On Moral Sentiment

Hark! my Lorenzo, how, they rage,
The pious of our pious age;
Those who think heaven an easy fool,
Of wiser mortals made the tool,
Takes counters vile for current coin,
Our filthy rags for robes divine;
We made its joint immortal heirs
For penance, paltry alms and prayers!
What racks their disappointed zeal
Dooms the poor, culprit bard to feel;
The thief, whose rhimes the rents have stole,
Long mark'd on their celestial roll!
So angry bees take sudden wing,
Furious the harmless boy to sting,
Who, less in anger than in play,
O'erturns their labours in his way.
Have they the poor their farthings lent,
At more than th' usual cent. per cent.;
Becauses the promises of heaven
For principal and interest given;
Yet, loth to mortgage house or land,
Dealing ev'n these with sparing hand:
Hard times and taxes wont to moan,
T' excuse their adding to the loan;
Spite of hypocrisy, confess'd
The world's security the best?
Vile us'rers! yet ye think it hard,
Your virtue should not meet reward!
I think so too—hence, hence, to hell,
And there your worth to devils tell.

Do here th' immoral pertly ask,
What profits rise from virtue's task?
If "vice and virtue, bliss and woe
"Quit scores effectually below;
"While, unaffected, heaven surveys
"Its ends fulfill'd in human ways."
Say they "if pain give pleasure birth,
"To joy proportion'd grief, on earth;
"Our suff'rings all comparative;
"What matters how th' ungodly live?
"What can we gain by self-denial,
"Or standing virtue's fiery trial?"
Virtue's clear gain, my friend, 'tis true,
If any, hid from me and you,
Lodg'd in the dark decrees of fate,
Awaits us in some future state;
A gift heaven pleases to bestow,
Wholly unmerited below.
So, whatsoever diff'rent state
May vice in future life await,
Hid in the counsels of th' all-wise,
The reprobating secret lies;
Predestination's awful plan
Beyond the scrutiny of man.

Can yet Lorenzo weakly dream
That ours is an immoral scheme:
Because we hold that joy and strife
Are ballanc'd probably in life;
Whence equally nor blest nor curst
The lives of th' unjust and the just?
Shines not the sun alike, on earth,
On good and bad of mortal birth?
Falls not the plant-enliv'ning rain
Alike on mountain-heath and plain?
Tho noxious there vile brambles shoot;
Here sweetest flow'rs and choicest fruit.
To reason's sober call, my friend,
Did the blind passions but attend;
While ever present to the mind
A full conviction we might find,
"That in the lust of mere desire
"No certain pleasure men acquire;
"But what in extasy they gain
"They're sure to lose in future pain;"
By truth enlighten'd, hence, to fly
The distant evil as the nigh,
Men were no longer prone to vice;
Now stript of all her charms t' entice;
But, arming in their own defence,
Would stand in neutral innocence.

Thro reason let a sensual eye
Th' enchanting form of vice espy;
Equivocal in make and face,
Her left side doth her right disgrace.
As form'd to give, and share, delight,
One blooming cheek doth hearts invite;
While roguish loves in ambush lie,
And dart their arrows from her eye.
A polish'd arm, a taper side,
Her thigh that scarce her garments hide,
Her well-turn'd leg, and ancle neat,
The half of beauty's form compleat.
But ah, the contrast side appears
Worn out with care and grey with years;
With wrinkled brow and squinting eye,
Scowling most haggardly awry;
While hollow cheek and nostril maim'd,
Notch'd ear, burnt hand, and thigh-bone lam'd,
Display a wretch from head to tail
Diseas'd with many a desp'rate ail;
A form, which, wrapt in squalid dress,
Compleats the half of ugliness.
Behold the charmer,—this is vice.
Embrace her.—Is thy stomach nice?
Too often passion, single-ey'd,
Enamour'd with the fairer side,
The monster clasps; till, turn'd her face,
We starting fly her loath'd embrace:
Thro reason's medium only shown
Her real form, in tints her own;
Which, thus disgusting to the sense,
Could ne'er beguile our innocence.

