[1409] "Flaming" is not an appropriate epithet for mines. The line calls up a false idea of splendour, and not a vision of subterranean gloom and desolation.
[1410] Dryden, Æn. xii. 963:
An iron harvest mounts, and still remains to mow.—Wakefield.
Pope's image is not sufficiently distinctive. There is only one word, the epithet "iron," to indicate that he is speaking of military renown, and this epithet, drawn from the material of which swords are made, is also applicable to the sickle.
[1411] "Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow," is the invocation addressed by Pope to Happiness. He now strangely answers his own inquiry in a tone of rebuke, as though it were preposterous to ask the question. "Where grows! where grows it not?"
[1412] These lines follow in the MS.:
Heav'n plants no vain desire in human kind,
But what it prompts to seek, directs to find,
From whom, so strongly pointing at the end,
To hide the means it never could intend.
Now since, whatever happiness we call,
Subsists not in the good of one, but all,
And whosoever would be blessed must bless,
Virtue alone can form that happiness.
A sentence in Hooker's Eccl. Pol., Book i. Chap. viii. Sect. 7, will explain Pope's idea in the last four lines: "If I cannot but wish to receive all good at every man's hand, how should I look to have any part of my desire satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire in other men?"
[1413] "Sincere" in its present use is the opposite of "disingenuous," "deceptive," and has always a moral signification. Formerly it had the sense, which Pope gives it here, of "pure," "unadulterated," without any necessary ethical meaning. Thus Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii.
And none can boast sincere felicity.