EPISTLE THE FIFTH. (Beyond the science of mankind)

Beyond the science of mankind, In nature's fane our God enshrin'd; Content, Lorenzo, let us trace The lines, the shaddow, of his face; In humble boldness seek to know Our heav'n on earth; our God below.

To face the sun, to beat the sky Demand an eagle's wing and eye. Ah! let not, then, mere birds of night, Whose wings, whose opticks check their flight, Encourag'd by the morning ray To risk the sun-shine of the day, Their feeble pow'rs too highly rate, And rush absurdly on their fate; As in the noon-tide beams they gaze Struck blind by Heav'ns meridian blaze, For ever after to their cost To grope; in endless errour lost.

Adapted, then, inquiry's plan To truths as relative to man, Wouldst thou, Lorenzo, comprehend Man's physical and moral end, To future, to immortal views Conducted by the faithful muse? Secure while yet in reason's sight, For thee she takes her daring flight; Born up on scientifick wing, Attempts her boldest note to sing; For thee those winding tracts t'explore; Where seldom muse hath dar'd to soar.

But, here, as truth we hope to find, Be left each vain desire behind. Be thrown those obstacles aside Which expectation builds on pride; While busy hope and bustling care Erect their castles in the air; Our fertile wishes safe to hold, Fertile in pleasure, fame or gold, A treasure valued at no less Than man's consummate happiness. For know, if bliss thy end and aim, Truth but invalidates thy claim: Th' exclusive privilege to know The all we taste of Heav'n below.

Is this a maxim wits profess? "That man was born to happiness: "Tho' tow'rs of hope he fondly raise, "Their structure lasts him all his days: "In expectation ev'n possessing "The better half of ev'ry blessing, "His bliss for ever in his view, "Whene'er he pleases to pursue." My friend, with care such maxims weigh: Nor run with giddy wits astray. In search of truth may genius roam; But bliss, if found, is found at home; To region, clime nor soil confin'd This boasted seed of Heav'nly kind. Ah! vainly boasted, if below The plant celestial cannot grow! Say sophists neither more nor less Than happiness is happiness; Yet will they boast this state unknown, This bliss indefinite, their own? The diff'rence plain 'twixt bliss and woe, Whate'er we feel we surely know: What state can, then, be ever thine Which sense nor science can define.

That man, by others is't confess'd, Ne'er is but always to be blest? Yet would they teach, in moral strain, How all may happiness attain? As well who ne'er was bless'd with light May boast the happiness of sight, The splendour of the solar ray; Or teach his comrades blind their way; As such to thee make ever known A state of being ne'er their own.

Dost thou to prove my judgment wrong In answer quote thy fav'rite song? True bliss, thy Pope if we believe, All hands can reach, all heads conceive: The happiness of each confin'd, In truth, to that of all our kind. Know terms so gen'ral naught define. The bliss of all nor yours nor mine: As yet distinctly understood The publick and the private good. Nor doth it prove this maxim right To say that both in one unite; Unless their union be so plain That, seeking one, we both obtain: Since th'individual, for himself, Applies to riot, fame or pelf: In spite of all the wise can say, We seek our bliss a sep'rate way; Just as the present maggots bite, Take our own measures for the right; Or, having no peculiar whim, Along the tide of custom swim. Mean-while, of bliss tho' all dispute, None leave their darling substitute. How short of happiness is gold! The miser cries; yet keeps his hold. In women, sighs the batter'd rake, What solid comfort can we take! Ah! what in wine? Silenus asks. Yet cart the whore; go, stave the casks; "How shall the sons of Comus live, "If wine nor women life doth give!" Thus publick happiness our care But for our own peculiar share: While sons their father's schemes traduce; And here all patriotism abuse.

However then the specious face Of wit may countenance the case, Bliss inconsistently we call The happiness of one and all. Nor is it yet precisely meant By good, ease, pleasure or content. Good might we variously explain. Ease is deliv'rance but from pain. Pleasure is actual joy confess'd: And mere content but patient rest; A neutral state, at best and worst, But negatively blest or curst: That which our happiness we call, Tho' that nor this, the sum of all. The world's plain meaning plainly this, Some constant state of actual bliss. No matter whether in degree Alike bestow'd on you or me: Enough, if, void of fear or pain, No motive lead us to complain: Enough, whate'er the mode of joy, If such that it can never cloy.

Look round the world, and tell me true. Where is such happiness in view? From monarchs fled, as sings the bard, His patron's virtue to reward, Tell me, in truth, was St. John blest? Or did the bitter bard but jest; Dipping his pen in worse than gall, An outed statesman bless'd to call? With equal truth the muse might paint My Lord of Bolingbroke a saint; Run riot o'er his dubious fame, And dub him with a patriot's name: So worthy of his country's pràise! So meek! so holy all his ways!

