By Nature planted for the nobleft ends.
Abfurd the fain❜d advice to Pyrrhus giv'a,

More prais'd, than ponder'd ; specious, but unfound; Sooner that hero's word the world had quell'd,

Than reafon, his ambition. Man must foar.

In obftinate activity within,

An infuppreffive spring, will tofs him

up.

In fpite of Fortune's load. Not kings alone,
Each villager has his ambition too;
No fultan prouder than his fetter'd slave ;
Slaves build their little Babylons of straw,
Echo the proud Affyrian, in their hearts,
And cry,-

"Behold the wonders of my might!"
And why? Because immortal as their lord;
And fouls immortal muft for ever heave
At fomething great; the glitter, or the gold;
The praise of mortals, or the praise of heav'n.
Nor abfolutely vain is human praise,
When human is fupported by divine.
I'll introduce Lorenzo to himself :

Pleafure and Pride (bad mafters !) share our hearts.
As love of pleafure is ordain'd to guard
And feed our bodies, and extend our race:
The love of praife is planted to protect
And propagate the glories of the mind.
What is it, but the Love of praife, infpires,
Matures, refines, embellishes, exalts
Earth's happiness? From that, the delicate,
The grand, the marvellous, of civil life,
Want and Convenience, under-workers, lay
The bafis on which Love of glory builds.
Nor is Thy life, O Virtue ! lefs in debt
To praife, thy fecret ftimulating friend.
Were men not proud, what merit should we miss!
Pride made the virtues of the Pagan world.
Praife is the falt that feafons right to man,
And whets his appetite for moral good.
Thirst of applaufe is Virtue's fecond guard;
Reafon, her firft; But reafon wants an aid;

Thirst of applaufe calls public judgment in,
To poife our own, to keep an even scale,
And give endanger'd Virtue fairer play.
Here a fifth proof arifes, Atronger ftill;
Why this to nice conftruction of our hearts,
Thefe delicate moralities of fenfe;
This conftitutional reserve of aid

;

To fuccour virtue, when our reason falls
If virtue, kept alive by care and toil,
And, oft the mark of injuries on earth,
When labour'd to maturity (its bill
Of difciplines and pains unpaid must die ?
Why freighted rich, to dash against a rock ?
Were man to perish when moft fit to live,
O how mifpent were all these ftratagems,
By skill Divine inwoven in our frame?
Where are Heav'n's holiness and mercy fled ?
Laughs heav'n, at once, at virtue, and at man ?
If not, why that discourag'd this destroy'd ?.

Thus far Ambition. What fays Avarice?
This her chief maxim, which has long been thine,
"The wife and wealthy are the fame."-I grant it
To ftore up treasure, with inceffant toil,
This is man's province, this his highest praife.
To this great end keen Inftina ftings him on ;
To guide that inftinct, Reason! is thy charge;
'Tis thine to tell us where true treafure lies;
But, Reafon failing to discharge her trust,
Or to the deaf discharging it in vain,
A blunder follows; and blind Industry,
Gall'd by the fpur, but ftranger to the courfe,
The courfe where stakes of more than gold are won)
O'erloading, with the cares of distant age
The jaded fpirits of the prefent hour,

Provides for an eternity below.

"Thou shalt not covet," is a wife command; But bounded to the wealth the fun furveys; Look farther, the command ftands quite revers❜d, And Av'rice is a virtue moft divine.

Is faith a refuge for our happiness?

Moft fure: And is it not for reason too?
Nothing this world unriddles, but the next.
Whence inextinguishable thirst of gain ?
From inextinguishable life in man:

Man, if not meant, by worth, to reach the skies,
Had wanted wing to fly fo far in guilt.
Sour grapes, I grant, ambition, avarice,
Yet ftill their root is immortality.

Thefe its wild growth fo bitter, and fo bafe,
(Pain and reproach!) religion can reclaim,
Refine, exalt, throw down their pois'nous lee,
And make them sparkle in the bowl of bliss.
See, the third witnefs laughs at blifs remote,
And falfely promises an Eden here.

Truth fhe fhall speak for once, tho' prone to lie,
A common cheat, and Pleasure is her name.
To pleasure never was LORENZO deaf;
Then hear her now, now first thy real friend.
Since Nature made us not more fond than proud
Of happiness, (whence hypocrites in joy!
Makers of mirth! artificers of smiles!)

