UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES

 
 THE WORKS 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE. 
 
 NEW EDITION. 
 
 SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER 
 NEW MATERIALS. 
 
 COLLECTED IK PART BT THE LATE 
 
 RT. HON. JOHN WILSON CHOKER. 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES. 
 
 BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 POETRY. VOL. II. 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 & O i i JL 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN : 'Mftj&RAt &LBEMARLE STREET. 
 1871. 
 
 [The right of Translation is reserved.']
 
 BB1DBUKT, AOXEW, it CO. LD., PK1KTKM 
 LONDON AMD lONURIIifiE.
 
 StacR 
 Annex 
 
 PR 
 
 3620 
 E7/ 
 v. 2 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME OF POETRY. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 ESSAY ON CRITICISM 3 
 
 WARBURTON'S COMMENTARY AND NOTES 85 
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK 113 
 
 FIRST EDITION OF THE RAPE OF THE LOCK . . ... 183 
 
 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY . . . 195 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD . . . . . . . . *. . 217 
 
 ESSAY ON MAN 259 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL PBAYER 457 
 
 WARBURTON'S COMMENTARY AND NOTES ON TUB ESSAY ON MAN . 485 
 
 WARBURTON'S NOTES ON THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER . . . . 525 
 
 TOT,. IT. -PORTRT.
 
 AN 
 
 ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 IN THE YEAR
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM, 
 4to. 
 
 Si quid novisti rectius istis, 
 
 Candidas imperti ; si non, his utere mecxim. HORAT. 
 
 London : Printed for W. LEWIS, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden ; and sold 
 by W. TAYLOR, at the Ship, in Pater- Noster- Row, T. OSBORN, in Gray's- 
 Inn, near the Walks, and J. GRAA^ES, in St. James's Street. 1711. 
 
 Warton says that the poem was ' ' first advertised in the Spectator, No. 65, 
 May 15th, 1711." Pope informed Caryll that a thousand copies were printed. 
 Lewis, the publisher, was a Roman Catholic, and an old schoolfellow of the 
 poet. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 W d'hn >y M .. IVfE. 
 
 The second edition, 8vo. 
 
 London : Printed for W. LEWIS, in Rnssel-Street Covent Garden, 1713. 
 
 Though the date on the title page is 1713, Isaac Reed states that the second 
 edition was advertised in the Spectator on November 22, 1712. It was a 
 common practice to substitute the date of the coming, for that of the expir- 
 ing, year. A third and fourth edition in a smaller type and size came out 
 in 1713. In 1714, the poem was appended to the second edition of Lintot's 
 Miscellanies, by some arrangement with Lewis, whose name appears upon the 
 title page of that particular edition of the Miscellanies as joint publisher. On 
 July 17, 1716, Lintot purchased the remainder of the copyright for 15, pre- 
 paratory to inserting the piece in the quarto of 1717. He brought out a sixth 
 octavo edition of the essay in 1719, and a seventh in 1722, and reprinted the 
 poem in each of the four editions of his Miscellanies which were published 
 between 1720 and 1732. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Written in the year 1709. With the Commentary and Notes of 
 W. WARBURTON, A.M. 4to. 
 
 The Essay on Criticism has no date, but on the title page of the " Essay on 
 Man," which appeared in the same volume is, "London: Printed by W. 
 BOWYER for M. COOPER, at the Globe in Pater-Noster Row. 1743." Pope, 
 writing to Warburton on October 7, 1743, says, "I have given Bowyer your 
 comment on the Essay on Criticism this week, and he shall lose no time with 
 the rest." On Jan. 12, 1744, he tells his commentator that the publication 
 had been delayed by the advice of Bowyer, and on Feb. 21, he writes word 
 that he shall keep it back till Warburton goes to town. There is no doubt 
 that the edition was printed in 1743, and published in 1744.
 
 IN the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work 
 which displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinc- 
 tion, such acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of 
 ancient and modern learning, as are not often attained by the ma- 
 turest age and longest experience. It was published about two years 
 afterwards, and being praised by Addison in the Spectator, with 
 sufficient liberality, met with so much favour as enraged Dennis, 
 " who," he says, " found himself attacked without any manner of 
 provocation on his side, and attacked in his person, instead of his 
 wzitings, by one who was wholly a stranger to him, at a time when 
 all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune ; and not only saw 
 that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the utmost 
 falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a little 
 affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time 
 but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnani- 
 mity." How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor 
 how his person is depreciated ; but he seems to have known some- 
 thing of Pope's character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to 
 talk too frequently of his own virtues. Thus began the hostility 
 between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a 
 short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have at- 
 tacked him wantonly ; but though he always professed to despise 
 him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his 
 force or his venom. 
 
 Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be 
 quick, because " not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal educa- 
 tion, could understand it. " The gentlemen and the education of that 
 time seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. 
 He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression. Dennis 
 was not his only censurer. The zealous papists thought the monks 
 treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised ; 
 but to these objections he had not much regard. The Essay has been 
 translated into French by Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grain- 
 inont, whose version was never printed ; by Robotham, secretary to 
 the king for Hanover, and by Resnel ; and commented by Dr. War- 
 burton, who has discovered in it such order and connection as was 
 not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by the author. 
 Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary and 
 immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with
 
 6 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 no apparent inconvenience ; for of two or more positions, depending 
 upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent 
 reason why one should precede the other. But for the order in 
 which they stand, whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a 
 reason. " It is possible," says Hooker, " that, by long circumduc- 
 tion from any one truth, all truth may be inferred." Of all homo- 
 geneous truths, at least of all truths respecting the same general end, 
 in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by inter- 
 mediate ideas may be formed such as, when it is once shown, shall 
 appear natural ; but if this order be reversed, another mode of 
 connection equally specious may be found or made. Aristotle is 
 praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal virtues, as that 
 without which no other virtue can steadily be practised ; but he 
 might with equal propriety have placed prudence and justice before 
 it, since without prudence fortitude is mad, without justice it is 
 mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is 
 siifficiently regular that avoids obscurity, and where there is no 
 obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method. 
 
