SYRIAN MEDALS.

Ver. 374. Speak'st thou of Syrian medals? The strange story following, which may be taken for a fiction of the poet, is justified by a true relation in Spon's Voyages. Vaillant (who wrote the history of the Syrian kings as it is to be found on medals) coming from the Levant, where he had been collecting various coins, and being pursued by a corsair of Sallee, swallowed down twenty gold medals. A sudden bourrasque freed him from the rover, and he got to land with them in his belly. On his road to Avignon he met two physicians, of whom he demanded assistance. One advised purgations, the other vomits. In this uncertainty he took neither, but pursued his way to Lyons, where he found his ancient friend, the famous physician and antiquary, Dufour, to whom he related his adventure. Dufour first asked him whether the medals were of the higher empire? He assured him they were. Dufour was ravished with the hope of possessing such a treasure he bargained with him on the spot for the most curious of them, and was to recover them at his own expense.

EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

Ver. 487. Or that bright image to our fancy draw,
Which Theoclev in raptured vision saw.

Bright image was the title given by the later Platonists to that idea of Nature, which they had formed in their fancy, so bright, that they called it AŰTORTOV "Ayuλμа, or the self-seen image, i.e. seen by its own light.

Thus this philosopher calls upon his friend to partake with him in these visions:

"To-morrow, when the eastern sun

With his first beams adorns the front,

Of yonder hill, if you're content

To wander with me in the woods you see,

We will pursue those loves of ours,

By favour of the sylvan nymphs:

and invoking first the Genius of the place, we'll try to obtain at least some faint and distant view of the sovereign Genius and first Beauty."-Charact. vol. 2, p. 245.

This Genius is thus apostrophized (p. 345) by the same philosopher :— O glorious Nature!

Sir Isaac Newton distinguishes between these two in a very different manner. [Prine. Schol. gen. sub fin.]-Hunc cognoscimus solummodo per proprietates suas et attributa, et per sapientissimas et optimas rerum structuras, et causas finales; veneramur autem et colimus ob dominium. Deus etenim sine dominio, providentia, et eausis finalibus, nihil aliud est quam fatum et

natura.

[There is often great beauty in the stately and melodious periods of Thesales, or Shaftesbury, while he dilates on his Platonic philosophy. To some of his airy speculations and reflections Pope might have subscribed. For example:

"The central powers which hold the lasting orbs in their just poise and movement, must not be controlled to save a fleeting form, and rescue from the precipice a puny animal, whose brittle frame, however protected, must of itself soon dissolve. The ambient air, the inward vapours, the impending meteors, or whatever else is nutrimental or preservative of this earth, must operate in a natural course; and other good constitutions must submit to the good habit and constitution of the all-sustaining globe. Let us not wonder, therefore, if by earthquakes, storms, pestilential blasts, nether or upper fires, or floods, the animal kinds are often afflicted, and whole species perhaps involved at once in one common ruin. Nor need we wonder if the interior form, the soul and temper, partakes of this occasional deformity, and sympathizes often with its close partner. Who is there that can wonder either at the sicknesses of sense, or the depravity of minds enclosed in such frail bodies and dependent on such pervertible organs?

"Here then is that solution you require, and hence those seeming blemishes cast upon Nature. Nor is there aught in this beside what is natural and good. 'Tis good which is predominant; and every corruptible and mortal nature, by its mortality and corruption, yields only to some better, and all in common to that best and highest nature which is incorruptible and immortal."

Pope was well acquainted with the works of Shaftesbury, as appears from his Essay on Man.]

AN ESSAY ON MAN:

ΤΟ

HENRY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE.

[THE three first parts, or epistles of the ESSAY ON MAN, were published anonymously in 1732 and 1733. "The design of concealing myself," says Pope, "was good, and had its full effect. I was thought a divine, a philosopher, and what not? and my doctrine had a sanction I could not have given to it." The poem was ascribed to various persons-to Dr. Young, to Dr. Desaguliers, Lord Paget and others. Dr. Alured Clarke (a courtly divine, whom Pope afterwards satirized) in writing to Lady Sundon, expresses a hope that the author, when known, would be found to be a very good man, else his scholars-that is, his readers-would be much mortified. Swift seems to have been among the number of the deceived, though his pride revolted at the idea of his being a dupe. When Pope apologized for not having told him the secret of the authorship, Swift wrote, "Surely I never doubted about your Essay on Man: and I would lay any odds, that I would never fail to discover you in six lines, unless you had a mind to write below or beside yourself on purpose. I confess, I did never imagine you were so deep in morals, or that so many new and excellent rules could be produced so advantageously and agreeably in that science from any one head." To the fourth part of the Essay Pope prefixed his name, thus dispelling the mystery which had given rise to so much interest and speculation, and also added materially to his reputation both as a poet and philosopher.