Nor, tho' to him, to him alone A state of perfect bliss unknown, Of each complexion, age, degree, Mankind as far remov'd as he. Go, ask, my friend, from door to door, The high, the low, the rich, the poor; In court, or cot, if here, or there, Reside the mortal free from care. You ask in vain, for joy and strife Diversify all states of life. To wield the scythe with sweaty brow, With wearied arm to guide the plough, To sow in hope, to reap in joy, Thine, labour, is the sweet employ. A life of rest with pain t'endure, To seek in health disease's cure, To eat the grape, unprun'd the vine, Laborious idleness is thine. Yet idleness of care complains And labour quarrels with its pains.

Nor only found, or made, distress; Because externals fail to bless: Lodg'd in ourselves the taste, and will, That make externals good or ill; No earthly blessing, hence, we find An equal good to all mankind. Belmore, the sober'st thing on earth, Dreads the broad laugh, and roar of mirth: While Clerrio, with a length of chin, Protracted by perpetual grin, Tho'Socrates himself pass by, Must laugh in ridicule or die. How elegant, how high refin'd The palate of Cardella's mind! How low, how vulgar Cotta's soul, That feels no rapture in a vole! See thousands, as in love with strife, Pursue it, fretting, all their life; And darken, with the clouds of spleen, The sky of providence serene: Wretched to find another eas'd, And most unhappy when they're pleas'd. How strange! while some, with patient toil, Raise comfort on a barren soil Or pleasure strike, by native dint, From cruel fortune's hardest flint; The patriarch like, whose rod, we're told, Earth's stubborn fetters burst, of old; When gush'd the stream from Horeb's rock, To water Israel's thirsty flock.

Hence not on earth a blessing sent Gives universally content. For while so varied is our taste, Manna itself were show'r'd to waste. With reason, therefore, we profess God meant not here our happiness: Else in the various blessings given Sure various minds might find their heaven. But know, as different we find Each individual's turn of mind, As little with ourselves we see Ourselves, at various times, agree. So oft our views, our tempers change, As through life's varied scenes we range. At times, so diff'rent from himself, The prodigal will hoard his pelf; Spend greedily the night at play, To throw next morn his gains away. At times ev'n misers rob their store, And give their sixpence to the poor. At times ev'n trembling cowards fight, And, desp'rate, put the bold to flight: While, sick of fighting and of fame, The brave, like belgick lions, tame. How oft, my friend, in private life, We love the maid we hate a wife. How oft the scene, that gives delight At morn, offends the eye at night. 'Tis not the want of that or this: Possession is the bane of bliss: And hence of happiness we see On earth th' impossibility.

Yet, with an interested view, Doth still Lorenzo truth pursue? Dost thou suppose th'enlighten'd mind In truth's researches bliss may find? That science fancy may restrain, And fix that weather-cock the brain? Alas, deceive thy self no more; But give thy vain pretensions o'er. For, as a world of fruitless cost In vain inquiries hath been lost; A world of labour spent t'attain To knowledge man may never gain: So millions all their lives have spent, Searching for bliss in discontent: For bliss, which but a little thought Had told them never could be taught. Yet still they ask; yet still they run A race that never can be won. Thus sought, of yore, projecting fools The summum bonum of the schools; And wiser heads than those of old The stone converting all to gold; Or vain adepts, much wiser still, To wrest from nature's hand, at will, Promethean theft, celestial fire; To animate their wood and wire: Madmen, that not Monro could cure Of circles and their quadrature, Of thinking drunken nature reels, Like a slung coach, on springs and wheels!

Dost thou, instructed in thy youth To place consummate bliss in truth, Conceive it somewhere hidden lies, Among the learned and the wise; That hence our bliss or misery flow, The truth to know or not to know? In vain the learn'd, in science deep, In search of bliss, their vigils keep; In vain the universe explore, Swift as their search, it flies before, Through ev'ry clime, on ev'ry wind, And leaves the panting wish behind. O, tell me, what connection ties So close the happy and the wise. Did e'er the sage in wisdom find The artless infant's peace of mind? Proud, knowledge, e'er, or boastful art, Restore to joy the broken heart? Ah! what avails the truth to know, When truth's the frequent source of woe; While gilded fiction's dazzling rays With sun-shine beautify our days, Or, mildly shed, its silver beams, Reflected, light our nightly dreams; While pleasure and its laughing train Dance, by the moon-shine of the brain. For what is knowledge, but to know How ignorant our state below? The more we learn, the more to find, Beyond our learning, still behind: Our fruitless wishes to increase, Whene'er our mental prospects cease? So far from happiness, my friend, Is science, in its means, or end.