 <^7 The Essay on Criticism is one of Pope's greatest works, and if he 
 \\ I had written nothing else, would have placed him among the first 
 
 j / critics and the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence 
 that can embellish or dignify didactic composition selection of mat- 
 ter, novelty of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of illus- 
 tration, ai d propriety of digression. I know not whether it be 
 pleasing to consider that he produced this piece at twenty, and never 
 afterwards excelled it. He that delights himself with observing that 
 such powers may be soon attained, cannot but grieve to think that 
 life was ever after at a stand, To mention the particular beauties of 
 the essay, would be unprofitably tedious ; but I cannot forbear to 
 observe that the comparison of a student's progress in the sciences 
 with the journey of a traveller in the Alps, is perhaps the best that 
 English poetry can show. A simile, to be perfect, must both illus- 
 trate and ennoble the subject ; must show it to the understanding in 
 a clearer view, and display it to the fancy with greater dignity ; but 
 either of tnese qualities may be sufficient to recommend it. In 
 didactic poetry, of which the great purpose is instruction, a simile 
 may be praised which illustrates though it does not ennoble ; in 
 heroics that may be admitted which ennobles, though it does not 
 illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required to exhibit, in- 
 dependently of its references, a pleasing image ; for a simile is said 
 to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so attentive, that 
 circumstances were sometimes added which, having no parallels, 
 served only to fill the imagination, and produced what Perrault 
 ludicrously called " comparisons with a long tail." In their similes 
 the greatest writers have sometimes failed. The ship race compaied
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 7 
 
 with the chariot race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised ; land 
 and water make all the difference. When Apollo, running after 
 Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing 
 gained ; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made 
 plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god, are not represented 
 much to their advantage by a hare and a dog. The simile of the 
 Alps has._jjio_jiiseless ^rts^^eJ^aJBforji^_a_jtriking_^)icture by itself; 
 it makes the foregoing position better understood, and enables it to 
 take faster hold on the attention ; it assists the apprehension, and 
 elevates the fancy. 
 
 Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph in 
 which it is directed that the sound should seem an echo to the 
 sense, a precept which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond 
 any other English poet. This notion of representative metre, and 
 the desire of discovering frequent adaptations of the sound to the 
 sense, have produced, in my opinion, many wild conceits and 
 imaginary beauties. All that can furnish this representation are the 
 sounds of the words considered singly, and the time in which they 
 are pronounced. Every language has some words framed to exhibit 
 the noises which they express, as thump, rattle, growl, hiss. These, 
 however, are but few, and the poet cannot make them more, nor 
 can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned. The 
 time of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned 
 languages capable of considerable variety ; but that variety could be 
 accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of 
 motion were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without 
 much attention of the writer, when the image had full possession 
 of his fancy ; but our language having little flexibility, our verses 
 can differ very little in their cadence. The fancied resemblances, 
 I fear, arise sometimes merely from the ambiguity of words ; there 
 is supposed to be some relation between a soft line and a soft 
 couch, or between hard syllables and hard fortune. Motion, how- 
 ever, may be in some sort exemplified, and yet it may be sus- 
 pected that in such resemblances the mind often governs the 
 idea, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of 
 their most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of 
 Sisyphus : 
 
 With many a weary step, and many a groan, 
 
 Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone ; 
 
 The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, 
 
 Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground. 
 
 Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll 
 violently back 1 But set the same numbers to another sense : 
 
 While many a merry tale, and many a song, 
 
 Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long;
 
 8 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 The rough road then, returning in a round, 
 
 Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground. 
 
 We have surely now lost much of the delay, and much of the 
 rapidity. But to show how little the greatest master of numbers 
 can fix the principles of representative harmony, it will be sufficient 
 to remark that the poet who tells us that 
 
 When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 
 
 The line too labours, and the words move slow ; 
 
 Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, 
 
 Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main ; 
 
 when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's 
 lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon sound and time, 
 and produced this memorable triplet : 
 
 Waller was smooth ; but Dryden taught to join 
 The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march, and energy divine. 
 
 Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow- 
 paced majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of 
 syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of swift- 
 ness by one time longer than that of tardiness. Beauties of this 
 kind are commonly fancied, and when real are technical and nuga- 
 tory, not to be rejected, and not to be solicited. JOHNSON. 
 
 The Essay on Criticism is a poem of that species for which our 
 author's genius was particularly turned, the didactic and moral. It 
 is therefore, as might be expected, a master-piece in its kind. I 
 have been sometimes inclined to think that the praises Adclisou has 
 bestowed on it were a little partial and invidious. " The observa- 
 tions," says he, " follow one another like those in Horace's Art of 
 Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been 
 requisite in a prose writer." It is, however, certain that the poem 
 before us is by no means destitute of a just integrity, and a lucid 
 order. 1 Each of the precepts and remarks naturally introduce the 
 succeeding ones, so as to form an entire whole. The Spectator adds, 
 "The observations in this Essay are some of them uncommon." 
 There is, I fear, a small mixture of ill-nature in these words ; for this 
 Essay, though on a beaten subject, abounds in many new remarks 
 and original rules, as well as in many happy and beautiful illustra- 
 tions and applications of the old ones. We are, indeed, amazed to 
 find such a knowledge of the world, such a maturity of judgmeiit, 
 and such a penetration into human nature, as are here displayed, in 
 
