POPE. 421 



And not seldom he is satisfied with the music of the 

 verse without much regard to fitness of imagery ; in the 

 " Essay on Man," for example : — 



" Passions, liko elements, though born to fight, 

 Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite ; 

 These 't is enough to temper and employ: 

 But what composes man can man destroy ? 

 Suffice that Reason keep to Nature's road, 

 Subject, compound them, follow her and God. 

 Love, Hope, and Joy. fair Pleasure's smiling train, 

 Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain, 

 These, mixed with Art, and to due bounds confined, 

 Hake and maintain the balance of the mind.'' 



Here reason is represented as an apothecary compound 

 ing pills of " pleasure's smiling train " and the " family 

 of pain." And in the Moral Essays, 



" Know God and Nature only are the same ; 

 In man the judgment shoots at flying game, 

 A bird of passage, gone as soon as found, 

 Now in the moon, perhaps, now under ground." 



The "judgment shooting at flying game " is an odd 

 image enough ; but I think a bird of passage, now in 

 the moon and now under ground, could be found no- 

 where — out of Goldsmith's Natural History, perhaps. 

 An epigrammatic expression will also tempt him into 

 saying something without basis in truth, as where he 

 ranks together " Macedonia's madman and the Swede," 

 and says that neither of them " looked forward farther 

 than his nose," a slang phrase which may apply well 

 enough to Charles XII., but certainly not to the pupil 

 of Aristotle, who showed himself capable of a large 

 political forethought. So, too, the rhyme, if correct, is 

 a sufficient apology for want of propriety in phrase, as 

 where he makes " Socrates bleed." 



But it is in his Moral Essays and parts of his Satires 

 that Pope deserves the praise which he himself de 

 sired : — 



