I reckon it for nothing that M. du Resnel saw none of the fine reasoning from these two lines to ver. 73, in which the poet confutes both the philosophic and popular errors concerning happiness. What I can least bear is his perverting these two lines to a horrid and senseless fatalism, foreign to the argument in hand, and directly contrary to the poet's general principles:
Une loi générale
Détermine toujours la cause principale;
i.e. a general law always determines the first cause: which is the very Fate of the ancient pagans; who supposed that the destinies gave law to the father of gods and men. The poet says again, soon after, ver. 49, "Order is heaven's first law," i. e. the first law made by God relates to order, which is a beautiful allusion to the Scripture history of the creation, when God first appeased the disorders of chaos, and separated the light from the darkness. Let us now hear his translator:
L'ordre, cet inflexible et grand législateur,
Qui des décrets du ciel est le premier auteur.
Order, that inflexible and grand legislator, who is the first author of the law of heaven. A proposition abominable in most senses; absurd in all.
Ver. 79. Reason's whole pleasure, &c.] This is a beautiful periphrasis for happiness; for all we feel of good is by sensation and reflection. But the translator, who seemed little to concern himself with the poet's philosophy or argument, mistook this description of happiness for a description of the intellectual and sensitive faculties, opposed to one another, and therefore turns it thus,
Le charme séducteur, dont s'enivrant les sens,
Les plaisirs de l'esprit, encore plus ravissans;
And so, with the highest absurdity, not only makes the poet constitute sensual excesses a part of human happiness, but likewise the product of virtue.
Ver. 82. And peace, &c.] Conscious innocence, says the poet, is the only source of internal peace; and known innocence, of external; therefore, peace is the sole issue of virtue, or, in his own emphatic words, peace is all thy own; a conclusive observation in his argument; which stands thus: Is happiness rightly placed in externals? No; for it consists in health, peace, and competence; health and competence are the product of temperance; and peace, of perfect innocence.
Ver. 100. See god-like Turenne] This epithet has a peculiar justness, the great man to whom it is applied not being distinguished from other generals, for any of his superior qualities, so much as for his providential care of those whom he led to war, in which he was so intent, that his chief purpose in taking on himself the command of armies, seems to have been the preservation of mankind. In this god-like care he was more remarkably employed throughout the whole course of that famous campaign in which he lost his life.