 1 This language, held by Warton in his Essay on the Genius of Pope, was 
 subsequently reversed by him in his edition of Pope's Works. He then acknow- 
 ledged that the notion of "a methodical regularity " in the Essay on Criticism 
 was a " groundless opinion."
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 9 
 
 so very young a writer as was Pope when, he produced this Essay, for 
 he was not twenty years old. Correctness and a just taste are 
 usually not attained but by long practice and experience in any art ; 
 but a clear head and strong sense were the characteristical qualities 
 of our author, and every man soonest displays his radical excellences. 
 If his predominant talent be warmth and vigour of imagination it 
 will break out in fanciful and luxuriant descriptions, the colouring 
 of which will perhaps be too rich and glowing. If his chief force 
 lies in the understanding rather than in the imagination, it will soon 
 appear by solid and manly observations on life or learning, expressed 
 in a more chaste and subdued style. The former will frequently be 
 hurried into obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction ; 
 the latter will seldom hazard a figure whose usage is not already 
 established, or an image beyond common life ; will always be per- 
 spicuous if not elevated ; will never disgust if not transport his 
 readers ; will avoid the grosser faults if not arrive at the greater 
 beauties of composition. When we consider the just taste, the 
 strong sense, the knowledge ofTnen, I3obks7^.nd opinions that are so 
 predominant in the Essay on Criticism, we must readily agree to place 
 the author among the first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, 
 " among the first poets," on this account alone. As a poet he must 
 rank much higher for his Elo'isa and Rape of the Lock. The Essay, 
 it is said, was first written in prose, according to the precept of Vida, 
 and the practice of Racine, who was accustomed to draw out in plain 
 prose, not only the subject of each of the five acts, but of every 
 scene, and every speech, that he might see the conduct and cohe- 
 rence of the whole at one view, and would then say, " My tragedy 
 is finished." WARTON. 
 
 Most of the observations in this Essay are just, and certainly 
 evince good sense, an extent of reading, and powers of comparison, 
 considering the age of the author, extraordinary. Johnson's praise 
 however is exaggerated. BOWLES. 
 
 " Essay" in Pope's day was used in its now obsolete sense of an 
 attempt. Stephens in 1648 entitled his translation of the five first 
 books of the Thebais " an Essay upon Statius : " and Denham's 
 "Essay on the second book of Virgil's ^Eneis " is a version and not 
 a dissertation. " I have undertaken," Dryden wrote to Walsh, 
 " to translate all Virgil ; and as an essay have already paraphrased 
 the third Georgic as an example." Two quotations in Johnson's 
 Dictionary, one from Dryden, the other from Glanville, show that 
 the word was usually understood to imply diffidence. Dryden, in his 
 Epistle to Roscommon, says, 
 
 Yet modestly he does his work survey, 
 And calls a finished poem an essay ;
 
 10 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 and Glanville says, " This treatise prides itself in no higher a title 
 than that of an essay, or imperfect attempt at a subject." Locke 
 named his great and elaborate work an " Essay on the Human 
 Understanding," from the consciousness that it was an " imperfect 
 attempt," and when hostile critics refused him the benefit of his 
 modest title, he answered that they did his book an honour " in not 
 suffering it to be an essay." Pope borrowed both the word, and the 
 plan of his poem, from some works which enjoyed in his youth a 
 credit far beyond their worth, the Essay on Translated Verse by 
 the Earl of Roscommon, and the Essay on Satire, and the Essay on 
 Poetry by the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckingham. 
 These small productions had been suggested in their turn by Horace's 
 Art of Poetry, and its modern imitations. Roscommon and Mul- 
 grave, men of common-place minds, were incapable of originality, 
 and Pope, with the latent genius of a leader, was a follower in early 
 years. 
 
 " The things that I have written fastest," said Pope to Spence, 
 " have always pleased the most. I wrote the Essay on Criticism 
 fast ; for I had digested all the matter in prose before I began upon 
 it in verse." 1 This last circumstance was mentioned by Warton in 
 his Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, long before the Anec- 
 dotes of Spence were published, and Johnson commented upon the 
 statement in his review of Warton's work. " There is nothing," he 
 said, " improbable in the report, nothing indeed but what is more 
 likely than the contrary ; yet I cannot forbear to hint the danger 
 and weakness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but ex- 
 perience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable any 
 man to conceive that so many groundless reports should be propagated 
 as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men relate 
 what they think as what they know ; some men of confused memo- 
 ries and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what belongs to 
 another ; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men are 
 sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused 
 by successive relators." 2 The caution was not intended to discredit 
 the evidence of Spence. Warton had suppressed his authority, and 
 Johnson had a proper mistrust of common hearsay. 
 
 On the title-page of the poem in the quarto of 1717, it is said, 
 that it was "written in the year 1709," to which Richardson has 
 attached the note, ' ' Mr. Pope told me himself that the Essay on 
 Criticism was, indeed, written 1707, though said 1709 by mistake." 
 The poet continued the alleged mistake through all succeeding revisions. 
 The quarto of 1743 was the last edition he superintended, and 1709 
 
