What wonder therefore, since the endearing ties Of passion link the universal kind Of man so close, what wonder if to search This common nature through the various change Of sex, and age, and fortune, and the frame Of each peculiar, draw the busy mind With unresisted charms? The spacious west, And all the teeming regions of the south, Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight Of Knowledge, half so tempting or so fair, 10 As man to man. Nor only where the smiles Of Love invite; nor only where the applause Of cordial Honour turns the attentive eye On Virtue's graceful deeds. For, since the course Of things external acts in different ways On human apprehensions, as the hand Of Nature temper'd to a different frame Peculiar minds; so haply where the powers Of Fancy [Endnote X] neither lessen nor enlarge The images of things, but paint in all 20 Their genuine hues, the features which they wore In Nature; there Opinion will be true, And Action right. For Action treads the path In which Opinion says he follows good, Or flies from evil; and Opinion gives Report of good or evil, as the scene Was drawn by Fancy, lovely or deform'd: Thus her report can never there be true Where Fancy cheats the intellectual eye, With glaring colours and distorted lines. 30 Is there a man, who, at the sound of death, Sees ghastly shapes of terror conjured up, And black before him; nought but death-bed groans And fearful prayers, and plunging from the brink Of light and being, down the gloomy air, An unknown depth? Alas! in such a mind, If no bright forms of excellence attend The image of his country; nor the pomp Of sacred senates, nor the guardian voice Of Justice on her throne, nor aught that wakes 40 The conscious bosom with a patriot's flame; Will not Opinion tell him, that to die, Or stand the hazard, is a greater ill Than to betray his country? And in act Will he not choose to be a wretch and live? Here vice begins then. From the enchanting cup Which Fancy holds to all, the unwary thirst Of youth oft swallows a Circaean draught, That sheds a baleful tincture o'er the eye Of Reason, till no longer he discerns, 50 And only guides to err. Then revel forth A furious band that spurn him from the throne, And all is uproar. Thus Ambition grasps The empire of the soul; thus pale Revenge Unsheaths her murderous dagger; and the hands Of Lust and Rapine, with unholy arts, Watch to o'erturn the barrier of the laws That keeps them from their prey; thus all the plagues The wicked bear, or o'er the trembling scone The tragic Muse discloses, under shapes 60 Of honour, safety, pleasure, ease, or pomp, Stole first into the mind. Yet not by all Those lying forms, which Fancy in the brain Engenders, are the kindling passions driven