avarice Were means, not ends; ambition was the vice. That very Cæsar, born in Scipio’s days, Had aimed, like him, by chastity at praise. Lucullus, when frugality could charm, Had roasted turnips in the Sabine farm.    In vain the observer eyes the builder’s toil, But quite mistakes the scaffold for the pile. In this one passion man can strength enjoy, As fits give vigour, just when they destroy. Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand, Yet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand. Consistent in our follies and our sins, Here honest Nature ends as she begins.    Old politicians chew on wisdom past, And totter on in business to the last; As weak, as earnest, and as gravely out, As sober Lanesb’row dancing in the gout.    Behold a reverend sire, whom want of grace Has made the father of a nameless race, Shoved from the wall perhaps, or rudely pressed By his own son, that passes by unblessed: Still to his haunt he crawls on knocking knees, And envies every sparrow that he sees.    A salmon’s belly, Helluo, was thy fate; The doctor called, declares all help too late: “Mercy!” cries Helluo, “mercy on my soul! Is there no hope!—Alas!—then bring the jowl.”    The frugal crone, whom praying priests attend, Still tries to save the hallowed taper’s end, Collects her breath, as ebbing life retires, For one puff more, and in that puff expires.    “Odious! in woollen! ’twould a saint provoke” (Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke); “No, let a charming chintz, and Brussels lace Wrap my cold limbs, and shade my lifeless face: One would not, sure, be frightful when one’s dead— And—Betty—give this cheek a little red.”    The courtier smooth, who forty years had shined An humble servant to all human kind, Just brought out this, when scarce his tongue could stir, “If—where I’m going—I could serve you, sir?” “I give and I devise” (old Euclio said, And sighed) “my lands and tenements to Ned.” “Your money, sir?”  “My money, sir? what, all? Why—if I must” (then wept)—“I give it Paul.” “The Manor, sir?”—“The Manor! hold,” he cried, “Not that,—I cannot part with that”—and died.    And you! brave Cobham, to the latest breath Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death: Such in those moments as in all the past, “Oh, save my country, Heaven!” shall be your last.

EPISTLE II.  TO A LADY.

Of the Characters of Women.

Nothing so true as what you once let fall, “Most women have no characters at all.” Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair.    How many pictures of one nymph we view, All how unlike each other, all how true! Arcadia’s countess, here, in ermined pride, Is, there, Pastora by a fountain side. Here Fannia, leering on her own good man, And there, a naked Leda with a swan. Let then the fair one beautifully cry, In Magdalen’s loose hair, and lifted eye, Or dressed in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine, With simpering angels, palms, and harps divine; Whether the charmer sinner it, or saint it, If folly grow romantic, I must paint it.

   Come then, the colours and the ground prepare! Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air; Choose a firm cloud, before it fall, and in it Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute.

   Rufa, whose eye, quick-glancing o’er the park Attracts each light gay meteor of a spark, Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke, As Sappho’s diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet’s greasy task, With Sappho fragrant at an evening masque: So morning insects that in muck begun, Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting sun.

   How soft is Silia! fearful to offend; The frail one’s advocate, the weak one’s friend: To her, Calista proved her conduct nice; And good Simplicius asks of her advice. Sudden, she storms! she raves!  You tip the wink, But spare your censure; Silia does not drink. All eyes may see from what the change arose, All eyes may see—a pimple on her nose.

   Papillia, wedded to her am’rous spark, Sighs for the shades—“How charming is a park!” A park is purchased, but the fair he sees All bathed in tears—“Oh, odious, odious trees!”

   Ladies, like variegated tulips show; ’Tis to their changes half their charms we owe; Fine by defect, and delicately weak, Their happy spots the nice admirer take, ’Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarmed, Awed without virtue, without beauty charmed; Her tongue bewitched as oddly as her eyes, Less wit than mimic, more a wit than wise; Strange graces still, and stranger flights she had, Was just not ugly, and was just not mad; Yet ne’er so sure our passion to create, As when she touched the brink of all we hate.

   Narcissa’s nature, tolerably mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover’s prayer, And paid a tradesman once to make him stare; Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim, And made a widow happy, for a whim. Why then declare good-nature is her scorn, When ’tis by that alone she can be borne? Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, Now drinking citron with his grace and Chartres: Now Conscience chills her, and now Passion burns; And Atheism and Religion take their turns; A very heathen in the carnal part, Yet still a sad, good Christian at her heart.

   What then? let blood and body bear the fault, Her head’s untouched, that noble seat of thought: Such this day’s doctrine—in another fit She sins with poets through pure love of wit. What has not fired her bosom or her brain? Cæsar and Tall-boy, Charles and Charlemagne. As Helluo, late dictator of the feast, The nose of Hautgout, and the tip of taste, Critic’d your wine, and analysed your meat, Yet on plain pudding deigned at home to eat; So Philomede, lecturing all mankind On the soft passion, and the taste refined, The address, the delicacy—stoops at once, And makes her hearty meal upon a dunce.    Flavia’s a wit, has too much sense to pray; To toast our wants and wishes, is her way; Nor asks of God, but of her stars, to give The mighty blessing, “while we live, to live.” Then all for death, that opiate of the soul! Lucretia’s dagger, Rosamonda’s bowl. Say, what can cause such impotence of mind? A spark too fickle, or a spouse too kind. Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please; With too much spirit to be e’er at ease; With too much quickness ever to be taught; With too much thinking to have common thought: You purchase pain with all that joy can give, And die of nothing but a rage to live.    Turn then from wits; and look on Simo’s mate, No ass so meek, no ass so obstinate. Or her, that owns her faults, but never mends, Because she’s honest, and the best of friends. Or her, whose life the Church and scandal share, For ever in a passion, or a prayer. Or her, who laughs at hell, but (like her Grace) Cries, “Ah! how charming, if there’s no such place!” Or who in sweet vicissitude appears Of mirth and opium, ratafie and tears, The daily anodyne, and nightly draught, To kill those foes to fair ones, time and thought. Woman and fool are two hard things to hit; For true no-meaning puzzles more than wit.    But what are these to great Atossa’s mind? Scarce once herself, by turns all womankind! Who, with herself, or others, from her birth Finds all her life one warfare upon earth: Shines in exposing knaves, and painting fools, Yet is, whate’er she hates and ridicules. No thought advances, but her eddy brain Whisks it about, and down it goes again. Full sixty years the world has been her trade, The wisest fool much time has ever made From loveless youth to unrespected age, No passion gratified except her rage. So much the fury still outran the wit, The pleasure missed her, and the scandal hit. Who breaks with her, provokes revenge from hell, But he’s a bolder man who dares be well. Her every turn with violence pursued, Nor more a storm her hate than gratitude: To that each passion turns, or soon or late; Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate: Superiors? death! and equals? what a curse! But an inferior not dependent? worse. Offend her, and she knows not to forgive; Oblige her, and she’ll hate you while you live: But die, and she’ll adore you—then the bust And temple rise—then fall again to dust. Last night, her lord was all that’s good and great; A knave this morning, and his will a cheat. Strange! by the means defeated of the ends, By spirit robbed of power, by warmth of friend By wealth of followers! without one distress Sick of herself through very selfishness! Atossa, cursed with every granted prayer, Childless with all her children, wants an heir. To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store, Or wanders, Heaven-directed, to the poor.    Pictures like these, dear madam, to design, Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line; Some wandering touches, some reflected light, Some flying stroke alone can hit ’em right: For how should equal colours do the knack? Chameleons who can paint in white and black?    “Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot”— Nature in her then erred not, but forgot. “With every pleasing, every prudent part, Say, what can Chloe want?”—She wants a heart. She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought; But never, never, reached one generous thought. Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, Content to dwell in decencies for ever. So very reasonable, so unmoved, As never yet to love, or to be loved. She, while her lover pants upon her breast, Can mark the figures on an Indian chest; And when she sees her friend in deep despair, Observes how much a chintz exceeds mohair. Forbid it, Heaven, a favour or a debt She e’er should cancel—but she may forget. Safe is your secret still in Chloe’s ear; But none of Chloe’s shall you ever hear. Of all her dears she never slandered one, But cares not if a thousand are undone. Would Chloe know if you’re alive or dead? She bids her footman put it in her head. Chloe is prudent—would you too be wise? Then never break your heart when Chloe dies.    One certain portrait may (I grant) be seen, Which Heaven has varnished out, and made a Queen . The same for ever! and described by all With truth and goodness, as with crown and ball. Poets heap virtues, painters gems at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill. ’Tis well—but, artists! who can paint or write, To draw the naked is your true delight. That robe of quality so struts and swells, None see what parts of nature it conceals: The exactest traits of body or of mind, We owe to models of an humble kind. If Queensbury to strip there’s no compelling, ’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen, From peer or bishop ’tis no easy thing To draw the man who loves his God or king: Alas! I copy (or my draught would fail) From honest Mah’met, or plain Parson Hale.    But grant in public men sometimes are shown, A woman’s seen in private life alone: Our bolder talents in full light displayed; Your virtues open fairest in the shade. Bred to disguise, in public ’tis you hide; There, none distinguish ’twixt your shame or pride, Weakness or delicacy; all so nice, That each may seem a virtue or a vice.    In men, we various ruling passions find; In women, two almost divide the kind: Those, only fixed they first or last obey— The love of pleasure, and the love of sway.    That, Nature gives; and where the lesson taught Is but to please, can pleasure seem a fault? Experience, this; by man’s oppression curst, They seek the second not to lose the first.    Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake: Men, some to quiet, some to public strife; But every lady would be queen for life.    Yet mark the fate of a whole sex of queens! Power all their end, but beauty all the means: In youth they conquer, with so wild a rage, As leaves them scarce a subject in their age: For foreign glory, foreign joy, they roam; No thought of peace or happiness at home. But wisdom’s triumph is well-timed retreat, As hard a science to the fair as great! Beauties, like tyrants, old and friendless grown, Yet hate repose, and dread to be alone, Worn out in public, weary every eye, Nor leave one sigh behind them when they die.    Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue, Still out of reach, yet never out of view; Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most, To covet flying, and regret when lost: At last, to follies youth could scarce defend, It grows their age’s prudence to pretend; Ashamed to own they gave delight before, Reduced to feign it, when they give no more: As hags hold Sabbaths, less for joy than spite, So these their merry, miserable night; Still round and round the ghosts of beauty glide, And haunt the places where their honour died.    See how the world its veterans rewards! A youth of frolics, an old age of cards; Fair to no purpose, artful to no end; Young without lovers, old without a friend; A fop their passion, but their prize a sot; Alive, ridiculous; and dead, forgot!    Ah! friend! to dazzle let the vain design; To raise the thought and touch the heart be thine! That charm shall grow, while what fatigues the ring, Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing: So when the sun’s broad beam has tired the sight, All mild ascends the moon’s more sober light; Serene in virgin modesty she shines, And unobserved the glaring orb declines.    Oh! blest with temper whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day, She, who can love a sister’s charms, or hear Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear; She, who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, Yet has her humour most, when she obeys; Let fops or fortune fly which way they will; Disdains all loss of tickets, or Codille: Spleen, vapours, or small-pox, above them all, And mistress of herself, though China fall.    And yet, believe me, good as well as ill, Woman’s at best a contradiction still. Heaven, when it strives to polish all it can Its last best work, but forms a softer man; Picks from each sex, to make the fav’rite blest, Your love of pleasure, or desire of rest: Blends, in exception to all general rules, Your taste of follies, with our scorn of fools: Reserve with frankness, art with truth allied, Courage with softness, modesty with pride; Fixed principles, with fancy ever new; Shakes all together, and produces—You.    Be this a woman’s fame: with this unblest, Toasts live a scorn, and queens may die a jest. This Phoebus promised (I forget the year) When those blue eyes first opened on the sphere; Ascendant Phoebus watched that hour with care, Averted half your parents’ simple prayer, And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf That buys your sex a tyrant o’er itself. The gen’rous god, who wit and gold refines, And ripens spirits as he ripens mines, Kept dross for duchesses—the world shall know it— To you gave sense, good-humour, and a poet.

EPISTLE III.  TO ALLEN LORD BATHURST.

Of the use of Riches.

That it is known to few, most falling into one of the extremes, Avarice or Profusion, v.1, etc.  The point discussed, whether the invention of money has been more commodious or pernicious to Mankind, v.21 to 77.  That Riches, either to the Avaricious or the Prodigal, cannot afford Happiness, scarcely Necessaries, v.89-160.  That Avarice is an absolute Frenzy, without an end or purpose, v.113, etc., 152.  Conjectures about the motives of Avaricious men, v.121 to 153.  That the conduct of men, with respect to Riches, can only be accounted for by the Order of Providence, which works the general good out of extremes, and brings all to its great End by perpetual Revolutions, v.161 to 178.  How a Miser acts upon Principles which appear to him reasonable, v.179.  How a Prodigal does the same, v.199.  The due Medium and true use of Riches, v.219.  The Man of Ross, v.250.  The fate of the Profuse and the Covetous, in two examples; both miserable in Life and in Death, v.300, etc.  The Story of Sir Balaam, v.339 to the end.

   P. Who shall decide, when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me? You hold the word, from Jove to Momus given, That man was made the standing jest of Heaven; And gold but sent to keep the fools in play, For some to heap, and some to throw away.    But I, who think more highly of our kind, (And surely, Heaven and I are of a mind) Opine, that Nature, as in duty bound, Deep hid the shining mischief under ground: But when by man’s audacious labour won, Flamed forth this rival to its sire, the sun, Then careful Heaven supplied two sorts of men, To squander these, and those to hide again.    Like doctors thus, when much dispute has past, We find our tenets just the same at last. Both fairly owning Riches, in effect, No grace of Heaven or token of th’ elect; Given to the fool, the mad, the vain, the evil, To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the devil.    B. What Nature wants, commodious gold bestows, ’Tis thus we eat the bread another sows.    P. But how unequal it bestows, observe; ’Tis thus we riot, while, who sow it, starve: What Nature wants (a phrase I much distrust) Extends to luxury, extends to lust: Useful, I grant, it serves what life requires, But, dreadful too, the dark assassin hires.    B. Trade it may help, society extend.    P. But lures the pirate, and corrupts the friend.    B. It raises armies in a nation’s aid.    P. But bribes a senate, and the land’s betrayed. In vain may heroes fight, and patriots rave; If secret gold sap on from knave to knave. Once, we confess, beneath the patriot’s cloak, From the cracked bag the dropping guinea spoke, And jingling down the back-stairs, told the crew, “Old Cato is as great a rogue as you.” Blest paper-credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly! Gold imped by thee can compass hardest things, Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings; A single leaf shall waft an army o’er, Or ship off senates to a distant shore; A leaf, like Sibyl’s, scatter to and fro Our fates and fortunes, as the winds shall blow: Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen, And silent sells a king, or buys a queen.    Oh! that such bulky bribes as all might see, Still, as of old, encumbered villainy! Could France or Rome divert our brave designs, With all their brandies or with all their wines? What could they more than knights and squires confound, Or water all the Quorum ten miles round? A statesman’s slumbers how this speech would spoil! “Sir, Spain has sent a thousand jars of oil; Huge bales of British cloth blockade the door; A hundred oxen at your levee roar.”    Poor Avarice one torment more would find; Nor could Profusion squander all in kind. Astride his cheese Sir Morgan might we meet; And Worldly crying coals from street to street, Whom with a wig so wild, and mien so mazed, Pity mistakes for some poor tradesman crazed. Had Colepepper’s whole wealth been hops and hogs, Could he himself have sent it to the dogs? His Grace will game: to White’s a bull be led, With spurning heels and with a butting head. To White’s be carried, as to ancient games, Fair coursers, vases, and alluring dames. Shall then Uxorio, if the stakes he sweep, Bear home six w****s, and make his lady weep? Or soft Adonis, so perfumed and fine, Drive to St. James’s a whole herd of swine? Oh, filthy cheek on all industrious skill, To spoil the nation’s last great trade, Quadrille! Since then, my lord, on such a world we fall, What say you?  B. Say?  Why, take it, gold and all.    P. What Riches give us let us then inquire: Meat, fire, and clothes.  B. What more?  P. Meat, clothes, and fire. Is this too little? would you more than live? Alas! ’tis more than Turner finds they give. Alas! ’tis more than (all his visions past) Unhappy Wharton, waking, found at last! What can they give? to dying Hopkins, heirs; To Chartres, vigour; Japhet, nose and ears? Can they in gems bid pallid Hippia glow, In Fulvia’s buckle ease the throbs below; Or heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail, With all th’ embroid’ry plastered at thy tail? They might (were Harpax not too wise to spend) Give Harpax’ self the blessing of a friend; Or find some doctor that would save the life Of wretched Shylock, spite of Shylock’s wife: But thousands die, without or this or that, Die, and endow a college, or a cat. To some, indeed, Heaven grants the happier fate, T’ enrich a bastard, or a son they hate.    Perhaps you think the poor might have their part? Bond damns the poor, and hates them from his heart: The grave Sir Gilbert holds it for a rule, That “every man in want is knave or fool:” “God cannot love,” says Blunt, with tearless eyes, “The wretch He starves”—and piously denies: But the good bishop, with a meeker air, Admits, and leaves them—Providence’s care.    Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but hate his neighbour as himself: Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.    B. Who suffer thus, mere charity should own, Must act on motives powerful, though unknown.    P. Some war, some plague, or famine they foresee, Some revelation hid from you and me. Why Shylock wants a meal, the cause is found— He thinks a loaf will rise to fifty pound. What made directors cheat in South-Sea year? To live on venison when it sold so dear. Ask you why Phryne the whole auction buys? Phryne foresees a general excise. Why she and Sappho raise that monstrous sum? Alas! they fear a man will cost a plum.    Wise Peter sees the world’s respect for gold, And therefore hopes this nation may be sold: Glorious ambition! Peter, swell thy store, And be what Rome’s great Didius was before.    The crown of Poland, venal twice an age, To just three millions stinted modest Gage. But nobler scenes Maria’s dreams unfold, Hereditary realms, and worlds of gold. Congenial souls! whose life one av’rice joins, And one fate buries in th’ Asturian mines.    Much injured Blunt! why bears he Britain’s hate? A wizard told him in these words our fate: “At length corruption, like a gen’ral flood (So long by watchful Ministers withstood), Shall deluge all; and av’rice, creeping on, Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the sun; Statesman and patriot ply alike the stocks, Peeress and butler share alike the box, And judges job, and bishops bite the town, And mighty dukes pack cards for half-a-crown. See Britain sunk in Lucre’s sordid charms, And France revenged of Anne’s and Edward’s arms!” ’Twas no Court-badge, great Scriv’ner! fired thy brain, Nor lordly luxury, nor City gain: No, ’twas thy righteous end, ashamed to see Senates degen’rate, patriots disagree, And, nobly wishing party-rage to cease, To buy both sides, and give thy country peace.    “All this is madness,” cries a sober sage: But who, my friend, has reason in his rage? “The ruling passion, be it what it will, The ruling passion conquers reason still.” Less mad the wildest whimsey we can frame, Than even that passion, if it has no aim; For though such motives folly you may call, The folly’s greater to have none at all.    Hear then the truth: “’Tis Heaven each passion sends, And different men directs to different ends. Extremes in nature equal good produce, Extremes in man concur to gen’ral use.” Ask we what makes one keep, and one bestow? That Power who bids the ocean ebb and flow, Bids seed-time, harvest, equal course maintain, Through reconciled extremes of drought and rain, Builds life on death, on change duration founds, And gives th’ eternal wheels to know their rounds.    Riches, like insects, when concealed they lie, Wait but for wings, and in their season fly. Who sees pale Mammon pine amidst his store, Sees but a backward steward for the poor; This year a reservoir, to keep and spare; The next, a fountain, spouting through his heir, In lavish streams to quench a country’s thirst, And men and dogs shall drink him till they burst.    Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth, Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth: What though (the use of barbarous spits forgot) His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot? His court with nettles, moats with cresses stored, With soups unbought and salads blessed his board? If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more Than Brahmins, saints, and sages did before; To cram the rich was prodigal expense, And who would take the poor from Providence? Like some lone Chartreux stands the good old hall, Silence without, and fasts within the wall; No raftered roofs with dance and tabor sound, No noontide bell invites the country round; Tenants with sighs the smokeless towers survey, And turn th’ unwilling steeds another way; Benighted wanderers, the forest o’er, Curse the saved candle and unopening door; While the gaunt mastiff growling at the gate, Affrights the beggar whom he longs to eat.    Not so his son; he marked this oversight, And then mistook reverse of wrong for right. (For what to shun will no great knowledge need; But what to follow is a task indeed.) Yet sure, of qualities deserving praise, More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise. What slaughtered hecatombs, what floods of wine, Fill the capacious squire, and deep divine! Yet no mean motive this profusion draws; His oxen perish in his country’s cause; ’Tis George and Liberty that crowns the cup, And zeal for that great house which eats him up. The woods recede around the naked seat; The sylvans groan—no matter—for the fleet; Next goes his wool—to clothe our valiant bands; Last, for his country’s love, he sells his lands. To town he comes, completes the nation’s hope, And heads the bold train-bands, and burns a Pope. And shall not Britain now reward his toils, Britain, that pays her patriots with her spoils? In vain at Court the bankrupt pleads his cause, His thankless country leaves him to her laws.    The sense to value riches, with the art T’ enjoy them, and the virtue to impart, Not meanly, nor ambitiously pursued, Not sunk by sloth, nor raised by servitude; To balance fortune by a just expense, Join with economy, magnificence; With splendour, charity; with plenty, health; O teach us, Bathurst! yet unspoiled by wealth! That secret rare, between the extremes to move Of mad good-nature, and of mean self-love.    B. To worth or want well weighed, be bounty given, And ease, or emulate, the care of Heaven (Whose measure full o’erflows on human race); Mend Fortune’s fault, and justify her grace. Wealth in the gross is death, but life diffused; As poison heals, in just proportion used: In heaps, like ambergrise, a stink it lies, But well dispersed, is incense to the skies.    P. Who starves by nobles, or with nobles eats? The wretch that trusts them, and the rogue that cheats. Is there a lord who knows a cheerful noon Without a fiddler, flatterer, or buffoon? Whose table, wit or modest merit share, Unelbowed by a gamester, pimp, or play’r? Who copies yours or Oxford’s better part, To ease the oppressed, and raise the sinking heart? Where’er he shines, O Fortune, gild the scene, And angels guard him in the golden mean! There, English bounty yet awhile may stand, And Honour linger ere it leaves the land.    But all our praises why should lords engross? Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross: Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds, And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds. Who hung with woods you mountain’s sultry brow? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow? Not to the skies in useless columns tost, Or in proud falls magnificently lost, But clear and artless, pouring through the plain Health to the sick, and solace to the swain. Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows? Whose seats the weary traveller repose? Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise? “The Man of Ross,” each lisping babe replies. Behold the market-place with poor o’erspread! The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread; He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state, Where age and want sit smiling at the gate; Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blest, The young who labour, and the old who rest. Is any sick? the Man of Ross relieves, Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes, and gives. Is there a variance? enter but his door, Baulked are the courts, and contest is no more. Despairing quacks with curses fled the place, And vile attorneys, now a useless race.    B. Thrice happy man! enabled to pursue What all so wish, but want the power to do! Oh say, what sums that generous hand supply? What mines, to swell that boundless charity?    P. Of debts, and taxes, wife and children clear, This man possest—five hundred pounds a year. Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your blaze! Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays!    B. And what? no monument, inscription, stone? His race, his form, his name almost unknown?    P. Who builds a church to God, and not to Fame, Will never mark the marble with his name; Go, search it there, where to be born and die, Of rich and poor makes all the history; Enough, that virtue filled the space between; Proved, by the ends of being, to have been. When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend The wretch, who living saved a candle’s end: Shouldering God’s altar a vile image stands, Belies his features, nay, extends his hands; That livelong wig, which Gorgon’s self might own, Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone. Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend! And see what comfort it affords our end.    In the worst inn’s worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!— Gallant and gay, in Cliveden’s proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love; Or just as gay, at council, in a ring Of mimic’d statesmen and their merry king. No wit to flatter left of all his store! No fool to laugh at, which he valued more. There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.    His grace’s fate sage Cutler could foresee, And well (he thought) advised him, “Live like me.” As well his grace replied, “Like you, Sir John? That I can do, when all I have is gone.” Resolve me, Reason, which of these is worse, Want with a full, or with an empty purse? Thy life more wretched, Cutler, was confessed, Arise, and tell me, was thy death more blessed? Cutler saw tenants break, and houses fall, For very want; he could not build a wall. His only daughter in a stranger’s power, For very want; he could not pay a dower. A few grey hairs his reverend temples crowned, ’Twas very want that sold them for two pound. What even denied a cordial at his end, Banished the doctor, and expelled the friend? What but a want, which you perhaps think mad, Yet numbers feel the want of what he had! Cutler and Brutus, dying, both exclaim, “Virtue! and wealth! what are ye but a name!”    Say, for such worth are other worlds prepared? Or are they both in this their own reward? A knotty point! to which we now proceed. But you are tired—I’ll tell a tale.   B. Agreed.    P. Where London’s column, pointing at the skies, Like a tall bully, lifts the head, and lies; There dwelt a citizen of sober fame, A plain good man, and Balaam was his name; Religious, punctual, frugal, and so forth; His word would pass for more than he was worth. One solid dish his week-day meal affords, An added pudding solemnised the Lord’s; Constant at church, and Change; his gains were sure, His givings rare, save farthings to the poor. The devil was piqued such saintship to behold, And longed to tempt him like good Job of old: But Satan now is wiser than of yore, And tempts by making rich, not making poor.    Roused by the prince of Air, the whirlwinds sweep The surge, and plunge his father in the deep; Then full against his Cornish lands they roar, And two rich shipwrecks bless the lucky shore.    Sir Balaam now, he lives like other folks, He takes his chirping pint, and cracks his jokes; “Live like yourself,” was soon my lady’s word; And lo! two puddings smoked upon the board.    Asleep and naked as an Indian lay, An honest factor stole a gem away: He pledged it to the knight; the knight had wit, So kept the diamond, and the rogue was bit. Some scruple rose, but thus he eased his thought, “I’ll now give sixpence where I gave a groat; Where once I went to church, I’ll now go twice— And am so clear, too, of all other vice.”    The Tempter saw his time; the work he plied; Stocks and subscriptions pour on every side, ’Till all the demon makes his full descent In one abundant shower of cent. per cent., Sinks deep within him, and possesses whole, Then dubs director, and secures his soul.    Behold Sir Balaam, now a man of spirit, Ascribes his gettings to his parts and merit; What late he called a blessing, now was wit, And God’s good Providence, a lucky hit. Things change their titles, as our manners turn; His counting-house employed the Sunday morn; Seldom at church (’twas such a busy life), But duly sent his family and wife. There (so the devil ordained) one Christmas tide My good old lady catched a cold and died.    A nymph of quality admires our knight; He marries, bows at court, and grows polite: Leaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair) The well bred c*ck**ds in St. James’s air; First, for his son a gay commission buys, Who drinks and fights, and in a duel dies; His daughter flaunts a viscount’s tawdry wife; She bears a coronet and ---- for life. In Britain’s senate he a seat obtains, And one more pensioner St. Stephen gains. My lady falls to play; so bad her chance, He must repair it; takes a bribe from France; The House impeach him; Coningsby harangues; The Court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs; Wife, son, and daughter, Satan! are thine own, His wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the Crown: The Devil and the King divide the prize, And sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies.