 1 Singer's Spence, p. 107. 
 
 * Johnson's Works, ed. Murphy, vol. ii. p. 354.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CKITICISM. 11 
 
 appears as usual upon the title-page, but Warburton announced in the 
 final sentence of the commentary, that the Essay was " the work 
 of an author who had not attained the twentieth year of his age," 
 and as the author was born in May, 1688, he must, according to this 
 testimony, have completed his task before May, 1708, which con- 
 firms the account of Richardson. Pope had thus assigned one date 
 to his piece on the first page of the quarto of 1743, and sanctioned 
 the promulgation of a different date on the concluding page. There 
 is the same contradiction in his conversations with Spence. " My 
 Essay on Criticism," he said on one occasion, "was written in 1709, 
 and published in 1711, which is as little time as ever I let any- 
 thing of mine lay by me." 1 This agrees with the printed title-page. 
 "I showed Walsh," he said to Spence on another occasion, "my 
 Essay on Criticism in 1706. He died the year after." 2 This falls in 
 with the evidence of Richardson and Warburton ; for Walsh died on 
 March 15, 1708, and 1706 was an error for 1707. The double date 
 reappears in a note to the Pope Letters of 1735, solely through a 
 change in the punctuation. " Mr. Walsh," it was said in some copies, 
 "died at 49 years old, in the year 1708. The year after Mr. Pope 
 writ the Essay on Criticism." "Mr. Walsh," it was said in other 
 copies, " died at 49 years old in the year 1708, the year after Mr. 
 Pope writ the Essay on Criticism." In the first version it is asserted 
 that the poem was written in 1709, or the year after Mr. Walsh died ; 
 in the second version it is asserted that it was written in 1707, and 
 that Mr. Walsh died the year after. Such a series of conflicting state- 
 ments could not all be accidental. When Pope published the quarto 
 edition of his Letters in 1737, he again altered the note. " Mr. 
 Walsh," he then said, " died at 49 years old, in the year 1708, the year 
 before the Essay on Criticism was printed," which informs us of the 
 new fact that it was printed a couple of years before it was published, 
 and since the poet assured Spence that it was written two or three 
 years before it was printed, 3 we have the date of its composition once 
 more thrown back to 1707. Pope forgot the confession in the 
 poem, ver. 735 740, that in consequence of having " lost his guide " 
 by the death of Walsh, he was afraid to attempt ambitious themes, 
 and selected the Essay on Criticism as a topic suited to " low num- 
 bers." However fictitious may have been the reason he assigned for 
 the choice of his subject, he there admits that he did not form the 
 design till after the death of his friend in March 1708. In his later 
 statements he oscillated between the truth, and the desire to magnify 
 the precocity of his genius. He was always ambitious of the kind 
 of praise which Johnson bestows upon the Essay, when he calls it 
 "the stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty." But at 
 
 1 .'pence, p. 128. * Spence, p. 147. 3 Spence, p. 205.
 
 12 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 whatever period the poem was first written, it did not appear till May, 
 1711, and represents the capacity of Pope at twenty- three. He 
 avowedly kept his pieces long in manuscript for the purpose of matur- 
 ing and polishing them, and they were as good as he could make 
 them at the period when they finally left his hands. 
 
 The Essay on Criticism was published anonymously. Warton was 
 informed by Lewis the bookseller, that " it laid many days in his shop 
 unnoticed and unread." Pope wrote word to Gary 11, July 19, 1711, 
 that he did not expect it would ever arrive at a second edition. 
 Piqued, said Lewis, at the neglect, the poet one day directed copies 
 to several great men, and among others to Lord Lansdowne, and the 
 Duke of Buckingham. These presents caused the work to be talked 
 about.' The name of the author, which soon transpired, assisted 
 the sale, and the paper of Addison in the Spectator on December 20, 
 1711, brought the Essay under the notice of the entire reading world, 
 though it was still another twelvemonth before the thousand copies 
 were exhausted. 
 
 The notoriety, if not the sale, of the Essay on Criticism must have 
 been promoted by the angry pamphlet put forth by Dennis six 
 months before the laudatory paper of Addison appeared in the 
 Spectator.* Dennis was the only living writer who was openly 
 abused in the poem, and there was an asperity in the language which 
 savoured of personal hostility. He and Pope were slightly acquainted. 
 "At his first coming to town,'' says Dennis, " he was very importu- 
 nate with the late Mr. Henry Cromwell to introduce him to me. 
 The recommendation of Mr. Cromwell engaged me to be about thrice in 
 company with him ; after which I went into the country, and neither 
 saw him, nor thought of him, till I found myself insolently attacked 
 by him in his very superficial Essay on Criticism." 3 A passage 
 quoted by Bowles from Pope's Prologue to the Satires reveals the 
 cause of the enmity : 
 
 Soft were my numbers ; who could take offence 
 While pure description held the place of sense ? 
 Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme, 
 A painted mistress, or a purling stream. 
 Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret ; 
 I never answered, I was not in debt.* 
 
 Here we learn that Dennis thought meanly of Pope's Pastorals. 
 
 1 Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xviii. 
 
 2 Dennis's Reflections, Critical and Satyrical, upon a late Rhapsody called An 
 Essay upon Criticism, was advertised as "this day published " in The Daily 
 Courant of June 20, 171L Pope sent the pamphlet to Caryll on June 25, and 
 in a letter to Cromwell of the same date, he says "Mr. Lintot favoured me with 
 a sight of Mr. Dennis's piece of fine satire before it was published." 
 
 3 Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Dunciad, p. 39. 
 
 4 Ver. 147.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 13 
 
 The critic had enough taste for true poetry to despise the conven- 
 tional puerilities which, more than " pur description, held the place 
 of sense " in these juvenile effusions. He frequented the coffee- 
 houses where authors congregated, he indulged in professional talk, 
 and his unfavourable judgment was sure to get round to Pope. The 
 irritation at the time must have been great, since the censure con- 
 tinued to rankle in the mind of the poet at the distance of five-and- 
 twenty years. His memory was less faithful when he claimed credit 
 for not replying. He found it convenient to forget that he had 
 seized an early opportunity for retaliating in the Essay on Criticism. 
 
