The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke ... In Four Volumes Octavo. Revised and corrected by the Original Manuscript With a Portrait of the Author, and His Life By Miss Brooke. The Third Edition |
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| UNIVERSAL BEAUTY:
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 | The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke |  |
UNIVERSAL BEAUTY:
A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, IN SIX BOOKS.
The Author introduces his work with a general survey of the whole, in nature of the plan or argument; and then commences anew with a demonstration, a priori, of the being and attributes of God. Thence proceeds to creation, in which he endeavours at an opinion of the manner, as near as possible he may; as also of the nature and difference of the substances of spirit and matter; the economy of the universe; the astronomic system, physics, anatomy, and most branches of natural philosophy; in which the technical terms are as few, and the whole explained and made as easy and obvious as possible. The connection, dependence, use, and beauty, of the whole. Man considered; the nature of his being; the manner of his attaining knowledge; the analysis of the mind, faculties, affections, and passions; how they consist in each individual, and in the species. The nature of freedom; that it is not in the will; what it is, and wherein it consists, demonstrated. Of vice, misery, virtue, and happiness; their nature and final tendency. The whole being wrought into one natural and connected scheme, the author rises whence he began, and ends with a poetical rhapsody in the contemplation of the beauty of the whole.
BOOK I.
Birth-day of heaven, wise daughter of the All Wise;
When from Jove's head in perfect sapience born,
Of heaven you rose the first empyreal morn,
As erst descend—
To mortals thy immortal charms display,
And in our Lake thy heavenly form survey!
Venus Urania! born the babe of smiles,
And Nature on thy form divinely hung;
Whose steps, by Loves and Graces kiss'd, advance,
And laughing Hours lead on the sprightly dance;
While Time, within eternal durance bound,
Harmonious moves on golden hinges round—
Such, Goddess! as when Silence wondering gazed,
And even thyself beheld thyself amazed;
Such haply by that Côon artist known,
Seated apparent queen on Fancy's throne;
From thence thy shape his happy canvas blest,
And colours dipt in heaven thy heavenly form confest—
Such, Goddess! thro' this virgin foliage shine;
Let kindling beauties glow thro' every line,
And every eye confess the work divine.
And space immense in its own depth was drown'd;
If Nothing was, or Something yet was not,
Or tho' to be, e'erwhile was unbegot;
If caused, then how?—if causeless, why effect?
(No hand to form, nor model to direct)
What chance, what will, what freedom, or what fate?—
Matter, and spirit, fire, air, ocean, earth;
All Nature born, nor conscious of its birth!—
Alike unconscious did the womb disclose,
And Nothing wonder'd whence this Something rose—
Then, by what power?—or what such power could move?
Wisdom, or chance?—necessity, or love?
O, from what root could such high plenty grow?
From what deep fount such boundless oceans flow?
What fund could such unwearied wealth afford?
Subjects unnumber'd! where, O where's your Lord?
Whence are your attributes of time and place
Won from eternity and boundless space?
Motion from rest? just order from misrule?
A world from nought?—all empty, now all full!
From silence harmony? from darkness light?
And beamy day from everlasting night?
Light, matter, motion, music, order, laws!
And silent dark nonentity the cause?
If nothing was?—'tis answer'd, chance of nought.
Alike from matter moved , could Beauty rise,
The florid planets, and gay ambient skies;
Or painted skies, and rolling orbs, dispense
Perception, life, thought, reason, judgment, sense.
Mysterious Thought! swift Angel of the mind!
By space unbounded, tho' to space confined,
How dost thou glow with just disdain, how scorn,
That thought could ever think thee earthly born?
Thou who canst distance motion in thy flight,
Wing with aspiring plume the wondrous height,
Swifter than light outspeed the flame of day,
Pierce thro' the dark profound, and shame the darting ray;
Throughout the universal system range,
New form old systems, and new systems change;
Thro' nature traffick on, from pole to pole,
And stamp new worlds on thy dilated soul;
(By time unlimited, unbound by space)
Sure demonstration of thy heavenly race,
Derived from that, which is derived from none,
Which ever is—but of Himself alone!
Haply some glimpse, some dawning to obtain,
Some taste divine of thy eternal spring,
Above those Heliconian bards to sing—
How He who inaccessible remains,
Yet omnipresent thro' all nature reigns;
Whose age blooms ever in eternal youth,
His substance, Beauty, and essential Truth,
Essential Truth! and Beauty's charm! in course,
Of boundless Love the ever boundless source!
Of boundless Love, which would not, could not miss,
To be the boundless source of boundless bliss!—
Beatitude, rejecting all access!
Repletion, never to be more, nor less!
Why this Ineffable, this Inexprest,
This Fulness in Himself, past utterance blest,
Spontaneous pour'd these wondrous worlds around,
And fill'd with blessings this immense profound?
Jocund thro' heaven to run the various race;
Orb within orb in living circlets turn,
And central suns thro' every system burn;
Revolving planets on their gods attend,
And tow'rds each sun with awful reverence bend;
And pant, and tremble, like the amorous steel.
They spring, they revel in the blaze of day,
Bathe in the golden stream, and drink the orient ray;
Their blithe satellites with lively glance,
Celestial equipage, around them dance;
All, distance due, and beauteous order keep,
And spinning soft, upon their centers sleep:
The eternal clue the mazy labyrinth guides,
While each in his appointed movement glides;
Transverse, ecliptick, oblique, round they run;
Like atoms wanton in the morning sun;
The seeming vagrants joy to cheat the view,
These turn, these change, these fly, and these pursue;
The implicit discipline to order tends,
And still in regular confusion ends—
Each to his native vortex is assign'd,
And magick circles every system bind;
A deeper charm each individual holds,
And firm within its atmosphere enfolds;
The secret spell, thro' every part, and whole,
Distinct, intire, invades it like a soul;
And knit, in universal wedlock share.
Space furnish'd out one boundless nuptial bow'r;
Ten thousand thousand worlds, profusely gay,
The pomp of bridal ornament display—
How modified, here needless to be told;
Whether terrene, or of ethereous mold;
Gross, porous, firm, opaque, condense, or rare;
Or argent, with celestial tempering clear;
Pellucid, to imbibe the streaming light;
Or dun, but with reflected radiance bright;
Or dazzling shrine, or of corporeal leaven,
Terrestrial, that unfold an earthly heaven
Unspeakable! their landskip hill, and dale,
The lowly sweetness of the flowery vale,
The mount elate that rises in delight,
The flying lawns that wanton from the sight,
The florid theatres, romantick scenes,
The steepy mountains, and luxuriant plains,
Delicious regions! plants, woods, waters, glades,
Grotts, arbours, flowrets, downs, and rural shades,
The brooks that sportive wind the echoing hills,
The pearly founts, smooth lakes, and murmuring rills—
Myriads of Edens! blissful, blissful seats!
Delightful Ennas, and Hesperian isles,
And round, and round throughout, Elysium smiles—
Consummate joy, peace, pleasure without end,
Thro' mansions numberless their guests attend,
Nor long inanimate—As when some cloud
Throws on the beamy noon her sable shroud,
Wide o'er the green a dusk and stillness creep,
And glittering swarms beneath the verdure sleep;
Quick, and at once, the drowsy shade gives way;
At once breaks forth the bright enlivening ray;
At once, the gay, the quickening insects rise,
And gilded squadrons strike our wondring eyes;
Musick flies wanton from ten thousand wings,
And life and joy thro' every region rings—
Or when glad news some sudden transport start,
The flood swells instant in the labouring heart;
The limbs its lively energy attest,
And catch contagion from the exulting breast;
Tumultuous, thro' our little world it flies,
Smiles in the dimpling cheek, and lightens from the eyes—
Or so—or yet beyond compare—as wide
As spaces endless from some point divide,
Sudden the universal world conceives;
Quick pulses thro' each throbbing artery beat,
And all the matron glows with genial heat;
At once reveals her offspring to the sight;
Up spring the numbers numberless, to light!
The one, the various, blessed, glorious birth,
Of every world, heaven, ocean, air, and earth—
Diverse, throughout their infinite abodes;
Their essence, nature, virtues, forms, and modes
Ineffable! that mock where fancy soars,
Or what the deep of deepest thought explores,
By visionary semblance, quaint device,
By gloss, trope, type abstruse, or emblem nice—
Ideal, how untoward to convey,
Or reach conception by the dark assay.
All perfect, yet alike not perfect found,
With differing virtues, differing glories crown'd;
The prime pre-eminent, and heavenly born,
Whom splendors next to Deity adorn,
Lightnings divine, indued with native right
Of regal scepter and transcending might,
Such, whom eternal Prescience might invest
Far blazing, with monarchal titles graced;
Of bright, the brightest; pure, the most refined;
All intellect, quintessence of the mind;
Empyreal natures with empyreal names,
Natives of heaven!—Nor want the lucid spheres,
Of blest inheritance the blissful heirs;
Angelick shapes that wing the etherial space,
And scarce inferior to the heavenly race;
An incompounded radiant form they claim,
Nor spirit all—nor yet corporeal frame;
Than one, more dense—than t'other, more refin'd;
If spirit, organiz'd—if matter, mind:
Their essence one, imperishable, bright,
Vital throughout, all heart, ear, sense, and sight.
While order knits, and beautifies by change;
While from the Unchangeable, the One, the Wise,
Still changing endless emanations rise,
Of substance duplicate, or triple, mix'd,
Single, ambiguous, or free, or fix'd;
From those array'd in heaven's resplendent robes,
To the brute essence on terrestrial globes;
Nor such inelegant, nor less demand
The curious texture of the Almighty Hand:
Thrice happy all, and lords of wide domains,
Celestial vales, and elemental plains!
And hence the reptile, hence the Seraph glows:
Still equal, tho' inequal, that and this;
Since fulness bounds, and all are fill'd with bliss.
In amplitude stretch'd out this wondrous frame,
Equipt magnificent the house of God,
Thro' height, and depth, his boundless, blest abode!
One house, one world, one universe divine,
Where countless orbs thro' countless systems shine;
Systems, which, viewed throughout the circuit wide,
Or lost, or scarce the pointed sight abide,
(Thro' space immense with diminution seen)
Yet boundless to those worlds that roll within;
Each world as boundless to its native race,
That range and wanton thro' its ample space,
Frequent, thro' fields, thro' clouds of fragrance stray,
Or skim the watery or etherial way:
For now, with vivid action, nature swarms,
And life's dear stream the purpling conduit warms;
The continent, blithe air, and floating seas,
The smiling lakes, swift floods, and winding bays,
And aptly yield their alimental food,
Adjusted to the trunk's unwieldy size,
As nice proboscis of luxurious flies,
Or azure tribes that o'er the damson bloom,
And paint the regions of the ripening plum.
In every stream, perpetual pleasure flows;
Each ravish'd sense with endless bounty feast,
The Soul, and ear, and eye, and smell, and touch, and taste.
Their sweets, the blossoms plants and flowers bequeath;
Elixirs from the steaming vapours breath;
In balm imbosom'd every region lies,
Of ambient æther, and infolding skies;
As the great Mover wrapt each wheeling sphere
In the soft down of elemental air
Transparent, to imbibe the golden beam,
And wide around spun out th' etherial stream,
Where worlds in endless revolutions move,
And swim on the abyss of endless Love.
And low to earth thy bright irradiance bend;
Dispel the clouds that round our fancy stray,
The mist that damps our intellectual ray;
And in one act performs ten thousand ends.
And why not vagrant thro' the boundless space?
Why here preferr'd, sagacious to refuse
What thwarts propriety, convenience, use?
Why not more neighbour to the burning ray,
Or more remote from the declining day?
Or here , not sedentary fixt and still,
Admonish'd by no voice, obsequious to no will?
Or moving, why in circling eddies round,
And not progressive thro' the immense profound?
Or endless while the dizzy drunkard reels,
And round the sun its annual motion wheels,
Whence that innate and delegated power,
Central to spin the swift diurnal tour?
Not self revolv'd, throughout its airy race,
It might expose one constant sultry face,
Damn its antipodes with endless night,
And curse with fire the restless sons of light;
Nor those to rise and bless the golden dawn.
Or tho' rotation duplicate endears
Sweet change of days, and nights, and rolling years;
What new vicissitudes of motion bring
The seasons, circling, to the vernal spring?
Whether thro' heaven the winding compass steers,
Or pendulous by mutual balance veers,
What Secret Hand the trepidation weighs,
Or thro' the zodiac guides the spiral pace?
What magick wand the floating orb confines
With polar circles, and the tropic lines?
Or does some Voice the potent charm command?
Too potent for unwieldy worlds to stand!—
“Here, nor elsewhere, thou earth, thy station keep;
“Here, roll thy progress thro' the boundless deep!
“My Word's the bias, and my Will's the way,
“That wheels thy circlet round the lord of day;
“That round thy axis spins thy cumbrous frame;
“That cheers thee with the still returning beam;
“That whirls thy wondrous motions, one in three,
“Where time, and place, still varying, still agree.”
One slip had maim'd ten thousand thousand hits,
Where to one point unnumber'd causes tend,
Concurring to effect one destined end,
Which once attain'd pours forth ten thousand more;
A blessed sea, that never knows a shore!
“And banish Omnipresence with a nod;
“In shrewd contempt, at final causes sneer;
“In wilful deafness shut the tortuous ear,
“Nor think it suited to the sounds ye hear;
“Who, in your wisdoms, negatively spy,
“How vain's the texture of the useless eye;
“While fondly thus prime reasoners you'd commence,
“By literally exploding common sense,
“And plead for one concession (only due)
“That nature must have err'd—in forming you—
“Approach, ye Sages, to your parent earth,
“Much wiser than the clods on whom she lavish'd birth!”
With equal scale, the least advantage weighs;
How apt, for time, place, circumstance, and use,
She culls all means, that to all ends conduce!
Nice to a point, each benefit selects;
As prudent, every mischief she rejects;
In due proportions, time, and motion, metes,
Advances to a hair, and to a hair retreats:
Constant to Good, for that alone she veers,
And with the varying beam her offspring chears;
Cools all beneath her equinoctial line,
And gives the day throughout the world to shine;
The nitre from the frozen pole unseals,
And to the tropic speeds the pregnant gales;
Here, leaves the exhausted fallow to recruit;
Here, plumps and burnishes the ripening fruit;
Superfluous hence withdraws the sultry beam,
Here drinks anew the vivifying flame;
Returns, still faithful to the labouring steer—
Wide waves the harvest of the golden year;
Inspires, revives, and cultivates the whole;
Frugal, where lack, supplies with what redounds,
And here bestows what noxious there abounds;
This with the gift, and that with giving, blest,
Alike, throughout, of every wish possest.
Wrapt in her airy car , the matron glides,
And o'er the firmament ascending rides;
The subtile mass its copious mantle spreads,
Its mantle wove of elemental threads;
The elastick flue of fluctuating air,
Transfused invisible, enfolds the sphere;
With poinance delicate pervades the whole,
Its ear , eye, breath, and animating soul;
Active, serene , comprest, rare, cool'd, or warm'd,
For life, health, comfort, pleasure, business, form'd;
Useful around, throughout, above, beneath!
This gives the bloom of vegetative life;
Corrects the seeds of elemental strife;
Broods o'er the eggs , in airy caverns laid,
Warm'd in the down of their etherial bed;
Gives motion to the swimmers of the flood;
Gives musick to the warblers of the wood;
Rebounds in echo from the doubling vale,
And wafts to heaven the undulating gale:
Here hush'd , translucid smiles the gentle calm;
And here impearld , sheds meek the showery balm;
And winnows pure the pestilential steams;
Here buoys the bird high on the chrystal wave,
Whose level plumes the azure concave shave;
Here sits voluptuous in the swelling sail,
The vessel dancing to the sprightly gale!