Sayst thou that bliss the world affect The smile of God on his elect; Confin'd to Abr'am's faithful seed; And made dependant on our creed? Go, ask the saints, to whom are given The best assurances of Heaven, The few distinguish'd here on earth As children of a spiritual birth, "How gloomy oft a state of grace; "How often hid their Maker's face; "How oft, by satan and by sin, "Sore buffeted the man within." These all confess beyond the sky Their blissful heritage doth lie.

Say, is repos'd this Heav'nly trust Within the bosom of the just, While virtue, in itself, you call The happiness of one and all? Pretending still, "tho' yours and mine "No partial mode of bliss define; "Yet that our diff'rent tastes unite "In meaning well and thinking right: "An universal moral this, "Conducting all mankind to bliss!" Alas, what sophistry to tell Of "thinking right, and meaning well:" Unless this rectitude of thought With perspicuity be taught; This honest meaning plainly shown; So oft admir'd! so little known! At virtue if we're left to guess, What is't to say 'tis happiness? The way to virtue as to bliss; If dubious that as doubtful this. How fruitless therefore but to know "Virtue is happiness below!"

Sayst thou, mankind are all agreed That happiness is virtue's meed? The service of the work inquire, And by the labour rate the hire. Now virtue some to fact confine, While others place it in design. These blest but for the good they do; And those for all they have in view. But, if by virtue understood The mere intent of doing good, Those fully virtuous may be held, Who ne'er one lawless passion quell'd; Whom ne'er temptation led astray, Beyond the tenour of their way; A sober path by stoicks trod; Nor friends to man, nor foes to God. Consistent with a state of rest, If virtue's centred in the breast, As happy those may surely live Who nothing give nor have to give, As those who taste, in ey'ry sense, Th' exertion of benevolence. Some seeming diff'rence yet we find. What pangs affect the tender mind? What exquisite sensations rise, To hear the orphan's piteous cries; To feel the widow's piercing woe; When no relief our wants bestow? Doth virtue here rejoice the heart As when the gen'rous ease impart, When purest transports warm the breast, That glows to succour the distress'd? And yet, my friend, 'twere wond'rous hard, If bliss the virtuous rich reward, In poverty that virtue's zeal Should double all the pangs we feel; Each gen'rous sigh, each social tear, But render want the more severe.

To virtue, therefore, if the deed Our best designs must yet succeed, Granting that happy ev'ry mind In such proportion as its kind, Here in externals do we place The happiness of human race: Enabled to relieve distress As wealth, or pow'r, ourselves possess; For bliss capacitated more As blest with fortune's worldly store. Fix'd, by this scheme, the blissful state, Exclusive, to the rich and great: The virtuous poor, but innocent, Claim, at th' utmost, bare content. Besides, if individuals blest As sharers only with the rest, True happiness with thee to call Not merely that of one but all, What is inactive virtue's use? Can it to social good conduce? Can it, thus fruitless and confin'd, Be call'd a blessing to mankind? If then we judge so much amiss Of virtue, and of virtuous bliss, If faith, tho' crown'd with alms and pray'rs, Hath all its pangs, hath all its cares, While, ev'n from knowledge, prospects rise, That make us miserably wise, His perfect happiness to reach, No morals mortal man can teach: Still Heav'n's best vot'ries must confess No blessings here compleatly bless: A compound strange of bliss and woe Man's variable state below. Some absent something ours to crave, Ev'n from the cradle to the grave!

How idly, then, employ'd the mind In search of that we cannot find. For human bliss stands never still; Our good insep'rable from ill; Whilst all of pain and pleasure share, Their hour of joy, their hour of care, Adapted to each sev'ral state; Fix'd and determinate as fate. The world my friend, an ample field, Of such examples store doth yield. How throbs the infant's little breast, Beneath a load of care oppress'd; The care that issues with a sigh; The tear yet standing in the eye; Or, caught in laughter's dimple sleek, Dry'd up in stealing down the cheek. See next, among, the sachel'd crowd, Bold as a hero and as proud, The little tyrant of his class; How happy! till condemn'd to parse, Or sob beneath the weightier curse Of scanning Lily's crabbed verse. In youth how glows the vital fire 'Tween expectation and desire; Our sanguine hopes our awkard fears, All suiting unexperienc'd years. Still riper joys do manhood bless, When full-blown fortune we possess? We riot on the joyous store, Till health and strength can charm no more; When disappointment and chagrin Retaliate all our joys with spleen. Proportion'd next to wasted age, Insipid joys and peevish rage, Tho' dim th' exhausted passions burn, Take, to our latest gasp, their turn. Thus relative, my friend, we find The pains and pleasures of mankind: Adapted all, in due degree, To human sensibility. For see, no more alive to smart Than dead to joy the hard-of-heart: As far from rapture as despair The fretful family of care. Not sickness, pain, nor death itself Avarus dreads like loss of pelf: While Lavish offers an estate To staunch a cut, ere yet too late, Dispel the head-ach, or remove Th' effects of his intemp'rate love.