 Dennis complained that " he was attacked in a clandestine manner 
 in his person instead of his writings." " How the attack,'' says 
 Johusou, " was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person 
 is depreciated." Evidently Dennis termed the attack clandestine, 
 because the Essay was anonymous, and his assailant concealed. Pope, 
 however, had not been studious of secrecy among his acquaintances, 
 and Dennis showed in his pamphlet that he knew perfectly well with 
 whom he had to deal. His assertion, denied by Johnson, that he 
 was attacked "in his person instead of his writings" is clearly correct, 
 unless, contrary to usage, the word is restricted to what is indelible 
 in a man's bodily make. To say that he reddened at every word 
 of objection, and stared tremendous with a threatening eye, like the 
 fierce tyrants depicted in old tapestry, was to represent his personal 
 bearing and appearance in an offensive li^ht. Pope himself dis- 
 claimed the personality. " I cannot conceive," he wrote to Gary 11, 
 June 25, 1711, " what ground he has for so excessive a resentment, 
 nor imagine how those three lines can be called a reflection on his 
 person which only describe him subject to a little colour and stare on 
 some occasions, which are revolutions that happen sometimes in the 
 best and most regular faces in Christendom." The description, in 
 other words, was not a reflection upon the person of Dennis, because 
 some persons with handsome faces were liable to the same infirmity, 
 and no satire was personal which did not declare a man to be radically 
 ugly. That the resentment might seem the more unreasonable, the 
 stare tremendous and threatening eye, were softened down to a 
 " little stare." This was characteristic of Pope. He was not afraid 
 to strike, but when the blow was resented, he frequently made a 
 hasty and ignominious retreat. Either he pretended that the satire 
 was not aimed at the individuals who called him to account, or he 
 gave a mitigated and erroneous version of his lampoons. 
 
 Pope lashed Dennis for an intemperance of manner which could be 
 controlled at will. Dennis upbraided Pope with a deformity which 
 he had not caused and could not cure. " If you have a mind," said 
 the infuriated critic, "to enquire between Sunninghill and Oaking- 
 ham, for a young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of
 
 14 AN ESSAY ON CEITICISJL 
 
 amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love, 
 you will be soon directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have 
 taken a survey of him, tell me whether he is a proper author to make 
 personal reflections on others. This little author may extol the ancients 
 as much, and as long as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good 
 gods that he was born a modern, for had he been born of Grecian 
 parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute dis- 
 posal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his 
 poems, the life of half a day." 1 There was a wide difference 
 between ridiculing the distortions of countenance which grew out of 
 irascible vanity, and mocking at defects which were a misfortune, and 
 not a fault. But Pope's lines were insulting, and a man of the 
 world would have foreseen that Dennis would repel insult by scurrility. 
 The poet was as yet a novice in the coarse personalities of that- 
 abusive age, and he had not anticipated such brutal raillery. " The 
 latter part of Mr. Dennis's book," he wrote to Caryll, " is no way to 
 be properly answered, but by a wooden weapon, and I should per- 
 haps have sent him a present from Windsor Forest of one of the best 
 and toughest oaken plants between Sunninghill and Oakingham if he 
 had not informed me in his preface that he is at this time persecuted 
 by fortune. This, I protest, I knew not the least of before ; if I had, 
 his name had been spared in the Essay for that only reason." 2 Pope 
 could no more compete with Dennis in personal prowess, than Dennis 
 could compete in satire with Pope. His assigned reason for not 
 executing his empty vaunt was equally hollow. He was not wont to 
 spare his enemies out of consideration for their necessities, but 
 taunted them with their forlorn condition, and, true to his custom, 
 the persecution of fortune, which he said would have induced him to 
 suppress his satire upon Dennis, was made the ingredient of a fresh 
 satire at a future day : 
 
 I never answered ; I was not in debt. 
 
 The insinuation was unjust. Violent, and often wrong-headed, 
 Dennis spoke his genuine sentiments, and was not more a hireling 
 than Pope, or any other author who earns money by his pen. The 
 poor debtor could not have bartered his honour for a sorrier bribe. 
 The pamphlet on the Essay on Criticism consisted of thirty-two 
 octavo pages of small print, with a preface of five pages, and he 
 received for it 21. 12s. 6d. 
 
 Dennis urged as an aggravation of the " falsehood and calumny" 
 in the Essay, that they proceeded from a " little affected hypocrite, who 
 aad nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, 
 
 1 Dennis's Reflections, p. 29. 
 1 Pope to Caryll, June 25, 1711.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 15 
 
 friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity." These are the 
 qualities enforced in the poem, and whether the description of Dennis, 
 under the name of Appius, was a faithful likeness or a caricature, the 
 attack was at variance with the precepts which accompanied it. 
 Pope insisted that the specification of faults, to be useful, must be 
 delicate and courteous. He laid down the proposition at ver. 573, that 
 " blunt truths do more mischief than nice falsehoods," and at ver. 576, 
 that "without good breeding truth is disapproved." At the interval 
 of six lines he exemplified the urbanity he enjoined by a derisive 
 sketch which could only be intended to injure and exasperate. The 
 inconsistency did not stop here. He prefaced the obnoxious passage 
 by the maxim, " those best can bear reproof who merit praise," and 
 the sketch of Dennis is an illustration of the opposite character. 
 Was Pope a man who bore reproof with the fortitude which entitled 
 him to scoff at others for their irritability ? He certainly sometimes 
 drew a flattering picture of his own equanimity and forbearance. He 
 assures us at ver. 741, that he was " careless of censure." He told 
 Spence, that "he never much minded what his angry critics pub- 
 lished against him, only one or two things at first." " When," 
 he added, " I heard for the first time that Dennis had written against 
 me, it gave me some pain ; but it was quite over as soon as I came 
 to look into his book, and found he was in such a passion." 1 In the 
 Prologue to the Satires, he represents himself to have been a perfect 
 model of candour and amiability, and says of the objections of his 
 correctors, 
 