EPISTLE IV.  TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON.

Of the Use of Riches.

The Vanity of Expense in people of Wealth and Quality.  The abuse of the word Taste, v.13.  That the first Principle and foundation, in this as in everything else, is Good Sense, v.40.   The chief Proof of it is to follow Nature even in works of mere Luxury and Elegance.  Instanced in Architecture and Gardening, where all must be adapted to the Genius and Use of the Place, and the Beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it, v.50.  How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings, for want of this true Foundation, without which nothing can please long, if at all: and the best Examples and Rules will but be perverted into something burdensome or ridiculous, v.65, etc., to 92.  A description of the false Taste of Magnificence; the first grand Error of which is to imagine that Greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the Proportion and Harmony of the whole, v.97, and the second, either in joining together Parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the Repetition of the same too frequently, v.105, etc.  A word or two of false Taste in Books, in Music, in Painting, even in Preaching and Prayer, and lastly in Entertainments, v.133, etc.  Yet Providence is justified in giving Wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is dispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind, v.169 (recurring to what is laid down in the first book, Ep. ii., and in the Epistle preceding this, v.159, etc.).  What are the proper objects of Magnificence, and a proper field for the Expense of Great Men, v.177, etc., and finally, the Great and Public Works which become a Prince, v.191 to the end.

’Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy: Is it less strange, the prodigal should waste His wealth, to purchase what he ne’er can taste? Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats; Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats: He buys for Topham, drawings and designs, For Pembroke, statues, dirty gods, and coins; Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone, And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane. Think we all these are for himself? no more Than his fine wife, alas! or finer w***e.    For what has Virro painted, built, and planted? Only to show, how many tastes he wanted. What brought Sir Visto’s ill-got wealth to waste? Some demon whispered, “Visto! have a taste.” Heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool, And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule. See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride, Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide. A standing sermon, at each year’s expense, That never coxcomb reached magnificence!    You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse, And pompous buildings once were things of use. Yet shall, my lord, your just, your noble rules Fill half the land with imitating fools; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, And of one beauty many blunders make; Load some vain church with old theatric state, Turn arcs of triumph to a garden-gate; Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all On some patched dog-hole eked with ends of wall; Then clap four slices of pilaster on ’t, That, laced with bits of rustic, makes a front Shall call the winds through long arcades to roar, Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door; Conscious they act a true Palladian part, And, if they starve, they starve by rules of art.    Oft have you hinted to your brother peer A certain truth, which many buy too dear: Something there is more needful than expense, And something previous even to taste—’tis sense. Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven: A light, which in yourself you must perceive: Jones and Le Notre have it not to give.    To build, to plant, whatever you intend, To rear the column, or the arch to bend, To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot; In all, let Nature never be forgot. But treat the goddess like a modest fair, Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare; Let not each beauty everywhere be spied, Where half the skill is decently to hide. He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.    Consult the genius of the place in all; That tells the waters or to rise or fall, Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades; Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines; Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.    Still follow sense, of every art the soul, Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, Spontaneous beauties all around advance, Start even from difficulty, strike from chance; Nature shall join you; Time shall make it grow A work to wonder at—perhaps a Stowe.    Without it, proud Versailles, thy glory falls; And Nero’s terraces desert their walls: The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make; Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake: Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, You’ll wish your hill or sheltered seat again. Even in an ornament its place remark, Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke.    Behold Villario’s ten years’ toil complete: His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet; The wood supports the plain, the parts unite, And strength of shade contends with strength of light; A waving glow the bloomy beds display, Blushing in bright diversities of day, With silver-quivering rills meandered o’er— Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more; Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield, He finds at last he better likes a field.    Through his young woods how pleased Sabinus strayed, Or sat delighted in the thickening shade, With annual joy the reddening shoots to greet, Or see the stretching branches long to meet! His son’s fine taste an opener vista loves, Foe to the Dryads of his father’s groves; One boundless green, or flourished carpet views, With all the mournful family of yews; The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made, Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.    At Timon’s villa let us pass a day, Where all cry out, “What sums are thrown away!” So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole, a laboured quarry above ground; Two Cupids squirt before; a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind. His gardens next your admiration call, On every side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees With here a fountain, never to be played; And there a summer-house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers; There gladiators fight or die in flowers; Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn, And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn.    My lord advances with majestic mien, Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen: But soft—by regular approach—not yet— First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat; And when up ten steep slopes you’ve dragged your thighs, Just at his study door he’ll bless your eyes.    His study! with what authors is it stored? In books, not authors, curious is my lord; To all their dated backs he turns you round: These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound, Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good For all his lordship knows, but they are wood. For Locke or Milton ’tis in vain to look; These shelves admit not any modern book.    And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer; Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all Paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite, Who never mentions hell to ears polite.    But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call; A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall: The rich buffet well-coloured serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. Is this a dinner? this a genial room? No, ’tis a temple, and a hecatomb. A solemn sacrifice, performed in state, You drink by measure, and to minutes eat. So quick retires each flying course, you’d swear Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there. Between each act the trembling salvers ring, From soup to sweet-wine, and God bless the King. In plenty starving, tantalised in state, And complaisantly helped to all I hate, Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave, Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve; I curse such lavish cost and little skill, And swear no day was ever past so ill.    Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; Health to himself, and to his infants bread The labourer bears; what his hard heart denies His charitable vanity supplies.    Another age shall see the golden ear Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.    Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle. ’Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.    His father’s acres who enjoys in peace, Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase: Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil; Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed The milky heifer and deserving steed; Whose rising forests, not for pride or show, But future buildings, future navies, grow: Let his plantations stretch from down to down, First shade a country, and then raise a town.    You too proceed! make falling arts your care, Erect new wonders, and the old repair; Jones and Palladio to themselves restore, And be whate’er Vitruvius was before: ’Till kings call forth the ideas of your mind (Proud to accomplish what such hands denied) Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid temples, worthier of the god, ascend; Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main; Back to his bounds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land: These honours peace to happy Britain brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings.

EPISTLE V.  TO MR. ADDISON.

Occasioned by his Dialogues on Medals.

See the wild waste of all-devouring years! How Rome her own sad sepulchre appears, With nodding arches, broken temples spread! The very tombs now vanished like their dead! Imperial wonders raised on nations spoiled, Where mixed with slaves the groaning martyr toiled: Huge theatres, that now unpeopled woods, Now drained a distant country of her floods: Fanes, which admiring gods with pride survey, Statues of men, scarce less alive than they! Some felt the silent stroke of mouldering age, Some hostile fury, some religious rage. Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire, And Papal piety, and Gothic fire. Perhaps, by its own ruins saved from flame, Some buried marble half preserves a name; That name the learned with fierce disputes pursue, And give to Titus old Vespasian’s due.    Ambition sighed: she found it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust: Huge moles, whose shadow stretched from shore to shore, Their ruins perished, and their place no more; Convinced, she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps; Beneath her palm here sad Judea weeps; Now scantier limits the proud arch confine, And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine; A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled, And little eagles wave their wings in gold. The medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Through climes and ages bears each form and name: In one short view subjected to our eye Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie. With sharpened sight pale antiquaries pore, The inscription value, but the rust adore. This the blue varnish, that the green endears, The sacred rust of twice ten hundred years! To gain Pescennius one employs his schemes, One grasps a Cecrops in ecstatic dreams. Poor Vadius, long with learnéd spleen devoured, Can taste no pleasure since his shield was scoured; And Curio, restless by the fair one’s side, Sighs for an Otho, and neglects his bride.    Theirs is the vanity, the learning thine: Touched by thy hand, again Rome’s glories shine; Her gods and god-like heroes rise to view, And all her faded garlands bloom anew. Nor blush, these studies thy regard engage; These pleased the fathers of poetic rage; The verse and sculpture bore an equal part, And art reflected images to art.    Oh, when shall Britain, conscious of her claim, Stand emulous of Greek and Roman fame? In living medals see her wars enrolled, And vanquished realms supply recording gold? Here, rising bold, the patriot’s honest face; There warriors frowning in historic brass? Then future ages with delight shall see How Plato’s, Bacon’s, Newton’s looks agree; Or in fair series laurelled bards be shown, A Virgil there, and here an Addison. Then shall thy Craggs (and let me call him mine) On the cast ore, another Pollio shine; With aspect open, shall erect his head, And round the orb in lasting notes be read, “Statesmen, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, served no private end, Who gained no title and who lost no friend; Ennobled by himself, by all approved, And praised, unenvied, by the muse he loved.”

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT.

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This Paper is a sort of bill of complaint, begun many years since, and drawn up by snatches, as the several occasions offered.  I had no thoughts of publishing it, till it pleased some persons of rank and fortune (the authors of “Verses to the Imitator of Horace,” and of an “Epistle to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court”) to attack, in a very extraordinary manner, not only my writings (of which, being public, the public is judge), but my person, morals, and family, whereof, to those who know me not, a truer information may be requisite.  Being divided between the necessity to say something of myself, and my own laziness to undertake so awkward a task, I thought it the shortest way to put the last hand to this Epistle.  If it have anything pleasing, it will be that by which I am most desirous to please, the truth and the sentiment; and if anything offensive, it will be only to those I am least sorry to offend, the vicious or the ungenerous.

Many will know their own pictures in it, there being not a circumstance but what is true; but I have, for the most part, spared their names, and they may escape being laughed at if they please.

I would have some of them know, it was owing to the request of the learned and candid friend to whom it is inscribed, that I make not as free use of theirs as they have done of mine.  However, I shall have this advantage and honour on my side, that whereas, by their proceeding, any abuse may be directed at any man, no injury can possibly be done by mine, since a nameless character can never be found out but by its truth and likeness.—P.

EPISTLE TO DR. ARBUTHNOT, BEING THE PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES.

P. Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said, Tie up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead. The dog-star rages! nay ’tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land.    What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide; By land, by water, they renew the charge; They stop the chariot, and they board the barge. No place is sacred, not the Church is free; Even Sunday shines no Sabbath Day to me; Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, Happy to catch me just at dinner-time.    Is there a parson, much bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father’s soul to cross, Who pens a stanza when he should engross? Is there, who, locked from ink and paper, scrawls With desperate charcoal round his darkened walls? All fly to Twitenham, and in humble strain Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain. Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws, Imputes to me and my damned works the cause: Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope, And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.    Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song) What drop or nostrum can this plague remove? Or which must end me, a fool’s wrath or love? A dire dilemma! either way I’m sped, If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead. Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I! Who can’t be silent, and who will not lie. To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace, And to be grave, exceeds all power of face. I sit with sad civility, I read With honest anguish, and an aching head; And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This saving counsel, “Keep your piece nine years.”    “Nine years!” cries he, who high in Drury Lane, Lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends, Obliged by hunger, and request of friends: “The piece, you think, is incorrect? why, take it, I’m all submission, what you’d have it, make it.”    Three things another’s modest wishes bound, My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.    Pitholeon sends to me: “You know his Grace, I want a patron; ask him for a place.” ‘Pitholeon libelled me’—“but here’s a letter Informs you, sir, ’twas when he knew no better. Dare you refuse him?  Curll invites to dine, He’ll write a journal, or he’ll turn divine.”    Bless me! a packet.—“’Tis a stranger sues, A virgin tragedy, an orphan muse.” If I dislike it, “Furies, death and rage!” If I approve, “Commend it to the stage.” There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends, The players and I are, luckily, no friends, Fired that the house reject him, “’Sdeath I’ll print it, And shame the fools—Your interest, sir, with Lintot!” ’Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:’ “Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch.” All my demurs but double his attacks; At last he whispers, “Do; and we go snacks.” Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door, Sir, let me see your works and you no more.    ’Tis sung, when Midas’ ears began to spring (Midas, a sacred person and a king), His very minister who spied them first (Some say his queen) was forced to speak, or burst. And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case, When every coxcomb perks them in my face? A.  Good friend, forbear! you deal in dangerous things. I’d never name queens, ministers, or kings; Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick; ’Tis nothing— P. Nothing? if they bite and kick? Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass, That secret to each fool, that he’s an ass: The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?) The Queen of Midas slept, and so may I.    You think this cruel? take it for a rule, No creature smarts so little as a fool. Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand’st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature’s at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer, Lost the arched eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer? And has not Colley still his lord, and w***e? His butchers Henley, his free-masons Moore? Does not one table Bavius still admit? Still to one bishop Philips seem a wit? Still Sappho—  A. Hold! for God’s sake—you’ll offend, No names!—be calm!—learn prudence of a friend! I too could write, and I am twice as tall; But foes like these—  P. One flatterer’s worse than all. Of all mad creatures, if the learned are right, It is the slaver kills, and not the bite. A fool quite angry is quite innocent: Alas! ’tis ten times worse when they repent.    One dedicates in high heroic prose, And ridicules beyond a hundred foes: One from all Grubstreet will my fame defend, And more abusive, calls himself my friend. This prints my letters, that expects a bribe, And others roar aloud, “Subscribe, subscribe.”    There are, who to my person pay their court: I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short, Ammon’s great son one shoulder had too high, Such Ovid’s nose, and “Sir! you have an eye”— Go on, obliging creatures, make me see All that disgraced my betters, met in me. Say for my comfort, languishing in bed, “Just so immortal Maro held his head:” And when I die, be sure you let me know Great Homer died three thousand years ago.    Why did I write? what sin to me unknown Dipped me in ink, my parents’, or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. I left no calling for this idle trade, No duty broke, no father disobeyed. The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife, To help me through this long disease, my life, To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care, And teach the being you preserved, to bear.    But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; Well-natured Garth, inflamed with early praise; And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays; The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield, read; Even mitred Rochester would nod the head, And St. John’s self (great Dryden’s friends before) With open arms received one poet more. Happy my studies, when by these approved! Happier their author, when by these beloved! From these the world will judge of men and books, Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.    Soft were my numbers; who could take offence, While pure description held the place of sense? Like gentle Fanny’s was my flowery theme, A painted mistress, or a purling stream. Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wished the man a dinner, and sat still. Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answered—I was not in debt. If want provoked, or madness made them print, I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.    Did some more sober critic come abroad; If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod. Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence, And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense. Commas and points they set exactly right, And ’twere a sin to rob them of their mite. Yet ne’er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds, From slashing Bentley down to p---g Tibalds: Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells, Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables, Even such small critics some regard may claim, Preserved in Milton’s or in Shakespeare’s name. Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.    Were others angry: I excused them too; Well might they rage, I gave them but their due. A man’s true merit ’tis not hard to find; But each man’s secret standard in his mind, That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness, This, who can gratify? for who can guess? The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown, Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown, Just writes to make his barrenness appear, And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year; He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft, Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left: And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning: And he, whose fustian’s so sublimely bad, It is not poetry, but prose run mad: All these, my modest satire bade translate, And owned that nine such poets made a Tate. How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe And swear not Addison himself was safe.    Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; Blessed with each talent and each art to please, And born to write, converse, and live with ease: Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne. View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, And hate for arts that caused himself to rise; Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike; Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend; Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging, that he ne’er obliged; Like Cato, give his little senate laws, And sit attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise:— Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?    What though my name stood rubric on the walls, Or plaistered posts, with claps, in capitals? Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers’ load, On wings of winds came flying all abroad? I sought no homage from the race that write; I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight: Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long) No more than thou, great George! a birthday song. I ne’er with wits or witlings passed my days, To spread about the itch of verse and praise; Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town, To fetch and carry sing-song up and down; Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouthed, and cried, With handkerchief and orange at my side; But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate, To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.    Proud as Apollo on his forkéd hill, Sat full-blown Bufo puffed by every quill; Fed with soft dedication all day long, Horace and he went hand in hand in song. His library (where busts of poets dead And a true Pindar stood without a head) Received of wits an undistinguished race, Who first his judgment asked, and then a place: Much they extolled his pictures, much his seat, And flattered every day, and some days eat: Till grown more frugal in his riper days, He paid some bards with port, and some with praise; To some a dry rehearsal was assigned, And others (harder still) he paid in kind. Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh, Dryden alone escaped this judging eye: But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.    May some choice patron bless each grey goose quill! May every Bavius have his Bufo still! So, when a statesman wants a day’s defence, Or envy holds a whole week’s war with sense, Or simple pride for flattery makes demands, May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands! Blessed be the great! for those they take away, And those they left me; for they left me gay; Left me to see neglected genius bloom, Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb: Of all thy blameless life the soul return My verse, and Queensbury weeping o’er thy urn!    Oh let me live my own, and die so too! (To live and die is all I have to do:) Maintain a poet’s dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please; Above a patron, though I condescend Sometimes to call a minister my friend. I was not born for courts or great affairs; I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers; Can sleep without a poem in my head; Nor know, if Dennis be alive or dead.    Why am I asked what next shall see the light? Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write? Has life no joys for me! or (to be grave) Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save? “I found him close with Swift.”—‘Indeed? no doubt,’ (Cries prating Balbus) ‘something will come out.’ ’Tis all in vain, deny it as I will. ‘No, such a genius never can lie still;’ And then for mine obligingly mistakes The first lampoon Sir Will. or Bubo makes. Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile When every coxcomb knows me by my style?    Cursed be the verse, how well soe’er it flow That tends to make one worthy man my foe, Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear, Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear! But he who hurts a harmless neighbour’s peace, Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress, Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about, Who writes a libel, or who copies out: That fop, whose pride affects a patron’s name, Yet absent, wounds an author’s honest fame: Who can your merit selfishly approve, And show the sense of it without the love; Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend; Who tells whate’er you think, whate’er you say, And, if he lie not, must at least betray: Who to the Dean, and silver bell can swear, And sees at Canons what was never there; Who reads, but with a lust to misapply, Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie. A lash like mine no honest man shall dread, But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.    Let Sporus tremble—  A. What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk, Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?    P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys: So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite: Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Whether in florid impotence he speaks And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad, In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies. His wit all see-saw, between that and this, } Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, } And he himself one vile antithesis. } Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord. Eve’s tempter thus the rabbins have expressed, A cherub’s face, a reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust; Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.    Not fortunes worshipper, nor fashion’s fool, Not lucre’s madman, nor ambition’s tool, Not proud, nor servile;—be one poet’s praise, That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways: That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame, And thought a lie in verse or prose the same. That not in fancy’s maze he wandered long: But stooped to truth, and moralised his song: That not for fame, but virtue’s better end, He stood the furious foe, the timid friend, The damning critic, half approving wit, The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit; Laughed at the loss of friends he never had, The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad; The distant threats of vengeance on his head, The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed; The tale revived, the lie so oft o’erthrown, The imputed trash, and dulness not his own; The morals blackened when the writings scape, The libelled person, and the pictured shape; Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread, A friend in exile, or a father, dead; The whisper, that to greatness still too near, Perhaps, yet vibrates, on his sovereign’s ear:— Welcome for thee, fair virtue! all the past; For thee, fair virtue! welcome even the last!    A. But why insult the poor, affront the great?    P. A knave’s a knave, to me in every state: Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail, Sporus at Court, or Japhet in a jail, A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer, Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire; If on a pillory, or near a throne, He gain his prince’s ear, or lose his own.    Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit; This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress: So humble, he has knocked at Tibbald’s door, Has drunk with Cibber, nay has rhymed for Moore. Full ten years slandered, did he once reply? Three thousand sons went down on Welsted’s lie. To please a mistress one aspersed his life; He lashed him not, but let her be his wife. Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill, And write whate’er he pleased, except his will; Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse His father, mother, body, soul, and muse. Yet why? that father held it for a rule, It was a sin to call our neighbour fool: That harmless mother thought no wife a w***e: Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore! Unspotted names, and memorable long! If there be force in virtue, or in song.    Of gentle blood (part shed in honour’s cause While yet in Britain honour had applause) Each parent sprung— A. What fortune, pray?— P. Their own, And better got, than Bestia’s from the throne. Born to no pride, inheriting no strife, Nor marrying discord in a noble wife, Stranger to civil and religious rage, The good man walked innoxious through his age. Nor courts he saw, no suits would ever try, Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie. Unlearned he knew no schoolman’s subtle art, No language, but the language of the heart. By nature honest, by experience wise, Healthy by temperance, and by exercise; His life, though long, to sickness past unknown, His death was instant, and without a groan. O grant me thus to live, and thus to die! Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.    O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine! Be no unpleasing melancholy mine: Me, let the tender office long engage, To rock the cradle of reposing age, With lenient arts extend a mother’s breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep a while one parent from the sky! On cares like these if length of days attend, May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend, Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene, And just as rich as when he served a queen.    A. Whether that blessing be denied or given, Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven.

SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED.

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The occasion of publishing these Imitations was the clamour raised on some of my Epistles.  An answer from Horace was both more full, and of more dignity, than any I could have made in my own person; and the example of much greater freedom in so eminent a divine as Dr. Donne, seemed a proof with what indignation and contempt a Christian may treat vice or folly, in ever so low, or ever so high a station.  Both these authors were acceptable to the princes and ministers under whom they lived.  The Satires of Dr. Donne I versified, at the desire of the Earl of Oxford while he was Lord Treasurer, and of the Duke of Shrewsbury who had been Secretary of State, neither of whom looked upon a satire on vicious courts as any reflection on those they served in.  And indeed there is not in the world a greater error, than that which fools are so apt to fall into, and knaves with good reason to encourage, the mistaking a satirist for a libeller; whereas to a true satirist nothing is so odious as a libeller, for the same reason as to a man truly virtuous nothing is so hateful as a hypocrite.

Uni aequus Virtuti atque ejus Amicis.  P.

THE FIRST SATIRE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

Satire i.  to mr. fortescue..

   P. There are (I scarce can think it, but am told), There are, to whom my satire seems too bold: Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough, And something said of Chartres much too rough. The lines are weak another’s pleased to say, Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a day. Timorous by nature, of the rich in awe, I come to counsel learned in the law: You’ll give me, like a friend both sage and free, Advice; and (as you use) without a fee.    F. I’d write no more.  P. Not write? but then I think, And for my soul I cannot sleep a wink. I nod in company, I wake at night, Fools rush into my head, and so I write.    F. You could not do a worse thing for your life. Why, if the nights seem tedious—take a wife: Or rather truly, if your point be rest, Lettuce and cowslip wine: Probatum est. But talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise Hartshorn, or something that shall close your eyes. Or, if you needs must write, write Cæsar’s praise, You’ll gain at least a knighthood, or the bays.    P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce, With arms, and George, and Brunswick crowd the verse, Rend with tremendous sound your ears asunder, With gun, drum, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder? Or nobly wild, with Budgel’s fire and force, Paint angels trembling round his falling horse?    F. Then all your muse’s softer art display, Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay, Lull with Amelia’s liquid name the nine, And sweetly flow through all the royal line.    P. Alas! few verses touch their nicer ear; They scarce can bear their laureate twice a year; And justly Cæsar scorns the poet’s lays: It is to history he trusts for praise.    F. Better be Cibber, I’ll maintain it still, Than ridicule all taste, blaspheme quadrille, Abuse the city’s best good men in metre, And laugh at peers that put their trust in Peter. Even those you touch not, hate you.  P. What should ail ’em?    F. A hundred smart in Timon and in Balaam: The fewer still you name, you wound the more; Bond is but one, but Harpax is a score.    P. Each mortal has his pleasure: none deny Scarsdale his bottle, Darty his ham-pie; Ridotta sips and dances, till she see The doubling lustres dance as fast as she; F---- loves the senate, Hockley-hole his brother, Like in all else, as one egg to another. I love to pour out all myself, as plain As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne: In them, as certain to be loved as seen, The soul stood forth, nor kept a thought within; In me what spots (for spots I have) appear, Will prove at least the medium must be clear. In this impartial glass, my muse intends Fair to expose myself, my foes, my friends; Publish the present age; but where my text Is vice too high, reserve it for the next: My foes shall wish my life a longer date, And every friend the less lament my fate. My head and heart thus flowing through my quill, Verse-man or prose-man, term me which you will, Papist or Protestant, or both between, Like good Erasmus in an honest mean, In moderation placing all my glory, While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.    Satire’s my weapon, but I’m too discreet To run a muck, and tilt at all I meet; I only wear it in a land of Hectors, Thieves, supercargoes, sharpers, and directors. Save but our army! and let Jove encrust Swords, pikes, and guns, with everlasting rust! Peace is my dear delight—not Fleury’s more: But touch me, and no minister so sore. Whoe’er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme, Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burthen of some merry song.    Slander or poison dread from Delia’s rage Hard words or hanging, if your judge be Page. From furious Sappho scarce a milder fate, Plagued by her love, or libelled by her hate. Its proper power to hurt, each creature feels; Bulls aim their horns, and asses lift their heels; ’Tis a bear’s talent not to kick, but hug; And no man wonders he’s not stung by pug. So drink with Walters, or with Chartres eat, They’ll never poison you, they’ll only cheat.    Then, learned sir! (to cut the matter short) Whate’er my fate, or well or ill at Court, Whether old age, with faint but cheerful ray, Attends to gild the evening of my day, Or death’s black wing already be displayed, To wrap me in the universal shade; Whether the darkened room to muse invite, Or whitened wall provoke the skewer to write: In durance, exile, Bedlam or the Mint— Like Lee or Budgel, I will rhyme and print.    F. Alas, young man! your days can ne’er be long, In flower of age you perish for a song! Plums and directors, Shylock and his wife, Will club their testers, now, to take your life!    P. What? armed for virtue when I point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men; Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car; Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star; Can there be wanting, to defend her cause, Lights of the Church, or guardians of the laws? Could pensioned Boileau lash in honest strain Flatterers and bigots even in Louis’ reign? Could Laureate Dryden pimp and friar engage, Yet neither Charles nor James be in a rage? And I not strip the gilding off a knave, Unplaced, unpensioned, no man’s heir, or slave? I will, or perish in the generous cause: Hear this, and tremble! you, who ’scape the laws. Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave Shall walk the world, in credit, to his grave. To Virtue only and her friends a friend, The world beside may murmur, or commend. Know, all the distant din that world can keep Rolls o’er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep. There, my retreat the best companions grace, Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place. There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl The feast of reason and the flow of soul: And he, whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines, Now forms my quincunx, and now ranks my vines Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain, Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.    Envy must own, I live among the great, No pimp of pleasure, and no spy of state. With eyes that pry not, tongue that ne’er repeats, Fond to spread friendships, but to cover heats; To help who want, to forward who excel; This, all who know me, know; who love me, tell; And who unknown defame me, let them be Scribblers or peers, alike are mob to me. This is my plea, on this I rest my cause— What saith my counsel, learned in the laws?    F. Your plea is good; but still I say, beware! Laws are explained by men—so have a care. It stands on record, that in Richard’s times A man was hanged for very honest rhymes. Consult the Statute: quart. I think it is, Edwardi sext. or prim. et quint. Eliz. See libels, satires—here you have it—read.    P. Libels and satires! lawless things indeed! But grave epistles, bringing vice to light, Such as a king might read, a bishop write; Such as Sir Robert would approve—  F. Indeed? The case is altered—you may then proceed; In such a cause the plaintiff would be hissed; My lords the judges laugh, and you’re dismissed.

THE SECOND SATIRE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

Satire ii.  to mr. bethel..

What, and how great, the virtue and the art To live on little with a cheerful heart (A doctrine sage, but truly none of mine), Let’s talk, my friends, but talk before we dine. Not when a gilt buffet’s reflected pride Turns you from sound philosophy aside; Not when from plate to plate your eyeballs roll, And the brain dances to the mantling bowl.    Hear Bethel’s sermon, one not versed in schools, But strong in sense, and wise without the rules.    Go work, hunt, exercise! (he thus began) Then scorn a homely dinner, if you can. Your wine locked up, your butler strolled abroad, Or fish denied (the river yet unthawed), If then plain bread and milk will do the feat, The pleasure lies in you, and not the meat.    Preach as I please, I doubt our curious men Will choose a pheasant still before a hen; Yet hens of Guinea full as good I hold, Except you eat the feathers green and gold. Of carps and mullets why prefer the great (Though cut in pieces ere my lord can eat), Yet for small turbots such esteem profess? Because God made these large, the other less.    Oldfield with more than harpy throat endued, Cries “Send me, gods! a whole hog barbecued! Oh, b---- it, south-winds! till a stench exhale Rank as the ripeness of a rabbit’s tail. By what criterion do ye eat, d’ye think, If this is prized for sweetness, that for stink?” When the tired glutton labours through a treat, He finds no relish in the sweetest meat, He calls for something bitter, something sour, And the rich feast concludes extremely poor: Cheap eggs, and herbs, and olives still we see; Thus much is left of old simplicity! The robin-redbreast till of late had rest, And children sacred held a martin’s nest, Till becca-ficos sold so devilish dear To one that was, or would have been a peer. Let me extol a cat, on oysters fed, I’ll have a party at the Bedford-head; Or even to crack live crawfish recommend; I’d never doubt at Court to make a friend.    ’Tis yet in vain, I own, to keep a pother About one vice, and fall into the other: Between excess and famine lies a mean; Plain, but not sordid; though not splendid, clean.    Avidien, or his wife (no matter which, For him you’ll call a dog, and her a bitch) Sell their presented partridges, and fruits, And humbly live on rabbits and on roots: One half-pint bottle serves them both to dine, And is at once their vinegar and wine. But on some lucky day (as when they found A lost bank-bill, or heard their son was drowned) At such a feast, old vinegar to spare, Is what two souls so generous cannot bear: Oil, though it stink, they drop by drop impart, But souse the cabbage with a bounteous heart.    He knows to live, who keeps the middle state, And neither leans on this side, nor on that; Nor stops, for one bad cork, his butler’s pay, Swears, like Albutius, a good cook away; Nor lets, like Naevius, every error pass, The musty wine, foul cloth, or greasy glass.    Now hear what blessings temperance can bring: (Thus said our friend, and what he said I sing,) First health: The stomach (crammed from every dish, A tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, Where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar, And all the man is one intestine war) Remembers oft the schoolboy’s simple fare, The temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.    How pale, each worshipful and reverend guest Rise from a clergy, or a city feast! What life in all that ample body, say? What heavenly particle inspires the clay? The soul subsides, and wickedly inclines To seem but mortal, even in sound divines.    On morning wings how active springs the mind That leaves the load of yesterday behind! How easy every labour it pursues! How coming to the poet every muse! Not but we may exceed, some holy time, Or tired in search of truth, or search of rhyme; Ill health some just indulgence may engage, And more the sickness of long life, old age; For fainting age what cordial drop remains, If our intemperate youth the vessel drains?    Our fathers praised rank venison.  You suppose, Perhaps, young men! our fathers had no nose. Not so: a buck was then a week’s repast, And ’twas their point, I ween, to make it last; More pleased to keep it till their friends could come, Than eat the sweetest by themselves at home. Why had not I in those good times my birth, Ere coxcomb pies or coxcombs were on earth?    Unworthy he, the voice of fame to hear, That sweetest music to an honest ear; (For ’faith, Lord Fanny! you are in the wrong The world’s good word is better than a song) Who has not learned fresh sturgeon and ham-pie Are no rewards for want, and infamy? When luxury has licked up all thy pelf, Cursed by thy neighbours, thy trustees, thyself, To friends, to fortune, to mankind a shame, Think how posterity will treat thy name; And buy a rope, that future times may tell, Thou hast at least bestowed one penny well.    “Right,” cries his lordship, “for a rogue in need To have a taste is insolence indeed: In me ’tis noble, suits my birth and state, My wealth unwieldy, and my heap too great.” Then, like the sun, let bounty spread her ray, And shine that superfluity away. Oh, impudence of wealth! with all thy store, How dar’st thou let one worthy man be poor? Shall half the new-built churches round thee fall? Make quays, build bridges, or repair Whitehall: Or to thy country let that heap be lent, As M**o’s was, but not at five per cent.    Who thinks that Fortune cannot change her mind, Prepares a dreadful jest for all mankind. And who stands safest? tell me, is it he That spreads and swells in puffed posterity, Or blest with little, whose preventing care In peace provides fit arms against a war?    Thus Bethel spoke, who always speaks his thought, And always thinks the very thing he ought: His equal mind I copy what I can, And, as I love, would imitate the man. In South-Sea days not happier, when surmised The lord of thousands, than if now excised; In forest planted by a father’s hand, Than in five acres now of rented land. Content with little, I can p----e here On broccoli and mutton, round the year; But ancient friends (though poor, or out of play) That touch my bell, I cannot turn away. ’Tis true, no turbots dignify my boards, But gudgeons, flounders, what my Thames affords: To Hounslow Heath I point and Banstead Down, Thence comes your mutton, and these chicks my own: From yon old walnut-tree a shower shall fall; And grapes, long lingering on my only wall, And figs from standard and espalier join; The devil is in you if you cannot dine: Then cheerful healths (your mistress shall have place), And, what’s more rare, a poet shall say grace.    Fortune not much of humbling me can boast; Though double taxed, how little have I lost? My life’s amusements have been just the same, Before, and after, standing armies came. My lands are sold, my father’s house is gone; I’ll hire another’s; is not that my own, And yours, my friends? through whose free-opening gate None comes too early, none departs too late; (For I, who hold sage Homer’s rule the best, Welcome the coming, speed the going guest). “Pray Heaven it last!” (cries Swift!) “as you go on; I wish to God this house had been your own: Pity! to build without a son or wife: Why, you’ll enjoy it only all your life.” Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon? What’s property? dear Swift! you see it alter From you to me, from me to Peter Walter; Or, in a mortgage, prove a lawyer’s share; Or, in a jointure, vanish from the heir; Or in pure equity (the case not clear) The Chancery takes your rents for twenty year: At best, it falls to some ungracious son, Who cries, “My father’s damned, and all’s my own.” Shades, that to Bacon could retreat afford, Become the portion of a booby lord; And Hemsley, once proud Buckingham’s delight, Slides to a scrivener or a city knight. Let lands and houses have what lords they will, Let us be fixed, and our own masters still.

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

Epistle i.  to lord bolingbroke..

   St. John, whose love indulged my labours past, Matures my present, and shall bound my last! Why will you break the Sabbath of my days? Now sick alike of envy and of praise. Public too long, ah let me hide my age! See, modest Cibber now has left the stage: Our generals now, retired to their estates, Hang their old trophies o’er the garden gates, In life’s cool evening satiate of applause, Nor fond of bleeding, even in Brunswick’s cause.    A voice there is, that whispers in my ear, (’Tis Reason’s voice, which sometimes one can hear) “Friend Pope, be prudent, let your muse take breath, And never gallop Pegasus to death; Lest stiff and stately, void of fire or force, You limp, like Blackmore, on a lord mayor’s horse.”    Farewell then verse, and love, and every toy, The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy; What right, what true, what fit we justly call, Let this be all my care—for this is all. To lay this harvest up, and hoard with haste What every day will want, and most, the last.    But ask not, to what doctors I apply? Sworn to no master, of no sect am I: As drives the storm, at any door I knock: And house with Montaigne now, or now with Locke. Sometimes a patriot, active in debate, Mix with the world, and battle for the State, Free as young Lyttelton, her cause pursue, Still true to virtue, and as warm as true: Sometimes with Aristippus, or St. Paul, Indulge my candour, and grow all to all; Back to my native moderation slide, And win my way by yielding to the tide. Long, as to him who works for debt, the day, Long as the night to her whose love’s away, Long as the year’s dull circle seems to run, When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one: So slow th’ unprofitable moments roll, That lock up all the functions of my soul; That keep me from myself; and still delay Life’s instant business to a future day: That task, which as we follow, or despise, The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise; Which done, the poorest can no wants endure; And which not done, the richest must be poor.    Late as it is, I put myself to school, And feel some comfort, not to be a fool. Weak though I am of limb, and short of sight, Far from a lynx, and not a giant quite; I’ll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes. Not to go back, is somewhat to advance, And men must walk at least before they dance.    Say, does thy blood rebel, thy bosom move With wretched avarice, or as wretched love? Know, there are words and spells, which can control Between the fits this fever of the soul: Know, there are rhymes, which fresh and fresh applied Will cure the arrant’st puppy of his pride. Be furious, envious, slothful, mad, or drunk, Slave to a wife, or vassal to a punk, A Switz, a High Dutch, or a Low Dutch bear; All that we ask is but a patient ear.    ’Tis the first virtue, vices to abhor; And the first wisdom, to be fool no more. But to the world no bugbear is so great, As want of figure, and a small estate. To either India see the merchant fly, Scared at the spectre of pale poverty! See him, with pains of body, pangs of soul, Burn through the Tropic, freeze beneath the pole! Wilt thou do nothing for a nobler end, Nothing, to make philosophy thy friend? To stop thy foolish views, thy long desires, And ease thy heart of all that it admires?    Here, wisdom calls: “Seek virtue first, be bold! As gold to silver, virtue is to gold.” There, London’s voice: “Get money, money still! And then let virtue follow, if she will.” This, this the saving doctrine, preached to all, From low St. James’s up to high St. Paul; From him whose quills stand quivered at his ear, To him who notches sticks at Westminster.    Barnard in spirit, sense, and truth abounds; “Pray then, what wants he?” fourscore thousand pounds; A pension, or such harness for a slave As Bug now has, and Dorimant would have. Barnard, thou art a Cit, with all thy worth; But Bug and D * l, their honours, and so forth.    Yet every child another song will sing: “Virtue, brave boys! ’tis virtue makes a king.” True, conscious honour is to feel no sin, He’s armed without that’s innocent within; Be this thy screen, and this thy wall of brass; Compared to this, a minister’s an ass.    And say, to which shall our applause belong, This new Court jargon, or the good old song? The modern language of corrupted peers, Or what was spoke at Cressy and Poitiers? Who counsels best? who whispers, “Be but great, With praise or infamy leave that to fate; Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace; If not, by any means get wealth and place—” For what? to have a box where eunuchs sing, And foremost in the circle eye a king. Or he, who bids thee face with steady view } Proud fortune, and look shallow greatness through: } And, while he bids thee, sets th’ example too? } If such a doctrine, in St. James’s air, Should chance to make the well-dressed rabble stare; If honest S * z take scandal at a spark, That less admires the palace than the park: Faith I shall give the answer Reynard gave: “I cannot like, dread sir, your royal cave: Because I see, by all the tracks about, Full many a beast goes in, but none come out.” Adieu to virtue, if you’re once a slave: Send her to Court, you send her to her grave.    Well, if a king’s a lion, at the least, The people are a many-headed beast: Can they direct what measures to pursue, Who know themselves so little what to do? Alike in nothing but one lust of gold, Just half the land would buy, and half be sold: Their country’s wealth our mightier misers drain, Or cross, to plunder provinces, the main; The rest, some farm the poor-box, some the pews; Some keep assemblies, and would keep the stews; Some with fat bucks on childless dotards fawn; Some win rich widows by their chine and brawn; While with the silent growth of ten per cent. In dirt and darkness, hundreds stink content.    Of all these ways, if each pursues his own, Satire be kind, and let the wretch alone: But show me one who has it in his power To act consistent with himself an hour. Sir Job sailed forth, the evening bright and still, “No place on earth,” he cried, “like Greenwich Hill!” Up starts a palace; lo, th’ obedient base } Slopes at its foot, the woods its sides embrace, } The silver Thames reflects its marble face. } Now let some whimsy, or that devil within } Which guides all those who know not what they mean, } But give the knight (or give his lady) spleen; } “Away, away! take all your scaffolds down, For snug’s the word: my dear! we’ll live in town.”    At amorous Flavio is the stocking thrown? That very night he longs to lie alone. The fool, whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter, For matrimonial solace dies a martyr. Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch, } Transform themselves so strangely as the rich? } Well, but the poor—the poor have the same itch; } They change their weekly barber, weekly news, Prefer a new japanner to their shoes, Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and run (They know not whither) in a chaise and one; They hire their sculler, and when once aboard, Grow sick, and damn the climate—like a lord.    You laugh, half beau, half sloven if I stand, My wig all powder, and all snuff my band; You laugh, if coat and breeches strangely vary, White gloves, and linen worthy Lady Mary! But when no prelate’s lawn with hair-shirt lined, Is half so incoherent as my mind, When (each opinion with the next at strife, One ebb and flow of follies all my life) I plant, root up; I build, and then confound; Turn round to square, and square again to round; You never change one muscle of your face, You think this madness but a common case, Nor once to Chancery, nor to Hale apply; Yet hang your lip, to see a seam awry! Careless how ill I with myself agree, Kind to my dress, my figure, not to me. Is this my guide, philosopher, and Friend? This, he who loves me, and who ought to mend? Who ought to make me (what he can, or none), That man divine whom wisdom calls her own; Great without title, without fortune blessed; Rich even when plundered, honoured while oppressed; Loved without youth, and followed without power; At home, though exiled; free, though in the Tower; In short, that reasoning, high, immortal thing, Just less than Jove, and much above a king, Nay, half in heaven—except (what’s mighty odd) A fit of vapours clouds this demi-god.

THE SIXTH EPISTLE OF THE FIRST BOOK OF HORACE.

Epistle vi.  to mr. murray..

