On Happiness, and the Incapacity of Mankind for Its Attainment

Do wits this maxim still profess?
"That man was born for happiness:
"Tho tow'rs of hope he fondly raise,
"Their structure lasting all his days:
"In expectation ev'n possessing
"The better half of ev'ry blessing;
"His bliss for ever in his view,
"Whene'er he pleases to pursue."
My friend, with care, such maxims weigh:
Nor run with giddy wits astray.
Genius, in search of truth may roam;
But bliss, if found, is found at home:
To region, clime nor soil confin'd
This boasted seed of heav'nly kind.
Ah! vainly boasted, if below
The plant celestial cannot grow!

Say sophists neither more nor less
Than happiness is happiness;
Yet will they boast this state unknown,
This bliss indefinite, their own?—
The diff'rence plain 'twixt bliss and woe,
Whate'er we feel we surely know:
What state can, then, be ever thine
Which sense nor science can define?

That man, by others is't confess'd,
Ne'er is, but still is to be blest?
Yet would they teach, in moral strain,
How all may happiness attain?
As well who ne'er was bless'd with light
May boast the happiness of sight,
The splendour of the solar ray;
Or teach his comrades blind their way;
As such to thee make ever known
A state of being ne'er their own.

Dost thou to prove my judgment wrong
In answer quote thy fav'rite song?
True bliss, thy Pope, if we believe,
All hands can reach, all heads conceive:
The happiness of each confin'd,
In truth, to that of all our kind.
But terms so gen'ral nought define:
The bliss of all not yours nor mine:
For, yet distinctly's understood
The public from the private good.
Nor doth it prove this maxim right
To say that both in one unite;
Unless their union be so plain
That, seeking one, we both obtain;
Since th' individual, for himself,
Applies to riot, fame or pelf:
In spite of all the wise can say,
We seek our bliss a sep'rate way;
Just as the present maggots bite,
Take our own measures for the right;
Or, having no peculiar whim,
Along the tide of custom swim.
Mean-while, tho all of bliss dispute,
None leave their darling substitute.
"How short of happiness is gold!"
The miser cries; yet keeps his hold.
"In women," sighs the batter'd rake,
"What solid comfort can we take!"
"Ah! what in wine?" Silenus asks.
Yet, cart the whore; go, stave the casks.—
"How shall the sons of Comus live,
"If wine nor women life will give!"
Thus public happiness our care
But for our own peculiar share;
While sons their father's hopes traduce;
And here even patriotism's abuse.
However then the specious face
Of wit may countenance the case,
Bliss inconsistently we call
The happiness of one and all.
Nor is it yet precisely meant
By good, ease, pleasure or content.
Good might we variously explain.
Ease is deliv'rance but from pain.
Pleasure is actual joy confess'd;
And mere content but patient rest;
A neutral state, at best and worst,
But negatively blest or curst:
That which our happiness we call,
Tho that nor this, the sum of all.
The word's plain meaning's plainly this,
Some constant state of actual bliss;
No matter whether in degree
Alike bestow'd on you or me:
Enough, if, void of fear or pain,
No motive lead us to complain:
Enough, whate'er the mode of joy,
If such that it can never cloy.

Look round the world, and tell me true.
Where is such happiness in view?
From monarchs fled, as sings the bard,
His patron's virtue to reward,
Tell me, in truth, was St. John blest?
Or did the bitter bard but jest;
Dipping his pen in worse than gall,
An outed statesman bless'd to call?
With equal truth the Muse might paint
My lord of Bolingbroke a saint;
Run riot o'er his dubious fame,
And dub him with a patriot's name:
So worthy of his country's praise!
So meek! so holy all his ways!

Nor, tho to him, to him alone
A state of perfect bliss unknown:
Of each complexion, age, degree,
Mankind as far remov'd as he.
Go, ask, my friend, from door to door,
The high, the low, the rich, the poor;
In court, or cot, if here, or there,
Resides the mortal free from care.
You ask in vain, for joy and strife
Diversify all states of life.

To wield the scythe with sweaty brow,
With wearied arm to guide the plough,
To sow in hope, to reap in joy,
Thine, Labour! is the sweet employ.
A life of rest with pain t'endure,
To seek in health disease's cure,
To eat the grape, unprun'd the vine,
Laborious Idleness! is thine.
Yet idleness of care complains
And labour, quarrels with its pains.

Nor only found, or made, distress;
Because externals fail to bless;
Lodg'd in ourselves the taste, and will,
That make externals good or ill;
No earthly blessing, hence, we find
An equal good to all mankind.