Why fhould the joy moft poignant fenfe affords,
Burn us with blushes, and rebuke our pride?
Thofe heav'n-born blushes tell us man defcends
Ev'n in the zenith of his earthly blifs:
Should Reafon take her infidel repose,
This honeft inflind fpeaks our lineage high:
This inftinct calls on darknefs to conceal
Our rapturous relation to the stalls.
Our glory covers us with noble fhame,
And he that's unconfounded, is unmann'd.
The man that blushes, is not quite a brute.
Thus far with thee, LORENZO! will I close:
Pleafure is good, and man for pleasure made;
But pleasure full of glory, and of joy;
Pleafure which neither blushes, nor expires.
The witneffes are heard: The cause is o'er :
Let confcience file the fentence in her court,

Dearer than deeds that half a realm convey.
Thus feal'd by Truth, th' authentic record runs:
"Know, ali; know, Infidels-uhapt to know!
"Tis immortality your nature folves;
"Tis immortality decyphers man,

"And opens all the myt'ries of his make:
"Without it, half his inftincts are a riddle;
"Without it, all his virtues are a dream.
"His very crimes atteft his dignity;
"His fatclefs thirft of pleafure, gold, and fame,
"Declares him born for bleffings infinite.
"What lefs than infinite, makes un-abfurd

Paffions, which all on earth but more inflames? Fierce paffions, fo mif-meafur'd to this scene, "Stretch'd out, like eagles wings, beyond our neft, "Far, far beyond the worth of all below, "For earth too large prefage a nobler flight, "And evidence our title to the fkies."

Ye gemile theologues, of calmer kind!
Whofe conftitution dictates to your pen,

Who cold, yourfelves, think ardour comes from hell!
Think not our paffions from corruption fprung,
Tho' to corruption now they lend their wings;
That is their mifirefs, not their mother. All
(And juftly) Reafon deem divine; I fee,
I feel a grandeur in the paffions too,

Which speaks their high defcent and glorious end;
Which speaks them rays of an eternal fire.
In paradife itself they burnt as ftrong,
Ere Adam fell; though wifer in their aim.
Like the proud Eaflern ftruck by Providence,"
What though our paffions are run mad, and stoop,
With low, terreftrial appetite to graze

On trash, on toys, dethron'd from high defire ?
Yet ftill, thro' their difgrace, a feeble ray
Of greatnefs fhines, and tells us whence they fell:
But thefe (like that fall'n monarch when reclaim'd)
When Reafon moderates the rein aright,

Shall re-afcend, remount their former fphere,

Where once they foar'd illuftrious, ere feduc'd
By wanton Eve's debauch to ftroll on earth,
And fet the fublunary world on fire.

But, grant their phrenzy lafts; their phrenzy fails · To disappoint one providential end,

For which Heav'n blew up ardour in our hearts:
Were Reafon filent, boundless pasion speaks,
A future scene of boundless objects too,
And brings glad tidings of eternal day.
Eternal day! 'tis that enlightens all;
And all, by that enlighten'd, proves it fure.
Confider man as an immortal being;
Intelligible all; and all is great;

A chrystalline transparency prevails,
And ftrikes full luftre thro' the human sphere;
Confider man as mortal, all is dark

And wretched; Reafon weeps at the furvey.

The learn'd LORENZO cries, "And let her weep, "Weak modern reafon ; ancient times were wife. "Authority, that venerable guide,

62

"Stands on my part; the fam d Athenian porch
(And who for wisdom fo renown'd as they?)
"Deny'd this immortality to man.”

I grant it; but affirm they prov'd it too.
A riddle this?ave patience, I'll explain.
What noble vanities, what moral flights,
Glitt'ring thro' their romantic wisdom's page,
Make us, at once, defpife them, and admire?
Fable is flat, to thefe high-feafon'd fires;
They leave th' extravagance of fong below.
"Flesh fhall not feel; or, feeling, fhall enjoy
"The dagger or the rack; to them, alike
"A bed of rofee, or the burning bull.”
In men exploding all beyond the grave,
Strange doctrine this! as dodrine, it was ftrange,
But not, as prophecy; for fuch it prov'd,
And, to their own amazement, was fulfill'd.
They feign'd a firmnefs, Chriftians need not feign,
The Chriftian truly triumph'd in the flame.