   “Not to admire, is all the art I know, To make men happy, and to keep them so.” (Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech, So take it in the very words of Creech.) This vault of air, this congregated ball, Self-centred sun, and stars that rise and fall, There are, my friend! whose philosophic eyes Look through, and trust the ruler with his skies, To him commit the hour, the day, the year, And view this dreadful all without a fear. Admire we, then, what earth’s low entrails hold, } Arabian shores, or Indian seas infold. } All the mad trade of fools and slaves for gold? } Or popularity? or stars and strings? The mob’s applauses, or the gifts of kings? Say with what eyes we ought at courts to gaze, And pay the great our homage of amaze?    If weak the pleasure that from these can spring, The fear to want them is as weak a thing: Whether we dread, or whether we desire, In either case, believe me, we admire; Whether we joy or grieve, the same the curse, Surprised at better, or surprised at worse. Thus good or bad, to one extreme betray Th’ unbalanced mind, and snatch the man away; For virtue’s self may too much zeal be had; The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.    Go then, and if you can, admire the state Of beaming diamonds, and reflected plate; Procure a taste to double the surprise, And gaze on Parian charms with learned eyes: Be struck with bright brocade, or Tyrian dye, Our birthday nobles’ splendid livery. If not so pleased, at council-board rejoice, To see their judgments hang upon thy voice; From morn to night, at senate, rolls, and hall, Plead much, read more, dine late, or not at all. But wherefore all this labour, all this strife? For fame, for riches, for a noble wife? Shall one whom nature, learning, birth, conspired To form not to admire but be admired, Sigh, while his Chloe blind to wit and worth Weds the rich dulness of some son of earth? Yet time ennobles, or degrades each line; It brightened Craggs’s, and may darken thine: And what is fame? the meanest have their day, The greatest can but blaze and pass away. Graced as thou art, with all the power of words, So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords: Conspicuous scene! another yet is nigh, (More silent far) where kings and poets lie; Where Murray (long enough his country’s pride) Shall be no more than Tully, or than Hyde!    Racked with sciatics, martyred with the stone, Will any mortal let himself alone? See Ward by battered beaux invited over, And desperate misery lays hold on Dover. The case is easier in the mind’s disease; There all men may be cured, whene’er they please, Would ye be blest? despise low joys, low gains; } Disdain whatever Cornbury disdains; } Be virtuous and be happy for your pains. }    But art thou one, whom new opinions sway, One who believes as Tindal leads the way, Who virtue and a church alike disowns, Thinks that but words, and this but brick and stones? Fly then on all the wings of wild desire, Admire whate’er the maddest can admire. Is wealth thy passion?  Hence! from pole to pole, Where winds can carry, or where waves can roll, For Indian spices, for Peruvian gold, Prevent the greedy, and out-bid the bold: Advance thy golden mountain to the skies; On the broad base of fifty thousand rise, Add one round hundred, and (if that’s not fair) Add fifty more, and bring it to a square. For, mark th’ advantage; just so many score Will gain a wife with half as many more, Procure her beauty, make that beauty chaste, And then such friends—as cannot fail to last. A man of wealth is dubbed a man of worth, Venus shall give him form, and Antis birth. (Believe me, many a German Prince is worse, Who proud of pedigree, is poor of purse.) His wealth brave Timon gloriously confounds; Asked for a groat, he gives a hundred pounds; Or if three ladies like a luckless play, Takes the whole house upon the poet’s day. Now, in such exigencies not to need, Upon my word, you must be rich indeed; A noble superfluity it craves, Not for yourself, but for your fools and knaves: Something, which for your honour they may cheat, And which it much becomes you to forget. If wealth alone then make and keep us blest, Still, still be getting, never, never rest.    But if to power and place your passion lie, If in the pomp of life consist the joy; Then hire a slave, or (if you will) a lord To do the honours, and to give the word; Tell at your levee, as the crowds approach, To whom to nod, whom take into your coach, Whom honour with your hand: to make remarks, Who rules in Cornwall, or who rules in Berks: “This may be troublesome, is near the chair; That makes three members, this can choose a mayor.” Instructed thus, you bow, embrace, protest, } Adopt him son, or cousin at the least, } Then turn about, and laugh at your own jest. }    Or if your life be one continued treat, If to live well means nothing but to eat; Up, up! cries gluttony, ’tis break of day, Go drive the deer, and drag the finny prey; With hounds and horns go hunt an appetite— So Russel did, but could not eat at night, Called happy dog! the beggar at his door, And envied thirst and hunger to the poor.    Or shall we every decency confound, Through taverns, stews, and bagnios take our round, Go dine with Chartres, in each vice out-do K---l’s lewd cargo, or Ty---y’s crew, From Latian Syrens, French Circean feasts, Return well travelled, and transformed to beasts.    If, after all, we must with Wilmot own, The cordial drop of life is love alone, And Swift cry wisely, “Vive la Bagatelle!” The man that loves and laughs, must sure do well. Adieu—if this advice appear the worst, E’en take the counsel which I gave you first: Or better precepts if you can impart, Why do, I’ll follow them with all my heart.

THE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

The Reflections of Horace, and the Judgments past in his Epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present Times, that I could not help applying them to the use of my own Country.  The Author thought them considerable enough to address them to his Prince; whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a Monarch, upon whom the Romans depended for the Increase of an Absolute Empire.  But to make the Poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those which contribute to the Happiness of a Free People, and are more consistent with the Welfare of our Neighbours.

This Epistle will show the learned World to have fallen into Two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a Patron of Poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the Best Writers to name him, but recommended that Care even to the Civil Magistrate: Admonebat Prætores, ne paterentur Nomen suum obsolefieri, etc.  The other, that this Piece was only a general Discourse of Poetry; whereas it was an Apology for the Poets, in order to render Augustus more their Patron.  Horace here pleads the Cause of his Contemporaries, first against the Taste of the Town, whose humour it was to magnify the Authors of the preceding Age; secondly against the Court and Nobility, who encouraged only the Writers for the Theatre; and lastly against the Emperor himself, who had conceived them of little Use to the Government.  He shows (by a View of the Progress of Learning, and the Change of Taste among the Romans) that the Introduction of the Polite Arts of Greece had given the Writers of his Time great advantages over their Predecessors; that their Morals were much improved, and the Licence of those ancient Poets restrained: that Satire and Comedy were become more just and useful; that, whatever extravagances were left on the Stage, were owing to the Ill Taste of the Nobility; that Poets, under due Regulations, were in many respects useful to the State, and concludes, that it was upon them the Emperor himself must depend for his Fame with Posterity.

We may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his Court to this great Prince by writing with a decent Freedom toward him, with a just Contempt of his low Flatterers, and with a manly Regard to his own Character.  P.

EPISTLE I.  TO AUGUSTUS.

While you, great patron of mankind! sustain The balanced world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend; How shall the muse from such a monarch, steal An hour, and not defraud the public weal?    Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame, And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name, After a life of generous toils endured, The Gaul subdued, or property secured, Ambition humbled, mighty cities stormed, Our laws established, and the world reformed; Closed their long glories with a sigh, to find Th’ unwilling gratitude of base mankind! All human virtue, to its latest breath, Finds envy never conquered but by death. The great Alcides, every labour past, Had still this monster to subdue at last. Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray Each star of meaner merit fades away! Oppressed we feel the beam directly beat, Those suns of glory please not till they set.    To thee, the world its present homage pays, The harvest early, but mature the praise: Great friend of liberty! in kings a name Above all Greek, above all Roman fame: Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered, As heaven’s own oracles from altars heard. Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes None e’er has risen, and none e’er shall rise.    Just in one instance be it yet confest Your people, sir, are partial in the rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the Faery Queen; A Scot will fight for Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green: And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the Muses met him at the devil.    Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires, Why should not we be wiser than our sires? In every public virtue we excel; We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well, And learned Athens to our art must stoop, Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.    If time improve our wit as well as wine, Say at what age a poet grows divine? Shall we or shall we not account him so, Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago? End all dispute; and fix the year precise When British bards begin t’ immortalise?    “Who lasts a century can have no flaw, I hold that wit a classic, good in law.”    Suppose he wants a year, will you compound; And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound, Or damn to all eternity at once, At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?    “We shall not quarrel for a year or two; By courtesy of England, he may do.” Then by the rule that made the horse-tail bear, I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair, And melt down ancients like a heap of snow: While you to measure merits, look in Stowe, And estimating authors by the year Bestow a garland only on a bier.    Shakespeare (whom you and every play-house bill Style the divine, the matchless, what you will) For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight, And grew immortal in his own despite. Ben, old and poor, as little seemed to heed The life to come, in every poet’s creed. Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit; Forget his epic, nay Pindaric art; But still I love the language of his heart.    “Yet surely, surely, these were famous men! What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben? In all debates where Critics bears a part, Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson’s art, Of Shakespeare’s nature, and of Cowley’s wit; How Beaumont’s judgment checked what Fletcher writ; How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow; But for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe. These, only these, support the crowded stage, From eldest Heywood down to Cibber’s age.”    All this may be; the people’s voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God. To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, And yet deny the careless husband praise. Or say our fathers never broke a rule; Why then, I say, the public is a fool. But let them own, that greater faults than we They had, and greater virtues, I’ll agree. Spenser himself affects the obsolete, And Sidney’s verse halts ill on Roman feet: Milton’s strong pinion now not Heaven can bound, Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground, In quibbles angel and archangel join, And God the Father turns a school divine. Not that I’d lop the beauties from his book, Like slashing Bentley with his desperate hook, Or damn all Shakespeare, like the affected fool At court, who hates whate’er he read at school.    But for the wits of either Charles’s days, The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease; Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more, (Like twinkling stars the miscellanies o’er) One simile, that solitary shines In the dry desert of a thousand lines, Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page, Has sanctified whole poems for an age. I lose my patience, and I own it too, When works are censured, not as bad but new; While if our elders break all reason’s laws, These fools demand not pardon, but applause.    On Avon’s bank, where flowers eternal blow, If I but ask, if any weed can grow; One tragic sentence if I dare deride Which Betterton’s grave action dignified, Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims, (Though but, perhaps, a muster-roll of names) How will our fathers rise up in a rage, And swear, all shame is lost in George’s age! You’d think no fools disgraced the former reign, Did not some grave examples yet remain, Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill, And, having once been wrong, will be so still. He, who to seem more deep than you or I, Extols old bards, or Merlin’s Prophecy, Mistake him not; he envies, not admires, And to debase the sons, exalts the sires. Had ancient times conspired to disallow What then was new, what had been ancient now? Or what remained, so worthy to be read By learned critics, of the mighty dead?    In days of ease, when now the weary sword Was sheathed, and luxury with Charles restored; In every taste of foreign courts improved, “All, by the king’s example, lived and loved.” Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t’ excel, Newmarket’s glory rose, as Britain’s fell; The soldier breathed the gallantries of France, And every flowery courtier wrote romance. Then marble, softened into life, grew warm: And yielding metal flowed to human form: Lely on animated canvas stole The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul. No wonder then, when all was love and sport, The willing Muses were debauched at court: On each enervate string they taught the note To pant, or tremble through an eunuch’s throat.    But Britain, changeful as a child at play, Now calls in princes, and now turns away. Now Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate; Now all for pleasure, now for Church and State; Now for prerogative, and now for laws; Effects unhappy from a noble cause.    Time was, a sober Englishman would knock His servants up, and rise by five o’clock, Instruct his family in every rule, And send his wife to church, his son to school. To worship like his fathers, was his care; To teach their frugal virtues to his heir; To prove, that luxury could never hold; And place, on good security, his gold. Now times are changed, and one poetic itch Has seized the court and city, poor and rich: Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays, Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays, To theatres, and to rehearsals throng, And all our grace at table is a song. I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie, Not ----’s self e’er tells more fibs than I; When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore, And promise our best friends to rhyme no more; We wake next morning in a raging fit, And call for pen and ink to show our wit.    He served a ’prenticeship, who sets up shop; Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop; Even Radcliff’s doctors travel first to France, Nor dare to practise till they’ve learned to dance. Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile? (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile) But those who cannot write, and those who can, All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.    Yet, sir, reflect, the mischief is not great; These madmen never hurt the Church or State; Sometimes the folly benefits mankind; And rarely av’rice taints the tuneful mind. Allow him but his plaything of a pen, He ne’er rebels, or plots, like other men: Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he’ll never mind; And knows no losses while the Muse is kind. To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter; The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre, Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet; And then—a perfect hermit in his diet.    Of little use the man you may suppose, Who says in verse what others say in prose; Yet let me show, a poet’s of some weight, And (though no soldier) useful to the State. What will a child learn sooner than a song? What better teach a foreigner the tongue? What’s long or short, each accent where to place, And speak in public with some sort of grace? I scarce can think him such a worthless thing, Unless he praise some monster of a king; Or virtue, or religion turn to sport, To please a lewd or unbelieving court. Unhappy Dryden!—In all Charles’s days, Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays; And in our own (excuse some courtly stains) No whiter page than Addison remains. He, from the taste obscene reclaims our youth, And sets the passions on the side of truth, Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art, And pours each human virtue in the heart. Let Ireland tell, how wit upheld her cause, Her trade supported, and supplied her laws; And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved: ‘The rights a court attacked, a poet saved.’ Behold the hand that wrought a nation’s cure, Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor, Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn, And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn. Not but there are, who merit other palms; Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms: The boys and girls whom charity maintains, Implore your help in these pathetic strains: How could devotion touch the country pews, Unless the gods bestowed a proper Muse? Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work, Verse prays for peace, or sings down Pope and Turk. The silenced preacher yields to potent strain, And feels that grace his prayer besought in vain; The blessing thrills through all the lab’ring throng, And Heaven is won by violence of song.    Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labour when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off’rings, and a thankful strain: The joy their wives, their sons, and servants share, Ease of their toil, and partners of their care: The laugh, the jest, attendants on the bowl, Smoothed every brow, and opened every soul: With growing years the pleasing licence grew, And taunts alternate innocently flew. But times corrupt, and Nature, ill-inclined, Produced the point that left a sting behind; Till friend with friend, and families at strife, Triumphant malice raged through private life. Who felt the wrong, or feared it, took th’ alarm, Appealed to law, and justice lent her arm. At length, by wholesome dread of statutes bound, The poets learned to please, and not to wound: Most warped to flatt’ry’s side; but some more nice, Preserved the freedom, and forebore the vice. Hence satire rose, that just the medium hit, And heals with morals what it hurts with wit.    We conquered France, but felt our captive’s charms; Her arts victorious triumphed o’er our arms; Britain to soft refinements less a foe, Wit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow. Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join } The varying verse, the full-resounding line, } The long majestic march, and energy divine. } Though still some traces of our rustic vein And splay-foot verse, remained, and will remain. Late, very late, correctness grew our care, When the tired nation breathed from civil war. Exact Racine, and Corneille’s noble fire, Showed us that France had something to admire. Not but the tragic spirit was our own, And full in Shakespeare, fair in Otway shone: But Otway failed to polish or refine, And fluent Shakespeare scarce effaced a line. E’en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot The last and greatest art, the art to blot. Some doubt, if equal pains, or equal fire The humbler Muse of comedy require. But in known images of life, I guess The labour greater, as th’ indulgence less. Observe how seldom even the best succeed: Tell me if Congreve’s fools are fools indeed? What pert, low dialogue has Farquhar writ! How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit! The stage how loosely does Astræa tread, Who fairly puts all characters to bed! And idle Cibber, how he breaks the laws, To make poor Pinky eat with vast applause! But fill their purse, our poet’s work is done, Alike to them, by pathos or by pun.    O you! whom vanity’s light bark conveys On fame’s mad voyage by the wind of praise, With what a shifting gale your course you ply, For ever sunk too low, or borne too high! Who pants for glory finds but short repose, A breath revives him, or a breath o’erthrows. Farewell the stage! if just as thrives the play, The silly bard grows fat, or falls away.    There still remains, to mortify a wit, The many-headed monster of the pit; A senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd; Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud, Clatt’ring their sticks before ten lines are spoke, Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke. What dear delight to Britons farce affords! Ever the taste of mobs, but now of lords; (Taste, that eternal wanderer, which flies From heads to ears, and now from ears to eyes). The play stands still; damn action and discourse, Back fly the scenes, and enter foot and horse; Pageants on pageants, in long order drawn, Peers, Heralds, Bishops, ermine, gold, and lawn; The champion too! and, to complete the jest, Old Edward’s armour beams on Cibber’s breast, With laughter sure Democritus had died, Had he beheld an audience gape so wide. Let bear or elephant be e’er so white, The people, sure, the people are the sight! Ah luckless poet! stretch thy lungs and roar, That bear or elephant shall heed thee more; While all its throats the gallery extends, And all the thunder of the pit ascends! Loud as the wolves, on Orcas’ stormy steep, Howl to the roarings of the Northern deep, Such is the shout, the long-applauding note, At Quin’s high plume, or Oldfield’s petticoat; Or when from court a birthday suit bestowed, Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load. Booth enters—hark! the universal peal! “But has he spoken?”  Not a syllable. What shook the stage, and made the people stare? Cato’s long wig, flowered gown, and lacquered chair.    Yet lest you think I rally more than teach, Or praise malignly arts I cannot reach, Let me for once presume t’ instruct the times, To know the poet from the man of rhymes: ’Tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains, Can make me feel each passion that he feigns; Enrage, compose, with more than magic art, With pity, and with terror, tear my heart; And snatch me, o’er the earth, or through the air, To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where.    But not this part of the poetic state Alone, deserves the favour of the great; Think of those authors, sir, who would rely More on a reader’s sense, than gazer’s eye. Or who shall wander where the Muses sing? Who climb their mountain, or who taste their spring? How shall we fill a library with wit, When Merlin’s cave is half unfurnished yet?    My liege! why writers little claim your thought, I guess; and, with their leave, will tell the fault: We poets are (upon a poet’s word) Of all mankind, the creatures most absurd: The season, when to come, and when to go, To sing, or cease to sing, we never know; And if we will recite nine hours in ten, You lose your patience, just like other men. Then too we hurt ourselves, when to defend A single verse, we quarrel with a friend; Repeat unasked; lament, the wit’s too fine For vulgar eyes, and point out every line. But most, when straining with too weak a wing, We needs will write epistles to the King; And from the moment we oblige the town, Expect a place, or pension from the Crown; Or dubbed historians, by express command, T’ enrol your triumphs o’er the seas and land, Be called to Court to plan some work divine, As once for Louis, Boileau and Racine.    Yet think, great sir! (so many virtues shown) Ah think, what poet best may make them known? Or choose at least some minister of grace, Fit to bestow the laureate’s weighty place.    Charles, to late times to be transmitted fair, Assigned his figure to Bernini’s care; And great Nassau to Kneller’s hand decreed To fix him graceful on the bounding steed; So well in paint and stone they judged of merit: But kings in wit may want discerning spirit. The hero William and the martyr Charles, One knighted Blackmore, and one pensioned Quarles; Which made old Ben, and surly Dennis swear, “No Lord’s anointed, but a Russian bear.”    Not with such majesty, such bold relief, The forms august, of king, or conquering chief, E’er swelled on marble; as in verse have shined (In polished verse) the manners and the mind. Oh! could I mount on the Mæonian wing, Your arms, your actions, your repose to sing! What seas you traversed, and what fields you fought! Your country’s peace, how oft, how dearly bought! How barb’rous rage subsided at your word, And nations wondered while they dropped the sword! How, when you nodded, o’er the land and deep, Peace stole her wing, and wrapped the world in sleep; Till earth’s extremes your mediation own, And Asia’s tyrants tremble at your throne— But verse, alas! your majesty disdains; And I’m not used to panegyric strains: The zeal of fools offends at any time, But most of all, the zeal of fools in rhyme. Besides, a fate attends on all I write, That when I aim at praise, they say I bite. A vile encomium doubly ridicules: There’s nothing blackens like the ink of fools. If true, a woeful likeness; and if lies, “Praise undeserved is scandal in disguise:” Well may he blush, who gives it, or receives; And when I flatter, let my dirty leaves (Like journals, odes, and such forgotten things As Eusden, Philips, Settle, writ of kings) Clothe spice, line trunks, or, flutt’ring in a row, Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Soho.

THE SECOND EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

“Ludentis speciem dabit, et torquebitur.”  Hor. (v.124.)

