| Ver. 309. | Know then this truth, enough for man to know, |
| "Virtue alone is happiness below."] |
M. du Resnel translates the line thus:
Apprend donc, qu'il n'est point ici bas de bonheur,
Si la vertu no règle et l'esprit et le cœur.
i.e. Learn then, that there is no happiness here below, unless virtue regulates the heart and the understanding, which destroys all the force of his author's conclusion. He had proved, that happiness consists neither in external goods, as the vulgar imagined, nor yet in the visions of the philosophers: he concludes, therefore, that it consists in virtue alone. His translator says, that without virtue, there can be no happiness. And so say the men whom his author is here confuting. For though they supposed external goods requisite to happiness, it was when in conjunction with virtue. Mr. Pope says,
Virtue alone is happiness below:
And so ought a faithful translator to have said after him.
Ver. 316. After ver. 316, in the MS.
Ev'n while it seems unequal to dispose,
And chequers all the good man's joys with woes,
'Tis but to teach him to support each state,
With patience this, with moderation that;
And raise his base on that one solid joy,
Which conscience gives, and nothing can destroy.
These lines are extremely finished. In which there is such a soothing sweetness in the melancholy harmony of the versification, as if the poet was then in that tender office in which he was most officious, and in which all his soul came out, the condoling with some good man in affliction.
Ver. 341. For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, &c.] Plato, in his first book of a Republic, hath a remarkable passage to this purpose: "He whose conscience does not reproach him, has cheerful hope for his companion, and the support and comfort of his old age, according to Pindar. For this great poet, O Socrates, very elegantly says, That he who leads a just and holy life, has always amiable hope for his companion, which fills his heart with joy, and is the support and comfort of his old age. Hope, the most powerful of the divinities, in governing the ever-changing and inconstant temper of mortal men." In the same manner Euripides speaks in his Hercules Furens: "He is the good man in whose breast hope springs eternally. But to be without hope in the world, is the portion of the wicked."