Its varied power to various uses tends,
And qualities occult atchieve contrarious ends;
With generative warmth fomenting breed,
Or alimental with nutrition feed;
In opposition reconciled to good,
Alike the menstruum, as sustaining food:
Or here restorative, destructive here;
Here nature's cradle, here her funeral bier;
And grateful, from our aching sense conveys;
Returns the bane into its native earth,
And there revives it to a second birth,
Renew'd and brighten'd like the minted ore,
To shoot again to life, more gorgeous than before!
Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, is fabled to have sprung from the head of Jupiter; and, coming down on earth, to have viewed her own perfections in the lake Triton in Africa, from whence she was called Tritonia. She is here addressed as the IDEA of the Self-Existent Author of all things, as first containing in itself the beauty of all created things; and after, surveying that beauty by reflection from the things so created.
This Venus, whom the ancients stiled Urania, or heavenly, is addressed as representing nature, or the creation, rising out of chaos in the perfection of beauty.
One of the atheistical unaccountable evasions, is to account for the order of nature by matter and motion.
diurnal, giving to its inhabitants the grateful vicissitude of day and night, adjusted to the times of labour and rest—
the manner of its annual motion, calculated for the useful and delightful variety of the seasons; the mutual allay of immoderate heat, and cold; as also for the successive growth and recruit of vegetative nature.
How, even to the extent of infinite wisdom, as nothing less could be the author, (vide supra, l. 305.) all is formed and contrived, and in that contrivance adapted, and in that adaption directed, and in that direction extended distinctly, and in that distinction entirely, for the life, light, and comfort of the whole, and through that whole of every part of this our globe! of infinitely possible inconveniencies, no one avoidable inconvenience being admitted; as of infinite advantages attainable, there is not one, consistent with the nature of this earth, left out.
its modification, admitting various, contrary, and even seemingly inconsistent qualities, suited as well to the single and separate interests of every individual, as to the entire and uniform weal of the whole—
raising harmony from disorder, and friendship from enmity, by fermenting and reconciling heat and cold, the fiery and watery particles, for the better conception and genial production of the beauties of nature—
modulating and composing as it were one universal organ for sound, and musick, so as the atmosphere becomes an entire harmony—
and the health of winds, or ventilations, that purge the noxious vapours, and preserve nature fresh and vigorous—
The various influence of the air on all bodies animate or inanimate: first, in the generation of particular beings; then, in their nutrition; thirdly, affording a healing balsam to the hurts or wounds of all creatures, when recoverable; but if past remedy, fourthly, hastening their dissolution, to rid the world of the nuisance, by restoring the matter to its original principle of nativity; fifthly, to send again the new modelled being blooming afresh in animal life or vegetation.
For the use of the atmosphere as a medium and mirror, vide Book II. p. 25.
BOOK II.
This, and the two ensuing books, contain and finish the general survey or epitome of the whole, being a piece in itself distinct and complete. The author then commences de novo, and proposes to answer every doubt, and illustrate at full every part of the foregoing abridgment.
The aspiring bard, and all his flights confound;
Ambitious thro' his airy tour to sing,
High born above the soar of Pegasean wing;
Or raised sublime in prospect, while he turns,
Views nature round, and still with rapture burns:
Now in this light the charmer he surveys,
This light he hopes her every charm displays;
But here unthought of charms discovered lie,
And flash new wonders on the admiring eye;
While Beauty, changing with alternate grace,
Varies the heaven of her all lovely face.
And in inextricable windings lost;
Where to begin, proceed, or how conclude,
This part omit, or hopeless that elude,
Doubtful. Again elated in his theme,
A daring unexampled task he'd claim,
And wide unfold the Universal Frame;
In mortal draught Immortal Beauty snare,
And stamp this leaf as Nature's volume fair.
Though for the flight Dedalian plumage fail ;
Tho' erst of that ambitious youth we read ,
Dismounted from the Muse's fabled steed,
And story with alluding caution tell,
How from the sun's bright car the headlong driver fell :
Nature, unerring tutoress, shall preside,
And through her endless revolutions guide;
Her various maze its windings shall unbraid,
Her doublings trace themselves, while self betrayed
Her complications to connection lead.
Its springy tension, and elastick spring;
The quick vibration of the yielding mass;
How objects thro' its lucid medium pass;
For Nature how the smiling glass expands;
Narcissus like, how beauteous Nature stands,
Self-loved within the splendid mirror shines,
But self enjoy'd, nor like Narcissus pines;
How, as a talisman of magick frame,
This atmosphere conveys the enlightening beam,
Reflects, inflects , refracts the orient ray;
Anticipating sheds the rising day—
(Whose image fires the horizontal waves)
Abridging, shears the sable robe of night,
And thro' the globe protracts the chearful light;
With sweet preambling twilight blends the shade,
And gently lets our evening beam recede.
Quickening the vision of poetick eyes;
Whence we may pierce into the deep profound,
And, searching, view the wondrous system round:
For wide as universal Nature spreads,
Light's sacred fount its streaming lustre sheds;
Still orient, to the parting beam succeeds;
Thro' azure climes a sumless journey speeds;
Nor less a boundless latitude imparts;
Where matter borders on retiring space,
Impulsive urges the perpetual race;
Stupendous length, illimited by aught
Of numbers summ'd or multiplied by thought!
But whence the Light's invigorating force,
Its active energy, or secret source,
Must be ascribed to that Eternal Spring,
Whom First, and Last, and ever Blest we sing—
Who only could his effluent Angel send;
Athwart the gulph the radiant blaze extend;
Kindle the mass to incorporeal speed;
The flame, with never dying splendors feed;
With heat , the universal page unseal;
With light, the universal charm reveal;
And gem the pavement of the milky-way;
Make grace from use, and use from beauty flow;
With florid pencil, shade the jasper bow;
The warring elements in wedlock bind,
Water and fire, dull earth and active wind;
Knit by Almighty Order they cohere,
And in their ever varying offsprings share.
Whose rosy progress paints the purpling morn;
The mingling glories o'er the surface play,
And ocean dances to the trembling ray.
And deep beneath subside the briny beds;
The spacious beds the liquid realms contain;
The seasoning tinctures purge the foamy main;
The salts perpetual hold their watery seat,
Nor in the tepid exhalations mount,
To fire the chrystal of the cooling fount.
The Almighty Fiat bade the deep conceive,
And finned with clustring tribes the vital wave,
From huge Leviathan's enormous frame,
To those who tincturing paint the crimson stream;
With watery wings they skim the yielding seas;
Their central poise its gravitation weighs,
Adjusted, steady to their varying size,
By geometrick rule, and calculation nice:
These have their palaces , and coral groves,
Their latent grotts, and pearly bright alcoves;
Wide is the copious hand of Bounty spread,
And myriads at the plenteous feast are fed.
Nor less , the grateful light salutes their eye,
And solar glories gild the nether sky;
And nightly glitters at the twinkling ray.
The moon, attended by her starry train,
Reflects reflection to the floating plain,
Its murmuring flux with pale dominion guides,
And swells the pride of its returning tides;
The deep those wholsome agitations purge,
And drive stagnation from the rolling surge;
Their rage the Sovereign Moderator cools,
And riding, as a steed the bounding billow rules;
Whence rising floods their stated empire know,
Nor wasteful o'er the neighbouring regions flow.
The thirsty soil the incumbent ocean drinks;
Whence, thro' the globe diluting liquors pass,
And circulate, as in our smaller mass;
And kindly thro' the porous strata drain,
Attracted, in a maze of tubes exhale;
(A stiffening clay cements the spacious vale)
From whence opposed, the mountain's height they claim,
And thence perpetual pour the winding stream;
Or lower, in perennial fountains rise,
Nor dread the star that fires autumnal skies.
Above its humid exhalation breaths;
Its bosom pants beneath the vigorous heat,
And eager beams the expanding surface beat;
Insinuating, form the lucid cell;
To bladders the circumfluous moisture swell;
The inflated vapours spurn the nether tide,
And mounted on the weightier æther ride:
Sublime the cloudy congregations tower;
O'er torrid climes collect their sable train,
And form umbrellas for the panting swain;
Or figured wanton in romantick mould,
Careering knights and airy ramparts hold,
(Imblazoning beams the flitting champions gild,
And various paint the visionary field;)
Sudden the loose inchanted squadrons fly,
And sweep delusion from the wondering eye;
Thence, on the floating atmosphere they sail,
And steer precarious with the varying gale;
Or hovering, with suspended wing delay,
And in disdain the kindred flood survey:
When lo! the afflicting æther checks their pride,
Compressing chills the vain dilated tide;
Their shivering essence to its center shrinks,
And a cold nuptial their coherence links;
With artful touch the curious meteor forms,
Parent prolifick of salubrious storms
Enlivening as a sneeze to man's inferior world:
The frigid chymist culls the mineral store,
The glossy sphærules of metallick ore;
Sublimes with nitre the sulphureous foam,
And hoards contagion in heaven's ample dome,
Where nature's magazine fermenting lies,
Till the bright ray athwart the welkin flies;
High rage the small incendiary inspires,
Whose kindling touch the dread artillery fires;
Quick, with effusion wide, the lightnings glare;
Disploding bolts the cloudy entrails tear;
The cleansing flames sweep thro' the etherial room,
And swift the gross infectious steam consume:
Our vital element the blaze refines,
While man, ingrateful, at his health repines.
With various skill the chilling artist works,
And operator chief in every meteor lurks:
Oft, where the zenith's lofty realms extend,
E'er mists, conglobing, by their weight descend,
And o'er the vapour throws a whitening shrowd;
Soft, from the concave, hovering fleeces fall,
Whose flaky texture cloaths our silver ball.
Or when the shower forsakes the sable skies,
Haply the cold in secret ambush lies,
Couching awaits in some inferior space,
And chills the tempest with a quick embrace;
The chrystal pellets at the touch congeal,
And from the ground rebounds the rattling hail.
Or constant where this artificer dwells,
And algid from his heights the mist repels,
The Almighty Alchymist his limbeck rears,
His lordly Taurus, or his Alpine peers;
Suspending fogs around the summit spread,
And gloomy columns crown each haughty head,
And soaking thro' the porous grit distil:
Collected from a thousand thousand cells
The subterraneous flood impatient swells;
Whence issuing torrents burst the mountain's side,
And hence impetuous pour their headlong tide.
(Whose briny dash each bounded region laves)
The soil, still rising, from the deep retires,
And mediate, to the neighbouring heaven aspires.
Hence, where the spring its surging effluence boils,
The stream ne'er refluent on the fount recoils,
But trips progressive, with descending pace,
And tunes, thro' many a league, its warbling maze;
And here the lake's capacious cistern fills;
Or wanton, here a snaky labyrinth roams;
Impervious here, with indignation foams;
Or here with rapture shoots the nether glade,
And whitening silvers in the steep cascade;
Or slackening here, its length of labour sooths;
And slumbering soft, its sleepy surface smooths;
Wide, deep, and slow, the doubtful current glides,
And o'er the flux the tilting vessel rides.
The embroidered banks their gaudy fringes dip,
And pendent flowers the smiling liquors sip;
Or gently where the humid mirrors pass,
The forest rises to the watry glass;
Self-worshipping the stately shade admires,
And to a double heaven its height aspires.
The social stream a winding motion steers,
And mindful of the neighbouring region veers;
With traverse or inverted circuit bends,
Nor leaves, unvisited, remotest friends;
With genial bounty spreads the verdant wealth,
And pours large draughts of ever blooming health:
Delight diffusive down the current flows,
And pleasure on the flowery margin grows.
Thro' many a realm, where mighty monarchs reign,
The stately flood protracts its floating train;
Nor in one day the liquid wanderer view;
Its facil maze the varying seasons wind,
And chrystal flakes the struggling fountain bind,
Which distant glows beneath the fervid beam,
And into ocean pours the copious stream.
And uses circling from our oceans spring;
Beneath, attracted, thro' the strata rise;
Above, exhaled, usurp the ambient skies;
Meet in the limpid source, or purling rill,
And bathe the vale, or sweep the shelving hill:
From hence their tributary floods repay,
And grateful nourish the recruited sea;
The sea replenished trafficks as before,
And back to earth returns the fruitful store.
To earth! for here, concentring, air, and fire,
And flood, in mutual triple league conspire:
Since He , on whom the mighty fabrick leans,
The Eternal, from eternity ordains
And order knit consummate, into use;
That Deity throughout the world may shine,
And Nature's birth confess her Sire Divine.
O how connected is thy wondrous frame!
(Thy grand machine, thro' many a wanton maze,
Steered where it winds, and streightning where it strays,
There most direct where seeming most inflext,
Most regular when seemingly most perplext,
As tho' perfection on disorder hung,
And perfect order from incaution sprung)
Still, endless as thy beauteous scenes arise,
Still, endless multiplies our deep surprize.
All conscious, thro' the gulf of boundless space?
(What human wisdom strives, but strives in vain to learn)
What mode mysterious paints the purpling rose,
What melts the current when Mæander flows?
What ruffle active in the blustering wind?
From inky jett exclude the piercing day;
Or thro' the brilliant drink the trembling ray;
With gay enammel arch the showery bow;
With various influence our senses greet,
Point in the sour, grow luscious in the sweet,
Scent in the civet, stifle in the draught,
Light from the doe the tainting odour waft,
Excite the nostril of the opening hound;
More subtile still the organick sense compound;
Thro' elements, plant, reptile, man, and brute,
This thing to that, and all to other suit?
Can clay, such virtues, forms, and modes assign?
Debating, methodize, conspire, combine?
Studious deliberate on the publick weal,
And ne'er like human politicians fail?
Each particle its separate province chuse,
Nor that prefer, nor froward this refuse;
Each for itself, and for the whole advise;
All good, all right, all perfect, and all wise?
Prophetick, thro' eternity foreknow,
From past, what future revolutions flow?
What endless links the blended fabrick weave,
On every various consequence reflect,
Prepare each cause to yield the just effect,
Sum up the whole, and thence the whole connect?
O dotage! dreamers! who could once suppose
The passive mass its Maker should inclose,
And the formed clay its forming Lord compose.
“Ye Atheists! if ye will be Atheists still,
“And will, no cause but this, because ye will;
“If stubborn, in your little reason's spight,
“Ye will judge wrong, because ye wo'nt judge right;
“Thus argue—Since the clue of boundless space
“Winds worlds on worlds, and wonders wonders trace;
“'Tis Order above rule that guides the plan,
“And Wisdom, far beyond what wisdom can;
“The Bounty boundless, Beauty without end:
“And who'd believe a God, he cannot comprehend?”
And high above his work the Maker flies:
Yet infinite that work, beyond our soar;
Beyond what Clarkes can prove, or Newtons can explore!
Of minstrelsie, to heavenly rapture wound,
On harmony suspended, tunes the whole,
Thrills in our touch, and lives upon our soul;
Each note inclusive melody reveals,
Softening within the Eternal Finger dwells,
Now sweetly melts, and now sublimely swells;
Yet relative each social note extends,
Throughout is blended, while throughout it blends
Symphonious, ecchoing the Supreme's design,
Beauty of Love, and Symmetry Divine!
