[NOTES.]
NOTES ON EPISTLE I.
Ver. 7, 8. A wild,—Or garden,] The wild relates to the human passions, productive, as he explains in the second epistle, both of good and evil. The garden to human reason, so often tempting us to transgress the bounds God has set to it, and wander in fruitless enquiries.
Ver. 12. Of all who blindly creep, &c.] i.e. Those who only follow the blind guidance of their passions; or those who leave behind them common sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of metaphysics. Both which follies are exposed in the fourth Epistle, where the popular and philosophical errors concerning happiness are detected. The figure is taken from animal life.
Ver. 15. Laugh where we must, &c.] Intimating, that human follies are so strangely absurd, that it is not in the power of the most compassionate, on some occasions, to restrain their mirth; and that its crimes are so flagitious, that the most candid have seldom an opportunity, on this subject, to exercise their virtue.
Ver. 16. Vindicate the ways of God to man.] Milton's phrase, judiciously altered, who says, justify the ways of God to man. Milton was addressing himself to believers, and delivering reasons or explaining the ways of God; this idea, the word justify precisely conveys. Pope was addressing himself to unbelievers, and exposing such of their objections whose ridicule and absurdity arises from the judicial blindness of the objectors; he, therefore, more fitly employs the word vindicate, which conveys the idea of a confutation attended with punishment. Thus suscipere vindictam legis, to undertake the defence of the law, implies punishing the violators of it.
| Ver. 19, 20. | Of man, what see we but his station here, |
| From which to reason, or to which refer? |
The sense is, "we see nothing of man but as he stands at present in his station here; from which station, all our reasonings on his nature and end must be drawn; and to this station they must all be referred." The consequence is, that our reasonings on his nature and end must needs be very imperfect.
Ver. 21. Through worlds unnumbered, &c.] Hunc cognoscimus solummodo per proprietates suas et attributa, et per sapientissimas et optimas rerum structuras et causas finales. Newtoni Princ. Schol. gen. sub. fin.