Belmore, the sober'st thing on earth,
Dreads the broad laugh, and roar of mirth;
While Clerrio, with a length of chin,
Protracted by perpetual grin,
Tho' Socrates himself pass by,
Must laugh in ridicule or die.

How elegant, how high refin'd
The palate of Cardella's mind!
How low, how vulgar Cotta's soul,
That feels no rapture in a vole!

See thousands, as in love with strife,
Pursue it, fretting, all their life;
And darken with the clouds of spleen,
The sky of providence serene:
Wretched to find another eas'd,
And most unhappy when, they're pleas'd
How strange! while some, with patient toil,
Raise comfort on a barren soil,
Or pleasure strike, by native dint,
From cruel Fortune's hardest flint;
The patriarch like, whose rod, we're told,
Earth's stubborn fetters burst, of old;
When gush'd the stream from Horeb's rock,
To water Israel's thirsty flock.

Hence, not on earth a blessing sent
Gives universally content:
For, while so varied is our taste,
Manna itself were show'r'd to waste.
With reason, therefore, we profess
God meant not here our happiness:
Else in the various blessings given
Sure various minds might find their heaven.
But know, as different we find
Each individual's turn of mind,
As little with ourselves we see
Ourselves, at various times, agree.
So oft our views, our tempers, change,
As through life's varied scenes we range.
At times, so diff'rent from himself,
The prodigal will hoard his pelf;
Spend greedily the night at play,
To throw next morn his gains away.
At times ev'n misers rob their store,
And give their sixpence to the poor.
At times ev'n trembling cowards fight,
And, desp'rate, put the bold to flight:
While, sick of fighting and of fame,
The brave as belgic lions tame.
How oft, my friend, in private life,
We love the maid we hate a wife!
How oft the scene that gives delight
At morn, offends the eye at night!
'Tis not the want of that or this;
Possession is the bane of bliss:
And hence of happiness we see
On earth th' impossibility.

Yet, with an interested view,
Doth still Lorenzo truth pursue?
Dost thou suppose th' enlighten'd mind
In truth's researches bliss may find?
That science fancy may restrain,
And fix that weather-cock the brain?
Alas, deceive thy self no more;
But give thy vain pretensions o'er.
For, as a world of fruitless cost
In vain inquiries hath been lost;
A world of labour spent t' attain
That knowledge man may never gain:
So millions all their lives have spent,
Searching for bliss in discontent:
For bliss, which but a little thought
Had told them never could be taught.
Yet still they ask; yet still they run
A race that never can be won.
Thus sought, of yore, projecting fools
The summum bonum of the schools;
And wiser heads than those of old
The stone converting all to gold;
Or vain adepts, much wiser still,
To wrest from nature's band, at will,
Promethean theft, celestial fire;
To animate their wood and wire:
Madmen, that not Monro could cure
Of circles and their quadrature,
Of thinking drunken nature reels,
Like a slung coach, on springs and wheels!

Dost thou, instructed in thy youth
To place consummate bliss in truth,
Conceive it somewhere hidden lies,
Among the learned and the wise;
That hence our bliss or misery flow,
The truth to know or not to know?
In vain the learn'd, in science deep,
In search of bliss, their vigils keep;
In vain the universe explore;
Swift as their search, it flies before,
Through ev'ry clime, on ev'ry wind,
And leaves the panting wish behind.
O, tell me, what connection ties
So close the happy and the wise.
Did e'er the sage in wisdom find
The artless infant's peace of mind?
Proud knowledge e'er, or boastful art,
Restore to joy the broken heart?
Ah! what avails the truth to know,
When truth's the frequent source of woe;
While gilded fiction's dazzling rays
With sun-shine beautify our days,
Or, mildly shed, its silver beams,
Reflected, light our nightly dreams;
While pleasure and its laughing train
Dance, by the moon-shine of the brain.
For what is knowledge, but to know
How ignorant our state below?
The more we learn, the more to find,
Beyond our learning, still behind;
Our fruitless wishes to increase,
Whene'er our mental prospects cease?
So far from happiness, my friend,
Is science, in its means, and end.
Sayst thou that bliss the world affect
The smile of God on his elect;
Confin'd to Abr'am's faithful seed,
And made dependent on our creed?
Go, ask the saints, to whom are given
The best assurances of heaven,
The few distinguish'd here on earth
As children of a spiritual birth,
How gloomy oft a state of grace;
How often hid their Maker's face;
How oft, by satan and by sin,
Sore buffeted the man within.
These all confess beyond the sky
Their blissful heritage doth lie.