The advantage of the atmosphere's elastick texture; by which it yields to, and closes imperceptibly upon all moving bodies—
The surprizing transparency, continuity, and coherence of its parts, forming an uninterrupted medium for the conveyance of all objects to the eye—
by which it is as it were an universal looking-glass, wherein all nature beholds, admires, and enjoys her own complete perfections—
Its curious disposition for the conveyance of light; which would be of no use in vacuo, as it is only perceptible itself, by rendering other objects visible—
Its still more wonderful quality, in not only reflecting, but refracting, and inflecting the morning and evening beam; in appearance lifting the sun about four degrees above his station, and refracting the light to us when the sun is about eighteen degrees below the horizon; by which means our day is prolonged about two hours, and the tedious night in the frigid zones shortened annually about thirty-two days—
by refraction of the rays creating the dawn, and gradual twilight; without which we should be suddenly immersed in an intolerable flood of day, and without a moment's warning shut up in immediate darkness.
The use of light must be apparent, to as many as have eyes to enjoy its benefit; but much more to those, who the further they pry into nature, by the assistance of this element, will still more and more discover an inexhaustible fund for delight and admiration—
What can be more amazing, than the expansion and extension of light, which though a body, propagated from body, and ponderous in its nature, is so thin and subtile, as to reach and dilate through an inconceivable compass of space, before the whole content would amount to one drachm of weight—
The swiftness and length of its progress is no less admirable, extending possibly ad infinitum, and moving in one second of time near two hundred thousand of our miles; without which miraculous velocity, its useful and glorious effect and influence could never be preserved:—
and as this perpetuated motion and vigour has not the least relation to any property inherent in matter, it can only be accounted for as flowing from the original Fountain of Light and Truth—
giving power to him only of unsealing her treasures, and unfolding her beauties; whereby the world's glorious and harmonious system becomes obvious, and the whole evidently as elegant, as it is useful.—
Is it not wonderful, that even Almighty power, out of one principle of matter, should constitute four; and by an endless compounding, modifying, and changing those four, should produce that infinite variety, which is visible in the universe?
Light. Beside the two elements of air and light, already treated of; what a spacious field do the waters, and first the ocean, yield, for contemplation and praise!
In the expansion of its superficies, without which it would never afford a sufficient quantity of vapours, to supply the thirsty land—
the methods by which its waters are preserved pure from corruption, by the mixture of salts, whose weight is calculated to prevent their exhaling—
the number, size, and qualities of its inhabitants, all adapted to its gross and tempestuous medium—
their ocean being a medium and atmosphere to them, as our atmosphere is to us; and equally suited to their natures, for respiration, as the conveyance of light from the heavenly luminaries—
How admirably is the moon's influence on tides (which preserves the great body of waters from stagnation) regulated, to the very point that can alone conduce to order and advantage: were she nearer, or larger; further off, or less; or were there more moons, so as on any hand the influence should be in the least altered; the whole earth would be rendered uninhabitable, by being poisoned with stagnated vapours, or perpetually overflowed with deluges—
As there is no point from whence the riches of nature do not flow in upon us; so there are two (though seemingly most opposite) methods of supplying us with sweet and refreshing waters; one perennial, and from beneath, being thence attracted through our globe as any liquid when touched by a piece of sugar; which cannot be ascribed to the pressure of our atmosphere, as it is readier performed in vacuo; the salts being separated by filtration through the strata, and the rising waters being opposed by a clayey substance that generally lies near the surface of the lower lands, they proceed to the mountains, from whence, by the advantage of a descent, they spread wealth and pleasure round all the earth—
The other method being by exhalation, the manner as above described; for heat being the most subtile, light, and agile of all bodies (if it may be called more than a quality of body) by its subtilty penetrates, and by its levity rarifies the humid parts of matter; and then by its agility breaking loose, carries off the parts so rarified; which being by that means rendered lighter than the air, mount till they rest or float in that part of the atmosphere that bears a specifick or proportionable gravity; and hence arises—
the use, beauty, and variety of our meteors; for as the chief operator in raising the vapours is heat, so on the other hand—
first rain, by expulsion of the rarifying heat; upon which the little bladders or vesicles knocking against each other, conglobe in the contact, and growing heavier than the atmosphere, fall down in larger, or smaller drops, according as the constituent parts of the cloud were more or less contiguous—
frequently causing storms of wind, by condensing, and thereby destroying the equilibrium of the atmosphere; the parts so condensed, pressing upon the parts more rare, and dilated, by warmth; which pressure produces the wind, which is no other than a current of air—
Or where the cold is a constant inhabitant in the upper regions; which by reason of their distance from the earth, are but little affected with the reflection of the sun-beams, which reflection chiefly promotes the intenseness of heat; there the rising vapours are repelled, because meeting with the cold, they, in a great measure, lose that active principle of heat, which was the chief motive of their ascension; and floating as the gale veers, are obstructed in their match by the mountains, or higher lands; and more vapours still gathering as they are obstructed, their parts, or little sphærules, become more neighbourly, or contiguous, than when they had a freedom of ranging wide from each other; and so jostling, run into, or incorporate one with the other; and descending by the laws of gravity—
soak into the hills, that are generally of a gravelly, mineral, or lax substance, through which the moisture distils; till finding, or making a vent to issue at, by the advantage of a descent, they pour their fertile and delicious streams over all the earth—
and this advantage of a descent is the more wonderful and happy, inasmuch as without it we should have no rivers, and consequently be poisoned and overflowed with the standing and stagnating waters: for who, but the Almighty Director, could lead the currents from their first source, by a gradual winding, and nice declivity, frequently through a miraculous length of about three thousand English miles? while flowing perpetual through various climates, and nations of different manner, and languages, they bear and spread around society, trade, commerce, riches, plenty, refreshment, luxuriant health, blooming verdure, and endless delight—
that order, which the Supreme Self-Existence, to manifest his own power and goodness, has caused to flow through an infinite variety of creatures; and yet has founded that infinite variety on the union of a few principles; which few principles are further, and ultimately resolvable, and united in Him, the only Original, and Self Eternal Principle.
The reason why I represent, as above, the various opinions of atheists, in one ridiculous light (when they may be supposed to differ much in their notions, and the learned treatises they have written for our instruction to carry a great appearance of ingenious and metaphysical argumentation) is, that the truth, and matter of fact, upon enquiry and reflection, will be found exactly and literally as I have represented it; and that all their ambages and circumlocutions center and turn upon one point, which is this, that whoever attempts to rob the world of a Superintendant Providence, or Designing Wisdom, does thereby necessarily ascribe all that is of connection, order, or beauty in the world, to blind, and insensible matter; and is, therefore, guilty of the ridiculous absurdities and contradictions above set forth. For, as the wit, or invention of men, has never yet laid down any atheistical hypothesis, however subtile or various, but what is evidently resolvable into, first, a Fortuitous Concourse of Atoms; secondly, an Eternal Operating Necessity; or, thirdly, an Endless Round, or Succession of Causes and Effects; if those gentlemen, who would thus point out our God, mean, as they often pretend, that He is any thing more than bare matter; we shall soon find their intention, by separating the terms they have annexed as operators for the assistance of stupid matter: and on our part it will be but common gratitude, to enquire, to which of these three pretended Causes, we are obliged for the particular benefits we receive, or (as members of the great whole) for the formation and order of the universe, or nature itself.
First then; as Chance is the operator assigned in a Fortuitous Concourse of Atoms; we would know, what this Chance, this wise and ingenious artist, is—Is it a substance? No, that is not pretended:—Matter? nor that:—Quality of matter? nor that neither.—What, neither subject, nor attribute?—No.—It is then, what is not; or is not any thing that is: it is, in truth, what, by way of apology, we assign as a cause of any effect produced, when our ignorance or idleness will not permit us to enquire, or find any other;—a meaning, without an idea; or even less, a word without a meaning:—And thus when Chance is introduced for the solution, Chance unluckily happens to leave all the operating burden upon that poor matter it was called to assist. As in the second place I also fear there will be immediate occasion for calling upon Chance to help out their Necessity, and that it will prove equally treacherous as before. For as Necessity is the supposed operator here, if it be asked, is this Necessity distinct from the things it necessitates? The answer is, Yes, by all means; since to assert otherwise, is allowing it to be the thing operated, and not the operator; and so the Original Superior Cause be as far to seek as ever. If then it be asked, Is this Necessity conscious, intelligent, free, or designing? That doubtless is denied, else we have there the very God we desire.—But then, if it should be unluckily started, that if this Necessity is neither designing, conscious, nor intelligent, it is altogether as blind as matter; and if not free, is as much in need of, and equally subjected to a Higher Cause as matter can possibly be; being consequently a Necessity necessitated, and not acting, but acted upon; if this, I say, should be objected, there must either be recourse to the old wise solution, that so it happens; or a Higher Necessity or unintelligent Cause be alleged, and so another to support the second, and another the third, ad infinitum; like the elephant bearing the earth, the crab the elephant, and so on; which procedure, ad infinitum, to assign a Cause, shews that, ad infinitum, they will be as far as ever from assigning a True Cause, and so, ad infinitum, no Cause at all will be assigned.
The third and last shift is an Endless Succession of Causes and Effects, where all the subtilty consists in the word Endless; for whatever is incapable of being a Cause in any time, ever was, and ever will, through eternity, continue equally incapable. And here, if the question be asked, Whether any of these Effects be original, independent, or superintendent? The answer is negative, if it were only to avoid a direct absurdity and contradiction: if then it be asked, what these Effects are? The answer is, that the Effects are no other than matter variously modified and actuated; for that is the utmost degree of perfection they will allow them, for fear of bordering too near upon spirit. Again, if it be asked on the other hand, whether among the Causes, there is any One original or independent? The answer, doubtless is, No; for to allow there were, would be contrary to the hypothesis laid down. But then observe the necessary consequence of all this; for first, if none of these Effects are original, independent, or superintendent; and they all consist of matter variously modified and actuated, they are no other than matter still, whatever action or modification be produced—And secondly, if on the other hand, among the Endless Causes, there is not any one Cause Original, or Independent, there is not any one Cause but what is effected; and every one being effected, the whole, which consists of them, is effected, and therefore is all Effect; and all the Effects being matter actuated and modified, the whole is consequently no other than matter actuated and modified; and so finally recurs, and in every light, view, shift, and evasion, resolves in this, that matter alone operates upon itself; and tho' destitute of design, wisdom, foresight, order, or direction, yet wisely foresees, designs, directs, and orders all things.
BOOK III.
Illustrious, thro' the world's great poem reigns!
The One grows sundry by creative power;
The Eternal's found in each revolving hour;
The Immense appears in every point of space;
The Unchangeable in nature's varying face;
The Invisible conspicuous to our mind;
And Deity in every atom shrined:
From whence exults the animated clod,
And smiling features speak the Parent God;
Who here, and there, and every where abounds:
Air uttering, tells His Harmony in sounds;
The light reveals the Fountain of its rays,
And like the Seraph kindles in His praise;
The floods ambitious to His glory rise,
And seek their Source throughout His ambient skies;
And tune their anthems o'er the warbled ball;
The ball enlivening at His order springs,
And rounding to its central Maker clings:
The Maker! ample in his bounty, spread
The various strata of earth's genial bed ;
Tempered the subject mass with pregnant juice,
And subtile stores, of deep and sacred use;
Salts, oils, and bitumen, and unctuous pitch,
With precious tho' mysterious influence rich;
Mercurial, nitrous, and sulphureous spume,
Fermenting virtual the terrestrial womb.
Hence, where the solar heat and searching air,
Transgressive, pierce our actuated sphere,
The arch-chymists work as in a secret mine,
And nature's crude originals refine;
Here blending mix, here separate, here select,
And purging here the incongruous parts reject;
Perennial bind the flint's impervious rock,
And strict its adamantine texture lock;
And wanton thro' its variegated vein;
Salubrious here the mineral medicine mix;
Here the once potable utensil fix;
Here modify with ever varying change;
And here the similar effluvia range;
Compact the lustre of metallick ore,
The steely, argent, or Corinthian store;
Or severing, cast in nature's purest mould
The dense elixir of refulgent gold.
Thro' sparkling gems the plastick artists play,
And petrify the light's embodied ray;
Now kindle the carbuncle's ruddy flame;
Now gild the chrysolite's transparent beam;
Infuse the saphire's subterraneous sky,
And tinge the topaz with a saffron dye;
With virgin blush within the ruby glow,
And o'er the jasper paint the showery bow.
What secrets earth's prolific entrails hold:
In nature's womb what embryon treasures sleep,
The wondrous natives of the hoary deep:
Whence happy oft', oft' hapless they aspire;
Supply what want can wish, or pride require—
Blest are the blameless means, the curse is the desire.
Tho' fire upon the expiring martyr preys;
The peasant hence manures the exhausted soil,
Tho' lordlings share the product of his toil;
Hence artists in the princely dome survive,
Tho' drones may occupy its ample hive;
Hence medicines yield the salutiferous pill,
But gently qualified can learn to kill:
Hence medals may reveal the patriot's face,
Altho' a tyrant gild the nether space;
Once more return great Socrates to light,
Or with an Alexander blast the sight—
(Who here approves the infamy of fame,
Shares Alexander's guilt, and Alexander's shame)
Nor less the plough-share needs the Lydian blade,
Tho' steel and pride the neighbouring realm invade;
Tho' deadly cruelty can whet their edge:
Such we approve the trade supporting ore,
Tho' avarice purloin the shining store;
In Maro's hand the precious treasure view,
It spreads all bounteous as the heavenly dew.
Shall Nature check the purple colouring globe,
Lest magistrates should trail the splendid robe?
Nor beauteous her adorning brilliants wear,
Lest gems should deck the follies of the fair?
“Ah Nature! thou hadst scaped thy only blot,
“Could man but cease to be—or hitherto were not:
“Ay, there's the task, the labour of our song—
“To prove that All is right, tho' man be wrong.”
And o'er the surface deepest wisdom trace;
The verdurous beauties charm our cherished eyes—
But who'll unfold the Root from whence they rise?
Next to ænigma in Almighty Power;
Who only could infinitude confine,
And dwell Immense within the minim shrine;
The eternal species in an instant mould,
And endless worlds in seeming atoms hold.
Plant within plant, and seed enfolding seed,
For ever—to end never—still proceed;
In forms complete, essentially retain
The future semen, alimental grain;
And these again, the tree, the trunk, the root,
The plant, the leaf, the blossom, and the fruit;
Again the fruit and flower the seed enclose,
Again the seed perpetuated grows,
And Beauty to perennial ages flows.
E'er yet their foliage cloath'd the novel glade;
Gave each a texture of peculiar frame,
And nature correspondent to its name;
Gave different powers to propagate their kind,
And varying means to various ends assign'd;
Then o'er the globe the missive treasure strow'd,
And first the Eternal Hand earth's spacious bosom sow'd.
To give the new consummate birth to light:
The glebe, now pregnant, yields nutritious food;
Lymphatic dews, their mild diluting flood;
The sun affords his rarifying sphere,
And æther breathes its actuating air;
Quatruple, round the temper'd embryon meet,
And its fine tegument fermenting greet;
Whence subtile juices pierce the filmy skin,
Repeating vigorous their attacks within;
Thence thro' the lobes with percolation strain,
And thence infusing thro' their radix drain;
Thence limpid to the plantal root distil ,
And each impregnated aperture fill,
With swoln repletion thro' the portals float,
And now unclasp the nice cutaneous coat;
The radicle now obvious they unfold,
And to its infant lips their liquors hold;
And thro' the veins the milky liquids glide,
Ascending visit the inclusive plume,
(Where Nature wantons in minutest room,
Where folded close, her implicated size
Of trunk, branch, leaf, and future semen lies)
Conspicuous its dilated form display,
And give its texture to apparent day.
