How widely then at happiness we aim
By selfish pleasures, riches, pow'r or fame!
Increase of these is but increase of pain,
Wrong the materials, and the labour vain.
[1434] He had in his mind Virgil's description, borrowed from Homer, of the attempt made by the giants, in their war against the gods, to scale the heavens by heaping Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa. Pope took the expressions "sons of earth," and "mountains piled on mountains," from Dryden's translation, Geor. i. 374.
[1435] "Still" is repeated to give force to the remonstrance. "Attempt still to rise, and Heaven will still survey your vain toil with laughter."
[1436] An allusion to Psalm ii. 1, 4: "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh."—Wakefield.
[1437] MS.:
The gods with laughter on the labour gaze,
And bury such in the mad heaps they raise.
[1438] "Nature" is a name for the second causes, or instruments, by which God works. Pope speaks as if nature's meaning was distinct from the meaning of God.
[1439] By "mere mankind" Pope means man in his present earthly condition, and not the generality of mankind as distinguished from favoured mortals, for he says, ver. 77, that individuals can no more attain to any greater good than mankind at large.
[1440] From Bolingbroke, Fragment 52: "Agreeable sensations, the series whereof constitutes happiness, must arise from health of body, tranquillity of mind, and a competency of wealth."
[1441] The MS. adds,