" The verbal coincidence is here as marked as the
coincidence in argument. Warton refers to an eloquent passage in
Shaftesbury, which contains a similar thought; but one can hardly doubt
that Bolingbroke was in this case the immediate source. A quaint
passage a little farther on, in which Pope represents man as complaining
because he has not "the strength of bulls or the fur of bears," may be
traced with equal plausibility to Shaftesbury or to Sir Thomas Browne;
but I have not noticed it in Bolingbroke.
One more passage will be sufficient. Pope asks whether we are to demand
the suspension of laws of nature whenever they might produce a
mischievous result? Is Etna to cease an eruption to spare a sage, or
should "new motions be impressed upon sea and air" for the advantage of
blameless Bethel?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging-wall?
Chartres is Pope's typical villain. This is a terse version, with
concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of
gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special
Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be
precipitated. The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from
falling, whilst innocent men lived in it or passed under it, and the
fall of it must be as miraculously determined to crush the guilty
inhabitant or passenger.
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