Should virtue, then, disown the muse;
At least let innocence excuse:
The strictest moralists content
If mortals were but innocent.
In actual virtue, true, indeed,
I see no hopes we should succeed;
If once by reason grown so tame
That naught our passions could inflame.
For say, desires may not extrude
A sense of moral rectitude;
This only points, to what is right;
But ne'er to virtue can excite.
Reason, indiff'rent to th' event,
Merely bestows its cold assent;
As far as truth's concern'd, in part,
Speaks to the head, but not the heart;
Reason bestow'd, an humble friend,
Not to keep faultless, but to mend;
With hopes to cheer or fears to bind
Self-love, a glutton deaf and blind;
To give our scene of action light;
To check the sensual appetite;
To show us what is good ahd fair;
And passion's blunders to repair.

To virtue sense of right and wrong
Must of necessity belong;
But from this knowledge who infer
The conscious party cannot err?
Nay, founded on such sense our claim
To bear of vice the moral blame:
The fool, the mad, do what they will,
Standing excus'd of moral ill.
Say, then, the virtuous must be wise;
In wisdom, sayst thou, virtue lies?
By other motives must the mind
To virtuous actions be inclin'd.
"What other motive?" dost thou ask?
Lorenzo, difficult the task
T' unravel here the human mind;
Its moral principles to find.
Sayst thou we all true virtue love;
And virtue that which all approve.
Supposing this, yet is't with you
That very approbation too?
Is this, Lorenzo, what is meant
By virtue sprung from sentiment?
By that ambiguous term of art
The native goodness of the heart?
Pride not yourselves, ye pharisees,
That acts of kindness give you ease:
Nor think, ye publicans, from heaven
An evil inclination's given.
Know that from diff'rent passions vice
And virtue take not sep'rate rise.
For, tho deducing moral ill
But from th' indulgence of the will,
No passion, not the love of pelf,
Is really vicious, in itself;
The noblest in the human breast,
Motives to action but confess'd,
Howe'er admir'd, howe'er approv'd,
From actual virtue far remov'd.
For a good heart, as put to use,
Or vice or virtue may produce;
A fertile soil, where, taking root,
Plants good and bad bear equal fruit.
Narcissa boasted once a mind,
The purest sure of human kind,
Till growing passions taught her breast
To feel for all that seem'd distress'd,
To melt in tenderness of grief,
And sigh to give, unask'd, relief.
Ah, since, by cruel arts betray'd,
How low is fall'n the hapless maid!
Too innocent to feel distrust,
Or know how diff'rent love and lust,
Now, by her tempter ev'n accus'd,
See her abandon'd and abus'd;
Her open heart, her generous mind
To prostitution how resign'd!
Of vices glorying in the shame
Her former self had blush'd to name!
Alas, for pity! see, mean-while,
At lost Narcissa's ruin smile
Gremia, to pity never mov'd,
As little loving as belov'd;
In spite of all vile man could say,
In pious maidenhood grown grey,
Blessing her better stars, that she
Still triumphs in her chastity;
Tho, with the planets, on her fide
Ill-nature, ugliness and pride.
See Phormio, stoically cold,
In youth by constitution old,
Who never yet, his heart of stone,
Made once another's cause his own;
But, living for himself, or heirs,
Minds nothing but his own affairs:
Whose word to take not faithless Jews,
For more than heaven is worth, refuse;
His credit sacred, east and west
His bills negotiating best;
Safe in his hands were many a pound;
Too good a man to run a-ground.
O worthy, honest man! we cry;
While bankrupt knaves in dungeons lie:
So vile the rogue, who, scorning pelf,
Lov'd others better than himself!

Thus oft th' inflexible, the just,
The man who never broke his trust,
Is virtuous but from fear or art,
Or killing coldness in his heart;
While base and mean the quick-of-sense,
From glowings of benevolence.

