If any one be so lamentable a critic as to require the smoothness, the numbers, and the turn of heroic poetry in this poem, I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his epistles is not ill imitated here. The expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction, ought to be plain and natural, and yet majestic: for here the poet is presumed to be a kind of lawgiver, and those three qualities which I have named, are proper to the legislative style. The florid, elevated, and figurative way is for the passions; for love and hatred, fear and anger, are begotten in the soul, by showing their objects out of their true proportion, either greater than the life or less: but instruction is to be given by showing them what they naturally are. A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth. * * * * * Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, Is reason to the soul: and as on high, Those rolling fires discover but the sky, Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, But guide us upward to a better day. And as those nightly tapers disappear When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere; So pale grows reason at religion's sight; 10 So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light. Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led From cause to cause, to nature's secret head; And found that one first principle must be: But what, or who, that UNIVERSAL HE: Whether some soul encompassing this ball, Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all; Or various atoms' interfering dance Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance; Or this Great All was from eternity; 20 Not even the Stagyrite himself could see; And Epicurus guess'd as well as he: As blindly groped they for a future state; As rashly judged of providence and fate: But least of all could their endeavours find What most concern'd the good of human kind: For happiness was never to be found, But vanish'd from them like enchanted ground. One thought Content the good to be enjoy'd-- This every little accident destroy'd: 30 The wiser madmen did for Virtue toil-- A thorny, or at best a barren soil: In Pleasure some their glutton souls would steep; But found their line too short, the well too deep; And leaky vessels which no bliss could keep. Thus anxious thoughts in endless circles roll, Without a centre where to fix the soul: In this wild maze their vain endeavours end: How can the less the greater comprehend? Or finite reason reach Infinity? 40 For what could fathom God were more than He.