418 POPE. 



might be called so. There is a manifest confusion be- 

 tween what we know about ourselves and about other 

 people ; the whole point of the passage being that we 

 are always mercifully blinded to our own future, how- 

 ever much reason we may possess. There is also inac- 

 curacy as well as inelegance in saying, 



" Heaven, 



Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, 

 A hero perish or a sparrow fall." 



To the last verse Warburton, desirous of reconciling his 

 author with Scripture, appends a note referring to Mat- 

 thew x. 29 : "Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing 1 ? 

 and one of them shall not fall to the ground without 

 your Father." It would not have been safe to have 

 referred to the thirty-first verse: "Fear ye not, there- 

 fore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." 



To my feeling, one of the most beautiful passages 

 in the whole poem is that familiar one : 



" Lo, the poor Indian whose untutored mind 

 Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind, 

 His soul proud science never taught to stray 

 Far as the solar walk or milky way: 

 Yet simple Nature to his hope has given 

 Behind the cloud-topt hill a humbler heaven; 

 Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 

 Some happier island in the watery waste, 

 Where slaves once more their native land behold, 

 No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 

 To be, contents his natural desire, 

 He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire, 

 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 

 His faithful dog shall bear him company." 



But this comes in as a corollary to what went just 

 before : 



" Hope springs eternal in the human breast, 

 Man never is but always to be blest; 

 The soul, uneasy, and confined from home, 

 Kests and expatiates in a life to come." 