 If wrong I smiled ; if right I kissed the rod. 2 
 
 But he could seldom keep long to one version of any subject, and the 
 truth comes out in his first Imitation of Horace : 
 
 Peace is my dear delight, not Fleury's more, 
 But touch me, and no minister so sore. 3 
 
 His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. His mind was 
 like inflamed flesh ; the touch which a healthy constitution would 
 have disregarded, tortured and enraged him ; his smile was a vindic- 
 tive jeer ; and he used with acrimony the rod he professed to kiss. 
 His soreness at censure was the very cause of his charging the weak- 
 ness upon Dennis. He was angry at the disparagement of his 
 Pastorals, and because he himself was testy, he ridiculed the testi- 
 ness of his critic. The accusation, according to Dennis, was a 
 malicious invention. " If a man," he said, "is remarkable for 
 the extraordinary deference which he pays to the opinions and 
 
 1 Spence, p. 208. 
 
 2 Ver. 158. 
 
 * Imitations of Horace, bk. ij. Sat. 1, ver. 75-
 
 16 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience 
 under reproof." 1 Though docility was not the virtue of Dennis, 
 his failing was probably overcharged in the Essay on Criticism, 
 for unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope. 
 
 In retaining a grudge against those who wounded his self-esteem, 
 Pope did not disdain to profit by their spiteful censorship. " I will 
 make my enemy," he said to Caryll, " do me a kindness where he 
 meant an injury, and so serve instead of a friend," and he requested 
 Trumbull to tell him " where Dennis had hit any blots." 2 He 
 cared too much for his works to be influenced by the stubborn pride 
 which cannot stoop to confess an error. Where the criticism has not 
 been inspired by malice, authors in general have not been intolerant 
 of their critics. Coleridge relates that his thankfulness to the re- 
 viewers of his juvenile poems was sincere, when they concurred in 
 condemning his obscurity, turgid language, and profusion of double 
 epithets. Of the obscurity he was unconscious, " and my mind," he 
 says, " was not then sufficiently disciplined to receive the authority 
 of others as a substitute for my own conviction." " The glitter 
 both of thought and diction " he pruned with an unsparing hand, 
 "though, in truth," he adds, "these parasite plants of youthful 
 poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such 
 intricacy of union that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the 
 weed from the fear of snapping the flower." 3 The candour and 
 manliness are charming, but it must not be overlooked that the 
 magnanimity diminishes as the mental capacity increases. Wake- 
 field well remarks that one reason why those who merit praise 
 can best bear reproof is, that the reproof is either counterbalanced by 
 praise, or by the inward consciousness that the merit is great and will 
 prevail. 4 Inferior writers have not the same consolation. The chief 
 advantage after all which authors derive from the enumeration of 
 their defects is, that it teaches them modesty, and the true limits of 
 their powers. They are seldom able to mend. The qualities they 
 lack are not within their reach ; for the mind cannot rise above 
 itself, and has little pliancy when once it has taken its bent. 
 
 The notice in the Spectator must have been doubly welcome to 
 Pope after the invective and cavils of Dennis. " In our own country," 
 says Addison, " a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking 
 the reputation of all his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the 
 modems, the scribblers of the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics 
 of detraction with which he makes his entrance into the world. I 
 am sorry to find that an author, who is very justly esteemed among 
 
 1 Dennis's Reflections, p. 22. 
 
 2 Pope to Caryll, June 25, 1711 ; Pope to Trumbull, Aug. 10, 1711. 
 * Biographia Literaria, ed. 1847, vol. i. p. 3. 
 
 < Wakefield's Works of Pope, p. 1G8.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 1? 
 
 the best judges, has admitted some strokes of this nature into a very 
 fine poem, I mean the Art of Criticism, which was published some 
 months since, and is a master-piece of its kind. The observations 
 follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that 
 methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author. 
 They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must 
 assent to, when he sees them explained with that elegance and per- 
 spicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which are the 
 most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful 
 a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in 
 them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before 
 acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity. 
 And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so 
 very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and 
 fine writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are 
 new, as in giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is 
 impossible for us, who live in the later ages of the world, to make 
 observations in criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which 
 have not been touched upon by others. We have little else left us 
 but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, 
 more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines 
 Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but very few precepts in it 
 which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not com- 
 monly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of 
 expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we 
 chiefly admire." l Pope was delighted. "Moderate praise," he said 
 to Steele, whom he erroneously supposed to have held the pen, 
 " encourages a young writer, but a great deal may injure him ; 
 and you have been so lavish in this point that I almost hope, not 
 to call in question your judgment in the piece that it was some 
 particular inclination to the author which carried you so far." He 
 accepted in good part the admonition for disparaging his " brother 
 moderns," and expressed his willingness to omit the "strokes" in 
 another edition. 2 He detected none of the "ill-nature" which Warton 
 saw lurking in the phrase " that some of the observations were un- 
 common." Addison was familiar with the sources from which the 
 Essay was compiled, and could hardly have been ignorant that even 
 the " some " was a generous license. He pleaded more plausibly for 
 the work when he contended that wit consisted in presenting old 
 thoughts in a better dress, and that the "known truths" in the poem 
 were " placed in so beautiful a light, that they had all the graces of 
 novelty." The charge brought later by Pope against Addison, of 
 
 1 Spectator, No. 253, Dec. 20, 1711. 
 
 2 Pope to Steele, Dec. 30, 1711. 
 
 VOi. II. POETRY. I
 
 18 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 viewing him with jealous eyes, suggested to Warton his strained 
 imputation, which is not warranted by the expression he quotes, and 
 is contradicted by the genial tone of the praise. Addison at the time 
 had no acquaintance with Pope. The eulogy on the Essay was 
 spontaneous, and an envious rival would never have adopted the 
 suicidal device of voluntarily publishing a strong panegyric in a perio- 
 dical which every one read, and of which the decisions were accepted 
 for law. 
 
