Through every scene of sense superior far: They graze the turf untilled; they drink the stream Unbrewed, and ever full, and unembittered With doubts, fears, fruitless hopes, regrets, despair. Mankind's peculiar! reason's precious dower! No foreign clime they ransack for their robes, No brother cite to the litigious bar. Their good is good entire, unmixed, unmarred; They find a paradise in every field, On boughs forbidden, where no curses hang: Their ill no more than strikes the sense, unstretched By previous dread or murmur in the rear; When the worst comes, it comes unfeared; one stroke Begins and ends their woe: they die but once; Blessed incommunicable privilege! for which Proud man, who rules the globe and reads the stars, Philosopher or hero, sighs in vain. Account for this prerogative in brutes: No day, no glimpse of day, to solve the knot But what beams on it from eternity. O sole and sweet solution! that unties The difficult, and softens the severe; The cloud on Nature's beauteous face dispels, Restores bright order, easts the brute beneath, And re-enthrones us in supremacy Of joy, e'en here. Admit immortal life, And virtue is knight-errantry no more: Each virtue brings in hand a golden dower Far richer in reversion: Hope exults, And, though much bitter in our cup is thrown, Predominates and gives the taste of Heaven. ANONYMOUS THE HAPPY SAVAGE Oh, happy he who never saw the face Of man, nor heard the sound of human voice! But soon as born was carried and exposed In some vast desert, suckled by the wolf Or shaggy bear, more kind than our fell race; Who with his fellow brutes can range around The echoing forest. His rude artless mind Uncultivated as the soil, he joins The dreadful harmony of howling wolves, And the fierce lion's roar; while far away Th' affrighted traveller retires and trembles. Happy the lonely savage! nor deceived, Nor vexed, nor grieved; in every darksome cave, Under each verdant shade, he takes repose. Sweet are his slumbers: of all human arts Happily ignorant, nor taught by wisdom Numberless woes, nor polished into torment. SOAME JENYNS From AN ESSAY ON VIRTUE Were once these maxims fixed, that God's our friend, Virtue our good, and happiness our end. How soon must reason o'er the world prevail, And error, fraud, and superstition fail! None would hereafter then with groundless fear Describe th' Almighty cruel and severe, Predestinating some without pretence To Heaven, and some to Hell for no offence; Inflicting endless pains for transient crimes, And favouring sects or nations, men or times.