gbroke a prey to
vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry jest into
verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known; mis-shapen
in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to himself,
and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment.'

[Sidenote: Bernard de Mandeville (1670?-1733).]

Bernard de Mandeville gained much notoriety by his _Fable of the Bees,
or Private Vices, Public Benefits_ (1723). The book opens with a poem in
doggrel verse called _The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves turned honest_, the
purport of which is to show that as the bees became virtuous, they
ceased to be successful. He closes with the moral that

'To enjoy the world's conveniences,
Be famed in war, yet live in ease,
Without great vices is a vain
Utopia, seated in the brain.
Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live,
While we the benefits receive.'

In the prose which follows the fable, Mandeville may at least claim the
credit of being outspoken, and he does not scruple to say that modesty
is a sham and that what seems like virtue is nothing but self-love. 'I
often,' he says, 'compare the virtues of good men to your large china
jars; they make a fine show, but look into a thousand of them, and you
will find nothing in them but dust and cobwebs.'

While declaring that he is far from encouraging vice, he regards it as
essential to the well-being of society. The degradation of the race
excites his amusement, and the fact that he cannot see a way of escape
from it, causes no regret. Shaftesbury's arguments excited the mirth of
a man who believed neither in present nor future good 'Two systems,' he
says, 'cannot be more opposite than his lordship's and mine. His
notions, I confess, are generous and refined. They are a high compliment
to human kind, and capable, by the help of a little enthusiasm, of
inspiring us with the most noble sentiments concerning the dignity of
our exalted nature. What pity it is that they are not true.'

The author of the _Fable of the Bees_ writes coarsely for coarse
readers, and the arguments by which he supports his graceless theory
merit the infamy generally awarded to them.[57] The book was attacked by
Warburton and Law, and with much force and humour by Berkeley, in the
second Dialogue of _Alciphron_. But the bishop, to use a homely phrase,
does not hit the right nail on the head. Instead of arguing that virtue
and goodness are realities, whil