Lorenzo, feelingly I speak
Of failings where myself am weak;
To whom adversity evere
Hath sold experience much too dear:
Hard hearted prudence far from me,
And narrow-soul'd frugality,
Hence oft to knave and fool a prey,
No match for either in his way,
Till cheated, plunder'd, fill'd with shame,
Lit on my luckless head the blame.
How short, Lorenzo, plainly, hence,
Of virtue is benevolence!
To mere good nature, while you live,
No more that pompous title give;
The milk of kindness in a trice
Yielding the luscious cream of vice.

The dryest eye, the hardest heart,
May act as virtuous a part;
Tho turn'd, as adders deaf, the ear
To all that others feel or fear;
While vicious sloth, a whining cheat,
Is forc'd to work before it eat;
Misfortune, struggling in its thrall,
Rises more glorious from its fall.

Should to the prodigal the friend,
On whom his spendthrift hopes depend,
When ask'd assistance or advice,
Reply, with looks as cold as ice,
With all the insolence of ease,
"Friend, you know best, do what you please."
May this not teach the hand profuse
Virtuous discretion's sov'reign use;
And thus a coldness of the heart
A good to too much warmth impart?

How oft less vicious is the mind,
That ne'er, beneficent or kind,
For others broke one moment's rest,
Nor cheer'd with comfort the distress'd,
Than his whose open hand and heart
Espouse the poor and needy's part,
Plunging in unforeseen distress
Hundreds, in striving one to bless.

Too short of sight, benevolence
Proves oft a breach of innocence:
To virtue therefore it is first
Requir'd the man be strictly just.

Passions, the springs of joy and strife,
Are but the elements of life;
And, as rich, streams from mountains flow,
Smooth winding some through vales below,
While others, raging as they come,
Tear up their mother-mountain's womb;
Or, pouring down the hills amain,
Deluge at once the humble plain;
So flow some passions gently mild,
While others, furious, bold, and wild,
Foaming o'er reason's rock-built mounds,
Disdain the check of moral bounds.
But see in pastures streams of use
When art corrects the flood's abuse,
When, their due channels taught to keep,
In shallow brook or river deep,
Smiling thro dappled meads they go;
And paint the flow'rs they cause to grow.
Corrected thus, by reason's art,
The bursts, or meltings, of the heart,
In virtue's channels see them glide:
Her flow'rs the blooming margin's pride.

Is the small spring thy fav'rite theme,
That trickles forth a shallow stream,
In murmurs soft, a purling rill?
What wilt thou do to drive the mill?
How wilt thou make to ride at large
Thy timber, or thy loaded barge?
As much as purling rills admir'd
The navigable stream's requir'd;
The stream, whose turbulence abides
The roaring of the swelling tides,
Alike whose raging bosom swells,
And back the threat'ning tide repels.
The hero, thus, the soldier brave
How needful half the world to save!
Like Prussia's king, thro seas of blood
Wading, for threaten'd Europe's good!

Virtuously useful to mankind,
The strongest as the weakest mind,
Thus, one's no better than the other,
The warmest heart the cold one's brother;
And neither this nor that, in fact,
Are virtuous till as such they act.

Yet here, appearances believ'd,
In virtuous actions oft deceiv'd,
How plain in th' hypocritic face
We read the characters of grace;
And falsely to youth's giddy tribe
Designing villainy ascribe;
While time, and circumstance, and place,
Our byass'd judgments here disgrace.

Is there a man, whose tender heart
Takes in another's pains a part,
Who cloathes the naked, feeds the poor,
And bribes the orphan to his door;
So kind he cannot bear to see
Another less at ease than he?
Godlike benevolence; you cry!
And praise his virtue to the sky.
But were this virtuous mortal poor,
Oblig'd to beg from door to door;
Could he not eat the bread at rest,
Torn by the law from the distress'd;
Should his weak mind compunction feel,
In honest ways of trade, to steal;
Could not the softness of his heart
Torture the horse, that draws the cart;
Mangle the lamb before it die,
Or draw its heart's blood thro its eye;
Who would not cry, "too proud to serve!
"Work, idle wretch, or work or starve;"
To Bridewell's lash the knave consign'd,
For vicious tenderness of mind.

