‘A monster of frightful mien’... A gorgon face , dating back to the sixth century BC, on display at the Monsters Exhibition in the Palazzo Massimo, Rome, in 2014. Pope sought to deal with two responses to vice that he regarded as counterproductive. One was the perilous mistake of thinking that because vice is commonplace, my little weaknesses somehow do not matter, especially as other people are obviously much worse. A second error was that finger-wagging censoriousness which has no room for pity and understanding, and instead of making people realise how much we need each other leaves us sundered by cold seas of judgmentalism. Society needs us to take both vice and forgiveness equally seriously.
Part 1 of 2
FOOLS! who from hence into the notion fall,
That vice or virtue there is none at all.
If white and black blend, soften, and unite
A thousand ways, is there no black or white?*
Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain;
’Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain.
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien*
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
But where th’ extreme of vice was ne’er agreed:
Ask Where’s the North? at York, ‘tis on the Tweed!*
In Scotland, at the Orcades;* and there,
At Greenland, Zembla,* or the Lord knows where.
No creature owns it in the first degree
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he;
Ev’n those who dwell beneath its very zone,
Or never feel the rage, or never own;*
What happier natures shrink at with affright,
The hard inhabitant contends is right.
* Pope has been saying that human life is made up of shades of grey rather than black and white, but now he reminds us that this does not mean there is no black and white, no vice and virtue. Virtue and vice are rarely seen in the purest state, but they are real: virtue is no vice, and vice is no virtue.
* ‘Mien’ (pronounced like ‘mean’) is a poetic word for one’s facial expression.
* Pope’s point is that people always think that there is a worse form of vice than their own, just as people in London think York is in the North, whereas people in York think Berwick-upon-Tweed is in the North, people in Edinburgh think the North means the Orkneys, and so on.
* The ‘Orcades’ is an ancient Roman name for the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, and still used in French.
* Zembla is Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Barents Sea north of Russia. Dutch navigators led by Willem Barentsz (?1550-1597) had explored it in 1596-97. Pope uses it as an example of a region in the extreme north, though short of the North Pole itself.
* ‘Or... or’ here means the same as ‘either... or’. Pope means that many people sunk in vice either do not feel disgust at what they are doing, or do not admit (‘own’) they are doing it at all.
Précis
In his Essay on Man, poet Alexander Pope acknowledged that all human life is a confusion of virtue and vice, but insisted that virtue and vice are nonetheless very different things. It is easy, he said, to let familiarity so blind us that we think our own vices are too slight to matter, or that vice is itself a virtue. (60 / 60 words)
Part Two
A pair of black guillemots in summer plumage on Yesnaby cliffs, on the west of Orkney’s Mainland. In this part of his poem, Pope goes on to talk about the way in which God can bring good out of evil, making our vices serve our virtues by showing each of us how much we need the help of our fellow men. If we work together, he says, we can better society: not by the virtuous scolding and schooling the vicious, but by realising that everyone is a confusion of virtues and vices, and that God has so framed us that (as St Paul would say) in bearing one another’s burdens we all grow in strength. See Galatians 6:2.
Virtuous and vicious ev’ry man must be,
Few in the extreme, but all in the degree;
The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise
And ev’n the best, by fits, what they despise.
‘Tis but by parts we follow good or ill
For, vice or virtue, self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a several goal;
But Heaven’s great view is one, and that the whole.
That* counter-works each folly and caprice;
That disappoints the effect of every vice;*
That, happy frailties to all ranks applied.*
Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,
Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief:
That,* virtue’s ends from vanity can raise,
Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise,
And builds on wants, and on defects of mind,
The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind.
Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, or endear the tie.*
* ‘That’ refers to Heaven’s great view, i.e. Divine Providence, which manages to turn evil to good.
* Caprice and vice do not really rhyme: caprice rhymes with fleece and vice rhymes with nice. This is an ‘eye-rhyme’, like Charles Wesley’s ‘love’ and ‘prove’.
* Pope acknowledges that God has deliberately set frailties in mankind — ‘happy’ frailties, i.e. not actual sins or impulses to evil, merely the weaknesses of human nature. He thus expresses what the Bible expresses as the ‘garment of flesh’ that was given to Adam and Eve after they were deceived by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and that was assumed by God himself when Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. Another poet, Cynewulf, expressed a similar idea, when he said that God never gives all the virtues to one man lest he become proud: see Gifts of the Spirit.
* ‘That’ picks up again on ‘Heaven’s great view’ before a few lines before. God can bring good (virtue’s ends/goals) from a vice such as vanity.
* Pope argues that although vice is always bad, the attempt to uproot it, and pity for those suffering from it, actually draw people closer together, whether out of mutual advantage or real affection. If we do not judge others, but judge ourselves quite severely, society will be made stronger; if we heap criticism upon others while being self-indulgent, society will be made weaker.
Précis
Everyone, said Pope, is a mix of strengths and weaknesses, even the best of us. This is something that God himself has ordained: for these weaknesses serve to highlight our need for one another; and through them we can, if we will, learn a mutual dependency that enriches our life together and cements our friendships. (55 / 60 words)
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