Was ever yet the child of mirth Intensely blest, or curst, on earth? Ah no! how lightly feel a pain The light-of-heart, or light-of-brain! The man, so happy as to think, Life's bitter potion born to drink!

Behold the foolish, weak and blind The sprightliest, merriest of mankind; While suffers oft superior sense, Ev'n from its own pre-eminence: Those follies that the wise: annoy The destitute-of-wisdom's joy. The blockhead naturally free From cares thy knowledge brings on thee, While Heav'n your daily toil to seek, Poor Ralpho works but once a week: When left his plough and worldly cares, He plies his sunday's task at pray'rs. Nor puzzled he in truth's research, Laid all his burthen on the church; The friendly church, by Heav'n design'd To help the weak, to lead the blind, To check the rash, to warm the cold, T'engage the young, t'amuse the old, Th' unthinking from themselves to save, And bring them calmly to the grave. Blest ignorance! from care so free, Hath it, Lorenzo, charms for thee? Wouldst thou to science, empty name If void of bliss resign thy claim? Be like the ass, that plodding goes, Nor looks beyond his bridled nose? For me—O, rather should I ask Life's most laborious, abject task. Would ev'n the meanest lot sustain; Bear ev'ry tolerable pain: To emp'ricks would intrust my cure; Ev'n to be pitied might endure: Nay, plague me, Heav'n, in ev'ry sense, Ere take my share of reason hence; Of science ere my soul deprive, My little portion, whilst alive.

Yet dost thou ignorance despise? The joys of knowledge hence arise. So strange so little understood The varied source of mortals' good! To Heav'n my grateful vows be paid That man in human frailty's made; That grief and ignorance my lot; In joy and science since forgot; Or best remember'd in the taste They give improvement's rich repast. O say, industrious querist, say, What raptures court you on the way; What views delight, from time, to time, As the steep hills of art you climb. Such transports ne'er had fir'd my breast, If born of sciences possess'd, As when, by want of knowledge fir'd, To nature's lore I late aspir'd; By slow degrees enlighten'd grew, Her volume op'ning to my view; To the weak mind as knowledge given; Knowledge, that wings the soul for Heaven.

Lorenzo, is this doctrine strange? Seest thou not, while the seasons change, How much, as each in contrast felt, We freeze with cold, by heat we melt. Thus exquisite our sense of woe As more refin'd our pleasures grow: Pleasure and pain, as light and shade, By one the other still display'd. Didst never want? to thee denied The bliss of being satisfied; In constant fulness but enjoye'd Th' insipid good of which we're cloy'd. Say, plenty gives thee bread more white, It blunts the edge of appetite; Or, giving wine, malignly first Robs thee, distasteful, of thy thirst.

How sunk, and terrible, to thee The hollow, eye of poverty! While Villius meets her with, a smile, And sings, or whistles all the while. Tho' worn his hands, perplex'd, his head, He relishes the sweets of bread; Nay patient sees, in want itself, His crustless cupboard's vacant shelf: Full many a time, in pleasant rue, Dancing for joy without a shoe.

Is Fortunatus rich and gay? Curst with the modish itch of play; Bubbled at White's, through lust of gain; Or jockey'd round New-Market plain; See with his barb his manors fly; His leaseholds totter with the die; Braving the storm of many a cast, His oaks a bet malignant blast, His card-built villas, one and all, Like infant architecture, fall.

From sharpers, creditors and duns, Not half the peril Villius runs; Whom all the world to trust refuse; Who nothing owns he dreads to lose.

Ah me! what threat'ning danger nigh? Why swells the tear in Delia's eye? Eclips'd the fairest of the fair By sad misfortune's drooping air; Delia on whom kind Nature smil'd, Ev'n at the birth her fav'rite child, When, all the graces to combine,

She cloath'd them in one form divine; Bestowing grandeur, wit and wealth, And fortune's best of bounties, health: Nay, adding, in her gen'rous fit, Good-nature even to her wit. With all these blessings yet unblest, Ah, tell me, fair one, why distress'd. Alas! alas! the belle's reply "Of Brilliante's birth-day suit I die.