 The truth is, that Addison, by his encomiums and authority, 
 brought into vogue the exaggerated estimate entertained of the 
 Essay. The authors of the next generation read it in their boyhood, 
 and were taught that it was a model of its kind. Juvenile impres- 
 sions retain their hold, and upon no other supposition could we 
 understand the preposterous opinion of Johnson, that the work set 
 Pope "among the first critics and the first poets," and that he " never 
 afterwards excelled it." Warton disputed the rank assigned to the 
 poet, and assented to the claim put forth for the critic, which was 
 equally untenable. He was misled by hia relish for platitudes. " I 
 propose," he said, "to make some observations on such passages and 
 precepts in this Essay as, on account of their utility, novelty, or 
 elegance, deserve particular attention," and his opening specimen of 
 these merits is the line, 
 
 In poets as true geniua is but rare. 1 
 
 He selected for distinction several other remarks which were not 
 more exquisite in their form, or recondite in their substance. 
 Hazlitt took up the strain of Johnson and Warton. "TJhe Rape of 
 the Lock," he says, " is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as 
 the Essay on Criticism is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought 
 and observation in this work, for so young a man as Pope was when 
 he wrote it, is wonderful ; unless we adopt the supposition that most 
 men of genius spend the rest of their lives in teaching others what 
 they themselves have learned under twenty. The conciseness and 
 felicity of the expression are equally remarkable. Thus, in reasoning 
 on the variety of men's opinions, he says, 
 
 'Tia with our judgments, as our watches ; none 
 Go just alike, yet each belieyes his own. 
 
 Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks 
 and illustrations in the Essay : the critical rules laid down are too 
 much those of a school, and of a confined one." 2 De Quincey, a 
 subtler and sounder critic than Hazlitt, boldly challenged decisions 
 
 1 Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 108. 
 * Lectures on the English Poets, 3rd ed. p. 142.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 19 
 
 which had passed, but little questioned, from mouth to mouth. 
 "The Essay on Criticism," he says, "is the feeblest and least in- 
 teresting of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, 
 like a metrical multiplication table, of common-places the most 
 mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps. The maxims 
 have no natural order or logical dependency, arc generally so vague as 
 to mean nothing, and what is remarkable, many of the rules are 
 
 violated by no man as often as by Pope, and~ by Pope nowhere so 
 
 The matter of the Essay is not raterT, 
 
 in this passage, below its value. 
 
 " I admired," said Lady Mary W. Montagu, " Mr. Pope's Esi-ay 
 on Criticism at first very much, because I had not then read any of 
 the ancient critics, and did not know that it was all stolen. " 2 Pope 
 had found the bulk of his materials nearer home. He told Spence 
 that in his youth " he went through all the best critics," and speci- 
 fied Quintilian, Rapin, and Bossu. 3 He states in his Essay, ver. 712, 
 that " critic-learning," in modern times, " flourished most in France," 
 and in fact the Rapins and Bossus were his principal masters. They 
 had been brought into credit with our countrymen by Dryden. 
 "Impartially speaking," he said, in his Dedication to the ^Eneis, 
 " the French are as much better critics than the English as they are 
 worse poets." He had a wonderful faith in the virtue of their pre- 
 cepts. " Spenser," he said, " wanted only to have read the rules of 
 Bossu ; for no man was ever born with a greater genius, or had 
 more knowledge to support it." He compared the French critics to 
 generals, and our celebrated poets to common soldiers ; the poet 
 executed what the commanding mind of the critic planned. 4 The 
 treatises which would have perfected the genius of Spenser were 
 shallow drowsy productions, compounded of truisms, pedantic falla- 
 cies, and doctrines borrowed from antiquity. Pope culled most of 
 his maxims from ~5ese } apd_ o^her^_mo^ef n works Many of his 
 remarks were the common property of "the civilised world. A slight 
 acquaintance with books and men is sufficient to teach us that people 
 re partial to their own judgment, that some authors are not qualified 
 be poets, wits, or critics, and that critics should not launch beyond 
 their depth. Such profound reflections, kept up throughout the 
 'Essay, owed their credit to the disguising properties of verse. Along 
 with the singular nicety of distinction, and knowledge of mankind, 
 Johnson detected a no less surprising range of ancient and modern 
 learning. Pope mentions Homer, Virgil, and half a dozen Greek and 
 Latin critics. He has characterised some of these critics in a manner 
 
 1 De Quincey's Works, ed. 1862, vol. vii. p. 64 ; xv. p. 142. 
 
 2 Spence, p. 176. 
 
 Spence, p. 147, 211. 
 
 4 Dryden's Virgil, ed. Carey, vol. ii. p. xxxii., Ixxxviti. 
 
 02
 
 20 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 which betrays that he had never looked into their works, and what 
 he says of the rest only required that he should know their writings 
 by repute. All, and more than all, the classical information embodied 
 in the Essay, might have been picked up from his French manuals 
 in a single morning. 
 
 A didactic poet who draws his precepts from the truisms and cur- 
 rent publications of his day, could not at twenty-three deserve credit 
 for precocity of learning or thought. He might still manifest an 
 early maturity of judgment in sifting the insignificant from the im- 
 portant, the true from the false. Pope did not avoid the trite, but he 
 is said to have evinced a rare capacity for discriminating the true. 
 Bowles agrees with Johnson and Warton that " the good sense in the 
 Essay is extraordinary considering the age of the author," and it is 
 pronounced "an uncommon effort of critical good sense" by Hallam, 
 conspicuous himself for sense and sobriety. 1 Whoever looks through 
 the speciousness of rhyme, and views the ideas in their naked meaning, 
 will be much more struck by the want of good sense in the principal 
 critical canons. They are not even " extraordinary for the age of the 
 author ; " versed as he was in English literature they are below his 
 years. They are the narrow, erroneous dogmas of a youth fresh from 
 school-boy studies, who imagined that the Greeks and Romans had 
 ransacked the illimitable realms of genius and taste, and swept off 
 the whole of the spoils. He broadly asserted this doctrine in the 
 poetical creed which he prefixed to his works. 2 He was at least old 
 enough then to know better, from whence it is clear that the common 
 statements respecting him are the opposite of the truth. He did not 
 display the ripe judgment of manhood in his juvenile criticism ; he 
 remained a boy in criticism when he was a man. 
 