Around the plume the guardian lobes arise ,
And fence their minor from inclement skies;
With pious dews his early verdure bathe,
Perform their trust with never failing faith;
Till, self-sufficient, they retire to earth,
And leave the stripling to his right of birth.
Now fervid beams the rising sap exhale,
And air ingredient wings the vital gale;
And colds condense the vegetating mass.
The labial pores of every various root
Their orifice to varying natures suit,
Admit effluvia of peculiar mode,
And delicate the incongruous parts explode.
Salts, oils, and sulphurs, thro' the entrance tend,
And similar, with proper members blend;
To sight, smell, taste, their several powers dispense,
And aptly ravish each luxuriant sense;
Still graceful, vary in some new delight;
Still obvious, please the involuntary sight.
Our transient optick o'er the surface plays,
And Nature's superficial mien surveys;
But rare with deeper inquisition pryes,
Where Beauty's wrapt, recluse from vulgar eyes,
Essential, sits on Truth's Eternal Throne,
And universal, reigns o'er worlds unknown;
Displays her sway thro' unimagined scenes,
Elysian tracts, and philosophic plains:
These, these are climes of ever-living joy;
Truth ne'er can satiate, Reason ne'er can cloy.
Than treasured lustre of Peruvian ore;
Or supererogated store, acquired
By pilgrimage, to saintship long expired.
In Nature's realms no wretched levees wait,
No monarchs hold their arbitrary seat;
Far different law her beauteous empire sways,
And Order dictates her unerring ways.
How first the originate material springs;
How substituted nature moulds her forms,
What tender love her infant embryo warms,
What tempering skill the boon conception frames;
And trace her maze of complicated schemes,
Where differing parts identity compose,
Yet endless how, from One! each varying essence flows;
Each vegetable set in beds of bliss,
Their sap exhaling from the Prime Abyss.
See, bashful why the downward roots retire,
(While up to heaven their kindred trunks aspire)
Obliquely some, and some with steep descent;
Some level, with direct, or tortuous bent;
Some to a root their tethered trunks condemn,
Attracting prone the yet reluctant stem;
And some rotund, with bold projected size,
And intersected horizon, arise.
See, wondrous thus how each sagacious root,
As marksmen, to their several signals shoot;
What Cause revers'd the separate bias guides,
And whence the still dissenting movement glides.
Alike obsequious to Its secret Will,
With pointed cone the yielding strata pass;
Or here, accumulate their bulbous mass;
Here bulky, taper, parted, or entire;
Here writhing, twist their complicated wire;
Here ramified, their forky branches spread;
Or tassell'd here, their fibrous fringes shed;
Adjusted thro' each multifarious sect,
And efficacious to some point elect—
Elect, within while Wisdom dwells replete,
Incomprehensive thro' His sacred seat.
And reach unerring each appointed end;
The maze of endless implication wind,
Directed by the clue of All Perceiving Mind.
To reason's spark, that gilds our sensual clay;
To life (scarce conscious) in the instinctive brute;
To reptile, plant, and vegetating root;
The features in conspicuous semblance shine,
And speak, thro' all, One Parent All Divine.
The plants half animate their powers dispense:
The mouth's analogy their root displays,
And for the intestine viscera purveys;
Their liquors thro' respondent vessels flow,
And organ like their fibrous membranes grow:
Nor yet inadequate their congruous use
Of mucilages, lymph, and lacteal juice;
The flood consimilary ducts receive,
And glands refine the separated wave;
Redounding vapours thro' the pores transpire,
And for the fresh ingredient guests retire.
Revers'd, their trachæ operate from beneath,
And thro' the trunk aerial conduits breathe;
Their lignous fibres with continuous length,
Equivalent, compact a bony strength;
But formed elastic, with inclining shade,
Their yielding stems each stormy gust evade:
And self-erected towers the stately growth.
There art with ample recompence avails,
By interposing skill to poise the eternal scales;
While these, more valid thro' dependence gain,
And strong in indigence on Nature lean.
Thus from the couch of earth's embroider'd bed,
In elegance of vernal foliage spread;
From pulse leguminous, of verdurous hue;
From herbal tribes, bedropp'd with morning dew;
The gourd, inhabiting the pastured glade;
The tufted bush, and umbelliferous shade;
The feeble stems that luscious viands bear,
Nor less sublime their pampered tension rear:
Thro' botany, thro' every sylvan scene,
That various deck the vegetating plain,
Even to the proud primæval sons of earth,
That rise superior in their right of birth,
Whose heights the blasting volley'd thunder stand,
In ruin still magnificently grand;
Distinct, each species of peculiar frame,
Distinct, peculiar love and fondness claim;
As each alone were her appointed heir.
The creepers draw their horizontal trail;
Wide o'er the bank the plantal reptile bends,
Adown its stem the rooty fringe depends,
The feeble boughs with anchoring safety binds,
Nor leaves precarious to insulting winds.
The tendrils next , of slender helpless size,
Ascendant thro' luxuriant pampering rise;
Kind Nature sooths their innocence of pride,
While buoy'd aloft the flowering wantons ride;
With fond adhesion round the cedar cling,
And wreathing circulate their amorous ring;
Sublime with winding maturation grow,
And clench'd retentive gripe the topmost bough;
Here climb direct the ministerial rock,
And clasping firm its steepy fragments lock;
Or various, with agglutinating guile,
Cement tenacious to some neighbouring pile;
Investing green, some fabric here ascend,
And clustering o'er its pinacles depend.
Collateral they spring with mutual aid;
Officious brace their amicable band,
And by reciprocal communion stand:
Bless'd model! (by humanity expell'd)
The whole upholding each, the whole by each upheld.
Their social branch the wedded plexures rear,
(Proximity of combination dear)
High arching, cypher love's enamour'd knot,
And wave the fragrance of inviting grot,
Or cool recess of odoriferous shade,
And fan the peasant in the panting glade;
Or lace the coverture of painted bower,
While from the enamell'd roof the sweet profusions shower.
Here duplicate , the range divides beneath,
Above united in a mantling wreath;
With continuity protracts delight,
Imbrown'd in umbrage of ambiguous night;
Perspicuous the vista charms our eye,
And opens, Janus like, to either sky;
While echo doubles from the warbling throng.
The solar plants adore the lord of day,
With Persian rites idolatrous incline,
And worship towards his consecrated shrine;
By south from east to west obsequious turn,
And moved with sympathetic ardours burn.
To these adverse, the lunar sects dissent,
With convolution of opposed bent;
From west to east by equal influence tend,
And towards the moon's attractive crescence bend;
There, nightly worship with Sidonian zeal,
And queen of heaven Astarte's idol hail.
“O Beauty, trod by proud insulting man,
“This boasted tyrant of thy wondrous ball,
“This mighty, haughty, little lord of all;
“This king o'er reason, but this slave to sense,
“Of wisdom careless, but of whim immense;
“Towards Thee! incurious, ignorant, profane,
“But of his own, dear, strange, productions vain!
“Then, with this champion let the field be fought,
“And nature's simplest arts 'gainst human wisdom brought:
“There kings beneficent, and courts polite;
“Here nature's wealth—there chymist's golden dreams;
“Her texture here—and there the statesman's schemes;
“Conspicuous here let Sacred Truth appear—
“The courtier's word, and lordling's honour there;
“Here native sweets in boon profusion flow—
“There smells that scented nothing of a beau;
“Let justice here unequal combat wage—
“Nor poise the judgment of the law-learn'd sage;
“Tho' all-proportion'd with exactest skill,
“Yet gay as woman's wish, and various as her will.”
Who veil pernicion with the mask of state!
Whence are those domes that reach the mocking skies,
And vainly emulous of nature rise?
Behold the swain projected o'er the vale!
See slumbering peace his rural eyelids seal;
Earth's flowery lap supports his vacant head;
Beneath his limbs her broider'd garment's spread;
And living shade of vegetation lends,
With ever propagated bounty blest,
And hospitably spread for every guest:
No tinsel here adorns a taudry woof,
Nor lying wash besmears a varnish'd roof;
With native mode the vivid colours shine,
And heaven's own loom has wrought the weft divine,
Where art veils art; and beauties beauties close,
While central grace diffused throughout the system flows.
The fibres , matchless by expressive line,
Arachne's cable , or ætherial twine ,
Continuous, with direct ascension rise,
And lift the trunk, to prop the neighbouring skies.
Collateral tubes with respiration play,
And winding in aerial mazes stray.
These as the woof, while warping, and athwart
The exterior cortical insertions dart
Transverse, with cone of equidistant rays,
Whose geometric form the Forming Hand displays.
In nice transparence of minutest cells;
From whence, thro' pores or transmigrating veins
Sublimed the liquid correspondence drains,
Their pithy mansions quit, the neighbouring chuse,
And subtile thro' the adjacent pouches ooze;
Refined, expansive, or regressive pass,
Transmitted thro' the horizontal mass;
Compress'd the lignous fibres now assail,
And entering thence the essential sap exhale;
Or lively with effusive vigour spring,
And form the circle of the annual ring,
The branch implicit of embowering trees,
And foliage whispering to the vernal breeze;
While Zephyr tuned, with gentle cadence blows,
And lull'd to rest consenting eyelids close.
Ah! how unlike those sad imperial beds,
Which care within the gorgeous prison spreads;
Where tedious nights are sunk in sleepless down,
And pillows vainly soft, to ease the thorny crown!
Transplanted chaste within the raptured lay;
And with the linnet gratulate the spring;
Sweep o'er the lawn, or revel on the plain,
Or gaze the florid, or the fragrant scene;
The flowers forensic beauties now admire,
The impalement, foliation, down, attire,
Couch'd in the pannicle, or mantling veil,
That intercepts the keen, or drenching gale;
Its infant bud here swathed with fostering care,
Or fledg'd and opening to the ambient air;
Or bloom dilated in the silken rose,
That flush'd mature, with kindling radiance glows;
Or shrunk in covert of its mantling bower,
(Now ushers evening cool, or chilling shower)
And skill'd prophetic, with eluding form,
Anticipates approach of ruffling storm.
Or now we pore with microscopic eye,
And Nature's intimate contextures spy;
Her œconomics, her implicit laws,
The effects how wondrous deep!—how wondrous High the Cause!
Now view the floret's miniature of state,
And scorn the scepter'd mansions of the great:
Not architrave embellish'd so adorn,
Whose fretted gold reflects the beamy morn;
Luxuriant range at large its ample space;
Or now in elegance the banquet spread,
While millions at the sumptuous feast are fed.
Now see whence various propagations breed,
The sucker, scyon, sprout, and embryon seed
In wall concrete of peachy stone secured,
Or in the bower of wainscot core immured;
Or fœtus in the secondine contain'd,
Its juices thro' the umbilic fibres drain'd;
With birth of prosperous generation spring,
And round, and round, hold on the eternal ring.
While Pleasure whispers in the balmy gale,
Or wantons venial in the revell'd dale,
Delight reclined attends the purling rill;
Health bounds luxuriant o'er the topmost hill;
The mount aspiring Contemplation climbs,
And outward forms to Inward Truth sublimes;
Surveys the worlds that deck the azure skies,
Reflects how beauteous earth's productions rise;
The system one, One Maker stands confess'd,
The Prime, the One, the Wondrous, and the Bless'd;
The One in various forms of Unity Express'd!
For the use of the strata or layers of earth in the conveyance of fountains and sweet waters, see Book II.
those metals affording also many engines, utensils, &c. for procuring and accelerating nourishment, and other conveniences and delights in life—
as also coin, for ascertaining the value, and speeding the transmigration of property in trade and commerce; as may best suit each person's convenience and advantage—
The seed, which, as here described in its vegetative state, may be said to contain or be divided into—
its teguments or coats; the main body included in the coats, and the root and plume, or plant, included in the main body—
the main body (though single in some, and in some more numerous) is generally and distinctly divisible into two equal parts, which are called lobes; and these lobes contain—
the seminal root, whose branches being spread through each lobe in equal moieties, unite at the extremity of the seed in—
radicle; which being supplied with juices in the two methods as above described, (i. e. first from the seminal root, and after from the earth to which it becomes obvious) communicates the nourishment to its plume, or young plant, which is closely included, and shut up in a narrow cavity within the lobes—
which lobes, upon a further growth, are effoliated, and rise about the young plant in two dissimilar leaves, (being now nourished in their turn by the radicle which they had formerly fostered) and thus protect and embrace it round, and nourish its infancy with refreshing dews, which they hold to it as in a basin, embalming it round, while yet the scanty moisture of the radicle is insufficient for its support; till having acted their part on the vegetable stage, nature gives them their discharge, and they rot off, or fall away.
This very principle in our air, or atmosphere, which chiefly conduces to, or is the very essence of animal and vegetable life, is also the very principle of corruption, or the dissolution of the parts of matter, as shall hereafter be made evident.
and supporting the feeble, as the vine, bryony, ivy, &c. and thus equally propagating a perpetuity, as spreading a universality of delights, pleasures, and enjoyments, in—
charming the eye of proportion with the regularity of vistas, and other various dispositions; and forming tuneful mansions and choirs for the feathered musicians.
BOOK IV.
The author having, in the third book, taken a short survey of vegetable nature, proceeds to consider the animal system: and first life in general. That life, perception, &c. are terms applicable to some being of whose essence we can form no adequate idea, verse 7th, &c. Yet that such perception and consciousness are an evident demonstration both of the existence, and simplicity of such essence; and in this simplicity consists what we call personal identity, or sameness, 13: that, nevertheless, we are not to conclude that every organized being is informed with such an essence, so as to have an actual principle of motion and perception; since many such may possibly be no other than pieces of Almighty mechanism, and matter so curiously acted upon, may deceive us with the appearance of internal action, 23. That if ever matter is wrought to such an appearance of life, it is the utmost perfection its nature is capable of; and that it is impossible it should be endued with any real act or perception; demonstrated, 51. That therefore what we call the soul, or such essence so distinct from matter, must exist the same for ever, as it is simple, indissoluble, and unchangeable, 65. The wonderful and inconceivable obligation incumbent on all who have received such a benefit, 75. That as no other return can be made to the Author of beneficence, gratitude and benediction should be universal in their praises from all animate creatures, 97. As all, the most minute and even invisible animalcules, par-
And all his bosom glows with recent fires:
Life, Life, new forms and constitutes the theme!
The song too kindles in the vital flame,
Whose vivid principle diffusive spreads,
And thro' our strain contagious rapture sheds.
Whate'er the spark, the light, the lamp, the ray,
Essence or effluence of Essential Day,
Substance, or transubstantiate, and inshrined,
Soul, Spirit, Reason, Intellect, or Mind;
Or these but terms, that dignity the use
Of some Unknown, some Entity abstruse—
Appropriate to the individual breast;
Whence, independence thro' dependence flows,
And each unknowing his existence , knows;
Existence, varied by Almighty plan,
From lowly reptiles, to the pride of man;
While incorporeal in corporeal dwells,
Distinct, in union, of associate cells;
Whence powers their prime informing acts dispense,
And sovereign guide the ministry of sense.