Many parts of the Essay, in sentiment, and also in expression, bear a close resemblance to the metaphysical treatises of Bolingbroke, and a question has been raised, and kindly discussed, whether the honours of originality should be awarded to the peer or the poet? Their common friend, Lord Bathurst, confidently stated that he had read the whole scheme of the poem, in the handwriting of Bolingbroke, drawn up in a series of propositions which Pope was to amplify, versify, and illustrate. An anonymous writer-supposed to be Mallet-makes a similar statement, and mentions a large prose manuscript, which Pope is reported to have produced on one occasion, naming Bolingbroke as the author, to explain the doctrines of the poem. Such positive assertions are startling, but they are not borne out by an examination of the facts of the case as disclosed in the printed correspondence. It is certain

that Pope had for many years contemplated an ethical work of this kindthat Bolingbroke merely claimed the merit of having requested or instigated his friend to undertake the subject-and that Bolingbroke considered Pope's work to be an original. The Essay on Man was published before Bolingbroke had written his metaphysical disquisitions. It was probably the manuscript of one of those disquisitions, addressed to Pope, which Bathurst (who was never a critical reader or a metaphysician) had seen and mistaken for the scheme of the poem. Pope first suggested to his noble friend, that he should give the world the benefit of his philosophical studies.

"In leading me," says Bolingbroke, "to discourse as you have done often, and in pressing me to write, as you do now, on certain subjects, you may propose to draw me back to those trains of thought which are, above all others, worthy to employ the human mind, and I thank you for it." He then discriminates between the style suited to the philosopher, and that adapted to the poet. "The business of the philosopher is to dilate, if I may borrow this word from Tully, to press, to prove, to convince; and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart." Having, however, for convenience, adopted the epistolary style, he states that his essays would be written with little regard to form, and with little reserve. "My thoughts, in what order soever they flow, shall be communicated to you just as they pass through my mind, just as they use to be when we converse together on these or any other subjects; when we saunter alone, or as we have often done, with good Arbuthnot and the jocose Dean of St. Patrick's, among the multiplied scenes

of your little garden." A pleasing picture in Pope's own manner! The
hints communicated in these garden walks would germinate in the mind of
the poet, and occasionally send him to his books, to see what Leibnitz, or
Shaftesbury, or King, or perhaps the 'divine Plato' himself had indited on
the subject. Shaftesbury's moralities would seem to have been often in
his hand. But perhaps Bolingbroke, not content with discursive talk,
would sometimes jot down his thoughts upon paper, and thus unfold more
clearly and precisely his philosophical ideas to his friend.
In this way,
without supposing that Pope received the whole scheme of his poem from
his friend, we may assign to the latter considerable influence in forming
the poet's opinions, and also account for a similarity in sentiment and ex-
pression in their writings. Take, for example, the fine passage in the
Essay on Man, epistle first, verse 53:-

"In human works, though labour'd 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."-Ep. I. v. 53.

Bolingbroke's prose is nearly the same:—

"We labour hard, we complicate various means to arrive at one end; and several systems of conduct are often employed by us to bring about some one paltry purpose; but God neither contrives nor executes like man. His means are simple, his purposes various; and the same system that answers the greatest, answers the least."-Bolingbroke, Frag. 43. Again, in Frag. 63, "In the works of men, the most complicated schemes produce, very hardly and very uncertainly, one single effect: in the works of God, one single scheme produces a multitude of different effects, and answers an immense variety of purposes." And in Frag. 43, "We ought to consider the world we inhabit, no other than as a little wheel in our solar system; nor our solar system any otherwise than as a little but larger wheel in the immense machine of the universe; and both the one and the other necessary, perhaps, to the motion of the whole, and to the pre-ordained revolutions in it."

Several such passages have been cited by Wakefield and others. The same trains of thought, the same illustrations, the same happy expressions and phrases abound in both. Bolingbroke has his curiosa felicitas as well as Pope. The poet tells us in a beautiful couplet that man is

"Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great."

St. John moralizes in a like strain. "This is the condition of humanity we are placed, as it were, in an intellectual twilight, where we discover but few things clearly, and none entirely, and yet see just enough to tempt us with the hope of making better and more discoveries." The Creator, says Pope, has