Is there who, worn with vice, begins
To hide his multitude of sins,
Leave of the wicked world doth take
And hermit turns for virtue's sake;
Or, anxious for the souls of men,
Flies to the pulpit or the pen?
Behold another Paul! we cry,
A new apostle from on high!

Are there whom cares nor want exclude,
At little cost, from doing good;
In pious practices that spend
Their fortune and their latter end;
The sick who physic in distress;
And make the trav'ler's burthen less?
To these what virtue will refuse
The praiseful elegiac muse!
But, say, doth tenderness of heart
Teach the divine's or doctor's art?
Too oft unletter'd preachers rave,
And damn the souls they meant to save:
Too oft, alas, the pious pill
Of charity, like Ward's, doth kill:
While lighten'd more the pedlar's pack
To clothe our own than save his back.

"Whence then is virtue," dost thou cry?
In truth and nature, I reply:
Reason and passion both combin'd
To form true virtue in the mind.
Nor rests it there in mere design;
To go where these may chance t' encline.
'Tis not sufficient to set out,
Tho meaning well, thy way in doubt;
Here known experience shouldst thou use,
That passion reason mayn't abuse;
Cautious in virtue's rout to go
No farther than our path we know:
Lest, when, thro ign'rance lost our way,
Passion to vice should lead astray.
'Tis not enough to mean aright,
Unless the meant effect's in sight:
Too apt to wander from the mark,
When blund'ring forward in the dark.
'Tis no excuse to have it said
The heart had put it in the head,
When mischief done, instead of good,
For want of being understood.
To virtue pitiful our claim
When, at a venture taking aim,
More by good luck than sense or wit,
The mark of moral good we hit.
What virtue's in the madman's dream,
Or fool's impracticable scheme?
Whose, should they ev'n succeed, at best,
Chance-medley virtue is confess'd.

Knowledge, my friend, goes, hence 'tis plain,
Foremost in virtue's splendid train;
While reason and the passions, join'd,
Walk closely, hand in hand, behind.

Is't said? "one mere good-natur'd deed
"All worth in science doth exceed."
On this weak maxim dost object
We virtuous merit here neglect;
Thus honest ign'rance to contemn;
And inability condemn?
Sayst thou "as no fore-knowledge given,
"Events are in the hands of heaven;
"And, therefore, virtuous those confess'd
"From what they know who act the best."
Lorenzo, no—unless 'tis shown
That such no better might have known.
'Tis true, as individuals here
Are plac'd in nature's proper sphere,
Their knowledge more or less compleat
As genius and instruction meet,
Man by no seraph's rapture fir'd,
Virtue's as knowledge giv'n requir'd.
But think not thou that bounteous heaven
Hath barren understanding given;
Hath talents lent which, unapplied,
'Tis virtuous in the earth to hide.
No— with the pow'r of reason blest,
Improvement's claim'd, as interest.

Is there who turns away his ear,
Instruction's voice averse to hear,
Most obstinately bent to plod
Along the road his father trod,
Old custom never to forsake;
Nor use of eye or ear to make?
Tho right the wilful wretch we find,
Is his a virtuous turn of mind?
With God above, or man below,
How is't deserving not to know?

Of virtue's merit, Folly, hush;
Nor put true wisdom to the blush.
Remember virtue still depends
Both on our motives and our ends.
What merit is't we gladly do
That which our hearts incline us to?
Or what that reason doth submit
To own the truth is right and fit?
For say that by the heart or head
Solely to virtue men were led;
If by the heart, and that alone,
What man e'er call'd his heart his own?
Right oft by impulse forc'd to go,
Whether his reason lead or no;
Apparently against the will,
As oft conducting him to ill.
How meritorious then the best,
That love or pity warms the breast?
For this, nor that, from vice can save;
Or if they could—'tis God that gave.