Say, is repos'd this heav'nly trust
Within the bosom of the just,
While virtue in itself you call
The happiness of one and all?
Pretending still, "tho' yours and mine
"No partial mode of bliss define;
"Yet that our different tastes unite
"In meaning well and thinking right;
"An universal moral this,
"Conducting all mankind to bliss!"
Alas, what sophistry to tell
Of "thinking right, and meaning well,"
Unless this rectitude of thought
With perspicuity be taught;
This honest meaning plainly shown;
So oft admir'd! so little known!
At virtue if we're left to guess,
What is't to say 'tis happiness?
The way to virtue as to bliss;
If dubious that as doubtful this.
How fruitless therefore but to know
"Virtue is happiness below!"

Sayst thou, mankind are all agreed
That happiness is virtue's meed?
The service of the work inquire,
And by the labour rate the hire.
Now virtue some to fact confine,
While others place it in design.
Some blest but for the good they do,
Others for all they have in view.
But, if by virtue's understood
The mere intent of doing good,
Those fully virtuous may be held,
Who ne'er one lawless passion quell'd;
Whom ne'er temptation led astray,
Beyond the tenour of their way;
A sober path by stoicks trod;
Nor friends to man, nor foes to God.
Consistent with a state of rest,
If virtue's centred in the breast,
As happy those may surely live
Who nothing give nor have to give,
As those who taste, in ev'ry sense,
Th' exertions of benevolence.
Some seeming difference yet we find,
What pangs affect the tender mind?
What exquisite sensations rise,
To hear the orphan's piteous cries;
To feel the widow's piercing woe;
When no relief we can bestow?
Doth virtue here rejoice the heart
As when the gen'rous ease impart,
When purest transports warm the breast,
That glows to succour' the distress'd?
And yet, my friend, 'twere wond'rous hard,
If bliss the virtuous rich reward,
In poverty that virtue's zeal
Should double all the pangs we feel;
Each gen'rous sigh, each social tear,
But render want the more severe.

To virtue, therefore, if the deed
Our best designs must yet succeed,
Granting that happy ev'ry mind
In such proportion as its kind,
Here in externals do we place
The happiness of human race;
Enabled to relieve distress
As wealth, or pow'r, ourselves possess;
For bliss capacitated more
As blest with fortune's worldly store.
Fix'd, by this scheme, the blissful state,
Exclusive, to the rich and great;
The virtuous poor, but innocent,
Claiming at th' utmost, bare content.
Besides, if individuals blest
As sharers only with the rest,
True happiness with thee to call
Not merely that of one but all,
What is inactive virtue's use?
Can it to social good conduce?
Can it, thus fruitless and confin'd,
Be call'd a blessing to mankind?
If then we judge so much amiss
Of virtue, and of virtuous bliss,
If faith, tho crown'd with alms and pray'rs,
Hath all its pangs, hath all its cares,
While ev'n from knowledge prospects rise,
That makes us miserably wise
His perfect happiness to reach,
No morals mortal man can teach;
Still Heav'n's b[...]st vot'ries must confess
No blessings here compleatly bless:
A compound strange of bliss and woe
Man's variable state below:
Some absent something ours to crave,
Ev'n from the cradle to the grave!

How idly, then, employ'd the mind
In search of that we cannot find.
For human bliss stands never still;
Our good insep'rable from ill;
Whilst all of pain and pleasure share,
Their hour of joy, their hour of care,
Adapted to each sev'ral state;
Fix'd and determinate as fate.
The world my friend, an ample field,
Of such examples store doth yield.
How throbs the infant's little breast,
Beneath a load of care oppress'd;
The care that issues with a sigh;
The tear yet standing in the eye;
Or, caught in laughter's dimple sleek,
Dry'd up in stealing down the cheek!
See next, among the sachel'd crowd,
Bold as a hero and as proud,
The little tyrant of his class;
How happy till condemn'd to parse,
Or sob beneath the weightier curse
Of scanning Lilly's crabbed verse!
In youth how glows the vital fire
'Tween expectation and desire;
Our sanguine hopes our aukward fears,
All suiting unexperienc'd years.
Still riper joys do manhood bless,
When full-blown fortune we possess,
We riot on the joyous store,
Till health and strength can charm no more;
When disappointment and chagrin
Retaliate all our joys with spleen.
Proportion'd next to wasted age
Insipid joys and peevish rage,
Tho dim th' exhausted passions burn,
Take, to our latest gasp, their turn.
Thus relative, my friend, we find
The pains and pleasures of mankind;
Adapted all, in due degree,
To human sensibility.
For see, no more alive to smart
Than dead to joy the hard-of-heart:
As far from rapture as despair
The fretful family of care.
Not sickness, pain, nor death itself
Avarus dreads like loss of pelf:
While Lavish offers an estate
To staunch a cut, ere yet too late,
Dispel the head-ach, or remove
Th' effects of his intemp'rate love.
Was ever yet the child of mirth.
Intensely blest, or curst, on earth?
Ah no! how lightly feel a pain
The light-of-heart, or light-of-brain!
The man, so happy as to think,
Life's bitter potions born to drink!

