the more they are weighed, amaze the more; which to have supposed, before they were revealed, would have been as great madness, and to have presumed on as great sin, as it is now madness and sin not to believe."
Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the most violent efforts against nature, he is still neither more nor less than the Young of the "Last Day," emptied and swept of his genius, and possessed by seven demons of fustian and bad rhyme. Even here his "Ercles' Vein" alternates with his moral platitudes, and we have the perpetual text of the "Night Thoughts:"
"Gold pleasure buys;
But pleasure dies,
For soon the gross fruition cloys;
Though raptures court,
The sense is short;
But virtue kindles living joys; —
"Joys felt alone!
Joys asked of none!
"Which Time's and fortune's arrows miss:
Joys that subsist,
Though fates resist,
An unprecarious, endless bliss!
"Unhappy they!
And falsely gay!
Who bask forever in success;
A constant feast
Quite palls the taste,
And long enjoyment is distress."
In the "Last Day," again, which is the earliest thing he wrote, we have an anticipation of all his greatest faults and merits. Conspicuous among the faults is that attempt to exalt our conceptions of Deity by vulgar images and comparisons, which is so offensive in the later "Night Thoughts." In a burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by the contemplation of Christ coming to judgment, he asks, Who brings the change of the seasons? and answers:
"Not the great Ottoman, or Greater Czar;
Not Europe's arbitress of peace and war!