Is it from caution, practis'd long,
You seek the right and shun the wrong;
By just experience understood
Your worldly interest's to be good,
What merits here the clod of earth
That nature smil'd upon its birth,
And gave it reason's fost'ring aid
To teach it virtue, as its trade?
Sayst thou "when head and heart we prais[...]
"Doth this not virtue's merit raise?
"The man of vicious acts asham'd"—
May yet for spiritual pride be blam'd.
"The elegantly just"—too nice
Perhaps for vulgar scenes of vice.
"The lowly-minded, kind and meek"—
Mean, pitiful, perhaps, and weak.
"The patriot, in his country's cause"—
A gudgeon, greedy of applause.
"The pious, who their God revere,"—
Only, perhaps, of hell in fear;
Or, not by fears sufficient driven,
Push'd forward by the hopes of heaven.
So little do we truly know
The cause to which we virtue owe;
To what bad principle or good
Ev'n we ourselves have vice withstood:
Nor can the best of mortals say,
From what has yet directed, may;
Or in a state he never knew
Tell what his head and heart might do.
Who then their moral worth shall prize?
Shall ev'n the best the worst despise?
Thin the partitions that divide
Ev'n vice itself from virtue's pride;
The virtuous boaster weak and proud;
Like the tall idiot in the crowd,
Who, stalking with exalted tread,
Above his fellows rears his head,
While from his more distinguish'd height
The harm upon his pate doth light.

The pride of virtue hence depress'd,
O learn to pity, not detest;
Ev'n looking with a brother's eye
On wretches doom'd by law to die;
To heaven that hath the diff'rence made
'Tween thee and them, the honour paid!
The object more of pity, sure,
The vicious mind no leach can cure,
Than such whose mere corporeal part
Diseas'd admits the doctor's art!
Nay, if by virtue understood
The act producing moral good,
And moral good and evil known
By sense of physical alone,
The term of merit thrown aside,
Abash'd at once is virtue's pride;
Since such most virtuous we must call
Who most promote the good of all.
Here virtue see, in fortune's power,
Dependent ev'ry day and hour!
So little rests on good intent,
So much alas, on accident!
See to the public good conduce
Of wealth and state the simple use;
Such power of doing good a lot
By birth, caprice, or favour got;
A post of virtue oft the gain
Of knavery, honest hearts disdain.

Proportional to ev'ry state,
Sayst thou, its virtue we must rate;
Those much to blame, tho doing good,
Who fail to do the most they cou'd?
Most needful, then, how far to know
Our pow'rs of doing good may go;
In ev'ry station, place and time,
Neglectful ignorance a crime.
For say, if e'er preferr'd to place,
Dame fortune take us into grace,
Tho kings should act the donor's part,
They neither give a head nor heart.

'Tis true a ribbon, star and garter
May make a flutt'ring fop look smarter;
Sir John sounds big and mighty pretty
Among the plain Johns of the city;
But George himself, of many a knight,
Ne'er dubb'd one sordid cit polite.
Clever indeed could royal grace
Fit ev'ry placeman for his place;
If being voted for with spirit,
Supplied our want of real merit,
Conferr'd taste, judgment, observation,
Adapted to th' appointed station!
Title and pow'r give consequence;
But never gave one jot of sense.

Knowledge, Lorenzo, hence confess'd
Of moral principles the best,
Well spent we hope our vacant days
In studious search of wisdom's ways;
On reason while our steps attend,
Reason, fair virtue's firmest friend!
Hail sober guide! O teach my youth
To woo thy lovelier sister truth;
For whose embrace my vows I pay,
In ardent sighs, throughout the day;
Nor, when the longest day is o'er,
Cease, by the midnight lamp, to pore
O'er the dull tale, or tedious page
Of saint or more laborious sage;
Happy if saint or sage could tell,
Where I with her might ever dwell;
With her for whom, and whom alone,
My genius for the verse be known:
For truth content to lose the bays;
The poet's for her lover's praise.