Dear Colonel, Cobham’s and your country’s friend! You love a verse, take such as I can send. A Frenchman comes, presents you with his boy, Bows and begins—“This lad, sir, is of Blois: Observe his shape how clean! his locks how curled! My only son, I’d have him see the world: His French is pure; his voice too—you shall hear. Sir, he’s your slave for twenty pound a year. Mere wax as yet, you fashion him with ease, Your barber, cook, upholsterer, what you please: A perfect genius at an opera song— To say too much might do my honour wrong. Take him with all his virtues, on my word; His whole ambition was to serve a lord: But, sir, to you, with what would I not part? Though faith, I fear ’twill break his mother’s heart. Once (and but once) I caught him in a lie, And then, unwhipped, he had the grace to cry: The fault he has I fairly shall reveal, (Could you o’erlook but that) it is to steal.”    If, after this, you took the graceless lad, Could you complain, my friend, he proved so bad? Faith, in such case, if you should prosecute, I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit: Who sent the thief that stole the cash away, And punished him that put it in his way.    Consider then, and judge me in this light; I told you when I went, I could not write; You said the same; and are you discontent With laws to which you gave your own assent? Nay worse, to ask for verse at such a time! D’ye think me good for nothing but to rhyme?    In Anna’s wars, a soldier poor and old Had dearly earned a little purse of gold; Tired with a tedious march, one luckless night, He slept, poor dog! and lost it to a doit. This put the man in such a desperate mind, } Between revenge, and grief, and hunger joined } Against the foe, himself, and all mankind, } He leaped the trenches, scaled a castle wall, Tore down a standard, took the fort and all. “Prodigious well,” his great commander cried, Gave him much praise and some reward beside. Next pleased his excellence a town to batter: (Its name I know not, and it’s no great matter). “Go on, my friend,” he cried, “see yonder walls, Advance and conquer! go where glory calls! More honours, more rewards attend the brave.” Don’t you remember what reply he gave? “D’ye think me, noble general, such a sot? Let him take castles who has ne’er a groat.”    Bred up at home, full early I begun To read in Greek the wrath of Peleus’ son. Besides, my father taught me from a lad, The better art to know the good from bad: (And little sure imported to remove, To hunt for truth in Maudlin’s learned grove). But knottier points we knew not half so well, Deprived us soon of our paternal cell; And certain laws, by sufferers thought unjust, Denied all posts of profit or of trust: Hopes after hopes of pious Papists failed, While mighty William’s thundering arm prevailed, For right hereditary taxed and fined, He stuck to poverty with peace of mind; And me, the Muses helped to undergo it; Convict a Papist he, and I a poet. But (thanks to Homer) since I live and thrive, Indebted to no prince or peer alive, Sure I should want the care of ten Monroes, If I would scribble rather than repose. Years following years, steal something every day, At last they steal us from ourselves away; In one our frolics, one amusements end, In one a mistress drops, in one a friend: This subtle thief of life, this paltry time, What will it leave me, if it snatch my rhyme? If every wheel of that unwearied mill, That turned ten thousand verses, now stands still?    But after all, what would you have me do? When out of twenty I can please not two; When this heroics only deigns to praise, Sharp satire that, and that Pindaric lays? One likes the pheasant’s wing, and one the leg; The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg; Hard task! to hit the palate of such guests, When Oldfield loves what Dartineuf detests.    But grant I may relapse, for want of grace, Again to rhyme, can London be the place? Who there his Muse, or self, or soul attends, In crowds, and courts, law, business, feasts, and friends? My counsel sends to execute a deed; A poet begs me I will hear him read; ‘In Palace Yard at nine you’ll find me there—’ ‘At ten for certain, sir, in Bloomsbury Square—’ ‘Before the Lords at twelve my cause comes on—’ ‘There’s a rehearsal, sir, exact at one.—’ “Oh, but a wit can study in the streets, And raise his mind above the mob he meets.” Not quite so well, however, as one ought; A hackney coach may chance to spoil a thought; And then a nodding beam or pig of lead, God knows, may hurt the very ablest head. Have you not seen, at Guildhall’s narrow pass, Two aldermen dispute it with an ass? And peers give way, exalted as they are, Even to their own s-r-v-ance in a car?    Go, lofty poet! and in such a crowd, Sing thy sonorous verse—but not aloud. Alas! to grottoes and to groves we run, To ease and silence, every Muse’s son: Blackmore himself, for any grand effort, Would drink and doze at Tooting or Earl’s Court. How shall I rhyme in this eternal roar? How match the bards whom none e’er matched before? The man, who, stretched in Isis’ calm retreat, To books and study gives seven years complete, See! strewed with learned dust, his night-cap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun! The boys flock round him, and the people stare: } So stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear, } Stepped from its pedestal to take the air! } And here, while town, and court, and city roars, With mobs, and duns, and soldiers at their doors; Shall I, in London, act this idle part? Composing songs for fools to get by heart? The Temple late two brother sergeants saw, Who deemed each other oracles of law; With equal talents these congenial souls, One lulled th’ Exchequer, and one stunned the Rolls; Each had a gravity would make you split, And shook his head at Murray as a wit. “’Twas, sir, your law”—and “Sir, your eloquence—” “Yours, Cowper’s manner”—and “yours, Talbot’s sense.” Thus we dispose of all poetic merit, Yours Milton’s genius, and mine Homer’s spirit. Call Tibbald Shakespeare, and he’ll swear the nine, Dear Cibber! never matched one ode of thine. Lord! how we strut through Merlin’s cave, to see No poets there, but Stephen, you, and me. Walk with respect behind, while we at ease Weave laurel crowns, and take what names we please. “My dear Tibullus!” if that will not do, “Let me be Horace, and be Ovid you: Or, I’m content, allow me Dryden’s strains, And you shall rise up Otway for your pains.” Much do I suffer, much, to keep in peace This jealous, waspish, wrong-head, rhyming race; And much must flatter, if the whim should bite To court applause by printing what I write: But let the fit pass o’er, I’m wise enough, To stop my ears to their confounded stuff.    In vain bad rhymers all mankind reject, They treat themselves with most profound respect; ’Tis to small purpose that you hold your tongue: Each praised within, is happy all day long; But how severely with themselves proceed The men, who write such verse as we can read? Their own strict judges, not a word they spare That wants, or force, or light, or weight, or care, Howe’er unwillingly it quits its place, Nay though at Court, perhaps, it may find grace: Such they’ll degrade; and sometimes, in its stead, In downright charity revive the dead; Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears, Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years; Command old words that long have slept, to wake, Words that wise Bacon or brave Raleigh spake; Or bid the new be English, ages hence, (For use will farther what’s begot by sense) Pour the full tide of eloquence along, } Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong, } Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue; } Prune the luxuriant, the uncouth refine, But show no mercy to an empty line: Then polish all, with so much life and ease, You think ’tis nature, and a knack to please: “But ease in writing flows from art, not chance; As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”    If such the plague and pains to write by rule, Better, say I, be pleased and play the fool; Call, if you will, bad rhyming a disease, It gives men happiness, or leaves them ease. There lived in primo Georgii, they record, A worthy member, no small fool, a lord; Who, though the House was up, delighted sate, Heard, noted, answered, as in full debate: In all but this, a man of sober life, Fond of his friend, and civil to his wife; Not quite a madman, though a pasty fell, And much too wise to walk into a well. Him, the damned doctors and his friends immured, They bled, they cupped, they purged; in short, they cured. Whereat the gentleman began to stare— “My friends!” he cried, “plague take you for your care! That from a patriot of distinguished note, Have bled and purged me to a simple vote.” Well, on the whole, plain prose must be my fate: Wisdom (curse on it) will come soon or late. There is a time when poets will grow dull: I’ll e’en leave verses to the boys at school: To rules of poetry no more confined, I learn to smooth and harmonise my mind, Teach every thought within its bounds to roll, And keep the equal measure of the soul.    Soon as I enter at my country door My mind resumes the thread it dropt before; Thoughts, which at Hyde Park Corner I forgot, Meet and rejoin me, in the pensive grot. There all alone, and compliments apart, I ask these sober questions of my heart.    If, when the more you drink, the more you crave, You tell the doctor; when the more you have, The more you want; why not with equal ease Confess as well your folly, as disease? The heart resolves this matter in a thrice, “Men only feel the smart but not the vice.”    When golden angels cease to cure the evil, You give all royal witchcraft to the devil; When servile chaplains cry, that birth and place Endure a peer with honour, truth, and grace, Look in that breast, most dirty D----! be fair, Say, can you find out one such lodger there? Yet still, not heeding what your heart can teach, You go to church to hear these flatterers preach.    Indeed, could wealth bestow or wit or merit, A grain of courage, or a spark of spirit, The wisest man might blush, I must agree, If D*** loved sixpence more than he.    If there be truth in law, and use can give A property, that’s yours on which you life. Delightful Abs Court, if its fields afford Their fruits to you, confesses you its lord; All Worldly’s hens, nay partridge, sold to town: His venison too, a guinea makes your own: He bought at thousands, what with better wit You purchase as you want, and bit by bit; Now, or long since, what difference will be found? You pay a penny, and he paid a pound.    Heathcote himself, and such large-acred men, Lords of fat E’sham, or of Lincoln fen, Buy every stick of wood that lends them heat, Buy every pullet they afford to eat. Yet these are wights, who fondly call their own Half that the Devil o’erlooks from Lincoln town. The laws of God, as well as of the land, Abhor, a perpetuity should stand: Estates have wings and hang in fortune’s power Loose on the point of every wavering hour, Ready, by force, or of your own accord, By sale, at least by death, to change their lord. Man? and for ever? wretch! what wouldst thou have? Heir urges heir, like wave impelling wave. All vast possessions (just the same the case Whether you call them villa, park, or chase). Alas, my Bathurst! what will they avail? Join Cotswold hills to Saperton’s fair dale, Let rising granaries and temples here, There mingled farms and pyramids appear, Link towns to towns with avenues of oak, Enclose whole downs in walls, ’tis all a joke! Inexorable death shall level all, And trees, and stones, and farms, and farmer fall.    Gold, silver, ivory, vases sculptured high, Paint, marble, gems, and robes of Persian dye, There are who have not—and thank heaven there are, Who, if they have not, think not worth their care, Talk what you will of taste, my friend, you’ll find, Two of a face, as soon as of a mind. Why, of two brothers, rich and restless one Ploughs, burns, manures, and toils from sun to sun; The other slights, for women, sports, and wines, All Townshend’s turnips, and all Grosvenor’s mines; Why one like Bu—with pay and scorn content, Bows and votes on, in Court and Parliament; One, driven by strong benevolence of soul, Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole; Is known alone to that directing power, Who forms the genius in the natal hour; That God of Nature, who, within us still, Inclines our action, not constrains our will: Various of temper, as of face or frame. Each individual: His great end the same.    Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap, A part I will enjoy, as well as keep. My heir may sigh, and think it want of grace A man so poor would live without a place; But sure no statute in his favour says How free, or frugal, I shall pass my days: I, who at some times spend, at others spare, Divided between carelessness and care. ’Tis one thing madly to disperse my store; Another, not to heed to treasure more! Glad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day, And pleased, if sordid want be far away.    What is’t to me (a passenger, God wot) Whether my vessel be first-rate or not? The ship itself may make a better figure, But I that sail, am neither less nor bigger, I neither strut with every favouring breath, Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth. In power, wit, figure, virtue, fortune, placed Behind the foremost and before the last.    “But why all this of avarice? I have none.” I wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone; But does no other lord it at this hour, As wild and mad: the avarice of power? Does neither rage inflame, nor fear appal? Not the black fear of death, that saddens all? With terrors round, can Reason hold her throne, Despise the known, nor tremble at the unknown? Survey both worlds, intrepid and entire, In spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire? Pleased to look forward, pleased to look behind, And count each birthday with a grateful mind? Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end? Canst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend? Has age but melted the rough parts away, As winter fruits grow mild ere they decay? Or will you think, my friend, your business done, When, of a hundred thorns, you pull out one?    Learn to live well, or fairly make your will; You’ve played, and loved, and ate, and drank your fill: Walk sober off; before a sprightlier age Comes tittering on, and shoves you from the stage; Leave such to trifle with more grace and ease, Where folly pleases, and whose follies please.

THE SATIRES OF DR. JOHN DONNE, DEAN OF ST. PAUL’S. VERSIFIED.

“Quid vetat et nosmet Lucili scripta legentes Quærere, num illius, num rerum dura negarit Versiculos natura magis factos, et euntes Mollius?” Hor. (Sat. lx. 56-9).

Yes; thank my stars! as early as I knew This town, I had the sense to hate it too; Yet here; as even in hell, there must be still One giant-vice, so excellently ill, That all beside, one pities, not abhors; As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.    I grant that poetry’s a crying sin; It brought (no doubt) the excise and army in: Catched like the plague, or love, the Lord knows how, But that the cure is starving, all allow. Yet like the Papist’s, is the poet’s state, Poor and disarmed, and hardly worth your hate! Here a lean bard, whose wit could never give Himself a dinner, makes an actor live: The thief condemned, in law already dead, So prompts, and saves a rogue who cannot read. Thus, as the pipes of some carved organ move, The gilded puppets dance and mount above. Heaved by the breath the inspiring bellows blow: The inspiring bellows lie and pant below.    One sings the fair; but songs no longer move; No rat is rhymed to death, nor maid to love: In love’s, in nature’s spite, the siege they hold, And scorn the flesh, the devil, and all but gold.    These write to lords, some mean reward to get, As needy beggars sing at doors for meat. Those write because all write, and so have still Excuse for writing, and for writing ill.    Wretched, indeed! but far more wretched yet Is he who makes his meal on others’ wit: ’Tis changed, no doubt, from what it was before; His rank digestion makes it wit no more: Sense, past through him, no longer is the same; For food digested takes another name.    I pass o’er all those confessors and martyrs Who live like S-tt-n, or who die like Chartres, Out-cant old Esdras, or out-drink his heir, Out-usure Jews, or Irishmen out-swear; Wicked as pages, who in early years Act sins which Prisca’s confessor scarce hears. Even those I pardon, for whose sinful sake Schoolmen new tenements in hell must make; Of whose strange crimes no canonist can tell In what Commandment’s large contents they dwell.    One, one man only breeds my just offence; Whom crimes gave wealth, and wealth gave impudence: Time brings all natural events to pass, And made him an attorney of an ass. No young divine, new beneficed, can be More pert, more proud, more positive than he. What further could I wish the fop to do, But turn a wit, and scribble verses too; Pierce the soft labyrinth of a lady’s ear With rhymes of this per cent. and that per year? Or court a wife, spread out his wily parts, Like nets or lime-twigs, for rich widows’ hearts; Call himself barrister to every wench, And woo in language of the pleas and bench? Language, which Boreas might to Auster hold More rough than forty Germans when they scold.    Cursed be the wretch, so venal and so vain: Paltry and proud, as drabs in Drury Lane. ’Tis such a bounty as was never known, If Peter deigns to help you to your own: What thanks, what praise, if Peter but supplies, And what a solemn face if he denies! Grave, as when prisoners shake the head and swear ’Twas only suretyship that brought ’em there. His office keeps your parchment fates entire, He starves with cold to save them from the fire; For you he walks the streets through rain or dust, For not in chariots Peter puts his trust; For you he sweats and labours at the laws, Takes God to witness he affects your cause, And lies to every lord in every thing, Like a king’s favourite—or like a king. These are the talents that adorn them all, From wicked waters even to godly * * Not more of simony beneath black gowns, Nor more of bastardy in heirs to crowns. In shillings and in pence at first they deal; And steal so little, few perceive they steal; Till, like the sea, they compass all the land, From Scots to Wight, from mount to Dover strand: And when rank widows purchase luscious nights, Or when a duke to Jansen punts at White’s, Or City-heir in mortgage melts away; Satan himself feels far less joy than they. Piecemeal they win this acre first, then that, Glean on, and gather up the whole estate. Then strongly fencing ill-got wealth by law, Indentures, covenants, articles thy draw, Large as the fields themselves, and larger far Than civil codes, with all their glosses, are; So vast, our new divines, we must confess, Are fathers of the Church for writing less. But let them write for you, each rogue impairs The deeds, and dexterously omits, ses heires; No commentator can more slily pass O’er a learned, unintelligible place; Or, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out Those words, that would against them clear the doubt.    So Luther thought the Paternoster long, When doomed to say his beads and even-song; But having cast his cowl, and left those laws, Adds to Christ’s prayer, the Power and Glory clause.    The lands are bought; but where are to be found Those ancient woods, that shaded all the ground? We see no new-built palaces aspire, No kitchens emulate the vestal fire. Where are those troops of poor, that thronged of yore The good old landlord’s hospitable door? Well, I could wish, that still in lordly domes Some beasts were killed, though not whole hecatombs; That both extremes were banished from their walls, Carthusian fasts, and fulsome bacchanals; And all mankind might that just mean observe, In which none e’er could surfeit, none could starve. These as good works, ’tis true, we all allow; But oh! these works are not in fashion now: Like rich old wardrobes, things extremely rare, Extremely fine, but what no man will wear.    Thus much I’ve said, I trust, without offence; Let no Court sycophant pervert my sense, Nor sly informer watch these words to draw Within the reach of treason, or the law.

Well, if it be my time to quit the stage, Adieu to all the follies of the age! I die in charity with fool and knave, Secure of peace at least beyond the grave. I’ve had my purgatory here betimes, And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes. The poet’s hell, its tortures, fiends, and flames, To this were trifles, toys, and empty names.    With foolish pride my heart was never fired, Nor the vain itch to admire, or be admired; I hoped for no commission from his Grace; I bought no benefice, I begged no place; Had no new verses, nor new suit to show; Yet went to Court!—the Devil would have it so. But, as the fool that in reforming days Would go to Mass in jest (as story says) Could not but think, to pay his fine was odd, Since ’twas no formed design of serving God; So was I punished, as if full as proud As prone to ill, as negligent of good, As deep in debt, without a thought to pay, } As vain, as idle, and as false, as they } Who live at Court, for going once that way! } Scarce was I entered, when, behold! there came A thing which Adam had been posed to name; Noah had refused it lodging in his Ark, Where all the race of reptiles might embark: A verier monster, that on Afric’s shore The sun e’er got, or slimy Nilus bore, Or Sloane or Woodward’s wondrous shelves contain, Nay, all that lying travellers can feign. The watch would hardly let him pass at noon, At night, would swear him dropped out of the moon. One whom the mob, when next we find or make A Popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take, And the wise Justice starting from his chair Cry: “By your priesthood tell me what you are?”    Such was the wight; the apparel on his back Though coarse, was reverend, and though bare, was black: The suit, if by the fashion one might guess, Was velvet in the youth of good Queen Bess, But mere tuff-taffety what now remained; So time, that changes all things, had ordained! Our sons shall see it leisurely decay, First turn plain rash, then vanish quite away.    This thing has travelled, speaks each language too, And know what’s fit for very state to do; Of whose best phrase and courtly accent joined, He forms one tongue, exotic and refined, Talkers I’ve learned to bear; Motteux I knew, Henley himself I’ve heard, and Budgel too. The doctor’s wormwood style, the hash of tongues A pedant makes, the storm of Gonson’s lungs, The whole artillery of the terms of war, And (all those plagues in one) the bawling bar: These I could bear; but not a rogue so civil, Whose tongue will compliment you to the devil. A tongue that can cheat widows, cancel scores, Make Scots speak treason, cozen subtlest w***es, With royal favourites in flattery vie, And Oldmixon and Burnet both outlie.    He spies me out, I whisper: “Gracious God! What sin of mine could merit such a rod? That all the shot of dulness now must be From this thy blunderbuss discharged on me!” “Permit” (he cries) “no stranger to your fame To crave your sentiment, if ----’s your name. What speech esteem you most?”  “The King’s,” said I “But the best words?”—“O, sir, the dictionary.” “You miss my aim; I mean the most acute And perfect speaker?”—“Onslow, past dispute.” “But, sir, of writers?”  “Swift, for closer style, But Ho**y for a period of a mile.” “Why, yes, ’tis granted, these indeed may pass: Good common linguists, and so Panurge was; Nay troth the Apostles (though perhaps too rough) Had once a pretty gift of tongues enough: Yet these were all poor gentlemen!  I dare Affirm, ’twas travel made them what they were.”    Thus others’ talents having nicely shown, He came by sure transition to his own: Till I cried out: “You prove yourself so able, Pity! you was not Druggerman at Babel; For had they found a linguist half so good I make no question but the tower had stood.” “Obliging sir! for courts you sure were made: Why then for ever buried in the shade? Spirits like you should see and should be seen, The King would smile on you—at least the Queen.” “Ah, gentle sir! you courtiers so cajole us— But Tully has it, Nunquam minus solus: And as for courts, forgive me, if I say No lessons now are taught the Spartan way: Though in his pictures lust be full displayed, Few are the converts Aretine has made; And though the Court show vice exceeding clear, None should, by my advice, learn virtue there.”    At this entranced, he lifts his hands and eyes, Squeaks like a high-stretched lutestring, and replies: “Oh, ’tis the sweetest of all earthly things To gaze on princes, and to talk of kings!” “Then, happy man who shows the tombs!” said I, “He dwells amidst the Royal Family; He every day, from king to king can walk, Of all our Harries, all our Edwards talk, And get by speaking truth of monarchs dead, What few can of the living, ease and bread.” “Lord, sir, a mere mechanic! strangely low, And coarse of phrase—your English all are so. How elegant your Frenchmen?”  “Mine, d’ye mean? I have but one, I hope the fellow’s clean.” “Oh! sir, politely so! nay, let me die, Your only wearing is your Paduasoy.” “Not, sir, my only, I have better still, And this you see is but my dishabille—.” Wild to get loose, his patience I provoke, Mistake, confound, object at all he spoke. But as coarse iron, sharpened, mangles more, And itch most hurts when angered to a sore; So when you plague a fool, ’tis still the curse, You only make the matter worse and worse.    He past it o’er; affects an easy smile At all my peevishness, and turns his style. He asks, “What news?”  I tell him of new plays, New eunuchs, harlequins, and operas. He hears, and as a still with simples in it Between each drop it gives, stays half a minute, Loth to enrich me with too quick replies, By little and by little drops his lies. Mere household trash! of birth-nights, balls, and shows, More than ten Holinsheds, or Halls, or Stowes. When the Queen frowned, or smiled, he knows; and what A subtle minister may make of that; Who sins with whom: who got his pension rug, Or quickened a reversion by a drug; Whose place is quartered out, three parts in four, And whether to a bishop, or a w***e; Who having lost his credit, pawned his rent, Is therefore fit to have a Government; Who in the secret, deals in stocks secure, And cheats the unknowing widow and the poor; Who makes a trust or charity a job, And gets an Act of Parliament to rob; Why turnpikes rise, and now no cit nor clown Can gratis see the country, or the town; Shortly no lad shall chuck, or lady vole, But some excising courtier will have toll. He tells what strumpet places sells for life, What ’squire his lands, what citizen his wife: And last (which proves him wiser still than all) What lady’s face is not a whited wall.    As one of Woodward’s patients, sick, and sore, I puke, I nauseate—yet he thrusts in more: Trims Europe’s balance, tops the statesman’s part, And talks gazettes and post-boys o’er by heart. Like a big wife at sight of loathsome meat Ready to cast, I yawn, I sigh and sweat. Then as a licensed spy, whom nothing can Silence or hurt, he libels the great man; Swears every place entailed for years to come, In sure succession to the day of doom; He names the price for every office paid, And says our wars thrive ill, because delayed; Nay hints, ’tis by connivance of the Court, That Spain robs on, and Dunkirk’s still a port. Not more amazement seized on Circe’s guests, To see themselves fall endlong into beasts, Than mine, to find a subject staid and wise Already half turned traitor by surprise. I felt the infection slide from him to me, As in the ---- some give it to get free; And quick to swallow me, methought I saw One of our giant statutes ope its jaw.    In that nice moment, as another lie Stood just a-tilt, the minister came by. To him he flies, and bows, and bows again, Then, close as Umbra, joins the dirty train. Not Fannius’ self more impudently near, When half his nose is in his Prince’s ear. I quaked at heart; and still afraid, to see All the Court filled with stranger things than he, Ran out as fast as one that pays his bail And dreads more actions, hurries from a jail.    Bear me, some god! oh, quickly bear me hence To wholesome solitude, the nurse of sense: Where Contemplation plumes her ruffled wings, And the free soul looks down to pity kings! There sober thought pursued the amusing theme, Till fancy coloured it, and formed a dream. A vision hermits can to hell transport, And forced even me to see the damned at Court. Not Dante dreaming all the infernal state, Beheld such scenes of envy, sin, and hate. Base fear becomes the guilty, not the free; Suits tyrants, plunderers, but suits not me: Shall I, the terror of this sinful town, Care, if a liveried lord or smile or frown? Who cannot flatter, and detest who can, Tremble before a noble serving-man? O, my fair mistress, Truth! shall I quit thee For huffing, braggart, puffed nobility? Thou, who since yesterday hast rolled o’er all The busy, idle blockheads of the ball, Hast thou, oh, sun! beheld an emptier fort, Than such who swell this bladder of a Court? Now plague on those who show a Court in wax! It ought to bring all courtiers on their backs: Such painted puppets! such a varnished race Of hollow gewgaws, only dress and face! Such waxen noses, stately staring things— No wonder some folks bow, and think them kings.    See! where the British youth, engaged no more At Fig’s, at White’s, with felons, or a bore, Pay their last duty to the Court and come All fresh and fragrant, to the drawing-room; In hues as gay, and odours as divine, As the fair fields they sold to look so fine. “That’s velvet for a king!” the flatterer swears ’Tis true, for ten days hence ’twill be King Lear’s. Our Court may justly to our stage give rules, That helps it both to fools-coats and to fools. And why not players strut in courtiers’ clothes? For these are actors too, as well as those: Wants reach all states; they beg but better drest, And all is splended poverty at best. Painted for sight, and essenced for the smell, Like frigates fraught with spice and cochinel, Sail in the ladies: how each pirate eyes So weak a vessel, and so rich a prize! Top-gallant he, and she in all her trim, He boarding her, she striking sail to him: “Dear Countess! you have charms all hearts to hit!” And “Sweet Sir Fopling! you have so much wit!” Such wits and beauties are not praised for nought, For both the beauty and the wit are bought. ’Twould burst even Heraclitus with the spleen To see those antics, Fopling and Courtin: The presence seems, with things so richly odd, The mosque of Mahound, or some queer Pagod. See them survey their limbs by Durer’s rules, Of all beau-kind the best proportioned fools! Adjust their clothes, and to confession draw Those venial sins, an atom, or a straw; But oh! what terrors must distract the soul Convicted of that mortal crime, a hole; Or should one pound of powder less bespread Those monkey tails that wag behind their head. Thus finished, and corrected to a hair, They march, to prate their hour before the fair. So first to preach a white-gloved chaplain goes, With band of lily, and with cheek of rose, Sweeter than Sharon, in immaculate trim, Neatness itself impertinent in him. Let but the ladies smile, and they are blest: Prodigious! how the things protest, protest: Peace, fools, or Gonson will for Papists seize you, If once he catch you at your Jesu! Jesu!    Nature made every fop to plague his brother, Just as one beauty mortifies another. But here’s the captain that will plague them both, Whose air cries Arm! whose very look’s an oath: The captain’s honest, Sirs, and that’s enough, Though his soul’s bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod’s hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman’s curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed fool, commands like law.    Frighted, I quit the room, but leave it so As men from jails to execution go; For hung with deadly sins I see the wall, And lined with giants deadlier than ’em all: Each man an Askapart, of strength to toss For quoits, both Temple Bar and Charing Cross. Scared at the grizzly forms, I sweat, I fly, And shake all o’er, like a discovered spy.    Courts are too much for wits so weak as mine: Charge them with Heaven’s artillery, bold divine! From such alone the great rebukes endure Whose satire’s sacred, and whose rage secure:    ’Tis mine to wash a few light stains, but theirs To deluge sin, and drown a Court in tears. However, what’s now Apocrypha, my wit, In time to come, may pass for holy writ.

EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES. IN TWO DIALOGUES. WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.

Dialogue i..

   Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print, And when it comes, the Court see nothing in’t. You grow correct, that once with rapture writ, And are, besides, too moral for a wit. Decay of parts, alas! we all must feel— Why now, this moment, don’t I see you steal? ’Tis all from Horace; Horace long before ye Said, “Tories called him Whig, and Whigs a Tory;” And taught his Romans, in much better metre, “To laugh at fools who put their trust in Peter.”    But Horace, sir, was delicate, was nice; Bubo observes, he lashed no sort of vice; Horace would say, Sir Billy served the crown, Blunt could do business, H-ggins knew the town; In Sappho touch the failings of the sex, In reverend bishops note some small neglects, And own, the Spaniard did a waggish thing, Who cropped our ears, and sent them to the king. His sly, polite, insinuating style Could please at Court, and make Augustus smile: An artful manager, that crept between His friend and shame, and was a kind of screen. But ’faith, your friends will soon be sore; Patriots there are, who wish you’d jest no more— And where’s the glory? ’twill be only thought The Great Man never offered you a groat. Go, see Sir Robert—P. See Sir Robert!—hum— And never laugh—for all my life to come? Seen him I have, but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power; Seen him, unencumbered with the venal tribe, Smile without art, and win without a bribe. Would he oblige me? let me only find He does not think me what he thinks mankind. Come, come, at all I laugh he laughs, no doubt; The only difference is I dare laugh out.    F. Why, yes: with Scripture still you may be free; A horse-laugh, if you please, at honesty: A joke on Jekyl, or some odd old Whig Who never changed his principle, or wig: A patriot is a fool in every age, Whom all Lord Chamberlains allow the stage: These nothing hurts; they keep their fashion still, And wear their strange old virtue, as they will. If any ask you, “Who’s the man, so near His prince, that writes in verse, and has his ear?” Why, answer, Lyttelton, and I’ll engage The worthy youth shall ne’er be in a rage; But were his verses vile, his whisper base, You’d quickly find him in Lord Fanny’s case. Sejanus, Wolsey, hurt not honest Fleury, But well may put some statesmen in a fury.    Laugh, then, at any, but at fools or foes; These you but anger, and you mend not those. Laugh at your friends, and, if your friends are sore, So much the better, you may laugh the more. To vice and folly to confine the jest, Sets half the world, God knows, against the rest; Did not the sneer of more impartial men At sense and virtue, balance all again. Judicious wits spread wide the ridicule, And charitably comfort knave and fool.    P. Dear sir, forgive the prejudice of youth; Adieu distinction, satire, warmth, and truth! Come, harmless characters, that no one hit; Come, Henley’s oratory, Osborne’s wit! The honey dropping from Favonio’s tongue, The flowers of Bubo, and the flow of Y--ng! The gracious dew of pulpit eloquence, And all the well-whipped cream of courtly sense, That first was H--vy’s, F---’s next, and then The S--te’s, and then H--vy’s once again. O, come, that easy Ciceronian style, So Latin, yet so English all the while, As, though the pride of Middleton and Bland, All boys may read, and girls may understand! Then might I sing, without the least offence, And all I sung should be the nation’s sense; Or teach the melancholy muse to mourn, Hang the sad verse on Carolina’s urn, And hail her passage to the realms of rest, All parts performed, and all her children blessed! So—satire is no more—I feel it die— No Gazetteer more innocent than I— And let, a’ God’s name, every fool and knave Be graced through life, and flattered in his grave.    F. Why so? if satire knows its time and place You still may lash the greatest—in disgrace: For merit will by turns forsake them all; Would you know when? exactly when they fall. But let all satire in all changes spare Immortal S--k, and grave De--re. Silent and soft, as saints remove to heaven, All ties dissolved and every sin forgiven, These may some gentle ministerial wing Receive, and place for ever near a king! There, where no passion, pride, or shame transport, Lulled with the sweet nepenthe of a Court; There, where no father’s, brother’s, friend’s disgrace Once break their rest, or stir them from their place: But past the sense of human miseries, All tears are wiped for ever from all eyes; No cheek is known to blush, no heart to throb, Save when they lose a question, or a job.    P. Good Heaven forbid, that I should blast their glory, Who know how like Whig ministers to Tory, And, when three sovereigns died, could scarce be vexed, Considering what a gracious prince was next. Have I, in silent wonder, seen such things As pride in slaves, and avarice in kings; And at a peer, or peeress, shall I fret, Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt? Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost? Ye gods! shall Cibber’s son, without rebuke, Swear like a lord, or rich out-rake a duke? A favourite’s porter with his master vie, Be bribed as often, and as often lie? Shall Ward draw contracts with a statesman’s skill? Or Japhet pocket, like his grace, a will? Is it for Bond or Peter (paltry things) To pay their debts, or keep their faith, like kings? If Blount despatched himself, he played the man, And so may’st thou, illustrious Passeran! But shall a printer, weary of his life, Learn, from their books, to hang himself and wife? This, this, my friend, I cannot, must not bear; Vice thus abused, demands a nation’s care; This calls the Church to deprecate our sin, And hurls the thunder of the laws on gin.    Let modest Foster, if he will, excel Ten Metropolitans in preaching well; A simple Quaker, or a Quaker’s wife, Outdo Llandaff in doctrine—yea in life: Let humble Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame. Virtue may choose the high or low degree, ’Tis just alike to virtue, and to me; Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, She’s still the same, beloved, contented thing. Vice is undone, if she forgets her birth, And stoops from angels to the dregs of earth: But ’tis the Fall degrades her to a w***e; Let greatness own her, and she’s mean no more; Her birth, her beauty, crowds and courts confess; Chaste matrons praise her, and grave bishops bless; In golden chains the willing world she draws, And hers the Gospel is, and hers the laws, Mounts the tribunal, lifts her scarlet head, And sees pale Virtue carted in her stead. Lo! at the wheels of her triumphal car Old England’s genius, rough with many a scar, Dragged in the dust! his arms hang idly round, His flag inverted trails along the ground! Our youth, all liveried o’er with foreign gold, Before her dance: behind her crawl the old! See thronging millions to the Pagod run, And offer country, parent, wife, or son; Hear her black trumpet through the land proclaim That not to be corrupted is the shame. In soldier, Churchman, patriot, man in power, ’Tis avarice all, ambition is no more! See, all our nobles begging to be slaves! See, all our fools aspiring to be knaves! The wit of cheats, the courage of a w***e, Are what ten thousand envy and adore; All, all look up, with reverential awe, At crimes that ’scape, or triumph o’er the law; While truth, worth, wisdom, daily they decry— “Nothing is sacred now but villainy.”    Yet may this verse (if such a verse remain) Show there was one who held it in disdain.

DIALOGUE II.

   Fr. ’Tis all a libel—Paxton (sir) will say. }    P. Not yet, my friend! to-morrow ’faith it may } And for that very cause I print to-day. } How should I fret to mangle every line, In reverence to the sins of thirty-nine! Vice with such giant strides comes on amain, Invention strives to be before in vain; Feign what I will, and paint it e’er so strong, Some rising genius sins up to my song.    F. Yet none but you by name the guilty lash; Even Guthry saves half Newgate by a dash. Spare, then, the person, and expose the vice.    P. How, sir? not damn the sharper, but the dice? Come on, then, satire! general, unconfined, Spread thy broad wing, and souse on all the kind. Ye statesmen, priests, of one religion all! Ye tradesmen vile, in army, court, or hall, Ye reverend atheists—              F. Scandal! name them! who?    P. Why that’s the thing you bid me not to do. Who starved a sister, who forswore a debt, I never named; the town’s inquiring yet. The poisoning dame—       F. You mean—          P. I don’t.             F. You do!    P. See, now I keep the secret, and not you! The bribing statesman—             F. Hold, too high you go.    P. The bribed elector—             F. There you stoop too low.    P. I fain would please you, if I knew with what; Tell me, which knave is lawful game, which not? Must great offenders, once escaped the Crown, Like royal harts, be never more run down? Admit your law to spare the knight requires, As beasts of nature may we hunt the squires? Suppose I censure—you know what I mean— To save a bishop, may I name a dean?    F. A dean, sir? no: his fortune is not made; You hurt a man that’s rising in the trade.    P. If not the tradesman who set up to-day, Much less the ’prentice who to-morrow may. Down, down, proud satire! though a realm be spoiled, Arraign no mightier thief than wretched Wild; Or, if a court or country’s made a job, Go drench a pickpocket, and join the mob.    But, sir, I beg you (for the love of vice!) The matter’s weighty, pray consider twice; Have you less pity for the needy cheat, The poor and friendless villain, than the great? Alas! the small discredit of a bribe Scarce hurts the lawyer, but undoes the scribe. Then better, sure, it charity becomes To tax directors, who (thank God!) have plums; Still better, ministers; or, if the thing May pinch even there—why lay it on a king.    F. Stop! stop!          P. Must satire, then, nor rise nor fall? Speak out, and bid me blame no rogues at all.    F. Yes, strike that Wild, I’ll justify the blow.    P. Strike? why the man was hanged ten year ago: Who now that obsolete example fears? Even Peter trembles only for his ears.    F. What? always Peter? Peter thinks you mad; You make men desperate if they once are bad: Else might he take to virtue some years hence—    P. As S---k, if he lives, will love the prince.    F. Strange spleen to S---k!             P. Do I wrong the man? God knows, I praise a courtier where I can. When I confess, there is who feels for fame, And melts to goodness, need I Scarb’row name? Please let me own, in Esher’s peaceful grove (Where Kent and Nature vie for Pelham’s love), The scene, the master, opening to my view, I sit and dream I see my Craggs anew!    Even in a bishop I can spy desert; Secker is decent, Rundel has a heart, Manners with candour are to Benson given, To Berkeley, every virtue under Heaven.    But does the Court a worthy man remove? That instant, I declare, he has my love: I shun his zenith, court his mild decline; Thus Somers once, and Halifax, were mine. Oft, in the clear, still mirror of retreat, I studied Shrewsbury, the wise and great: Carleton’s calm sense, and Stanhope’s noble flame, Compared, and knew their generous end the same; How pleasing Atterbury’s softer hour! How shined the soul, unconquered in the tower! How can I Pulteney, Chesterfield forget, While Roman spirit charms, and attic wit: Argyll, the state’s whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field: Or Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne, The master of our passions, and his own? Names, which I long have loved, nor loved in vain, Ranked with their friends, not numbered with their train; And if yet higher the proud list should end, Still let me say: No follower, but a friend.    Yet think not, friendship only prompts my lays; I follow Virtue: where she shines, I praise: Point she to priest or elder, Whig or Tory, Or round a Quaker’s beaver cast a glory. I never (to my sorrow, I declare) Dined with the Man of Ross, or my Lord Mayor. Some in their choice of friends (nay, look not grave) Have still a secret bias to a knave: To find an honest man I beat about, And love him, court him, praise him, in or out.    F. Then why so few commended?          P. Not so fierce! Find you the virtue, and I’ll find the verse. But random praise—the task can ne’er be done; Each mother asks it for her booby son, Each widow asks it for the best of men, For him she weeps, and him she weds again. Praise cannot stoop, like satire, to the ground; The number may be hanged, but not be crowned. Enough for half the greatest of these days To ’scape my censure, not expect my praise. And they not rich? what more can they pretend? Dare they to hope a poet for their friend? What Richelieu wanted, Louis scarce could gain, And what young Ammon wished, but wished in vain. No power the muse’s friendship can command; No power when virtue claims it, can withstand: To Cato, Virgil paid one honest line; O let my country’s friends illumine mine! What are you thinking?    F. ’Faith, the thought’s no sin: I think your friends are out, and would be in.    P. If merely to come in, sir, they go out, The way they take is strangely round about.    F. They too may be corrupted, you’ll allow?    P. I only call those knaves who are so now. Is that too little?  Come, then, I’ll comply— Spirit of Arnall! aid me while I lie. Cobham’s a coward, Polwarth is a slave, And Littelton a dark, designing knave, St. John has ever been a wealthy fool— But let me add, Sir Robert’s mighty dull, Has never made a friend in private life, And was, besides, a tyrant to his wife.    But pray, when others praise him, do I blame? Call Verres, Wolsey, any odious name? Why rail they, then, if but a wreath of mine, Oh, all-accomplished St. John! deck thy shrine?    What? shall each spur-galled hackney of the day, When Paxton gives him double pots and pay, Or each new-pensioned sycophant, pretend To break my windows, if I treat a friend? Then wisely plead, to me they meant no hurt, But ’twas my guest at whom they threw the dirt? Sure, if I spare the minister, no rules Of honour bind me, not to maul his tools; Some, if they cannot cut, it may be said His saws are toothless, and his hatchet’s lead.    If angered Turenne, once upon a day, To see a footman kicked that took his pay: But when he heard the affront the fellow gave, Knew one a man of honour, one a knave; The prudent general turned it to a jest, And begged, he’d take the pains to kick the rest: Which not at present having time to do—    F. Hold, sir! for God’s sake where’s the affront to you? Against your worship when had S---k writ? Or P--ge poured forth the torrent of his wit? Or grant the bard whose distich all commend (In power a servant, out of power a friend) To W---le guilty of some venial sin; What’s that to you who ne’er was out nor in?    The priest whose flattery be-dropt the Crown, How hurt he you? he only stained the gown. And how did, pray, the florid youth offend, Whose speech you took, and gave it to a friend?    P. ’Faith, it imports not much from whom it came; } Whoever borrowed, could not be to blame, } Since the whole house did afterwards the same. } Let courtly wits to wits afford supply, As hog to hog in huts of Westphaly; If one, through Nature’s bounty, or his Lord’s, Has what the frugal, dirty soil affords, From him the next receives it, thick or thin, As pure a mess almost as it came in; The blessed benefit, not there confined, Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind; From tail to mouth, they feed and they carouse: The last full fairly gives it to the House.    F. This filthy simile, this beastly line, Quite turns my stomach—          P. So does flattery mine; And all your courtly civet-cats can vent, Perfume to you, to me is excrement. But hear me further—Japhet, ’tis agreed, Writ not, and Chartres scarce could write or read, In all the courts of Pindus guiltless quite; But pens can forge, my friend, that cannot write; And must no egg in Japhet’s face be thrown Because the deed he forged was not my own? Must never patriot, then, declaim at gin, Unless, good man! he has been fairly in? No zealous pastor blame a failing spouse Without a staring reason on his brows? And each blasphemer quite escape the rod Because the insult’s not on man, but God?    Ask you what provocation I have had? The strong antipathy of good to bad. When truth or virtue an affront endures, The affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours. Mine, as a foe professed to false pretence, Who think a coxcomb’s honour like his sense; Mine, as a friend to every worthy mind And mine as man, who feel for all mankind.    F. You’re strangely proud.          P. So proud, I am no slave: } So impudent I own myself no knave: } So odd, my country’s ruin makes me grave. } Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God afraid of me: Safe from the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Throne, Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.    O, sacred weapon left for truth’s defence, Sole dread of folly, vice, and insolence! To all but heaven-directed hands denied The muse may give thee, but the gods must guide: Reverent I touch thee! but with honest zeal, To rouse the watchmen of the public weal; To virtue’s work provoke the tardy hall, And goad the prelate slumbering in his stall. Ye tinsel insects whom a Court maintains That counts your beauties only by your stains, Spin all your cobwebs o’er the eye of day! The muse’s wing shall brush you all away; All his Grace preaches, all his Lordship sings, All that makes saints of queens, and gods of kings. All, all but truth, drops dead-born from the press, Like the last gazette or the last address.    When black ambition stains a public cause, A monarch’s sword when mad vain-glory draws, Not Waller’s wreath can hide the nation’s scar Nor Boileau turn the feather to a star.    Not so, when diademed with rays divine, Touched with the flame that breaks from Virtue’s shrine, Her priestless muse forbids the good to die, And opes the temple of Eternity. There other trophies deck the truly brave, Than such as Anstis casts into the grave; Far other stars than * and * * wear, And may descend to Mordington from Stair: (Such as on Hough’s unsullied mitre shine, Or beam, good Digby, from a heart like thine). Let envy howl, while heaven’s whole chorus sings, And bark at honour not conferred by kings: Let flattery sickening see the incense rise Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies: Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line, And makes immortal, verse as mean as mine.    Yes, the last pen for freedom let me draw, When truth stands trembling on the edge of law; Here, last of Britons! let your names be read; Are none, none living? let me praise the dead, And for that cause which made your fathers shine Fall by the votes of their degenerate line.    Fr.  Alas! alas! pray end what you began, And write next winter more essays on man.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON MAN***

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Professional Eulogy Writing

Eulogy writing guide, funeral speeches for a work colleague, tribute speech to dad from daughter, funeral speech writing advice, honoring a life well-lived: writing a heartfelt eulogy for a great man.

• March 2, 2024

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Reflect on his life and legacy

With warmth, we honor spiritual guides, crafting tributes of spiritual resonance and connection, voices of heartfelt gratitude: from our client family, gather stories and anecdotes, consider the audience, keep it positive, use quotes and poetry, honoring a life well-lived eulogy example 1, honoring a life well-lived eulogy example 2, eulogy assistant: tributes to spiritual harmony, frequently asked questions.

Losing a great man can be a difficult experience. Whether he was a beloved family member, a friend, or a community leader, his presence will be sorely missed. However, while the pain of his loss can be overwhelming, it's important to remember that his life and legacy can continue to inspire and bring comfort to those who knew him. One way to honor his memory is through a heartfelt eulogy that celebrates his life and achievements.

Crafting a eulogy for a great man may seem daunting, but with some thoughtful preparation and reflection, you can create a tribute that truly captures his essence. Here are some tips and ideas to help you get started:

Think about the qualities that made this man so great. What were his passions and interests? What were his accomplishments and contributions? What impact did he have on the people and communities around him? Reflecting on his life and legacy can help you identify the themes and stories that should be highlighted in the eulogy.

To create a truly personal and meaningful eulogy, gather stories and anecdotes from family members, friends, and colleagues. Ask them to share their memories and experiences with the great man, and look for common threads that can help you create a cohesive narrative.

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When writing a eulogy, it's important to consider the audience who will be listening. If it's a large group of people who didn't know the great man well, you may want to provide more background information and context. If it's a smaller group of close friends and family members, you may be able to be more personal and share more intimate stories.

While it's important to acknowledge the sadness of the moment, a eulogy for a great man should focus on the positive aspects of his life and legacy. Share stories that highlight his humor, kindness, generosity, or other qualities that made him such an extraordinary person.

Quotes and poetry can be a powerful way to add depth and emotion to a eulogy. Look for quotes or poems that resonate with the great man's life or personality, and incorporate them into the eulogy as appropriate.

Ladies and gentlemen, family, friends, and all those gathered here,

We come together in this solemn moment to celebrate and honor the life of a truly great man, [Name of the Deceased], whose journey on this earth has been nothing short of remarkable. As someone who had the privilege of knowing him, I stand before you to share reflections on a life that was rich in love, wisdom, and exemplary deeds. Today, we bid farewell, but we also pay homage to a legacy that will continue to inspire us all.

[Name of the Deceased] was born on [Date of Birth] in [Place of Birth]. From his earliest days, it was clear that he was destined to leave an indelible mark on the world. He grew up in [Brief Background of Early Life], where he developed the values of integrity, perseverance, and compassion that would define his character.

His journey through life was marked by numerous achievements and contributions. [Name of the Deceased] was a man of many talents and passions. Professionally, he was [Mention his Profession or Career Achievements]. In his career, he was known for his [Mention specific qualities, such as 'innovative thinking', 'leadership', 'dedication']. He approached his work not just as a job but as a calling, and his impact in his field was profound and lasting.

But to truly understand the greatness of [Name of the Deceased], one must look beyond his professional accomplishments. He was a man who believed deeply in the power of kindness and the importance of giving back. He was involved in [Mention any Community Service, Volunteer Work, or Philanthropy], where his efforts made a significant difference in the lives of many. His generosity was not limited to grand gestures; even in his everyday interactions, he exuded a warmth and generosity of spirit that uplifted those around him.

As a family man, [Name of the Deceased] was unparalleled. He was a [mention his roles in the family, e.g., 'devoted husband', 'loving father', 'doting grandfather']. His family was his pride and joy, and he dedicated himself to their happiness and well-being. I remember [share a personal anecdote or story that illustrates his role in the family], a moment that encapsulates his loving nature and the depth of his commitment to his family.

His friendships were a testament to his character. [Name of the Deceased] was the kind of friend everyone hoped to have: loyal, understanding, and always present. He had the rare ability to listen, really listen, and to offer words of wisdom that came from a place of deep understanding and empathy.

One of the most remarkable aspects of [Name of the Deceased]'s life was his ability to face challenges with resilience and optimism. He encountered his fair share of trials and tribulations, but he faced them with a strength and a positive attitude that inspired all who knew him. He taught us that it's not the challenges that define us, but how we respond to them.

As we gather here to honor and remember [Name of the Deceased], it's important to reflect on the lessons he taught us through the way he lived his life. He showed us the importance of hard work, the value of compassion, and the power of a kind word or a helping hand. He was a man who lived not for himself but for others, and his legacy is one of selfless love and service.

In closing, I am reminded of [a quote, poem, or saying that resonates with the deceased's life or philosophy], words that beautifully capture the essence of [Name of the Deceased]'s life and legacy. These words inspire us to carry forward the torch that he lit in each of our lives.

[Name of the Deceased], your journey with us may have ended, but the footprints you left on our hearts will never fade. You lived a life of purpose, love, and exemplary grace. Your memory will continue to guide us, and your legacy will inspire generations to come.

Today, as we say our final goodbye, we do so with heavy hearts but also with a profound sense of gratitude for having known such a great man. Thank you, [Name of the Deceased], for the wisdom you shared, the love you gave, and the life you lived so well.

Rest in peace, dear [Name of the Deceased]. You were a blessing to us all, and you will be dearly missed.

Respected guests, beloved family, and cherished friends,

Today, we gather in a solemn yet profound celebration of life, to pay homage to a man whose existence was a beacon of integrity, love, and wisdom - [Name of the Deceased]. As I stand here, enveloped in the rich tapestry of memories and emotions, I am both humbled and honored to share the story of a man who was not just extraordinary in his deeds but was also an epitome of human kindness and strength.

