185 The fureft Virtues thus from paffions shoot, VARIATIONS. After ver. 194 in the MS. Thee. 190 How oft, with Paffion, Virtue points her Charms! E Reason the byas turns to good from ill, VARIATIONS. Whofe felf-denials nature most controul? NOTES. thin? 200 VER. 197. Reafon the byas, &c.] Left it should be objected, that this account favours the doctrine of Neceffity, and would infinuate that Men are only acted upon, in the production of Good out of Evil; the poet here teacheth, that Man is a free-agent, and hath it in his own power to turn the natural paffions into Virtue or into Vices, properly fo called: Reason the byas turns to good from ill, And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will. VER. 204. The God within the mind.] A Platonic phrafe for Confcience; and here employed with great judgment and propriety. For Confcience either fignifies, fpeculatively, the judgment we pass of things upon whatever principles we chance to have; and then it is only Opinion, 5 205 Extremes in Nature equal ends produce, In Man they join to fome mysterious use; Tho' each by turns the other's bounds invade, Where ends the Virtue, or begins the Vice. Fools! who from hence into the notion fall, That Vice or Virtue there is none at all. NOTES. 210 a very unable judge and divider. Or else it fignifies, practically, the application of the eternal rule of right (received by us as the law of God) to the regulation of our actions; and then it is properly Confcience, the God (or the law of God) within the mind, of power to divide the light from the darkness in this chaos of the paffions. VER. 285. Extremes in Nature equal ends produce.] The poet here reasons to this effect, That though indeed Vice and Virtue fo invade each other's bounds, that fometimes we can search tell where one ends, and the other begins, yet great purposes are ferved thereby, no less than the perfecting the conftitution of the whole, as lights and fhades, which run into one another in a well-wrought picture, make the harmony and spirit of the compofition. But, on this account, to say there is neither Vice nor Virtue, the poet fhews would be just as wife as to fay, there is neither black nor white; because the shade of that, and the light of this, often run into one another: Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; Afk your own heart, and nothing is fo plain? 215 'Tis to mistake them, cofts the time and pain. Vice is a monster of fo frightful mien, As, to be hated, needs but to be seen: Yet feen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. 220 But where th' Extreme of Vice, was ne'er agreed: Afk where's the North ? at York, 'tis on the Tweed; In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there, n At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where. No creature owns it in the first degree, 225 But thinks his neighbour further gone than he; Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone, Or never feel the rage, or never own; What happier natures fhrink at with affright, The hard inhabitant contends is right. VARIATIONS. After ver. 220. in the 1ft Edition, followed thefe, After ver. 226. in the MS. 230 The Col'nel fwears the Agent is a dog, Virtuous and vicious ev'ry Man must be, 235 240 But HEAV'N's great view is One, and that the Whole. NOTES. VER. 231. Virtuous and vicious ev'ry Man must be, Few, in th' extreme, but all in the degree ;] Of this the Poet, with admirable fagacity, affigns the caufe, in the following line: For, Vice or Virtue, SELF directs it ftill. An adherence or regard to what is, in the fenfe of the world, a man's own intereft, making an extreme in either Vice or Virtue almoft impoffible. Its effect in keeping a good Man from the extreme of Virtue, needs no explanation; and in an ill Man, Self-intereft fhewing him the neceffity of fome kind of reputation, the procuring, and preferving that, will keep him from the extreme of Vice, |