PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION.
INTRODUCTION to this more difficult part of the subject. Of truth and its three classes, matter of fact, experimental or scientifical truth, (contradistinguished from opinion,) and universal truth; which last is either metaphysical or geometrical, either purely intellectual or perfectly abstracted. On the power of discerning truth depends that of acting with the view of an end, a circumstance essential to virtue. Of virtue considered in the Divine Mind as a perpetual and universal beneficence. Of human virtue, considered as a system of particular sentiments and actions, suitable to the design of Providence and the condition of man, to whom it constitutes the chief good and the first beauty. Of vice and its origin. Of ridicule; its general nature and final cause. Of the passions, particularly of those which relate to evil, natural or moral, and which are generally accounted painful, though not always unattended with Pleasure.
THUS far of Beauty and the pleasing forms
Which man's untutor❜d fancy, from the scenes
Imperfect of this ever-changing world,
Creates, and views enamour'd. Now my song
Severer themes demand, mysterious truth;
And virtue, sovran good; the spells, the trains,
The progeny
of error; the dread sway
Of passion, and whatever hidden stores
From her own lofty deeds and from herself
The mind acquires. Severer argument,
Not less attractive, nor deserving less
A constant ear: for what are all the forms
Educ'd by fancy from corporeal things,
Greatness, or pomp, or symmetry of parts?
Not tending to the heart, soon feeble grows;
As the blunt arrow 'gainst the knotty trunk,
Their impulse on the sense, while the pall'd eye
Expects in vain its tribute, asks in vain,
Where are the ornaments it once admir'd?
Not so the moral species, nor the pow'rs
Of passion and of thought. Th' ambitious mind
With objects boundless as her own desires
Can there converse: by these unfading forms
Touch'd and awaken'd still, with eager act
She bends each nerve, and meditates well pleas'd 25
Her gifts, her godlike fortune. Such the scenes
Now op'ning round us: may the destin❜d Verse
Maintain its equal tenor, tho' in tracks
Obscure and ard'ous! may the Source of Light,
All present, all sufficient, guide our steps
Thro' ev'ry maze! and whom in childish years
From the loud throng, the beaten paths of wealth
And pow'r, didst thou apart send forth to speak
In tuneful words concerning highest things,
Him still do thou, O Father! at those hours
Of pensive freedom, when the human soul
Shuts out the rumour of the world, him still
Touch thou with secret lessons; call thou back
Each erring thought, and let the yielding strains
From his full bosom like a welcome rill
Spontaneous from its healthy fountain flow!
But from what name, what favourable sign, What heav'nly auspice, rather shall I date My perilous excursion than from truth,
That nearest inmate of the human soul,
Estrang'd from whom, the countenance divine
Of Man, disfigur'd and dishonour'd, sinks
Among inferior things? for to the brutes
Perception and the transient boons of sense
Hath Fate imparted; but to man alone
Of sublunary beings was it giv'n
Each fleeting impulse on the sensual pow'rs
At leisure to review, with equal eye
To scan the passion of the stricken nerve,
Or the vague object striking; to conduct
From sense, the portal turbulent and loud,
Into the mind's wide palace, one by one,
The frequent pressing, fluctuating forms,
And question and compare them. Thus he learns
Their birth and fortunes, how ally'd they haunt
The avenues of sense, what laws direct
Their union, and what various discords rise,
Or fix'd or casual; which, when his clear thought Retains, and when his faithful words express,
That living image of th' external scene,
As in a polish'd mirror held to view,
Is truth; where'er it varies from the shape
And hue of its exemplar, in that part
Dim error lurks. Moreover, from without,
When oft' the same society of forms
In the same order have approach'd his mind,
He deigns no more their steps with curious heed
To trace; no more their features or their garb
He now examines, but of them and their
Condition, as with some diviner's tongue,
Affirms what Heav'n in ev'ry distant place
Thro' ev'ry future season will decree.
This too is truth: where'er his prudent lips
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