[1457] This comparison of the favourites of the Almighty to the favourites of a weak prince is fallacious and revolting. Weak princes select their favourites from weak or vicious motives. The favourites of heaven are the righteous.
[1458] Warburton says that Pope alluded to Empedocles. The story ran that he pretended to be a divinity, and threw himself into the crater of Ætna, that nobody might know what had become of him, and might conclude that he had been carried up into heaven. All the circumstances of his death are doubtful, and whether he was a calumniated sage, or a conceited madman, legends are not a proper illustration of God's dealings with mankind. Pope had originally written,
T' explore Vesuvius if great Pliny aims,
Shall the loud mountain call back all its flames?
At the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, Pliny, the naturalist, was commanding the Roman fleet in the Gulf of Naples. He made for the coast in the neighbourhood of the volcano, till checked by the falling stones and ashes, he sailed to Stabiæ, and landed. In a few hours the tottering of the houses, shaken by the earthquake, warned him to fly, and according to his nephew he was overtaken by flames and sulphurous vapours, and suffocated. Stabiæ is ten miles from Vesuvius, and the flame and vapour could hardly have been propelled from the mountain.
[1459] The forgetfulness to thunder supposes unconscious obliviousness, the recalling the fires conscious activity. The mountain would not at the same moment forget to keep up the irruption, and remember to restrain it.
[1460] Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: "If a man's safety should depend upon winds or rains, must new motions be impressed upon the atmosphere?"
[1461] Warton tells us in a note on one of Pope's letters to Bethel, that the latter was "celebrated in two fine lines in the Essay on Man on account of an asthma with which he was afflicted." I find in Ruffhead's Life a quotation from a letter of Pope's to Bethel, "then in Italy," and we may conclude that Bethel, being troubled with an asthma, visited Italy for relief, but that in crossing the sea the "motions of the sea and air" disagreed with him, as they do with most people.—Croker.
[1462] "You," is Bolingbroke, to whom the epistle is addressed. A writer in the Adventurer, No. 63, quotes Wollaston, Religion of Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: "If a good man be passing by an infirm building, just in the article of falling, can it be expected that God should suspend the force of gravitation till he is gone by, in order to his deliverance?" The illustrations and language Pope copied from Wollaston are the objections of those who deny a special Providence, and Wollaston only stated the arguments to refute them.
[1463] MS.:
Or shall some ruin, as it nods to fall,
For Chartres' brains reserve the hanging wall?
No,—in a scene far higher heav'n imparts
Rewards for spotless hands, and honest hearts.