And locomotive forms the nice machine,
Sublimed and quick thro' elemental strife,
The insensate boasts its vegetative life;
A steaming vapour thro' the mass exhales,
And warming breathes its imitative gales;
Fomenting in the heart's vibration plays,
And circling winds the tubulary maze;
With conscious act the vivid semblance vies,
And subtile now the sprightly nerve supplies;
Unconscious lifts the lucid ball to light,
And glares around with unperceiving sight;
Or studious seems to muse with thought profound,
Or lists as 'waked to catch the flying sound—
So temper'd wondrous by mechanic scheme,
The Sovereign Geometrician knits the frame;
And quick with spirited quintessence fraught:
When objects on the exterior membrane press,
The alarm runs inmost thro' each dark recess,
Impulsive strikes the corresponding springs,
And moves the accord of sympathetic strings;
Effects like acts inevitable rise,
(Preordinate in the Design Allwise)
Yet still their earthly origin retain,
Reductive to the principle terrene,
Tho' curious to deceive with mimic skill,
And feint the dictate of interior will.
Tho' wrought beneath The Almighty's Forming Hand,
Or sacred flame of heaven's empyreal day,
Can yield one glimpse of all-informing mind;
The parts distinct in firm cohesion lie,
Distinct as those that range the distant sky;
Time's fleeting points the unreal self devour,
Varied and lost thro' every changling hour;
Whence, the precarious system, tho' compact,
Can ne'er arrive to individual act;
Since impotence absurdly should ensue,
Distinction be the same, and one be ten, or two.
The soul's irradiance burns with native light,
A pure essential unit, incompound;
Celestial Queen, with conscious scepter graced,
And rights in prime of vital action placed!
Hence by identity all thought subsists,
And one, in the existing one, exists;
The one indissoluble must exist,
And deathless thro' eternity subsist.
Deep Source of Principle, and Light of Light,
Whose Is will Be, whose Will Be ever was,
Of Self Essential Coessential Cause!
If not unhallow'd, nor the song profane,
Nor voice of matin elevation vain;
Prime, as the lark with earliest rapture springs,
And warbling soars to Goodness, warbling sings,
To Thee permissive sings with venial lays,
And wings his pittance of ascending praise—
O! whence to Us? or whence to aught? but Thee!
The word, the bliss, the privilege,—to Be—
Or if to Be, for Thee alone to Be,
Derivative Great Author Sole! from Thee
To pour the largess of perceptive sense,
Sense to perceive, to feel, to find, to know,
That we enjoy, and You Alone bestow.
Could increation crave Thy Vital Skill,
The virtual Fiat of Creative Will?
Less can Thy Flow of Plenitude receive
Reversion from the goods Its Bounty gave.
In all thy feeling soft suggestions drest,
And heave the swell of each exulting breast!
Thou Sentiment of friendship's cordial tye!
Thou Thanks expressive from the moistening eye!
Thou pledge assured of firm Dependence dear,
Reposed on Omnipresence, ever near—
Thro' all that breathe, waft, waft thy hallow'd gale,
And let the universal wish exhale;
In symphony of vocal transport raise,
And mount to Heaven the tributary praise!
Whence, happy creatures! all your blessings flow,
Your voice to praise Him, and your skill to know;
Whence, as the drops that deck the morning's robe,
And gem the bosom of the twinkling globe,
Profusive gifts the Smiling Goodness sheds,
And boon around His boundless plenty spreads;
Inscrutable amid the etherial space,
That mock unseen, while human optic pries
Or aids the search with microscopic eyes,
The sweets of Deified Complacence claim;
To Him display the wonders of their frame,
His own contexture, where Eternal Art,
Emotive, pants within the alternate heart:
And hence impulsive bounds the sanguine tide,
With blithe pulsation beats the arterial maze,
And thro' the branching complication plays;
Its wanton floods the tubal system lave,
And to the veins resign their vital wave;
Thro' glands refining , shed specific juice,
Secreted nice to each appropriate use;
Or here expansile , in meanders bend,
While thro' the pores nutritive portions tend,
Their equal aliment dividual share,
And similar to kindred parts adhere.
From thousand rills the flux continuous drains,
Now swells the porta, now the cava veins;
Here rallies last the recollected blood,
And on the right pours in the cordial flood:
While gales ingredient to the thorax pass,
And breathing lungs imbibe the etherial mass;
Whence, their licentious ducts dilation claim,
And open obvious to the welcome stream,
Expulsive springs its recontinual course.
The captive air impatient of retreat,
Refines expansive with internal heat,
Its levity too rare to poise the exterior weight;
Compressive round the incumbent æther lies,
And strict its elemental fold applies,
Whence either pulmonary lobe expires,
And all the interior subtile breath retires;
Subsiding lungs their labouring vessels press,
Affected mutual with severe distress,
While towards the left their confluent torrents gush,
And on the heart's sinister cavern rush;
Collected there complete their circling rout,
And vigorous from their venal engine shoot.
Again the heart's constrictive powers revive,
And the fresh fountain thro' the Aorta drive;
Arterial valves oppose the refluent blood,
And swift injections push the lingering flood;
Sped by the last, the foremost currents bound,
And thus perennial run the purpling round.
From India south the expanded oceans steam,
Intense their fervid exhalations rise,
And scale the steep of equinoctial skies;
Collected now progressive proudly sail,
And ride high born upon the trading gale;
Now 'thwart the trope, or zone antartic steer,
And now aloof the Cape's emergence veer;
Now wheeling dextrous wind the Æthiop main,
And shading now the Atlantic ocean stain;
Now westward hang o'er Montezuma's throne,
And view the worlds to ancient worlds unknown:
Around the antipodes the adventurers roam,
And exiled never hope their native home;
Some pious drops the restless vagrants shed,
And now afresh their wing'd effusion spread;
Askance, or cross the broad Pacific deep,
Obliquely north the floating squadrons sweep;
Now hurry'd on Sarmatian tempests roll;
Sinister round extreme Imaus bend,
And glooming o'er the Scythian realms depend;
Now driven before the keen Septentrion fly,
And intercept the clear Norossian sky;
Now view where swathed the mighty Tartar lay;
Now sidelong hover on the Caspian sea;
Now gather blackening from the farther shore,
And o'er Armenia sluice the impetuous store;
Euphrates here and rapid Tigris swell,
And weep their streams where great Darius fell.
Primæval there, the blissful garden stood;
Here, youthful Ammon stemm'd the torrent flood.
Circumfluous rolls the long disparted tide,
And mighty realms the wandering flux divide:
Here, Nineveh, and fair Seleucia rise;
There, Babel vain, attempts the laughing skies,
While proudly round the female structures gleam,
And break and tremble in the blazing stream;
Proficient whence, the liquid confluence meet,
And thro' the gulph their kindred ocean greet;
Urg'd by the moon, abjure the pearly shore,
And travel whence they sprung—to travel as before.
As disproportion'd, thro' allusion wide!
What tho' we join this globe's encumber'd frame,
The deep unfathom'd, and the copious stream,
With all the appendage of incumbent skies,
To match the frame of animalcule size—
Our theme no great (of One exclusive ) knows;
No little, when from One, that One, it flows;
This globe an atom to the native space,
Where vortical it wheels its annual race;
A point to worlds that circling blaze around;
Lost in the whole , these vanish in their turn,
And but with relative effulgence burn:
But where finite to Infinite aspires,
Shrunk from its Lord, the universe retires;
A shade its substance, and a blank its state,
Where One, and only One, is only Great!
All equidistant , or alike all near,
The reptile minim, or the rolling sphere;
In form finite Infinitude express;
Express the seal of Character Divine,
And bright, thro' His informing Radiance, shine.
And worlds on worlds illimited explores;
No end of thought, or time, or space is found,
And each immense, are each, in either drown'd:
So when the mind to central beauty tends,
And strict to fix some certain period bends,
In vain its ultimate contraction's sought,
And still delusive, shuns the labouring thought;
While That Immense ! whence every essence came,
Still Endless reigns in each minutest frame.
Nor deem our animalcule's texture vain;
Where tuned thro' every corresponding part,
Its system closes in consummate art.
Quick, from the mind's imperial mansion shed,
With lively tension spins the nervous thread,
With flux of animate effluvia stored,
And tubes of nicest perforation bored,
Whose branching maze thro' every organ tends,
And unity of conscious action lends;
And wing the message of informing mind ;
Or objects to the ideal seat convey;
Or dictate motion with internal sway.
Coop'd in his camp the Julian hero lay,
Full on the ditch the dusk Numidians bound,
And Rome's last hopes recruited rage around;
Serenely still, amid the dread alarms,
See, Cæsar sits, the mighty soul of arms!
See, at his nod, the various combat burns,
And the wing'd scout still turns, and still returns!
While he, the war sedately weigh'd informs,
Himself unmoved amid surrounding storms.
The Soul assumes her intellectual throne;
Each rising thought with prompt observance catch,
The tidings of internal passion spread,
And thro' each part the swift contagion shed.
With motive throes the quickening limbs conceive;
The blood tempestuous, pours a flushing wave;
With raging swell alternate pantings rise;
And terrors rowl within the kindling eyes.
The mind thus speeds her ministry abroad,
And rules obedient matter with a nod;
The obsequious mass beneath her influence yields,
And even her will the unwieldy fabric wields.
Thro' winding paths her sprightly envoys fly,
Or watchful in the frontier senses lie;
Brisk on the tongue the grateful gusto greet,
And thro' the nerves return the ideal sweet;
Or incense from the nostrils gate exhale,
And to their goddess waft the odorous gale;
Attentive round the tortuous ear patrole,
There each sonorous undulation wait,
And thrill in rapture to the mental seat;
Or wondrous to the organick vision pass,
And to the mind inflect the magick glass;
Here born elate upon etherial tides,
The blythe illuminated glory glides,
And on the beam the painted image rides ;
Those images that still continuous flow,
Effluviated around, above, below,
True to the colour, distance, shape, and size,
That from essential things perpetual rise,
And obvious gratulate our wondering eyes;
Convey the bloom of nature's smiling scene ,
The vernal landskip, and the watery main;
The frisking lambkin, and the wanton fawn;
The sight how grateful to the social soul,
That thus imbibes the blessings of the whole,
Joys in their joy, while each inspires his breast
With blessings multiplied from all that's blest!
Nor less yon heights the unfolding heaven display,
Its nightly twinkle, and its streaming day;
The page impress'd conspicuous on the skies,
A preface to the Book of Glory lies;
We mount the steep, high born upon delight,
While hope aspires beyond—and distances the sight.
Thus heaven and earth, whom varying graces deck,
In full proportions paint the visual speck;
So awful did the Almighty's forming will,
Amazing texture, and stupendous skill,
And the bright gem with lucid humours lave ;
So gave the ball's collected ray to glow,
And round the pupil arch'd his radiant bow ;
Full in a point unmeasured spaces lie,
And worlds inclusive dwell within our eye.
Yet useless was this textured wonder made,
Were Nature, beauteous object! undisplay'd;
Those, both as vain, the object, and the sight,
Wrapt from the radiance of revealing light;
As vain the bright illuminating beam,
Unwafted by the medium's airy stream:
Yet vain the textured eye, and object fair,
The sunny lustre, and continuous air;
All, all its grace, and lifeless glories, vain;
Till from the Eternal sprung this effluent Soul,
Bless'd to inspect, and comprehend the whole!
O whence, say whence this endless Beauty springs,
This awful, dear, delightful depth of things?
Whence but from Thee! Thou Great One! Thou Divine!
Placid! and Mild! All Gracious! All Benign!
Thou Nature's Parent! and Supreme Desire!
How loved the offspring!—and how bless'd the Sire!
How ever Bless'd! as blessings from Thee flow,
And spread all bounteous on Thy works below:
The reptile , wreathed in many a wanton play;
And insect, basking in the shine of day;
The grazing quadruped, and plumy choir
That earthly born to heavenly heights aspire;
That numberless adorn our future theme,—
Fed in Thy bounty, fashion'd in Thy Skill,
Cloath'd in Thy Love, instructed in Thy will,
Safe in Thy conduct, their unerring guide,
All-save the child of ignorance and pride—
The paths of Beauty and of Truth pursue,
And teach proud man those lectures which ensue!
Tho' (upon the reasons and authority of an eminent author) it has long been admitted, that personal identity, or sameness, consists in consciousness; yet as consciousness, whether by direct, or reflex perception, may, at most, be no other than the inseparable operation, or active principle of some simple, unchangeable, or individual substance; it is obvious to dispute, that such identity, or sameness, may more truly exist in the simplicity, or unchangeableness of such substance, than in any operation, whether separable, or inseparable: and yet, on the other hand, it is most evident, that a consciousness agreeing through differently distant points of duration, or (if I may be allowed the expression) a consentaneous perception, is the highest demonstration of the identity of such substance, as no one substance, or being, can perceive for another; which again is a further demonstration of the simplicity, or unchangeableness of such substance, as it now perceives for that very self, which it also perceives was the same, or identical self, from the first instant of its perception, notwithstanding all the various changes, and revolutions it has observed through all nature beside—
neither the manner in which the union between such substance and matter is made, so as to inform the stupid mass with an action utterly alien to its nature.
In the account to which this note is annexed, I have doubtless assigned a capacity of higher perfections to matter than it will easily be admitted susceptible of; and therefore I was obliged to call in no less than—
Omnipotence to support the scheme, who actuating and informing all nature by his wisdom, as he created it by his will, the creature so subjected cannot possibly withstand the creating power, and nothing to him is impossible, but impossibility, that is impotence, or what in the very supposition destroys that very power it would assert;—nor are such impotential hypotheses unfrequently started, and defended by a misguided zeal, which in the behalf of Omnipotence would destroy the very nature of power, indistinctly confounding truth and falsehood, and thereby ascribing and subjecting all things rather to an unaccountable arbitrary will, than to an infinite power ever guided equally by that infinite wisdom which equally and infinitely contemplates and actuates nature, agreeable to that order and those laws originally by that wisdom impressed on all things.—I should be unwilling to lay an error of this kind to the charge of a worthy prelate of a neighbouring nation, author of a late most learned treatise, wherein he denies that brutes, or the inferior animal system is endued with any being distinct from matter, and yet does not seem to me to account for the existence of actions of such animals as mere machines; but if I do not grossly misapprehend him, he ascribes to them, and consequently to mere matter under the term of animal life, an inferior kind of perception and ideas, and thus has carried the perfections of matter to a higher pitch than I can pretend to with any appearance of reason or even possibility.—I shall hereafter have a more ample and proper opportunity to shew the absurdity of this hypothesis, and shall at present only hint a few reasons that are applicable to the occasion, which are these—
Whether matter be divisible ad infinitum, or not, if it is capable of any degree of perception, such perception must either be naturally inherent, or arise from some peculiar modification:—now as no two parts of matter can exist in the same place, (for then neither part would exist in any place, as each would occupy the place of the other) the parts however harmoniously modified, or closely united, are absolutely distinct from each other, since their coherence can only consist in neighbourhood or contiguity, and not in corporation:—if therefore the parts so distinct have any inherent perception, they must have a perception as distinct from each other as their parts; and if divisible ad infinitum, there is such a confusion of indistinct distinct perceptions, as is too absurd for any thing but a jest.—But if matter is reducible to atoms, and every atom supposed to perceive, I would ask how atoms can be organized so as to see, hear, smell, &c. and if organization is necessary to the perception of matter, either such perception arises intirely new from the organization, or the organization only gives a liberty of action to the perception that was prior and distinctly latent in every part:—but if in the former supposition such perception is solely produced by the organization or modification, organization or modification, however nice or mechanic, being no other than a mode of form, or figure, the most extraneous and incidental of any property of matter, and perception being the most absolute and simple of any thing we know, and by which alone we know all that we do know; such hypothesis I say carries in itself such a palpable contradiction and confutation, as to make what is simple, absolute, and invariable, to be produced by what is most compound, precarious, and changeable, nay, by a mere relative term, figure being no other than the circumscription of space surrounding a finite body.—But, if in the last case and refuge, organization or modification is supposed only to give a power of action to what was before latent in the parts of matter, if the perceptions continue still as distinct as the parts, here must arise such a multiplicity of perceptions, as must destroy and confound the very operation of the organs by which the parts perceive. And lastly, if it be alleged that by the modification, the parts become so loving and neighbourly, as by sharing the perception of each other to make one amicable union of the whole, each part must still retain its proper right to its portion of perception; and if upon any accident a member of the system should be lopped off, why then truly a piece of such united perception being gone, we have only a piece of perception remaining; and thus also perception the most simple of all units must be daily and hourly divided by the perpetual flux of matter—
Whence I must necessarily and inevitably conclude, that whatever being is endued with the least degree of perception, must be a being, substance, or essence, as widely and oppositely distinct from matter, as any two things can be imagined: and though I do not see but such essences may be of infinitely different natures, and consequently differ in their manners and degrees of powers and perfections; yet as no being can perish but by annihilation, which though no contradiction to Almighty power, can yet never be admitted consistent with that creating wisdom which does nothing in vain; since even matter is otherwise imperishable, however its variation may deceive us, which only arises from its accidental properties of divisibility and cohesion: I must from the whole as necessarily and inevitably conclude, that what ever being is endued with any degree of real perception, as it cannot be affected with those accidental properties of matter, neither can it be affected with the variation that arises thereon, and must consequently exist in a higher enjoyment of powers and perfections, and that for ever.
