But Wisdome growes, when Senses doe decay,
And Folly most in quickest Sense is found.

If we had nought but Sense, each liuing wight,
Which we call brute, would be more sharp then we;
As hauing Sense's apprehensiue might,

In a more cleere, and excellent degree.

But they doe want that quicke discoursing power,
Which doth in vs the erring Sense correct;
Therefore the bee did sucke the painted flower,
And birds, of grapes, the cunning shadow, peckt.

Sense outsides knows; the Soule throgh al things sees;
Sense, circumstance; she, doth the substance view ;
Sense sees the barke, but she, the life of trees;
Sense heares the sounds, but she, the concords true.
(pp. 35-38.)

Once more :

I know my bodie's of so fraile a kind,
As force without, feauers within can kill;
I know the heauenly nature of my minde,
But 'tis corrupted both in wit and will:

I know my Soule hath power to know all things,
Yet is she blinde and ignorant in all;
I know I am one of Nature's little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

I know my life's a paine and but a span,

I know my Sense is mockt with euery thing:
And to conclude, I know my selfe a MAN,

Which is a proud, and yet a wretched thing. (p. 24.)

If the pathos and grandeur of Pascal be anticipated in these lines, Pope has certainly appropriated Davies' favourite metaphor of the 'spider.' Witness the Sense of Feeling illustrated :—

Much like a subtill spider, which doth sit

In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide;

If ought doe touch the vtmost thred of it,
Shee feeles it instantly on euery side.

So in the Essay of Man :—

"The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine,

Feels at each thread, and lives along the line."

(p. 70).

Another now familiar 'metaphor' also occurs in "Nosce Teipsum" :

"Heere Sense's apprehension, end doth take;

As when a stone is into water cast,

One circle doth another circle make,

Till the last circle touch the banke at last." (p. 72.)

These two characteristics, viz., (1) deep and original thinking, (2) perfection of workmanship, or mastery of an extremely difficult stanza-embrace that in "Nosce Teipsum," regarded broadly, which I am anxious to have the Reader recognize and 'prove' for himself. Subsidiary to them is one other thing-not shared with many of our Poets and therefore demanding specific

statement-viz. its condensation throughout.

Hallam

:

and Craik have called attention to this; and the student cannot fail to be struck with it. It is not simply that the stanzas are as so many rings of gold each complete in itself—much as Proverbs are but that whether it be idea or opinion or metaphor there is no beating of it out, as though yards of gold-leaf or tin-foil were more valuable than the relatively small solid ore that has been so manipulated or the common mistake of imagining that a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of lead. From Dean Donne until now comparisons are odious." Nevertheless when one recalls the attenuated thought and the blatant verbiage of not a few of our Poets, this resolute sifting out of everything extraneous is not less noticeable than commendable. It assures us that the Poet was conscious of his resources of his unused wealth of thought and imagination and fancies. He who compacts his carbon into a Koh-i-noor has infinite supplies of it. Similarly a Poet who could and did so lavishly add great thought to great thought and vivid metaphor to vivid metaphor, and still go on adding in smallest possible compass, declares his intellect to be of the highest. I take two stanzas as illustrative equally of condensed thought and condensed metaphor concerning our First Parents :—

When their reasons eye was sharpe and cleare,
And (as an eagle can behold the sunne)
Could haue approcht th' Eternall Light as neare,
As the intellectuall angels could haue done :

Euen then to them the Spirit of Lyes suggests

That they were blind, because they saw not ill;
And breathes into their incorrupted brests

A curious wish, which did corrupt their will.

Your Rhetorician-poet would have expatiated on his 'Eagle' through a hundred lines. Your mere Metaphysician would have entangled himself with distinctions between 'wish' and 'will' endlessly. Similarly how succinctly memorable is this of man's un-willinghood to know himself—every stanza a perfect circle but all the circles interlinked :

We study Speech but others we perswade;

We leech-craft learne, but others cure with it;
We interpret lawes, which other men haue made,
But reade not those which in our hearts are writ.

Is it because the minde is like the eye,

Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees—
Whose rayes reflect not, but spread outwardly :
Not seeing it selfe when other things it sees?

No, doubtlesse; for the mind can backward cast
Vpon her selfe, her vnderstanding light;
But she is so corrupt, and so defac't,
As her owne image doth her selfe affright.

As in the fable of the Lady faire,

Which for her lust was turnd into a cow;
When thirstie to a streame she did repaire,

And saw her selfe transform'd she wist not how :

At first she startles, then she stands amaz'd,

At last with terror she from thence doth flye;
And loathes the watry glasse wherein she gaz'd,
And shunnes it still, though she for thirst doe die :

Euen so Man's Soule which did God's image beare,
And was at first faire, good, and spotlesse pure;
Since with her sinnes her beauties blotted were,
Doth of all sights her owne sight least endure :

For euen at first reflection she espies,

Such strange chimeraes, and such monsters there;
Such toyes, such antikes, and such vanities,
As she retires, and shrinkes for shame and feare.

And as the man loues least at home to bee,

That hath a sluttish house haunted with spirits ;
So she impatient her owne faults to see,

Turnes from her selfe and in strange things delites.

For this few know themselues: for merchants broke
View their estate with discontent and paine;
And seas are troubled, when they doe reuoke
Their flowing waues into themselues againe.

(pp. 20-22.)

How daintily-put and how divinely ennobled by the