[Name of the Deceased] came into this world on [Date of Birth] in [Place of Birth] and set forth on a life journey that would leave an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of everyone he encountered. His early life in [Brief Background of Early Life] laid the foundation of the remarkable character he was revered for - a character steeped in resilience, empathy, and unwavering moral principles.

In his professional life, [Name of the Deceased] was more than just [Mention his Profession]. He was a visionary, a leader who led by example and inspired those around him to strive for excellence and integrity. His work ethic, coupled with his innate ability to connect with people, made him a respected figure in [his field/profession]. [Share a specific instance or achievement from his professional life]. In these moments, he was not only achieving success but was also building a legacy of inspiration.

However, the true measure of [Name of the Deceased]'s greatness was evident in the way he lived his personal life. As a [mention his roles in the family, e.g., 'loving husband', 'devoted father', 'caring brother'], he imbued his family life with the same love and dedication that he showed in every other aspect of his existence. His love for his family was his guiding force, and in his role as a family man, he was both a protector and a nurturer. [Share a personal story or memory that highlights his role in the family].

Beyond the confines of his professional and family life, [Name of the Deceased] was a man of the community. His sense of social responsibility and his compassion for others led him to engage in [mention any community service or social work]. He believed in making a difference, in leaving the world a little better than he found it, and his contributions to the community are a testament to this belief.

One of the most profound qualities of [Name of the Deceased] was his wisdom. He had an uncanny ability to provide guidance and insight, a wisdom that was not just intellectual but also deeply emotional. He understood the complexities of life and human relationships, and in his advice, there was always a depth of understanding and empathy. [Mention a specific piece of advice or wisdom he imparted].

As we bid farewell to [Name of the Deceased], we do so with a collective sense of loss but also with immense gratitude for having been a part of his life. He taught us through his actions the true meaning of honor, compassion, and unconditional love. His legacy is not just in the tangible achievements he leaves behind but in the lives he touched, the people he inspired, and the love he shared.

In closing, I am reminded of [a quote, poem, or saying that resonates with the deceased's life or philosophy], words that embody the spirit of [Name of the Deceased]'s life. These words offer comfort and a reminder of the incredible impact he had on us all.

[Name of the Deceased], your journey on this earth may have come to an end, but the echoes of your life will resonate for generations. You lived a life of honor, grace, and profound virtue. Your memory will continue to inspire us, guiding us like a lighthouse in the journey of life.

As we say our final goodbye, we do so with love and respect, celebrating a life that was truly well-lived. Thank you, [Name of the Deceased], for the wisdom, the love, and the remarkable life you shared with us.

Rest in eternal peace, dear [Name of the Deceased]. You were, and always will be, a great man in every sense of the word.

In the quiet reflection that precedes our final goodbyes, capturing the profound essence of a spiritual guide in words can feel as intricate as trying to sketch the breeze. The sacred act of crafting a eulogy for such a guiding spirit is a journey through deep respect interlaced with the most genuine of emotions. Eulogy Assistant is your companion on this path, delicately fusing tributes of esteem with heartfelt sentiment, and turning poignant memories into enduring honors.

Our team, experts in the art of crafting eulogies with tenderness, is here to support you in creating a homage that reflects the tranquil wisdom and uplifting spirit of your spiritual guide. At Eulogy Assistant , we offer more than a service—we provide a heartfelt collaboration, filled with empathy and compassion, as you celebrate a life of spiritual impact and harmony.

Eulogy Assistant believes in the power of collaboration to craft a eulogy that truly speaks to the heart. By blending your personal stories and reflections with our craftsmanship, we create a tribute that honors and deeply resonates, capturing the essence of your spiritual guide's legacy in every word.

Our methodology is grounded in genuine partnership and creative unity. Your insights and personal anecdotes are crucial, helping to sculpt a narrative that authentically represents the spirit and profound influence of your spiritual guide. This process is about more than recounting their teachings; it’s about celebrating their impact and the wisdom they’ve shared with us all.

Together, we strive to compose a narrative that genuinely embodies your spiritual guide—a eulogy that transcends traditional homage, rich with respect, personal stories, and genuine emotion. Our collaborative creation becomes a heartfelt narrative, a testament to the admiration and connection your spiritual guide has fostered.

The essence of Eulogy Assistant is beautifully reflected in the heartfelt gratitude and reflections from those we've supported. These testimonials highlight our dedication to providing solace and guidance during their moments of reflection.

"Facing the task of commemorating my spiritual guide was daunting, yet Eulogy Assistant provided unwavering support, guiding me to create a eulogy that truly honored their life and wisdom," says Morgan, expressing their appreciation.

"The compassionate guidance of Eulogy Assistant was a beacon during my time of sorrow, helping me to weave a tribute that was not only words but a heartfelt homage to my spiritual mentor," shares Alex, thankful for the support.

These stories underscore our commitment to crafting eulogies that are not merely expressions of respect and admiration but heartfelt commemorations of the spiritual guides who have profoundly touched our lives. We are honored to assist you in this journey, paying tribute to the unique legacies of those who have enriched our spiritual journeys, and creating eulogies that stand as lasting tributes to their nurturing guidance.

Together, let’s create stories that are deeply personal, filled with respect, and truly capture the essence of the spiritual guides who have enriched our paths.

What is a Eulogy for a Great Man?

A eulogy for a great man is a speech or written tribute that honors the life, achievements, and character of a man who had a significant impact on those around him.

How Do I Begin Writing a Eulogy for a Great Man?

Begin by reflecting on the qualities that made him great, your personal memories with him, and the influence he had on others' lives.

What Key Elements Should Be Included in a Eulogy for a Great Man?

Include anecdotes that highlight his character, his accomplishments, the lessons he taught, and the legacy he leaves behind.

How Long Should a Eulogy for a Great Man Be?

A eulogy for a great man should typically be around 3 to 5 minutes, long enough to cover key aspects of his life while being mindful of the audience’s attention span.

Can I Share a Personal Story About the Deceased?

Yes, sharing a personal story can provide insight into his character and the personal impact he had on your life.

Is It Appropriate to Mention His Professional Achievements?

Mentioning his professional achievements is appropriate, especially if they were a significant part of his identity and life’s work.

How Can I Honor His Legacy in the Eulogy?

Honor his legacy by speaking about the values he embodied, the impact of his work, and how he influenced others.

How Should I Conclude the Eulogy?

Conclude with a final farewell, a summary of his life’s impact, or a personal reflection on what he meant to you and others.

Should I Talk About the Challenges He Overcame?

Discussing the challenges he overcame can be inspiring, showcasing his strength, resilience, and the obstacles he faced.

How Do I Handle My Emotions While Delivering the Eulogy?

It’s okay to show emotion. Speak from the heart and take a moment to compose yourself if you become overwhelmed.

Can I Include a Quote or Saying He Lived By?

Including a meaningful quote or saying that he lived by can add depth and illustrate the principles he stood for.

How Do I Make the Eulogy Relatable to Other Attendees?

Focus on shared values, universal life lessons, and experiences that others can empathize with or have witnessed.

What Tone is Suitable for a Eulogy for a Great Man?

A respectful, heartfelt, and reverent tone is suitable, reflecting the significance of his life and the impact of his passing.

Should I Mention How He Influenced My Life Personally?

Sharing how he influenced your life can be powerful, highlighting the personal connection and the lessons you derived from him.

How Do I Address the Audience in the Eulogy?

Address the audience with warmth and inclusivity, recognizing the collective loss and shared admiration for the great man.

Can I Mention His Role as a Family Man?

Mentioning his role in his family is important, as it shows a different facet of his life and the love he had for his family.

How Do I Prepare for Delivering the Eulogy?

Prepare by practicing your speech, reflecting on the key messages you want to convey, and focusing on the essence of his life.

Is It Appropriate to Encourage Others to Share Their Memories?

Inviting others to share their memories after the eulogy can be a meaningful way to collectively celebrate his life and impact.

What Should I Avoid Saying in the Eulogy?

Avoid controversial topics, personal grievances, or any details that might detract from the respectful remembrance of his life.

Can I Use Literary or Poetic References in the Eulogy?

Using literary or poetic references that resonate with his life or your memories of him can add a rich layer to the eulogy.

In conclusion, writing a eulogy for a great man can be a daunting task, but it is also a deeply meaningful way to honor their life and legacy. By reflecting on the impact they had on your life and the lives of others, you can create a heartfelt tribute that truly captures their essence. Remember to take your time, gather your thoughts, and let your emotions guide you as you craft a eulogy that celebrates their unique and remarkable qualities. With patience, care, and a commitment to honoring their memory, you can create a eulogy that will touch the hearts of all who hear it.

Looking For Examples? Here Are Some of The Best Eulogies

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British Literature Wiki

An Essay on Man

“Is the great chain, that draws all to agree, And drawn supports, upheld by God, or Thee?” – Alexander Pope (From “An Essay on Man”)

“Then say not Man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault; Say rather, Man’s as perfect as he ought.” – Alexander Pope (From “An Essay on Man”)

“All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.” – Alexander Pope (From “An Essay on Man”)

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things

To low ambition, and the pride of kings., let us (since life can little more supply, than just to look about us and die), expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;, a mighty maze but not without a plan;, a wild, where weed and flow’rs promiscuous shoot;, or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit., together let us beat this ample field,, try what the open, what the covert yield;, the latent tracts, the giddy heights explore, of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;, eye nature’s walks, shoot folly as it flies,, and catch the manners living as they rise;, laugh where we must, be candid where we can;, but vindicate the ways of god to man. (pope 1-16), background on alexander pope.

Alexander Pope is a British poet who was born in London, England in 1688 (World Biography 1). Growing up during the Augustan Age, his poetry is heavily influenced by common literary qualities of that time, which include classical influence, the importance of human reason and the rules of nature. These qualities are widely represented in Pope’s poetry. Some of Pope’s most notable works are “The Rape of the Lock,” “An Essay on Criticism,” and “An Essay on Man.”

Overview of “An Essay on Man”

“An Essay on Man” was published in 1734 and contained very deep and well thought out philosophical ideas. It is said that these ideas were partially influenced by his friend, Henry St. John Bolingbroke, who Pope addresses in the first line of Epistle I when he says, “Awake, my St. John!”(Pope 1)(World Biography 1) The purpose of the poem is to address the role of humans as part of the “Great Chain of Being.” In other words, it speaks of man as just one small part of an unfathomably complex universe. Pope urges us to learn from what is around us, what we can observe ourselves in nature, and to not pry into God’s business or question his ways; For everything that happens, both good and bad, happens for a reason. This idea is summed up in the very last lines of the poem when he says, “And, Spite of pride in erring reason’s spite, / One truth is clear, Whatever IS, is RIGHT.”(Pope 293-294) The poem is broken up into four epistles each of which is labeled as its own subcategory of the overall work. They are as follows:

• Epistle I – Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to the Universe
• Epistle II – Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to Himself, as an Individual
• Epistle III – Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to Society
• Epistle IV – Of the Nature and State of Man with Respect to Happiness

Epistle 1 Intro In the introduction to Pope’s first Epistle, he summarizes the central thesis of his essay in the last line. The purpose of “An Essay on Man” is then to shift or enhance the reader’s perception of what is natural or correct. By doing this, one would justify the happenings of life, and the workings of God, for there is a reason behind all things that is beyond human understanding. Pope’s endeavor to highlight the infallibility of nature is a key aspect of the Augustan period in literature; a poet’s goal was to convey truth by creating a mirror image of nature. This is envisaged in line 13 when, keeping with the hunting motif, Pope advises his reader to study the behaviors of Nature (as hunter would watch his prey), and to rid of all follies, which we can assume includes all that is unnatural. He also encourages the exploration of one’s surroundings, which provides for a gateway to new discoveries and understandings of our purpose here on Earth. Furthermore, in line 12, Pope hints towards vital middle ground on which we are above beats and below a higher power(s). Those who “blindly creep” are consumed by laziness and a willful ignorance, and just as bad are those who “sightless soar” and believe that they understand more than they can possibly know. Thus, it is imperative that we can strive to gain knowledge while maintaining an acceptance of our mental limits.

1. Pope writes the first section to put the reader into the perspective that he believes to yield the correct view of the universe. He stresses the fact that we can only understand things based on what is around us, embodying the relationship with empiricism that characterizes the Augustan era. He encourages the discovery of new things while remaining within the bounds one has been given. These bounds, or the Chain of Being, designate each living thing’s place in the universe, and only God can see the system in full. Pope is adamant in God’s omniscience, and uses that as a sure sign that we can never reach a level of knowledge comparable to His. In the last line however, he questions whether God or man plays a bigger role in maintaining the chain once it is established.

2. The overarching message in section two is envisaged in one of the last couplets: “Then say not Man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault; Say rather, Man’s as perfect as he ought.” Pope utilizes this section to explain the folly of “Presumptuous Man,” for the fact that we tend to dwell on our limitations rather than capitalize on our abilities. He emphasizes the rightness of our place in the chain of being, for just as we steer the lives of lesser creatures, God has the ability to pilot our fate. Furthermore, he asserts that because we can only analyze what is around us, we cannot be sure that there is not a greater being or sphere beyond our level of comprehension; it is most logical to perceive the universe as functioning through a hierarchal system.

3. Pope utilizes the beginning of section three to elaborate on the functions of the chain of being. He claims that each creatures’ ignorance, including our own, allows for a full and happy life without the possible burden of understanding our fates. Instead of consuming ourselves with what we cannot know, we instead should place hope in a peaceful “life to come.” Pope connects this after-life to the soul, and colors it with a new focus on a more primitive people, “the Indian,” whose souls have not been distracted by power or greed. As humble and level headed beings, Indian’s, and those who have similar beliefs, see life as the ultimate gift and have no vain desires of becoming greater than Man ought to be.

4. In the fourth stanza, Pope warns against the negative effects of excessive pride. He places his primary examples in those who audaciously judge the work of God and declare one person to be too fortunate and another not fortunate enough. He also satirizes Man’s selfish content in destroying other creatures for his own benefit, while complaining when they believe God to be unjust to Man. Pope capitalizes on his point with the final and resonating couplet: “who but wishes to invert the laws of order, sins against th’ Eternal Cause.” This connects to the previous stanza in which the soul is explored; those who wrestle with their place in the universe will disturb the chain of being and warrant punishment instead of gain rewards in the after-life.

5. In the beginning of the fifth stanza, Pope personifies Pride and provides selfish answers to questions regarding the state of the universe. He depicts Pride as a hoarder of all gifts that Nature yields. The image of Nature as a benefactor and Man as her avaricious recipient is countered in the next set of lines: Pope instead entertains the possible faults of Nature in natural disasters such as earthquakes and storms. However, he denies this possibility on the grounds that there is a larger purpose behind all happenings and that God acts by “general laws.” Finally, Pope considers the emergence of evil in human nature and concludes that we are not in a place that allows us to explain such things–blaming God for human misdeeds is again an act of pride.

6. Stanza six connects the different inhabitants of the earth to their rightful place and shows why things are the way they should be. After highlighting the happiness in which most creatures live, Pope facetiously questions if God is unkind to man alone. He asks this because man consistently yearns for the abilities specific to those outside of his sphere, and in that way can never be content in his existence. Pope counters the notorious greed of Man by illustrating the pointless emptiness that would accompany a world in which Man was omnipotent. Furthermore, he describes a blissful lifestyle as one centered around one’s own sphere, without the distraction of seeking unattainable heights.

7. The seventh stanza explores the vastness of the sensory and cognitive spectrums in relation to all earthly creatures. Pope uses an example related to each of the five senses to conjure an image that emphasizes the intricacies with which all things are tailored. For instance, he references a bee’s sensitivity, which allows it to collect only that which is beneficial amid dangerous substances. Pope then moves to the differences in mental abilities along the chain of being. These mental functions are broken down into instinct, reflection, memory, and reason. Pope believes reason to trump all, which of course is the one function specific to Man. Reason thus allows man to synthesize the means to function in ways that are unnatural to himself.

8. In section 8 Pope emphasizes the depths to which the universe extends in all aspects of life. This includes the literal depths of the ocean and the reversed extent of the sky, as well as the vastness that lies between God and Man and Man and the simpler creatures of the earth. Regardless of one’s place in the chain of being however, the removal of one link creates just as much of an impact as any other. Pope stresses the maintenance of order so as to prevent the breaking down of the universe.

9. In the ninth stanza, Pope once again puts the pride and greed of man into perspective. He compares man’s complaints of being subordinate to God to an eye or an ear rejecting its service to the mind. This image drives home the point that all things are specifically designed to ensure that the universe functions properly. Pope ends this stanza with the Augustan belief that Nature permeates all things, and thus constitutes the body of the world, where God characterizes the soul.

10. In the tenth stanza, Pope secures the end of Epistle 1 by advising the reader on how to secure as many blessings as possible, whether that be on earth or in the after life. He highlights the impudence in viewing God’s order as imperfect and emphasizes the fact that true bliss can only be experienced through an acceptance of one’s necessary weaknesses. Pope exemplifies this acceptance of weakness in the last lines of Epistle 1 in which he considers the incomprehensible, whether seemingly miraculous or disastrous, to at least be correct, if nothing else.

1. Epistle II is broken up into six smaller sections, each of which has a specific focus. The first section explains that man must not look to God for answers to the great questions of life, for he will never find the answers. As was explained in the first epistle, man is incapable of truly knowing anything about the things that are higher than he is on the “Great Chain of Being.” For this reason, the way to achieve the greatest knowledge possible is to study man, the greatest thing we have the ability to comprehend. Pope emphasizes the complexity of man in an effort to show that understanding of anything greater than that would simply be too much for any person to fully comprehend. He explains this complexity with lines such as, “Created half to rise, and half to fall; / Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all / Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d: / The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!”(15-18) These lines say that we are created for two purposes, to live and die. We are the most intellectual creatures on Earth, and while we have control over most things, we are still set up to die in some way by the end. We are a great gift of God to the Earth with enormous capabilities, yet in the end we really amount to nothing. Pope describes this contrast between our intellectual capabilities and our inevitable fate as a “riddle” of the world. The first section of Epistle II closes by saying that man is to go out and study what is around him. He is to study science to understand all that he can about his existence and the universe in which he lives, but to fully achieve this knowledge he must rid himself of all vices that may slow down this process.

2. The second section of Epistle II tells of the two principles of human nature and how they are to perfectly balance each other out in order for man to achieve all that he is capable of achieving. These two principles are self-love and reason. He explains that all good things can be attributed to the proper use of these two principles and that all bad things stem from their improper use. Pope further discusses the two principles by claiming that self-love is what causes man to do what he desires, but reason is what allows him to know how to stay in line. He follows that with an interesting comparison of man to a flower by saying man is “Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, / To draw nutrition, propagate and rot,” (Pope 62-63) and also of man to a meteor by saying, “Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro’ the void, / Destroying others, by himself destroy’d.” (Pope 64-65) These comparisons show that man, according to Pope, is born, takes his toll on the Earth, and then dies, and it is all part of a larger plan. The rest of section two continues to talk about the relationship between self-love and reason and closes with a strong argument. Humans all seek pleasure, but only with a good sense of reason can they restrain themselves from becoming greedy. His final remarks are strong, stating that, “Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, / Our greatest evil, or our greatest good,”(Pope 90-91) which means that pleasure in moderation can be a great thing for man, but without the balance that reason produces, a pursuit of pleasure can have terrible consequences.

3. Part III of Epistle II also pertains to the idea of self-love and reason working together. It starts out talking about passions and how they are inherently selfish, but if the means to which these passions are sought out are fair, then there has been a proper balance of self-love and reason. Pope describes love, hope and joy as being “Fair treasure’s smiling train,”(Pope 117) while hate, fear and grief are “The family of pain.”(Pope 118) Too much of any of these things, whether they be from the negative or positive side, is a bad thing. There is a ratio of good to bad that man must reach to have a well balanced mind. We learn, grow, and gain character and perspective through the elements of this “Family of pain,”(Pope 118) while we get great rewards from love, hope and joy. While our goal as humans is to seek our pleasure and follow certain desires, there is always one overall passion that lives deep within us that guides us throughout life. The main points to take away from Section III of this Epistle is that there are many aspects to the life of man, and these aspects, both positive and negative, need to coexist harmoniously to achieve that balance for which man should strive.

4. The fourth section of Epistle II is very short. It starts off by asking what allows us to determine the difference between good and bad. The next line answers this question by saying that it is the God within our minds that allows us to make such judgements. This section finishes up by discussing virtue and vice. The relationship between these two qualities are interesting, for they can exist on their own but most often mix, and there is a fine line between something being a virtue and becoming a vice.

5. Section V is even shorter than section IV with just fourteen lines. It speaks only of the quality of vice. Vices are temptations that man must face on a consistent basis. A line that stands out from this says that when it comes to vices, “We first endure, then pity, then embrace.”(Pope 218) This means that vices start off as something we know is wrong, but over time they become an instinctive part of us if reason is not there to push them away.

6. Section VI, the final section of Epistle II, relates many of the ideas from Sections I-V back to ideas from Epistle I. It works as a conclusion that ties in the main theme of Epistle II, which mainly speaks of the different components of man that balance each other out to form an infinitely complex creature, into the idea from Epistle I that man is created as part of a larger plan with all of his qualities given to him for a specific purpose. It is a way of looking at both negative and positive aspects of life and being content with them both, for they are all part of God’s purpose of creating the universe. This idea is well concluded in the third to last line of this Epistle when Pope says, “Ev’n mean self-love becomes, by force divine.”(Pope 288) This shows that even a negative quality in a man, such as excessive self-love without the stability of reason, is technically divine, for it is what God intended as part of the balance of the universe.

Contributors

• Dan Connolly
• Nicole Petrone

“Alexander Pope.” : The Poetry Foundation . N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/alexander-pope >.

“Alexander Pope Photos.” Rugu RSS . N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. < http://www.rugusavay.com/alexander-pope-photos/ >.

“An Essay on Man: Epistle 1 by Alexander Pope • 81 Poems by Alexander PopeEdit.” An Essay on Man: Epistle 1 by Alexander Pope Classic Famous Poet . N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. < http://allpoetry.com/poem/8448567-An_Essay_on_Man_Epistle_1-by-Alexander_Pope >.

“An Essay on Man: Epistle II.” By Alexander Pope : The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. < http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174166 >.

“Benjamin Franklin’s Mastodon Tooth.” About.com Archaeology . N.p., n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. < http://archaeology.about.com/od/artandartifacts/ss/franklin_4.htm >.

“First Edition of An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Offered by The Manhattan Rare Book Company.” First Edition of An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope Offered by The Manhattan Rare Book Company. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2013. < http://www.manhattanrarebooks- literature.com/pope_essay.htm>.

Great Man Theory of Leadership: Examples, Pros and Cons

The Great Man Theory of leadership postulates that great leaders are born, not made. Some people are just born with the personality characteristics that predispose them to have great leadership skills .

According to this theory, it is not possible to teach people how to become great leaders.

Because they are born with a very specific personality profile, they emerge in society at key moments in history. During these times their in-born traits allow them to excel and accomplish greatness.