The meaning of the expression is, that the reason or necessity of the Deity's existence is included in himself.
As I claim no advantage from a poetical licence, to assert any thing contrary to what I apprehend as truth; it may reasonably be demanded here, how it comes to be known that there are animalcules so minute, as cannot come under the cognizance of our senses, by which alone we can perceive them. But I think it may more reasonably be answered; that since for many ages past the continual and successive improvements that have been made in natural philosophy, by perpetually displaying new and unimagined scenes of knowledge, do at the same time demonstrate there are many yet unopened; and since the use of glasses shews us how much our eyes were defective, and the further invention and improvements of such glasses still shew the defect of all the former, and yet can never arrive to the perception of any part of matter or inanimate body more minute than many systems and species of beings endued with animal life; I say, upon such consideration, it would be extremely absurd to stop here, and assert there is nothing further left for an Infinite and All Operating Wisdom.
And further—As equivocal generation, upon the soundest reasons, search, and experiments, is most justly exploded—however difficult it may appear to our apprehension, it is most certain, that such animal life in any material being, however minute, cannot exist without organization; since upon its supposition of being a mere machine, it must still have within, and throughout, those secret wheels and springs of motion, to which the machines of human artists may bear an inferior analogy or resemblance. And on the supposition of its being immaterial, but in union with a material vehicle; if the being in such union is perceptive, there then must consequently be a proper medium or organization for the conveyance to such perception—And again, this organization in the present flux and incertain state of matter, must be supported, continued, and supplied by as proper and equivalent means, as—
sanguification; the manner of which (so long and often debated) is as clearly and intelligibly represented, as the conciseness of this plan will admit; and is in some measure illustrated by the following—
allusion; where the earth may be considered as representing the solids of the animal system—the exhalations and streams as representing the circulating fluids—the wind or gales conveying those exhalations, the interior breath—and the influence of the moon on tides, the external influence of the atmosphere, which by compressing the thorax, and lungs, acts as antagonist to the natural contraction of the heart's muscular texture; and by embracing the outward members of the body, thereby, in some measure, actuates and assists the blood to mount in its return, and ascent, contrary to all the known laws of motion.
That the former comparison is by no means inadequate; great and little, being but relative terms, in respect of finite essences; and magnitude, or minuteness, as they appear or disappear reciprocally by comparison, depending barely on the relations, and not the essences or nature of things; as the term little is greater than what is less, and is only little by being compared with something greater; so that, properly speaking, whatever is finite, in respect of what is finite, is not really little; whereas, on the other hand, in respect of infinity, all things finite are equally diminutive; being equally remote from—
thus to any person, who should compare this stupendous globe of earth and ocean, to its vortex, or the vast extent of space that includes our planetary system, in which Saturn takes thirty years to finish his circle round the sun; upon the supposition that such person were transported to the sun in the center of our vortex, and the earth transported beyond the planet Saturn, to the uttermost verge of the vortex; this earth, though shining with reflected light, would not then appear even as a point, and would only be visible by the assistance of a telescope.—
Again, should such person contemplate the surrounding vortexes within his ken, where all the planets or inhabited worlds disappear, and nothing is perceeived but a glimmering ray shed from the several suns that shine each in the center of their proper vortex; upon comparing our vortical system to those other worlds or systems that appear numberless in his view; it is evident, that in the comparison, our system would barely hold the proportion of a unit in number, or a point in magnitude—
and yet further, should our thoughts extend to take in those other vortexes, systems, and suns, that are only visible by the help of glasses; and extending yet further, comprehend the whole imaginable and grand material system or universe: in this comparison, all the visible worlds in their turn would shrink to a proportionate point.—
But should we attempt yet higher, and compare the universe of matter, to immensity, the attribute of Deity; here the whole universal system, with which our thoughts were so greatly expanded, quite vanishes; since whatever is finite, as finite, will admit of no comparative relation with Infinity; for whatever is less than infinite, is still infinitely distant from Infinity, and lower than infinite distance the lowest or least cannot sink—
and yet by being creatures, even the most seemingly despicable, bear such relation to their Creator, as expresses His stamp and character sufficient to make it most highly valuable to all its fellow-creatures; who are themselves only valuable, by sharing and partaking the same Divine Influence—
which Divine Influence or character not only declares the immediate operation and art of omnipotence, but even so far is expressive of the very attribute of Deity, that whereas outwardly we can assign no certain bounds to the works of an infinite energy—
so; on the other hand, within we are as much lost and bewildered, in attempting to find or assign any point or period in the texture of the most minute animalcule—
while the harmony and infinity of the Eternal Artist are, in some degree; impressed on his works; and as outwardly we can find no bounds, so inwardly we can find no end of art and beauty—
Shall we then slight, or deem that little, in which immensity is so conspicuous? or trivial, which could employ no less than infinite wisdom and power?
It has already been proved in this book, where the circulation of the blood was treated of (vide supra) that the least animalcule must distinctly and perfectly have all the proportion, symmetry, and adjustment of that organized texture, which is indispensably necessary for the several functions of animal life: and as I there chose the smallest of imaginable animal creatures for the general instance of the oeconomy of an animal body; so here I continue it as an instance of general motion and sensation, both of which are performed by the mediation of the nerves, that all tend to, and arise from the brain and spinal marrow. And though formerly I shewed that matter when so curiously organized, might possibly be susceptible of motion, and even the appearance of sensation, by the correspondence of its inward texture with the outward impulse, or impressions made on it, like the answering harmony of a musical instrument (vide supra); yet I further demonstrated, that bare matter cannot possibly be susceptible of the least real sensation, or perception (vide supra). I am therefore obliged, upon this occasion, and on the supposition of actual sensation, to introduce—
a being of a nature distinct from matter, which being situate in the original point of motion and sensation—
(like Julius Cæsar in his camp at Ruspina in Afric, when attacked by Scipio and the confederate forces of Juba) without moving from that situation, receives all the concurrent intelligencies from abroad, by which means it is instructed to send forth its orders and emissaries as occasions require, and thus directs and informs the whole bodily system.
It is an observation of an author learned in the law, that “non omne simile quatuor pedi-“bus currit;” yet as our passions (the operation of which is above described) may be called a state of warfare, the simile even in that respect is not unjust.
I did not think it necessary to insert here the sense of feeling, not only because there is no special or peculiar organ to which it bears relation, but because I take it for a sort of universal sense, all sensation being performed by contact; and so—
seeing, being but a different kind of touch, or feeling, agreeable and accommodated to the difference of objects that are thereby perceived.
and as by means of this miraculous organ of sight, the beauties of earth are conspicuous, so in the first page of heaven expanded before us, to raise our hope to an assurance of further bliss.
The infinitely wise adjustment of nature demonstrated; inasmuch as the eye had been useless without the object, both eye and object useless without light, the eye, the object, and the light, still useless without the medium of air for conveyance, and altogether as useless without.
This paragraph was added as a hint of the following part, which chiefly treats of the arts and instincts of the inferior animal system: which subject, as it is less abstruse, so, it is probable, it will be more agreeable than any hitherto treated of.
BOOK V.
And trace even Life to its Eternal Spring—
The Eternal Spring! whence streaming bounty flows;
The Eternal Light! whence every radiance glows;
The Eternal Height of indetermin'd space!
The Eternal Depth of Condescending Grace!
Supreme! and Midst! and Principle! and End!
The Eternal Father! and the Eternal Friend!
The Eternal Bliss! whence every creature's blest—
While man, even man, the lavish goodness shares,
The wretch offends, and yet His Goodness spares;
Still to the wayward wight indulgent turns,
And kindly courts him to the peace he spurns;
Emits the beam of intellectual light—
Bright is the beam, and wilful is the night—
While Nature amply spreads the illustrious scene,
And renders all pretext of error vain:
Unfolded wide her obvious pages lie,
To win attention from the wandering eye;
Full to convince us, to instruct us sage,
Strict to reform, and beauteous to engage.
The mute harangue our every sense invades;
The apparent precepts of the Eternal Will,
His every work, and every object fill;
Round with our eyes His revelation wheels,
Our every touch his demonstration feels.
Thee, the sole Source, whence sense, and science flow!
Then must all faculty, all knowledge fail,
And more than monster o'er the man prevail.
Amid omniscient art, to search for chance,
Blind to the charms of Nature's beauteous frame;
Nor made our organ vocal, to blaspheme:
Not thus He will'd the creatures of his nod,
And made the mortal, to unmake his GOD;
Breathed on the globe, and brooded o'er the wave,
And bid the wide obsequious world conceive:
Spoke into being , myriads, myriads rise,
And with young transport gaze the novel skies;
Glance from the surge , beneath the surface scud,
Or cleave enormous the reluctant flood;
Or rowl vermicular their wanton maze,
And the bright path with wild meanders glaze;
Frisk in the vale , or o'er the mountains bound,
Or in huge gambols shake the trembling ground;
The plume creates, and then directs the gale:
While active gaiety, and aspect bright,
In each expressive, sums up all delight.
Or volubility of numerous song,
Can Nature's infinite productions range,
Or with her ever varying species change?
Not the famed bard, in whose surviving page,
Troy still shall stand, and fierce Pelides rage;
Not this the Mantuan's rival muse could hope;
Nor thou, sole object of my envy,—Pope!
Safe in the medium of their native deep;
Haply, when future beauteous scenes invite,
Haply our line may draw those scenes to light.
With just propriety of beauties deck'd;
Consummate each , adapted to its state,
And highly in the lowest sphere complete.
Well worth the song, since worth The Almighty's care;
Since even the smallest from the Great One springs,
Great and conspicuous in minutest things!
With vital streams thro' every organ warm'd!
External round the spiral muscle winds,
And folding close the interior texture binds;
Secure of limbs or needless wing he steers,
And all one locomotive act appears:
His rings with one elastic membrane bound,
The prior circlet moves the obsequious round;
The next, and next, its due obedience owes,
And with successive undulation flows.
Their stores of lubricating guile secrete;
Still opportune, with prompt emission flow,
And slipping frustrate the deluded foe;
When the stiff clod their little augers bore,
And all the worm insinuates thro' the pore.
Tenacious Snails their silent progress trace;
Thro' foreign fields secure from exile roam,
And sojourn safe beneath their native home.
Their domes self-wreathed , each architect attend,
With mansions lodge them, and with mail defend:
And mocks secluded from incumbent storms;
Till gates, unbarring with the vernal ray,
Give all the secret hermitage to day;
Then peeps the sage from his unfolding doors,
And cautious heaven's ambiguous brow explores:
Towards the four winds four telescopes he bends,
And on his own astrology depends;
Assured he glides beneath the smiling calm,
Bathes in the dew, and sips the morning balm;
The peach this pampering epicure devours,
And climbing on the topmost fruitage towers.
Least accurate of all the wondrous train,
Or multipede, earth's leafy verdure creep;
Or on the pool's new mantling surface play,
And range a drop, as whales may range the sea:
Or ply the rivulet with supple oars,
And oft, amphibious, course the neighbouring shores;
Or sheltering, quit the dank inclement sky,
And condescend to lodge where princes lie;
There tread the ceiling, an inverted floor,
And from its precipice depend secure:
Or who nor creep , nor fly, nor walk, nor swim,
But claim new motion with peculiar limb,
Successive spring with quick elastic bound,
And thus transported pass the refluent ground.
And buoy'd upon their own inventions rise;
And mounting o'er the distant zenith ride.
Natives of earth, and habitants of air;
Like warriors stride, oppress'd with shining mail,
But furl'd, beneath, their silken pennons veil:
Deceived our fellow reptile we admire,
His bright endorsement, and compact attire,
When lo! the latent springs of motion play,
And rising lids disclose the rich inlay;
The tissued wing its folded membrane frees,
And with blithe quavers fans the gathering breeze;
Elate towards heaven the beauteous wonder flies,
And leaves the mortal wrapp'd in deep surprize.
Elect, to win the seven times widow'd Fair,
The angelic form, concealed in human guise,
Deceived the search of his associate's eyes;
Till swift each charm bursts forth like issuing flame,
And circling rays confess his heavenly frame;
And waving radiance o'er his plumage burns:
In awful transports rapt, the youth admires,
While light from earth the dazzling shape aspires.
And even the still familiar wonders please,
These but the sketch , the garb, the veil of things,
Whence all our depth of shallow science springs;
Think, should this curtain of Omniscience rise,
Think of the sight! and think of the surprize!
Whelm'd on our soul, and lightning on our view!—
How would the vain disputing wretches shrink,
And shivering, wish they could no longer think;
Reject each model, each reforming scheme,
No longer dictate to the Grand Supreme,
But waking, wonder whence they dared to dream!
Replete with sacred and mysterious birth,
And Reason's task is, only to Adore.
Ten thousand thousand gaily gilded forms,
Bask in the beam, and beautify the day;
Who'd think these airy wantons so adorn,
Were late his vile antipathy and scorn,
Prone to the dust, or reptile thro' the mire,
And ever thence unlikely to aspire?
Or who with transient view , beholding, loaths
Those crawling sects, whom vilest semblance cloaths;
Who, with corruption, hold their kindred state,
As by contempt, or negligence of fate;
Could think, that such, revers'd by wondrous doom,
Sublimer powers and brighter forms assume;
From death, their future happier life derive,
And tho' apparently entomb'd, revive;
And wing the regions of unwonted skies;
So late depress'd, contemptible on earth,
Now elevate to heaven by second birth?
Led by the marvellous, absurd delight;
No golden ass , no tale Arabians feign;
Nor flitting forms of Naso's magic strain,
Deucalion's progeny of native stone,
Or armies from Cadmean harvests grown;
With many a wanton and fantastic dream,
The lawrel , mulberry , and bashful stream ;
Tithonus chang'd and garrulous with age.
Not such mutations deck the chaster song,
Adorn'd with Nature, and with Truth made strong;
No debt to fable, or to fancy due,
And only wondrous facts reveal'd to view.
