Go, reas'ning man, go mount, etc.
[1126] MS.:
Instruct erratic planets where to run.
[1127] Warburton says that the phrase "correct old Time" refers to Sir Isaac Newton's Chronology of Antient Kingdoms Amended, in which one of the main positions was based upon astronomical science. More probably Pope alluded to the familiar fact of the Gregorian reformation of the calendar by substituting new style for old. The change was adopted towards the close of the sixteenth century through the greater part of Europe, but the old style was retained in England till 1752. By "regulate the sun," Wakefield understands the use of equal mean for unequal apparent time.
[1128] Ed. 4, 5.:
Show by what rules the wand'ring planets stray,
Correct old Time, and teach the sun his way.—Pope.
"Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule," exclaims Pope, ver. 29, and Warburton correctly remarks that the sarcastic summary is "a conclusion from all that had been said before from ver. 18 to this effect." The illustrations which go before should consequently be examples of the wild attempts to show how the world might have been better contrived, and Pope points to such schemes when he says, "Instruct the planets in what orbs to run." But he has perplexed his meaning by improperly mixing up with instances of ignorant presumption, those real discoveries in science, which are the result of a patient investigation of God's works, and have no connection with the pretence of "teaching Eternal Wisdom how to rule."
[1129] Bolingbroke, Fragment 58: "They soar up on Platonic wings to the first good and the first just." Plato taught that there was a good in itself, a just in itself, a beautiful in itself, etc. These ideas, as he called them, these faultless archetypes of earthly qualities, were not mere abstractions of the mind. They had a real existence, and all that was good, beautiful, and just in this world, was derived from them. The "empyreal sphere" was the outermost of the nine fictitious spheres of the ancients, and is "inhabited," says Cicero in his Vision of Scipio, "by that all-powerful God who controls the other spheres." Pope learned his contempt of Plato from Bolingbroke, who said of him with his usual intemperance, and more than his usual ignorance, that he was the "father of philosophical lying, and treated every subject like a bombast poet, and a mad theologian."
[1130] MS.:
And proudly rave of imitating God.