Behold the foolish, weak and blind
The sprightliest, merriest of mankind;
While suffers oft superiour sense,
Ev'n from its own pre-eminence;
Those follies that the wise annoy
The destitute-of-wisdom's joy.
The blockhead naturally free
From cares thy knowledge brings on thee,
While Heav'n you daily toil to seek,
Poor Ralpho works but once a week:
When, left his plough and worldly cares,
He plies his Sunday's task at pray'rs.
Nor puzzled he in truth's research,
Laid all his burthen on the church;
The friendly church, by Heav'n design'd
To help the weak, to lead the blind,
To check the rash, to warm the cold,
T'engage the young, t'amuse the old,
Th' unthinking from themselves to save,
And bring them calmly to the grave.
Blest; ignorance! from care so free,
Hath it, Lorenzo, charms for thee?
Wouldst thou to science, empty name
If void of bliss resign thy claim?
Be like the ass, that plodding goes,
Nor looks beyond his bridled nose?
For me—O, rather should I ask
Life's most laborious; abject task;
Would ev'n the meanest lot sustain;
Bear ev'ry tolerable pain;
To emp'ricks would intrust my cure;
Ev'n to be pitied might endure:
Nay, plague me, Heav'n, in ev'ry sense,
Ere take my share of reason hence;
Of science ere my soul deprive,
My little portion, whilst alive.

Yet dost thou ignorance despise?
The joys of knowledge hence arise.
So strange so little understood
The varied source of mortals' good!
To Heav'n my grateful vows be paid
That man in human frailty's made;
That grief and ignorance my lot;
In joy and science since forgot;
Or best remember'd in the taste
They give improvement's rich repast.
O say, industrious querist, say,
What raptures court you on the way;
What views delight, from time to time,
As the steep hills of art you climb.
Such transports ne'er had fir'd my breast,
If born of sciences possess'd,
As when, by want of knowledge fir'd,
To nature's lore I late aspir'd;
By slow degrees enlighten'd grew,
Her volume op'ning to my view;
To the weak mind as knowledge given;
Knowledge, that wings the soul for Heaven.

Lorenzo, is this doctrine strange?
Seest thou not, while the seasons change,
How much, as each in contrast felt,
We freeze with cold, by heat we melt.
Thus exquisite our sense of woe
As more refin'd our pleasures grow:
Pleasure and pain, as light and shade,
By one the other still display'd.
Didst never want? to thee denied
The bliss of being satisfied;
In constant fulness but enjoy'd
Th' insipid good of which we're cloy'd.
Say, plenty gives thee bread more white;
It blunts the edge of appetite;
Or, giving wine, malignly first
Robs thee, distasteful, of thy thirst.
How sunk, and terrible, to thee
The hollow eye of poverty!
While Villius meets her with a smile,
And sings, or whistles all the while.
Tho worn his hands, perplex'd his head,
He relishes the sweets of bread;
Nay patient sees, in want itself,
His curstless cupboard's vacant shelf:
Full many a time, in pleasant rue,
Dancing for joy without a shoe.

Is Fortunatus rich and gay?
Curst with the modish itch of play,
Bubbl'd at White's, thro lust of gain,
Or jockey'd round New-Market plain,
See with his barb his manors fly;
His leaseholds totter with the die;
Braving the storm of many a cast,
His oaks a bet malignant blast;
His card-built villas, one and all,
Like infant architecture, fall.

From sharpers, creditors and duns,
Not half the perils Villius runs;
Whom all the world to trust refuse;
Who nothing owns he dreads to lose.
Ah me! what threat'ning danger's nigh?
Why swells the tear in Delia's eye?
Eclips'd the fairest of the fair
By sad misfortune's drooping air;
Delia on whom kind nature smil'd,
Ev'n at the birth her fav'rite child,
When, all the graces to combine,
She cloath'd them in one form divine;
Bestowing grandeur, wit and wealth,
And fortune's best of bounties, health:
Nay, adding, in her gen'rous fit,
Good-nature even to her wit.
With all these blessings yet unblest,
Ah, tell me, fair one, why distress'd.
Alas! alas! the belle's reply
"Of Brilliante's birty-day suit I die.'