Tho' numberless each tribe and species fair,
Who wing the noon, and brighten in the blaze,
Innumerous as the sands which bend the seas;
These have their organs , arts, and arms, and tools,
And functions exercised by various rules;
The saw, axe, auger, trowel, piercer, drill;
The neat alembick, and nectareous still:
But war, the force and fury of the foe,
The spear, the fauchion, and the martial mail,
And artful stratagem where strength may fail.
Each tribe peculiar occupations claim,
Peculiar beauties deck each varying frame;
Attire and food peculiar are assigned,
And means to propagate their varying kind.
Or fraught with scientific craft innate,
With conscious skill their oval embryon shed,
Where native first their infancy was fed:
Or on some vegetating foliage glued;
Or o'er the flood they spread their future brood;
A slender cord the floating jelly binds,
Eludes the wave, and mocks the warring winds;
And pearls in living ranges greet our eyes.
In firmest oak they scoop a spacious tomb,
And lay their embryo in the spurious womb:
Some flowers, some fruit, some gems, or blossoms chuse,
And confident their darling hopes infuse;
While some their eggs in ranker carnage lay,
And to their young adapt the future prey.
Each tepid air its motive influence breaths,
Mysterious springs the wavering life supply,
And quickning births unconscious motion try;
Mature their slender fences they disown,
And break at once into a world unknown.
Whate'er peculiar indigence can crave:
Profuse at hand the plenteous table's spread,
And various appetites are aptly fed.
Nor less each organ suits each place of birth,
Finn'd in the flood, or reptile o'er the earth;
Each organ, apt to each precarious state,
As for eternity designed complete.
Take all as due, still thoughtless that they owe.
And whisper wonders not to be exprest;
Each owns his error in his later cares,
And for the new unthought of world prepares:
New views, new tastes, new judgments are acquired,
And all now loath delights so late admired.
In confidence the solemn shroud they weave,
Or build the tomb, or dig the deadly grave;
Intrepid there resign their parting breath,
And give their former shape the spoils of death;
Thro' metamorphoses, new forms assume:
On death their true exalted life depends,
Commencing there, where seemingly it ends.
Each from the long, the mortal sleep revives;
The tombs pour forth their renovated dead,
And, like a dream, all former scenes are fled.
But O! what terms expressive may relate
The change, the splendor of their new form'd state?
Their texture nor composed of filmy skin,
Of cumbrous flesh without, or bone within,
But something than corporeal more refined,
And agile as their blithe informing mind.
In every eye ten thousand brilliants blaze,
And living pearls the vast horizon gaze;
And heaven's own wardrobe has array'd their frame;
Each spangled back bright sprinkling specks adorn,
Each plume imbibes the rosy tinctured morn;
Spread on each wing the florid seasons glow,
Shaded and verg'd with the celestial bow,
Where colours blend an ever varying dye,
And wanton in their gay exchanges vie.
The pride of fools, and pity of the wise;
Not all the shew and mockery of state,
The little, low, fine follies of the great;
Not all the wealth which eastern pageants wore,
What still our idolizing worlds adore;
Can boast the least inimitable grace,
Which decks profusive this illustrious race.
Or plunge the nether ocean's dread profound;
There mete Leviathan's enormous length,
Adorn'd with terrors, and unmatch'd in strength,
And tempests issue while his nostril breathes.
His shade extensive cools the distant lands;
Encamp'd, an army on his shoulder lies,
And o'er his back proud citadels arise.
Which all perceive, and envy deems complete.
“O Nature!” cries the wretch of human birth,
“O why a step-dame to this lord of earth?
“To brutes indulgent bends thy partial care,
“While just complainings fill our natal air.
“Helpless, uncloathed, the pride of nature lies,
“And Heaven relentless hears his viceroy's cries.
“O wherefore not with native bounties bless'd,
“Nor thus in humble poor dependance dress'd?
“The downy feather, and the wintry fleece;
“The crocodile's invulnerable scale,
“Or the firm tortoise's impervious mail;
“The strength of elephants, the rein deer's speed,
“Fleet and elastic as the bounding steed;
“The peacock's state of gorgeous plumage add,
“Gay as the dove in golden verdure clad;
“Give me the scent of each sagacious hound,
“The lynx's eye, and linnet's warbling sound;
“The soaring wing and steerage of the crane,
“And spare the toil and dangers of the main:
“O why of these thy bounteous goods bereft,
“And only to interior Reason left?
“There, there alone, I bless thy kind decree;
“Nor cause of grief, or emulation see.”
And man is, only in his wants, content;
Indocile where he needs instruction most,
His only error is his only boast.
Too wise to take Omniscience for your guide,
Those rules from insects, birds, and brutes discern,
Which from the Maker you disdain to learn!—
The filial sanctitude, and nuptial tie,
Patience in want, and faith to persevere,
The endearing sentiment, and tender care,
Courage o'er private interest to prevail,
And die all Decii for the public weal.
And skill'd in arts and sciences profound,
Their textured webs with matchless craft surprize,
Their buildings in amazing structures rise:
To them each clime, and longitude is known,
Each finds a chart and compass of his own;
They judge the influence of every star,
And calculate the seasons from afar;
Thro' devious air pursue the certain way,
Nor ever from the Conscious Dictate stray.
But more especially visible in the animate creation, so infinitely diversified in the several species and kinds of—
Whose characteristic of infinite power and wisdom is equally conspicuous in all, since even the lowest can be derived from no less than the Highest; and, in that respect, the lowest, though apparently despicable, is most highly valuable, since the same Extensive Benignity condescends even to the—
With every other mean and method accommodated to its sphere of action; and conducing to the safety and perfection of its state.
The same infinite Wisdom operating ever equally, though variously, is no less admirable in the different apparatus for the snail's motion, as differently adapted to its different state and occasions—
by a broad and strong skin on either side the belly, and the emission of a glutinous slime; by the assistance of which they adhere to any surface more firmly than they could do with claws or talons.
The advantage of their shells, which they form by a froth or petrifying juice, which they secreted from their body; and at any time repair a fracture or breach in their building, which serves them both for house and armour.
And which they close up during the winter, to shut out the inclemency of the weather, and also to prevent any consumption of the fluids; by which means they want no nourishment at a time that they cannot be readily provided.
I have inserted this opinion of snails having eyes at the ends of their horns, rather in submission to authority, than that I am really persuaded it is so. However, they may, in a great measure, be said to see with their touch, which in this part is extremely sensible, and equally serves their purpose—
and since the common earth-worm and snail (which seem the most despicable of all reptiles) are so curiously adorned, and provided in all respects, how amazing must the same conduct, care, and artifice be, through the several scenes of minute animalcules! who leave no place empty of suitable inhabitants, and are doubtless of greater consequence in nature, than our partial and narrow way of thinking may imagine.
Spiders, &c. whose flights are owing to a thread of inconceivable fineness and levity, which they dart, on occasion, from their bodies, and which being buoyed up by the least breeze, bears off the animalcule to which it is annexed.
Of this kind are beetles and lady-cows; and nothing can be more entertaining than to see them, by a surprizing machinery of little springs and hinges, erect the smooth covering of their backs, and unfolding their wings that were most neatly disposed within their cases, prepare for flight—
But what is there in nature that is not equally surprizing? We are ashamed not to account for objects that are daily obvious to our senses; and yet every work of the Deity—
in many respects, is to us as really incomprehensible as the Divine Operator; for who can give rule or measure to the works of an Infinite Artist? And if we only superficially behold, and reason from the qualities of things—
were this veil at once laid aside, how insupportably conspicuous would the fullness of Infinite Wisdom and Essential Beauty appear; pouring on our weak and unequal senses! We should then be convinced of the equal folly and impiety of presumption on one side; or scepticism on the other: of pretending to know all things; or (because we know not all things) of inferring that nothing is to be known.
Our reason indeed is not infallible; but neither is it useless: reason, throughout its sphere of knowledge, perceives a wisdom and art that is obvious, and inimitable; and hence cannot avoid to infer, that the same wisdom and art is universal; and that there must be One Sole Omnipresent and Adorable Artist. But when reason attempts a higher pitch, and forms to itself independent schemes of the courses of nature, or fitnesses of things; nothing can be more vain than such a dictating arrogance.
That there is, and ever will be, a fitness and propriety in things, is evident even to reason; because reason perceives sufficient Wisdom and Goodness, to demonstrate that Wisdom and Goodness now are, and ever will be, the sole directing principles. But to say to what infinitely wise and good purposes such direction tends; to say how far, and in what particulars, the nature of such tendency may alter the appearance of fitness in things; so as to determine what now is, or hereafter may be fit, possible, or impossible; is generally as absurd as to attempt to grasp the universe in our hand, or circumscribe immensity with a carpenter's compass.
Hence this one great truth is evident, that though our reason apprehends a propriety and fitness in the relations of many things and actions both natural and moral, yet as we cannot comprehend the whole of Infinite Wisdom—
there is doubtless a further design, and more latent fitness and beauty in things and their relations, than we can apprehend or are aware of: and as this fitness may be relative in respect of duration, and in respect of the difference between the present and future state of things; many things may now appear unfit and improper in our way of thinking, which in reality are most perfective of future infinitely wise and directing purposes, to which our notions are by no means adequate.
What has been here offered in the way of hypothesis, is evidently rational; but when more nearly attended to, will admit of the highest demonstration: for either there is a present absolute fitness in things; or a fitness in futuro, that is, in prospect or tendency, and only relative here to what must be absolute hereafter. But if there were an absolute fitness in the present state of things, there could then be no change in any thing; since what is best can never change to better: but things do change, and must therefore have a present relative fitness, tending to, and productive of some future, absolute, and unchangeable fitness or perfection; to which this present relative fitness is by a moral, wise, and orderly necessity, precedent.
The sum of all (which has so long and copiously employed the pens of the learned) is this,—First, That there is a present fitness or beauty sufficiently obvious in things, to demonstrate an Over ruling Wisdom.—Secondly, That this Over-ruling Wisdom, or God, now does, and ever will conduct all things for the best.—But, thirdly, Since things change, they cannot be now in their state of perfection.—Therefore, fourthly, There must be some other or future state, to which all things tend and are directed, for the final and unchangeable perfection of all things.
If any thing in the preceding lines seems too much tinctured with mystery; I must beg leave to ask the enemies of mystery, were it not for repeated experience, whether every thing in nature would not appear a mystery? or, whether, when they contemplate a gnat or butterfly, &c. they can perceive, by the bare light of nature or reason, the relation its present state and form bears to the several changes, states, and forms, through which it has passed, all in appearance as distinct as difference could make them?—
or, whether, by contemplating an animalcule's egg, they can foresee that this will produce a maggot or caterpillar, &c. that the maggot or caterpillar will build its own sepulchre; (and having continued therein for a certain term, in an apparent state of mortality, and laid aside its former limbs and organized members) will at length break through the gates of death, and put on a state and form of higher beauty and perfection, than could enter into any heart to conceive, or could have employed the dreams of the deepest philosopher?—
How would the refined reasoners of the present age argue against the absurdity and impossibility of such unaccountable contradictions, were not the facts too obvious to sense and perpetual experience to be disputed? facts altogether as wonderful, though not so fabulous, as the—
However merry or hyperbolical these assertions may appear, in respect of creatures, whom our ignorance, or want of inspection, have rendered despicable to us; there is nothing more certain, than that they have more trades and utensils than are here specified. The inimitable fineness, and mathematical proportion of their works, is a double demonstration of their skill, and the accuracy of their instruments; to which the most exquisite manufacture of man may bear just such relation, as a cumbrous windmill to the neatest tool or machine in a watchmaker's shop—
No less admirable is their reason, precaution, instinct, or what you please to call their care and skill, in the disposition of their eggs or embryo; not scattered at random, but situated agreeable to the nature of every species, in such places, and among such supplies of nutriment, as will alone contribute to the perfection, and be acceptable to the several appetites of their young ones—
if on the leaves of vegetables, then situated and glued in such a manner, as not to be subject to the influence of winds or rain—
For the mathematical order in which gnats dispose their eggs or sperm on the water, vide Derham's Phys. Theology, fig. IX. and X.—
And so, in like manner, the various receptacles which are suitable to the sperm of each species, are almost infinite; and yet the art and prophetic precaution, which, by a several and distinct method, is peculiar to each, carries the air of as much wisdom and importance, as if the harmony and connection of nature had depended on the regular and uniform propagation of every several sect or species—
The generality of these wonderful animals having thus performed all the requisites, take no further care for their young; but (like the ostrich, who covers her eggs with the sands) they are sensible their duty is over, and leave the rest to the clemency of the seasons, and the sufficiency of nature, who, in these instances, renders all further caution needless—
But among all the instances of a universal and benign Providence, nothing can be more signal or expressive of the extensive Goodness than the occasional and temporary parts and organs of many animals in their changeable state, still accommodated, suited, and adapted with the most circumstantial and minute exactness to the immediate manner and convenience of their existence; and yet as immediately shifted and thrown aside upon the animal's commencing a new state and scene of action, and a sett of limbs and garniture furnished de novo, as it were a new suit of clothes fitted and contrived agreeable to every season. This observation may have escaped many, who thought it beneath them to inquire into the oeconomy of these minute animals; but it is obvious to all persons in the tadpole estate of frogs, who, in their minority, are provided with a fin-like tail, which seems to constitute the chief part of their bulk, but drops off as the growing limbs extend, and gives notice that its continuance is superfluous and unnecessary.
Though the state and conduct of these animals, as here described, may be looked on as allegorical, and representative of the present state of man and his future hopes; yet the case with them is already real, and their change and resurrection most evident to sense. The moment they are hatched—
within a certain period of time, they conceive a disrelish to all past enjoyment, and by a profound reverie, seem, as it were, studious of some great event. During this interval, new judgments are acquired, and resolutions taken; they foresee and rejoice at their approaching mortality—
they frame and prepare the mansions of death with the same chearful alacrity and elegance, as a bridal chamber, or wedding garment
here the texture of their former organs suffers an actual dissolution; and whatever the principle of regeneration be, a new, and, in appearance, a quite different creature, is conceived from the remains of the old one—
their sepulchres give way; they spring forth, and wing the air in inexpressible beauty and magnificence.
Insecta non videntur nervos habere, nec ossa, nec spinas, nec cartilaginem, nec pinguia, nec carnes, nec crustam quidem fragilem, ut quædam marina, nec quæ jure dicatur cutis: sed mediæ cujusdam inter omnia hæc naturæ corpus. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xi. cap. 4.
These creatures, though, in appearance, they have but two eyes, are really multocular. Every lens (of which there are an innumerable number) is a distinct eye, which has a branch of the optic nerve ministring to it; by which provision no object escapes them; they at once view almost all round them; and as their eyes are immovable, this multiplicity amply supplies the absence of the motory nerves.
Cujus causa videtur cuncta alia genuisse Natura, magna & sæva mercede contra tanta sua munera; ut non sit satis æstimare, parens melior homini, an tristior noverca fuerit—
Ante omnia unum animantium cunctorum, alienis velat opibus: cæteris variè tegumenta tribuit; testas, cortices, coria, spinas, villos, setas, pilos, plumam, pennas, squamas, vellera. Truncos etiam arboresque cortice, interdum gemino, a frigoribus & calore tutata est. Hominem tantum nudum, & in nuda humo, natali die abjicit ad vagitus statim & ploratum, nullumque tot animalium aliud ad lacrymas, & has protinus vitæ principio. Plin. Nat. Hist. L. VII. Prœm.
