Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)

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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 abhorr'd in Catiline,

In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine:
The same ambition can destroy or save,

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And makes a patriot as it makes a knave.

This light and darkness in our chaos join'd,

What shall divide? The God within the mind.10
Extremes in Nature equal ends produce,

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In man they join to some mysterious use;
Though each by turns the other's bounds 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.

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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, cost 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.

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But where the 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,

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But thinks his neighbour further gone than he : 11

10 ["A Platonic phrase for conscience; and here employed with great judgment and propriety. For conscience either signifies, speculatively, the judgment we pass of things upon whatever principles we chance to have; and then it is only opinion, a very unable judge and divider. Or else it signifies, practically, the application of the eternal rule of right (received by us as the law of God) to the regulations of our actions; and then it is properly conscience, the God (or the law of God) within the mind, of power to divide the light from the darkness in this chaos of the passions."-Warburton.] 11 In the MS.

"The Colonel swears the agent is a dog,

The scriv'ner vows th' attorney is a rogue.

Even those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.

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Virtuous and vicious every man must be,
Few in the 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,

Against the thief th' attcrney loud inveighs,
For whose ten pound the county twenty pays.
The thief damns judges, and the knaves of state;
And dying, mourns small villains hanged by great."

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III.]

"Behold the child, by nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw."

ESSAY ON MAN, Ep. ii. lines 275, 276.

[Page 271.

That counter-works each folly and caprice
That disappoints the 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,

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245

A master, or a servant, or a friend,

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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,

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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,

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Not one will change his neighbour with himself.
The learn'd is happy Nature to explore,

The fool is happy that he knows no more;

The rich is happy in the plenty given,

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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.

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See some strange comfort every state attend,

And pride bestow'd 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,

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Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw:

Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,

A little louder, but as empty quite:

Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,

And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age:

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