Examples of leaders in history and modern times that fit the definition of the Great Man Theory include Napoleon Bonaparte, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Abraham Lincoln.

Definition of Great Man Theory of Leadership

The study of great leaders in history focused on both physical and personality traits. For instance, physical characteristics such as height and appearance were often included in a descriptive taxonomy of “great man” traits.

Personality factors were also identified as traits of great leaders, which included self-confidence, extraversion, charm, courage, aggressiveness and energy level.

This view was strongly supported by the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which provided an account of history as told through the biographies of great men that held leadership positions during significant times in history.

In that era, few women were allowed in the military or positions of political power, and were therefore excluded from consideration.

Examples of Great Man Theory of Leadership

1. napoleon bonaparte   .

Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military leader who is famous for conquering most of Europe in the early 19th century.

Napoleon’s conquests led to a swift rise in his political status, which he parlayed into a coup, seizing political power in 1799 and crowning himself emperor in 1804.

Napoleon was shrewd and ambitious, and a great military strategist. He successfully waged war against various European nations and expanded his empire.

Although most famous for his military accomplishments, many of his other initiatives are also noteworthy. For instance, he instituted many reforms in banking and education, and was a strong supporter of the sciences and arts.

One of his most meaningful and enduring accomplishments was his role in reshaping the French legal system. An effort that resulted in significant reform and remains the foundation of French civil law today.

Napoleon Bonaparte fits the profile of a Great Man because of these accomplishments, but is also widely known as an autocratic leader due to his strongman approach.

2. Abraham Lincoln  

Abraham Lincoln appears on the list of “great men” put together by many writers because of several very significant accomplishments. First, he was the 16th president of the United States.

His political rise was mostly due to his moderate views on several core controversies impacting the country at the time. One reason he makes the Great Man list is because he preserved the Union during the Civil War.

This feat alone was remarkable and without it, no one knows how the history of the world would have unfolded. His second most notable accomplishment was the emancipation of slaves in 1863.

Throughout his presidency, he was steadfast in his principles and withstood defiance and opposition from all sides, including his generals, his Cabinet, his party and a majority of the American people.

3. Martin Luther King, Jr.   

Martin Luther King, Jr. played a prominent role in the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.

MLK grew up in a relatively well-off family in the Deep South in an era of strict segregation. However, one summer King worked in the North and was astounded at how well Blacks and Whites got along and ate together freely. It was a summer that had a profound impact on his understanding of race relations.

His most famous moment in history is the “ I Have a Dream ” speech he delivered in Washington D.C. in 1963. King was a strong proponent of nonviolence and peaceful protest. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and was at that time the youngest person to receive the award.

Martin Luther King, Jr. possessed many of the key personality characteristics identified in the Great Man Theory, including being charismatic, persuasive, confident and courageous .

4. Nelson Mandela  

Nelson Mandela fought against racism his entire life. He faced enemies far more powerful than himself as an individual man.

However, his ideals and his determination allowed him to prevail against incredible odds.

He worked tirelessly to end apartheid in South Africa in the 20 th century. In 1993, he won the Nobel Peace Prize along with F. W. de Klerk, who was South Africa’s president at the time.

Even though he spent nearly 30 years in jail, he persevered and eventually became the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

He demonstrated many of the personality traits identified by the Great Man Theory, including being determined, persuasive, courageous, and self-confident.

See Also: Democratic Leadership Model

5. Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was the driving force behind at least three revolutions. He worked tirelessly to end racism, violence against the oppressed, and colonial rule of India.

Gandhi is an example of an amazing individual that possessed some of the most admirable attributes of a Great Man. He was focused and determined; resilient and strong, especially in the face of seemingly insurmountable opposition.

He spoke with a level of wisdom and eloquence that inspired millions of people to take action, even at great personal expense. Even though he endured physical assaults and imprisonment, he refused to accept defeat. He has gone down in history as one of the greatest and most visionary leaders of mankind.

Great Man Theory of Leadership Strengths and Weaknesses

Pro: described personality characteristics.

One value of the Great Man theory of leadership is the early attempt to identify key personality characteristics and traits of great leaders.

Although different authors produced slightly different descriptions, there are several common denominators, such as: charisma, persuasiveness, courage, and self-confidence. This psychological perspective on leadership is one that nearly all modern theories of leadership rely on today.

Pro: Considered Physical Characteristics

A lot of criticism of the Great Man Theory actually points to the consideration of physical characteristics of leaders, such as height.

However, this criticism may not be as valid as it once was in light of more recent research. For example, research reviewed by Vugt and Grabo (2015), shows that:

“ People prefer leaders with dominant, masculine-looking faces in times of war and conflict, yet they prefer leaders with more trustworthy, feminine faces in peacetime. In addition, leaders with older-looking faces are preferred in traditional knowledge domains, whereas younger-looking leaders are preferred for new challenges “ (p. 484).

Pro: Classification of Leadership Domains

The Great Man Theory, as proposed by Thomas Carlye, offered a taxonomy of leadership types. These types were labeled “Hero Classes” and included: Divine, Prophet, Poet, Priest, King, or Man of Letters.

For example, the Divine Hero could be found in Greek or Norse mythology, such as Odin or Thor.

The formal study of leadership was in its infancy and this first step in creating a classification framework for different types of leadership is a strength of the theory which shows an understanding that not all leaders are the same.

Pro: Propelled the Study of Leadership

The Great Man Theory of leadership and the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica helped bring the formal study of the subject into the scholarly domain.

It helped popularize the educated public’s understanding of leadership styles and sparked further interest and debate on the matter. No subject matter can advance without considerable discussion and analysis, and so perhaps the greatest value of the Great Man Theory is that it gave birth to a much more thorough and eventually scientific study of leadership.

Con: Not Supported by Science   

One very common criticism of the Great Man Theory is that it was postulated without being supported by any science at all.

This is true, there is no denying that. However, psychological science was practically non-existent in the 1800s. There were no such things as personality inventories or observational study which modern researchers rely on today to study leadership scientifically.

In a way, it is a bit unfair to criticize a theory for not using scientific methodologies that did not exist at the time.  

Con: Leadership can’t be Taught     

The fundamental premise of the Great Man Theory is that leaders are born. This means there is no way for the common man to become a great leader; quite the discouraging blow to the infinite number of leadership training programs that exist in the world today.

Corporations spend millions of dollars every year trying to develop the leadership potential of their employees, but according to the Great Man Theory, that is all a waste of time and money.

Fortunately, there are many examples of great leaders today that will confess to not possessing great skills early in their careers. Many of them had to evolve into greatness, mostly as a result of professional and personal failures. Therefore, it would seem that great leadership can be acquired by those not gifted with it at birth.

Con: Fails to Consider the Role of the Environment

Many leaders that are considered great today were shaped by significant and sometimes traumatic events in their lives.

Roosevelt became paralyzed from the waist down and married a woman who showed him the unsightly state of the poor in America. This helped open his eyes and heart to their plight. Martin Luther King, Jr. was influenced by his family’s devotion to the church and the summer he spent in the North where he was astonished at the freedom Blacks enjoyed.

There is no room in the Great Man Theory for these environmental factors that helped shape the personalities and personal philosophies of many great leaders.

Con: Gender Exclusivity    

The name of the theory itself says it all. The Great Man Theory only accepts one gender as being able to possess leadership skills.

It would seem that in addition to being born with certain personality traits that lead to greatness, it is also necessary to be born of a specific gender as well. Although to be fair, the 1800s was a time in history in which society was not as enlightened as it is in the 21 st century.

A modern version of the Great Man Theory could be renamed to reflect the possibility of either gender being capable of great leadership, perhaps: the Great Human Theory.

More Leadership Models

• Contingency Theory of Leadership
• Full Range Leadership Model
• Pacesetting Leadership Model

The Great Man Theory of leadership was one of the first attempts to identify the personality traits of leadership. Great leaders were described as possessing courage , charisma, self-confidence, and aggressiveness.

Although it was originally proposed in the 1800s, it is often criticized as lacking a scientific foundation, not being gender inclusive, and not taking in to account environmental factors that often shape the personality and philosophy of those identified as great leaders.

These shortcomings are substantial and are a major reason the theory is less relevant in the 21 st century. However, the theory generated much discussion and helped propel the subject of leadership to become a formal object of scientific study.  

Antonakis, J., & Eubanks, D. L. (2017). Looking leadership in the face.  Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26 (3), 270-275. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417705888

Carlyle T. On Heroes, Hero-worship and the heroic in history. Fredrick A. Stokes & Brother, 1988.

Conger, J. A. & Kanungo, R. N. (1987). Toward a behavioral theory of charismatic leadership in organizational settings. Academy of Management Review, 12 , 637-647.

Little, A. C. (2014). Facial appearance and leader choice in different contexts: Evidence for task contingent selection based on implicit and learned face-behaviour/face-ability associations, The Leadership Quarterly, 25 (5), 865-874. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2014.04.002 .

Vugt, M. V., & Grabo, A. E. (2015). The many faces of leadership: An evolutionary-psychology approach.  Current Directions in Psychological Science ,  24 (6), 484-489. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721415601971

Dave Cornell (PhD)

Dr. Cornell has worked in education for more than 20 years. His work has involved designing teacher certification for Trinity College in London and in-service training for state governments in the United States. He has trained kindergarten teachers in 8 countries and helped businessmen and women open baby centers and kindergartens in 3 countries.

• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ 25 Positive Punishment Examples
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• Dave Cornell (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/dave-cornell-phd/ Perception Checking: 15 Examples and Definition

Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Positive Punishment Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 25 Dissociation Examples (Psychology)
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link 15 Zone of Proximal Development Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) #molongui-disabled-link Perception Checking: 15 Examples and Definition

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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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A Solar Eclipse Means Big Science

By Katrina Miller April 1, 2024

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On April 8, cameras all over North America will make a “megamovie” of the sun’s corona, like this one from the 2017 eclipse. The time lapse will help scientists track the behavior of jets and plumes on the sun’s surface.

There’s more science happening along the path of totality →

An app named SunSketcher will help the public take pictures of the eclipse with their phones.

Scientists will use these images to study deviations in the shape of the solar surface , which will help them understand the sun’s churning behavior below.

The sun right now is approaching peak activity. More than 40 telescope stations along the eclipse’s path will record totality.

By comparing these videos to what was captured in 2017 — when the sun was at a lull — researchers can learn how the sun’s magnetism drives the solar wind, or particles that stream through the solar system.

Students will launch giant balloons equipped with cameras and sensors along the eclipse’s path.

Their measurements may improve weather forecasting , and also produce a bird’s eye view of the moon’s shadow moving across the Earth.

Ham radio operators will send signals to each other across the path of totality to study how the density of electrons in Earth’s upper atmosphere changes .

This can help quantify how space weather produced by the sun disrupts radar communication systems.

(Animation by Dr. Joseph Huba, Syntek Technologies; HamSCI Project, Dr. Nathaniel Frissell, the University of Scranton, NSF and NASA.)

NASA is also studying Earth’s atmosphere, but far from the path of totality.

In Virginia, the agency will launch rockets during the eclipse to measure how local drops in sunlight cause ripple effects hundreds of miles away . The data will clarify how eclipses and other solar events affect satellite communications, including GPS.

Biologists in San Antonio plan to stash recording devices in beehives to study how bees orient themselves using sunlight , and how the insects respond to the sudden atmospheric changes during a total eclipse.

Two researchers in southern Illinois will analyze social media posts to understand tourism patterns in remote towns , including when visitors arrive, where they come from and what they do during their visits.

Results can help bolster infrastructure to support large events in rural areas.

Read more about the eclipse:

Our Coverage of the Total Solar Eclipse

Dress for the Occasion:  What should you wear for the eclipse? Our fashion critic weighs the options , including an unexpected suggestion from scientists.

Free to View:  Six inmates in upstate New York prisons who sued the state won their lawsuit to view the eclipse , arguing it “is a religious event.” But a statewide prison lockdown during the eclipse will remain in place.

Hearing the Eclipse:  A device called LightSound is being distributed to help the blind and visually impaired experience what they can’t see .

Sky-High Hotel Prices: One Super 8 hotel in the eclipse’s path is charging $949 a night . Its normal rate is $95.

Animal Reactions : Researchers will watch if animals at zoos, homes and farms act strangely  when day quickly turns to night.

A Rare Return:  A total solar eclipse happens twice in the same place every 366 years on average. But people in certain areas will encounter April 8’s eclipse  about seven years after they were near the middle of the path of the “Great American Eclipse.”

 No Power Outages:  When the sky darkens during the eclipse, electricity production in some parts of the country will drop so sharply that it could theoretically leave tens of millions of homes in the dark. In practice, hardly anyone will notice  a sudden loss of energy.

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Raynham runner meets good Samaritans and EMTs who saved his life

by KATIE BENOIT, NBC 10 NEWS

RAYNHAM, Mass. (WJAR) — A 59-year-old Raynham man met the good Samaritans and EMTs who saved his life while he was on a routine run.

John Hogan was found lying on King Phillip Street without a pulse last month.

On Saturday, he came face to face with two of the three women who helped give him a second chance.

"It's a gift that I'll never be ungrateful for," John Hogan said.

John said he was out for a six-mile run on the morning of March 10 when things took a turn. He had no idea he had two blocked arteries and was having a heart attack.

"I just wasn't feeling quite myself. But I was just going to power through and make it home and relax when I got home, and about a mile from my home is the last I remember," Hogan said.

• ALSO READ: Man employed by McKee's office faces OUI charge after driving through crime scene

The Raynham resident later woke up in the ICU at Good Samaritan Medical Center, thanks to the three strangers who found him, called for help and jumped into action.

"There was no hesitation, I just pulled over," said Kelsi Korzeniowski, who performed CPR on John.

"We felt for a pulse and didn’t feel anything, so all three of us flipped him over, started compressions and we just switched off. We were keeping the operator on the phone updated," said Danielle Vlachos, who administered CPR to John.

Once first responders arrived, they continued CPR and used a defibrillator to help revive John.

His doctor credited the quick thinking of everyone involved for the miraculous outcome.

"God put some guardian angels in my path that day, and it was just something that I'll be grateful for the rest of my life that I have a second chance to be with my family and see my daughter get married later this month, and watch my grandson grow up," Hogan said.

John said he hopes his story will inspire others to get CPR certified.

"I hope that I'm living proof that it makes a difference. You just never know when that skill is going to come in handy," Hogan said.

John is now taking a few medications, but he’s hopeful his doctor clears him to run soon.

A courthouse circus surrounds his alleged killer. But John O’Keefe’s loved ones are focused on remembering a ‘good man.’

BRAINTREE — By any measure, the few months that straddled 2013 and 2014 were a difficult and life-changing stretch for John O’Keefe. His sister, Kristen, died from an aggressive form of brain cancer just months after her diagnosis. Eight days later, his partner and best friend at Boston police, Pat Rogers, took his own life. Months after that, Kristen’s husband, Stephen, died unexpectedly from a heart attack.

But it was O’Keefe’s response to such dark times that those who knew him say is a lasting testament to his character. He jumped to become the guardian of his niece Kayley, then 6, and nephew Patrick, then 3, morphing into a suburban dad practically overnight, helping with homework, driving to and from softball practice.

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“He was a good man,” said John Jackson, a close friend of O’Keefe’s from college.

O’Keefe’s life was cut short, prosecutors say, when his girlfriend at the time allegedly ran him over and left him for dead in Canton during a blizzard in 2022 after a night of heavy drinking.

The court case has attracted national attention, and some fear that the memory of who O’Keefe was has been lost amid the circus atmosphere that for months has pervaded the Dedham courthouse where the trial will begin April 16 for his alleged killer, Karen Read. Gaggles of protesters, egged on by social media and blogger-fueled allegations of a coverup, have waved placards that railed against police and prosecution, at times even booing and shouting at O’Keefe’s friends, parents, and brother in what loved ones view as a stunning breach of common decency.

Several of O’Keefe’s friends and family members told the Globe the spectacle has detracted from the real shame of the case: the loss of a loving uncle, a loyal and generous friend, and a dedicated police officer.

Read has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation, and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury and death.

She contends she is the innocent victim of a coverup by Canton police and local prosecutors seeking to pin O’Keefe’s death on her and protect the true killer or killers, a charge the Norfolk district attorney denies. Read remains free on bail.

Privately, O’Keefe’s loved ones are convinced Read is responsible for his death.

“No one planted anything in our heads,” said his brother, Paul O’Keefe. “No one brainwashed us.”

They say Read facing consequences for O’Keefe’s death would provide some modicum of justice.

Paul O’Keefe hinted there was some friction between his brother and Read in the weeks leading up to his death. He had considered hanging out with the couple on New Year’s Eve, he said, but opted not to because Read and his brother were bickering. He still kicks himself for not seeing more of John in the weeks preceding his death, he said.

But, Brendan Kane, who grew up with O’Keefe on the same street in Braintree, said he and his wife attended a Bruins game with Read and O’Keefe three weeks prior to his death.

“She put on a good show,” he said. “We liked her.”

The case has rocked Canton, a suburb of 24,000-plus residents south of Boston, where O’Keefe was living at the time of his death, and where his parents now take care of Kayley and Patrick.

The furor cannot change a cold reality: O’Keefe is dead. It’s a finality that his family and friends still wrestle with.

Paul O’Keefe, who attends every court hearing with his parents, said he still reaches for his phone to text his older brother. Most recently, it was when legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban retired. Both O’Keefes had grown up fans of the Crimson Tide and he wanted to tell John the news.

“I don’t think it’s fully processed,” he said.

Paul O’Keefe said that his brother’s catchphrase was “It’s only a movie.” It’s etched onto John’s headstone and it was his brother’s way of trying to take the edge off the craziness that life throws at you, he said.

Several friends held up John O’Keefe’s reaction to his sister’s death as proof of his priorities.

O’Keefe was living the the life of a bachelor in Dorchester at the time, but moved to Canton and adjusted his work schedule to care for the children, cutting down on extra hours and switching to a more administrative role, and a 9-to-5ish shift to better support the children, his friends said.

“He did it so humbly and so matter-of-factly,” added his friend Sean Coyle, a retired Boston firefighter.

There was a steep learning curve to parenting, but, “He did it for eight years,” said Paul O’Keefe. “He did a pretty bang-up job, I thought.”

Kane remembers him as “undoubtedly one of the most generous dudes I’ve ever met,” who would always buy the first round of drinks when out with a large group of friends. Kane said O’Keefe always excelled at whatever sports kids in the neighborhood played: Wiffle ball, street hockey, basketball.

Coyle said O’Keefe would rib him about being a firefighter, greeting him with, “Here comes the hero,” and joking that he could pop into Coyle’s firehouse to say hi, that is, if Coyle wasn’t sleeping.

Friends described O’Keefe as a Boston sports fan, traveling to other cities to take in away games of the Red Sox, Bruins, and Patriots. He attended Opening Day at Fenway Park religiously.

On one such occasion, Coyle shared, Martin J. Walsh, then mayor of Boston, was involved in the ceremonial first pitch and wore a custom Sox jersey with the local area code “617″ emblazoned on the back. Coyle made an offhand comment to O’Keefe that a jersey like that should be hanging in J.J. Foley’s, a South End watering hole.

O’Keefe was friends with Walsh’s driver, a fellow Boston cop, and connected Coyle with him. Coyle eventually was able to pitch Walsh on his plans for the jersey, and the then-mayor met with him and O’Keefe in his City Hall office, signed and gave him the shirt, and posed for pictures with the two friends. Things like that tended to happen when you were hanging out with O’Keefe, said Coyle, who had the shirt framed and gave it to the bar, where it now hangs.

“We always had a lot of laughs,” said Coyle.

Coyle, a former Marine, got choked up multiple times over the course of a 45-minute interview when talking about his friend. He now lives in Florida but is staying in a Massachusetts hotel for the duration of the case.

O’Keefe always wanted to be a police officer, his friends and family agreed. He liked order and rules. During a Super Bowl party at their parents’ house, while O’Keefe was in the bathroom, his sister changed the clock on the microwave to see how long it would take him to notice, Jackson recalled. When he emerged from the bathroom “he didn’t even break stride,” walking immediately over to the appliance to make sure it read the right time.

Jackson said that whenever a group of O’Keefe’s friends would go out, he was typically the most responsible, and he would make note of things like where the exits where, years before he became a police officer.

“He was made to be a cop,” Jackson said.

Their grandfather was a Boston police officer, and John had always looked up to him, Paul O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe was an auxiliary police officer in Duxbury and Falmouth before joining the Boston Police Department at the age of 29. He was assigned to stations in Hyde Park, downtown, and Dorchester, and also worked on the sex offender unit during his 15-plus years working for the department, according to his department roster card.

A fellow Boston police officer and friend used to tease O’Keefe that he was the sort of cop who looked like a cop even when he was off-duty and out of uniform.

“You have your friends who are goofballs, who are good for a laugh and you have your friends who are super serious. . . . John was the perfect mix of both,” the friend, who did not want his name published as he’s not cleared to speak to the media, said during a recent phone interview.

Jackson, who commuted with O’Keefe to Northeastern University from the South Shore for four years during the 1990s and named him godfather to his eldest daughter, said one of the best testaments to O’Keefe’s character is that multiple ex-girlfriends have shown up to the courthouse to support his family.

“That shows not only did he not burn a bridge, but he maintained friendships,” said Jackson during a recent phone interview.

His brother, Paul, speaking in a cafe in Braintree recently just down the road from where his brother is buried, shared multiple anecdotes of his sibling. John driving his friend to cancer treatments, John taking in a Red Sox game when a man he had arrested months earlier came over to him to say hello, a testament to how he did his job, Paul said. John staying by their sister’s side when she was hospitalized with cancer. John grabbing checks for family dinner.

Paul O’Keefe noted that many people say they would do anything for anyone, but far fewer people have a chance to prove that.

“Johnny proved it,” he said. “If he loved you, he took care of you.”

John Hilliard of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Danny McDonald can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @Danny__McDonald .

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Driver charged with attempted murder after hitting man with car in Brockton

By Paul Burton

April 6, 2024 / 6:34 PM EDT / CBS Boston

BROCKTON - A 50-year-old man has been left with life-threatening injuries after he was hit by a car in Brockton on Saturday.

Police say they responded to North Main Street just before 9 a.m., where they found the man bleeding on the ground.

The driver hit the man and a light pole before crashing into a building, according to police.

"Real good person"

"It's a sad day. When the car hit him, it flipped him in the air, and he laid down, and all this right here [the victim's head] was bust wide open," said Earl Hynes who lives in the same building as the victim.

"I was crying. I was literally crying. Cause Stewey, he was somewhat of a friend. But It was terrible, and I was almost traumatized," Gabrielle Palland said. 

The man was rushed to Good Samaritan Medical Center with serious injuries before being medflighted to a Boston hospital. 

Neighbors tell WBZ that the victim is well-known in the area. 

"Stewart, he was a real good person. He worked at the mechanic shop right there, and Stewart didn't bother nobody, he didn't bother nobody. He was a good person," Hynes said.

Driver charged 

The driver has been charged with attempted murder, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and two counts of assault and battery.

Police are still investigating the crash. The identity of the driver and victim have not been released.

• Brockton News

Paul Burton is a general assignment reporter for WBZ-TV News.

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