Youth should watch joys and shoot 'em as they fly.
[974] These metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, seem much below the dignity of the subject, and an unnatural mixture of the ludicrous and serious.—Warton.
They are the more so as Pope is not content with barely touching the metaphor of shooting en passant, but pursues it with so much minuteness. Let us "beat this ample field,"—"try what the covert yields,"—"eye nature's walks,"—"shoot folly." An illustration, if not at all dignified, or in correspondence with the theme, should not be pursued so minutely that the mind must perforce observe its meanness.—Bowles.
[975] "Candid" here bears the unusual sense of "lenient and favourable in our judgment."
[976] Alludes to the subject which runs through the whole design,—the justification of the methods of Providence.—Pope.
Milton, Par. Lost, i. 26:
And justify the ways of God to men.—Warton.
[977] The last part of the verse is barbarously elliptical. The meaning is that all our reasonings respecting the end of man must be drawn from his station here, and to this station we must refer all that we learn respecting him. Since we can know nothing but what relates to our present condition, the doctrine of a future life is excluded.
[978] MS.:
Through endless worlds His endless works are known,
But ours, etc.