You smile at misery like this. Match it with Delia's sense of bliss. In rapture ever, with the gay, To shine at concert, masque or play; Her greatest happiness to boast Her name the fopling's reigning toast: The all in life her wish regards Summ'd up in fashions, routs and cards. Ah, then, how pow'rful to distress Th' important article of dress!

So deeply some may cares affect, Those trifling cares that you neglect, Half the solicitude we see Ridiculous to you and me? Others there are as lightly hold Dangers, at which our blood runs cold. Lo where, beneath th' impending cliff The Norway fowler moors his skiff; Or, desp'rate, fifty fathoms high Suspended, seems himself to fly; While thus, from rock to rock, he swings; And, blythe, his summer's ditty sings. As blythe the sea-boy furls the sail, Regardless of the blust'ring gale; Nor winds, nor waves, disturb his sleep, Amid the horrours of the deep.

The cordial draught, the downy bed Had ne'er reviv'd the drooping head, Had sickness pale, and fainting grief Ne'er wish'd for wearied nerves relief. See Belmont on the sofa laid; What racking pains his limbs invade! Take half his gout, the respite given He calls a blissful taste of heaven. Give but a youth, dispersing wealth, Who riots on the bloom of health, That blissful part, which yet remains; And his a mortal's bitter'st pains. Pains which no aggravation know! Yet, so comparative our woe, Inflict them when Cleora's kiss, Kind earnest of approaching bliss, Hath rais'd the glowing lover's fire To flaming raptures of desire; Lo, disappointment joins the curse, And turns this worst affliction worse.

Correct ideas let us gain. Our sense of joy we owe to pain; So strange a paradox is this! And mis'ry to our sense of bliss; While such our varying state below, Ev'n joy degen'rates into woe; And pains, in sufferance, by degrees, On their own pangs engender ease; Their antidote, like scorpions, bring, T' expel the poison of their sting.

The tension of th' extended nerve, Say Phisiologists, may serve, The means of pleasure and of pain, This seeming paradox t' explain. As strung the harp with trembling wire, So brac'd with nerves the human lyre, While such in tune, these sages say, The smiling hours in concert play: But if, in change, too lax or tense; Health strikes no more the keys of sense: But, tremblingly alive all o'er, The tortur'd strings in discord roar: While sickness, with her harpy claws, Stranger to each harmonious cause, Labours, benumb'd, the jarring strain, That stuns our ear with deaf'ning pain. Nor yet can health too oft repeat Its musick, howsoever sweet; While, by degrees, lo, ev'ry string, Depriv'd of its elastick spring, In gen'ral lassitude, full soon The whole machine grows out of tune. Should, also, passion, sense or art Wind up too high the nervous part; With noise the notes tumultuous tire; Or breaking strings unman the lyre. Of pain or pleasure on our frame Th' effects, hence, frequently the same; Thus, full of gladness or of grief, In tears we find the same relief; Alike the feeble nerve destroy Exquisite pain, extatick joy. The bandit, stretch'd upon the wheel, Th' extreme of torture ne'er can feel; But, cruelty disarming, lies Or dead to sense, or really dies. So, rapture never meant to bless, Ev'n joy grows pain when in excess. Indulg'd to print the burning kiss On Chloe's lips, how fierce the bliss! How keen the torture of her charms, Caress'd, to pant within her arms, Melting in fulness of desire, Stretch'd on the rack of bliss, t'expire!

Thus constitutional, below, Is all our bliss, is all our woe: Each holding, intimately join'd, Alternate empire o'er the mind. Like Persian monarchs, hardly known Ere tumbled headlong from the throne, Precarious and as short its sway, Depos'd and sceptred in a day, Pleasure begins its fickle reign, And tyrannizes into pain: When, as to cruel pain we bow, Its rod grows light we know not how.

Ah, cruel blow to human pride! Is pain and pleasure thus allied, That all the sweets of life grow sour Within the transitory hour! Complains, Lorenzo? darts behind No ray of comfort on his mind? If thus with varied joy and strife Diversified all states of life; If human being cannot know A constant state of bliss or woe; Worn by sharp mis'ry to the bones, While grief with intermission groans, And meagre want, half fed, the while, Grins forth her grateful, ghastly smile; Tho' vain our hopes of bliss, as vain Our fears of unremitting pain: Absurd the mischief-making care That leads us blindly to despair.