BOOK VI.
“So justly substituted lords of earth;
“Who boast the seal of highest heaven impress'd,
“Thence with supremacy of reason bless'd,
“Attend the song, and vindicate your claim!
“Recall your ancestry of antique fame,
“Prime artizans of each sagacious craft,
“The curious model, or designing draft,
“All talents technical for each device,
“The skilful fabrick, and the texture nice!
“Judicial product of the studious mind,
“The scheme politic, or the moral plan,
“To form the conduct, or the heart of man;
“More than e'er Solon, or great Cecil knew;
“The moral, with diviner precepts fraught,
“Than stories, or than eastern magi taught.”
And o'er the mountain trace the Cretan Doe:
Behold the critic stand with curious mien,
And cull the virtues of the various green,
Secrete her foliage from the noxious weed,
And conscious of her skill securely feed!
From Æsculapius, or his Radiant Sire?
When to her panting flank the weapon flies,
And deep within the feather'd mischief lies,
She seeks the well known medicine of the plain,
Nor yet despairs where human art were vain;
Mild thro' her frame the sovereign balsams glide,
And the keen shaft falls guiltless from her side.
Whose science then averts impending fate,
When haply on the distant climate thrown,
Ye view strange objects, and a world unknown;
Each tree uncouth, with foreign fruitage crown'd,
And unacquainted plenty blooming round:
To pluck the bane of a suspected land?
Half famish'd they devour with wistful eyes;
But fear dissuades to tempt the dangerous prize:
Yet should they spy, amid the fruitful brake,
The skilful trace of some luxurious beak,
With birds their elegant repast they share,
And bless the learn'd inhabitants of air.
Convey your bard thro' Nature unconfined,
Licentious in the search of wisdom range,
Plunge in the depth, and wanton in the change;
Waft me to Tempe, and her flowery dale,
Born on the wings of every tuneful gale;
Amid the wild profusions let me stray,
And share with Bees the virtues of the day.
Behold the little Virtuosi rise!
Blithe for the task, they preen their early wing,
And forth to each appointed labour spring.
Now Nature boon exhales the morning steam,
And glows and opens to the welcome beam;
The vivid tribes amid the fragrance fly,
And every art, and every business ply.
Where, from the flower, the treasured odour breathes;
Here sip the liquid, here select the gum,
And o'er the bloom with quivering membrane hum.
Still with judicious scrutiny they pry,
Where lodg'd the prime essential juices lie;
Each luscious vegetation wide explore,
Plunder the spring of every vital store:
The dainty suckle, and the fragrant thyme,
By chymical reduction, they sublime;
Their sweets with bland attempering suction strain,
And, curious, thro' their neat alembicks drain;
Imbibed recluse, the pure secretions glide,
And vital warmth concocts the ambrosial tide.
The long lost labours of the Latent Stone;
Tho' the Five Principles so oft transpire,
Fined, and refined, amid the torturing fire.
Like issue should the daring chymist see,
Vain imitator of the curious Bee,
Nor arts improved thro' ages once produce
A single drachm of this delicious juice.
Your's then, industrious traders! is the toil,
And man's proud science is alone to spoil.
“And deep the fund incessant labours hoard;
“A friendly arm makes every burden light;
“And weakness, knit by union, turns to might.”
Whose forms minute such sacred maxims veil;
In whose just conduct, framed by wondrous plan,
We read revers'd each polity of man.
Who first in council form'd your embryon state?
Who rose a patriot in the deep debate?
Greatly proposed to reconcile extremes,
And weave in unity opposing schemes?
From fears inferr'd just reason of defence,
And from self-interest rais'd a publick sense;
Then pois'd his project with transposing scale,
And from the publick, shew'd the private weal?
Whence aptly summ'd, these politicians draw
The trust of power, and sanctitude of law;
Power in dispensing benefits employ'd,
And healing laws, not suffer'd, but enjoy'd.
The members, hence unanimous, combine
To prop that throne, on which the laws recline;
The law's protected even for private ends,
Whereon each individual's right depends;
And one full tide for every member flows;
Each member as the whole communion great,
Back'd by the powers of a defending state;
The state by mutual benefits secure,
And in the might of every member sure!
Each in the publick drowns all private views:
By social commerce and exchange they live,
Assist supported, and receiving give.
Gives the prime movement to the state machine:
She, in the subject, sees the duteous child;
She, the true parent, as the regent mild,
With princely grace invested sits elate,
Informs their conduct, and directs the state.
Around, the drones who form her courtly train,
Bask in the rays of her auspicious reign;
Beneath, the sage consulting peers repair,
And breathe the virtues of their prince's care;
Debating, cultivate the publick cause,
And wide dispense the benefit of laws.
One board sonorous fill the various row;
And spread the charms of symphony around.
Or speed the different orders of the state;
Here greet the labourer on the toilsome way,
And to the load their friendly shoulder lay;
Or frequent at the busy gate arrive,
And fill with amber-sweets their fragrant hive;
Or seek repairs to close the fractured cell;
Or shut the waxen wombs where embryos dwell;
The caterers prompt, a frugal portion deal,
And give to diligence a hasty meal;
In each appointed province all proceed,
And neatest order weds the swiftest speed;
Dispatch flies various on ten thousand wings,
And joy throughout the gladsome region rings.
Here infants throb within the quickening comb;
Here vacant seats invite to sweet repose,
And here the tide of balmy nectar flows;
While here their frugal reservoirs remain,
And not one act of this republick's vain.
Poured forth their sons, a wide superfluous host!
And many a plan of future empire laid;
Like powers these wise prolifick people send,
And o'er the globe their colonies extend.
And thro' the straitening citadel increase,
An edict issued in this grand extreme,
Proclaims the mandate of the power supreme.
Then exiled crouds abjure their native home,
And sad, in search of foreign mansions roam;
A youthful empress guides their airy clan,
And wheels and shoots illustrious from the van.
Fatigued at length, they wish some calm retreat,
The rural settlement, and peaceful state;
When man presents his hospitable snare,
And wins their confidence with traitorous care.
Suspicion ever flies a generous breast—
Betrayed, each enters an unwary guest;
Here every form of ancient maxim trace,
And emulate the glories of their race.
And o'er the main her future nation led;
Then staid her host on Afric's meted land,
And in strait bounds a mighty empire plann'd:
So founds and models with assiduous mien;
Instructs with little to be truly great,
And in small limits forms a mighty state.
And from the zenith bids her towers descend:
Nor like to man's, the aerial structures rise;
But point to earth, their base amid the skies.
Each band assigned to each peculiar art;
A troop of chymists scour the neighbouring field,
While servile tribes the cull'd materials wield,
With tempering feet the laboured cement tread,
And ductile now its waxen foliage spread.
The geometricians judge the deep design,
Direct the compass, and extend the line;
They sum their numbers, provident of space,
And suit each edifice with answering grace.
Rough in the draught, but perfect in the scheme;
When lo! each little Archimedes nigh,
Metes every angle with judicious eye;
Adjusts the centering cones with skill profound,
And forms the curious hexagon around.
Knit on the sides, and guarded on the rear;
Nought of itself, with circling chambers bound,
Each cell is form'd, to form the cells around;
While each still gives what each alike demands,
And but supported by supporting stands;
Jointly transferring, and transferr'd exists;
And, as by magick union, all subsists.
Contrived at once to borrow, and impart;
In action notable, as council great,
Their fabricks rise, just emblems of their state.
Tho' in a foe, still merit claims its praise,
Claims the revealing song, and claims the light,
Tho' long conceal'd in all obscuring night.
For deep these subterranean tribes retire,
Nor work like man, that mortals may admire;
In earth's dark womb their pompous structures rise,
Worthy the sight of Heaven's all-seeing Eyes;
While they recluse, o'er nether kingdoms reign,
And wrapt as in a little world remain.
And wide like yon enfolding concave bends;
Unfolded, two mysterious portals stand,
Emblems of human life, precarious state,
At entrance born, and dying in retreat.
Thousands within retiring taste repose;
Or thro' the streets the busy concourse flows:
Yet not as ours their costly pavements spread,
But high on terrasses and towers they tread,
With which not Roman aqueducts may vie,
Not the famed gardens pendant from the sky:
Here cities piled o'er cities may be seen,
And sumptuous intervals displayed between,
Where columns each proud architrave support,
And form the pomp of many an ample court;
The weight thro' ten successive stories bear,
And to the top the incumbent fabricks rear.
Some splendid theatre divide below,
With charms of gay machinery surprize,
Scenes over scenes, and stage on stage arise,
Lost in the glory of descending skies.
But form, sole architects, the pensive cell;
Like Seers of old, they seek some lonely seat,
And from the vain the busy world retreat;
And bind the vault of solitary stone;
Or clay, or timber, oft attempering, mould,
And round their form the ductile mansion fold;
Or in peculiar occupations skill'd,
A wondrous dome of silken fabrick build:
No debt to foreign implements they owe,
But from themselves the mantling tissues flow;
Themselves the gorgeous canopy they spread,
Themselves the loom, the distaff, and the thread—
The thread as famed Arachne's texture fine,
When thwart the morn she darts her floating line,
Or spins the scheme of implicated wiles,
And o'er her great Newtonian rival smiles;
Reveals the deep ænigma of his trade,
And squares the circle in the vernal glade;
The sportive plans of matchless art displays,
While round, and round, the dexterous wanton plays.
Secluded deep where latent nations lie,
And scared from man, a mighty hunter, fly?
He follows panting with a savage joy,
Rapt in his favourite transport to destroy:
To man, even man becomes a mutual prey;
No gain can satiate, and no limits stay;
Warr'd on himself, with passion passion strives.
Fly him, ye rangers of the rolling flood!
Fly him, ye songsters of the warbling wood!
Ye dwellers subterrene, the tyrant fly!
And safe in your remote asylums lie,
Where mice, innoxious cottagers, remain,
Meek in the covert of the flowery plain;
Recluse, their cautious hermitage explore,
And treasure provident the wintery store.
With kindred crafts, deep-mining burroughs work,
And sunk amid Dædalean labyrinths lurk;
Their various habitation nightly change,
And thro' a length of mazed apartments range.
With his associate train retires secured;
Their wary mansion elegantly stands,
Where the smooth stream or smiling lake expands,
Whose gentle wave in friendly visit glides,
And swells the tenement with grateful tides.
Two posterns gape with deep deceit below,
And o'er the pass fair mantling waters flow;
Evasive whence, they scape the dangerous train,
Or wide expatiate on the yielding plain;
Or homeward laden with returning stores.
Laborious here, they hew the sounding wood,
And lift the prize triumphant o'er the flood;
Here, lightly some vimineous burdens bear,
Or jointly here the ponderous rafter share;
Spread o'er their tails, they waft the temper'd clay,
And deep, and broad, their firm foundations lay;
Assign each chamber its commodious size,
Till rooms o'er rooms and trodden ceilings rise;
Their tail the trowel, as adorning train,
Their teeth the saw, the chissel, and the plane.
And Autumn yet withholds retreating day,
They range at large, and gambol thro' the stream,
Frisk on the beach, or batten in the beam;
Or Nature's bounteous vegetation taste,
And opportune indulge the transient feast.
But when pale Phosphor points the morning gale,
Curls on the wave and chills along the vale,
Domestick cares their conscious breast employ;
The frolick hours and luscious banquets cloy;
Intent they furnish the prophetick hoard,
And pile the treasures of their homely board,
And barter luxury for social cheer.
For them Astrea holds the impartial scale,
Her frugal hands unenvied portions deal;
Health quaffs satiety from Nature's bowl;
Peace gives the constant banquet of the soul;
High in the midst chaste Temperance is crown'd,
And Time leads on the smiling Hours around.
Thou Height, where never human fancy soared!
Supreme Irradiance! speed the distant ray,
Far speed the dawn of thy internal day;
And O! if such, inform the favourite line,
And be the praise as inspiration thine!
Brood on the wave, and mock the threatening storm;
Who quells the rage of thy reluctant main,
Or o'er thy winter throws a lordly rein?
Lulls the rock'd mansion on the slumbering tide,
And bids the care of guardian depths subside?
Till, volatile, the new fledg'd infants rise;
The surge mounts free, and breaks upon the skies.
The circling season, and the varying clime;
Thine! every dictate of the conscious breast;
Thine! every texture of the genial nest,
The oval embryon, and the fostering ray;
And Thine the life that struggles into day!
Gracious thy Ear, and bounteous thy Supply;
Till the flown choirs the revel consort raise,
And hymn to Heaven the rhapsody of praise!
Where haunts the woodcock, or the annual crane,
Where else encamp'd the feather'd legions spread,
Or bathe incumbent on their oozy bed,
The brimming lake Thy Smiling Presence fills,
And waves the banners of a thousand hills.
Thou speed'st the summons of Thy Warning Voice;
Wing'd at Thy Word, the distant troops rejoice,
From every quarter scour the fields of air,
And to the general rendezvous repair:
Each from the mingled rout disparting turns,
And with the love of kindred plumage burns:
Thy Potent Will instinctive bosoms feel,
And here arranging semilunar, wheel;
Or point the wedge that cleaves the aerial way:
Uplifted on Thy Wafting Breath they rise;
Thou pavest the regions of the pathless skies,
Thro' boundless tracts support'st the journey'd host,
And point'st the voyage to the certain coast;
Thou the sure Compass, and the Sea they sail,
The Chart, the Port, the Steerage, and the Gale!
Thro' yon steep heaven, and nether gulphs profound,
The dusky planet, and the lucid sphere,
Earth's ponderous ball, and soft enfolding air,
The fish who glance or tempest thro' the main,
The beasts who trip or thunder o'er the plain,
The reptile wreathing in the wanton ring,
The bird high wafted on the towering wing,
All, all from Thee, Sole Cause Essential! tend,
Thence flow effusive, thither centering end;
The bliss of Providential Vision share,
And the least atom claims peculiar care!
Or from the Vast this Universe was won;
While finitude e'erwhile was unconfined,
Nor space grew relative, to form assigned;
Thou didst thy own Eternal Now sustain,
And space was swallow'd in thy boundless main;
Thyself the filler of thy own abyss,
Thyself the Great Eternity of Bliss!
All When, and Where, in Thee imbosom'd lay,
The blaze of majesty, and self born day;
No void was found, where Endless Beauty beamed;
No darkness, where Essential Glory flamed;
No want, no solitude, where Thou wer't blest,
And in Thyself the unbounded whole possest.
Thyself all Reason, and thy Will all Laws;
All-reasoning Will with powerful Wisdom fraught!
Thy Wisdom, one unchanging endless thought,
Where all potential natures were survey'd,
And even in pre-existence lay display'd—
All, all—things past—now present—yet to be,
Great Intellect! were present all to Thee;
While Thou sole Infinite Essential reign'd,
And of finites the Infinity contain'd,
Distinguish'd endless, yet with Thee the same,
Thy Power their essence, and thy Will their claim.
Whence—at Thy Word, worlds caught the potent sound,
And into being leapt this wondrous round.
Pois'd on Thy Will the universal hung;
Attraction to its Central Magnet clung;
Thy spacious grasp the mighty convex closed;
Soft on Thy Care incumbent worlds reposed:
Within, throughout, no Second Cause presides,
And One Sole Hand the mazed volution guides!
Hence Endless Good, hence Endless Order springs;
Hence that importance in minutest things;
And endless hence Dependence must endure,
Blest in his Will, and in his Power secure!
| The Poetical Works of Henry Brooke | |