You smile at misery like this:
Match it with Delia's sense of bliss.
In rapture ever, with the gay,
To shine at concert, ball or play;
Her greatest happiness to boast
Her name the fopling's reigning toast;
The all in life her wish regards
Summ'd up in fashions, routs and cards.
Ah, then, how pow'rful to distress
Th' important article of dress!
So deeply some may cares affect,
Those trifling cares that you neglect;
Half the solicitude we see
Ridiculous to you and me?
Others there are as lightly hold
Dangers, at which our blood runs cold;
Lo where, beneath th' impending cliff,
The Norway fowler moors his skiff;
Or, desp'iate, fifty fathoms high
Suspended, seems himself to fly;
While thus, from rock to rock, he swings;
And, blythe, his summer's ditty sings:
As blythe the sea-boy furls the sail,
Regardless of the blust'ring gale;
Nor winds, nor waves, disturb his sleep,
Amid the horrours of the deep.

The cordial draught, the downy bed
Had ne'er reviv'd the drooping head,
Had sickness pale, and fainting grief
Ne'er wish'd for wearied nerves relief.

See Belmont on the sofa laid;
What racking pains his limbs invade!
Take half his gout, the respite given
He calls a blissful taste of heaven.
Give but a youth, dispersing wealth,
Who riots on the bloom of health,
That blissful part, which yet remains;
And his a mortal's bitter'st pains.
Pains which no aggravation know!
Yet, so comparative our woe,
Inflict them when Cleora's kiss,
Kind earnest of approaching bliss,
Hath rais'd the glowing lover's fire
To flaming raptures of desire;
Lo, disappointment joins the curse,
And turns this worst affliction worse.

Correct ideas let us gain.
Our sense of joy we owe to pain;
So strange a paradox is this!
And mis'ry to our sense of bliss;
While, such our varying state below,
Ev'n joy degen'rates into woe;
And pains, in sufferance, by degrees,
On their own pangs engender ease;
Their antidote, like poison, bring,
T'expel the poison of their sting.

The tension of th'extended nerve,
With physiologists may serve,
The means of pleasure and of pain,
The seeming paradox t'explain,
As strung the harp with trembling wire,
So brac'd with nerves the human lyre,
While such in tune, these sages say,
The smiling hours in concert play:
But if, in change, too lax or tense,
Health strikes no more the keys of sense:
But, tremblingly alive all o'er,
The tortur'd strings in discord roar:
While sickness, with her harpy claws,
Stranger to each harmonious pause,
Labours, benumb'd, the jarring strain,
That stuns our ear with deaf'ning pain.
Nor yet can health too oft repeat
Its musick, howsoever sweet;
While, by degrees, lo, ev'ry string,
Depriv'd of its elastic spring,
In gen'ral lassitude, full soon
The whole machine grows out of tune.
Should, also, passion, sense or art
Wind up too high the nervous part,
With noise the notes tumultuous tire;
Or breaking strings unman the lyre.
Of pain or pleasure on our frame
Th' effects, hence, frequently the same.
Thus, full of gladness or of grief,
In tears we find the same relief;
Alike the feeble nerve destroy
Exquisite pain, extatic joy.
The bandit, stretch'd upon the wheel,
Th' extreme of torture ne'er can feel;
But, cruelty disarming, lies
Or dead to sense, or really dies.
So, rapture never meant to bless,
E'vn joy grows pain when in excess.
Indulg'd to print the burning kiss
On Chloe's lips, how fierce the bliss!
How keen the torture of her charms,
Caress'd, to pant within her arms,
Melting in fulness of desire,
Stretch'd on the rack of bliss, t'expire!

Thus constitutional, below,
Is all our bliss, is all our woe;
Each holding, intimately join'd,
Alternate empire o'er the mind.
Like Persian monarchs, hardly known
Ere tumbled headlong from the throne.
Precarious and as short its sway
Depos'd and sceptred in a day,
Pleasure begins its fickle reign,
And tyrannizes into pain;
When, as to cruel pain we bow,
Its rod grows light we know not how.

Ah, cruel blow to human pride!
Is pain and pleasure thus allied,
That all the sweets of life grow sour
Within the transitory hour!
Complains Lorenzo? darts behind
No ray of comfort on his mind?
If thus with varied joy and strife
Diversified all-states of life;
If human being cannot know
A constant state of bliss and woe;
Worn by sharp mis'ry to the bones,
While grief with intermission groans,
And meagre want, half fed, the while,
Grins forth her grateful, ghastly smile;
Tho vain our hopes of bliss, as vain
Our fears of unremitting pain;
Absurd the mischief-making care
That leads us blindly to despair.