 Follow nature, said Pope, in his Essay, but beware of taking nature 
 at first hand. Homer and nature are the same, and to copy nature 
 is to copy the rules deduced from his works. The ancients sometimes 
 deviated into excellence by throwing off their self-imposed shackles. 
 The moderns must not presume to be irregularly great. They must 
 keep to the precepts, and if they ever break a rule they must at least 
 able to quote a case precisely parallel from a classical author. 3 
 The English had not submitted to the wholesome restraint. They 
 had been " fierce for the liberties of wit," and Pope avows his con- 
 viction that the entire race of English writers were therefore " un- 
 civilised," with the exception of a few who bad " restored among us 
 wit's fundamental laws." He names the most illustrious of these 
 reformers. They were three in number, the Duke of Buckingham, 
 
 1 Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed. vol. iv. p. 228. 
 3 Pope's Poetical Works, etl. Elwin, vol. i. p. 9. 
 Ver. 68, 130140, 146157, 161166.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 21 
 
 Lord Roscommon, and Walsh. 1 The absurdity could not be ex- 
 ceeded. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton were " un- 
 civilised " writers ; they not only fell into minor errors, but set at 
 nought the " fundamental laws" of poetry, while the persons who 
 taught how English poetry was to be raised from its rude condition 
 were a trio of prosy mediocrities, whose works might have been anni- 
 hilated without leaving the smallest vacuum in literature. " The 
 Duke of Buckingham," said Pope later, " was superficial in every- 
 thing ; even in poetry, which was his forte." 2 
 
 Pope seems to have been unconscious of the vast metamorphos. 
 which the world had undergone since the close of the Greek and 
 Roman eras. Religion, institutions, usages, opinions, all had changed. 
 Society was in a ferment with new ideas ; nations had been 
 gathered out of new elements ; characters were moulded under new 
 influences, and the play of passions, interests, convictions, and policy 
 had assumed new forms. This altered order of things was reflected 
 in our poetry. The mighty men of genius who led the way could 
 not have put aside their genuine thoughts to mimic works which, 
 noble in themselves, were musty and obsolete in modern imitations. 
 The vigorous races which had sprung up drew living pictures from 
 their own minds ; they were inspired by national and present senti- 
 ments ; they stamped upon their verse the feelings, humours, and 
 beliefs of their age. They borrowed from the classics, and some- 
 times with bad taste ; but the extrinsic details they appropriated 
 were not permitted to cramp the masculine elasticity of their native 
 fancy and experience. The materials of the edifice, in the main, 
 were no longer the same, and neither was the shape they assumed. 
 The difference was as great as between a Grecian temple and a Gothic 
 cathedral. The principles which governed the ancients in their com- 
 positions were confined, and did not give verge enough for that variety 
 and picturesqueness among ourselves which demanded to be embodied 
 in written words. The originality, which was our glory, appeared a 
 vice to Pope. The adaptation of the structure to its complex pur-i 
 poses he believed to be a declension towards barbarism. He would 
 have preferred that our magnificent English literature, instinct with 
 the freshness of nature, and gathering into its huge circumference 
 the growth of centuries, should have been reduced to a stale and 
 meagre counterfeit. The ancients had the prerogative to make and 
 break critical laws ; the moderns must not dare to think for them- 
 selves. Genius had been free in Greece, and was to be altogether a 
 slave in England. It cannot be urged in excuse for this protest 
 against the independence of our literature that Pope had imbibed the 
 
 1 Ver. 715730. * Spence, p. 195.
 
 22 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 prejudices of his generation. His doctrine was hackuied, but not 
 allowed. He admits that it had few disciples, 1 and one of the three 
 adherents he claimed did not belong to him. " Not only all present 
 poets," wrote Dryden to Walsh, in 3 693, " but all who are to come 
 in England will thank you for freeing them from the too servile imi- 
 tation of the ancients." 2 The rules of Pope could never have pre- 
 vailed, for they were intrinsically false, and would have emasculated 
 every national literature. The thoughts, words, and deeds of the 
 actual world would not have been impressed upon its books ; a gulf 
 would have separated the sympathies of the reader from the feeble, 
 monotonous unrealities of the author, and both author and reader would 
 soon have grown sick of this unnatural effort to be artificial and dull. 
 An exclusive partisan of classical poetry, Pope did not the less 
 denounce sectarians in wit, the contracted spirits " who the ancients 
 only or the moderns prize," and he exhorted critics " to regard not 
 if wit be old or new." 3 The contradiction in his principles was not 
 accompanied by a corresponding contradiction in his practice, for in 
 no part of his Essay did he rectify his injustice towards his country- 
 men. He had not one word of commendation for any great English 
 poet, with the exception of Dryden, and him he chiefly extolled, in 
 company with Denham and Waller, for his metrical euphony. Nay, 
 Pope limited the fame of our most illustrious writers to barely three- 
 score years, on the pretence that their language became partially 
 obsolete, which would yet leave them an enormous advantage over 
 dead tongues. Because " length of fame (our second life) is lost," 
 he exhorted the public in common fairness to recognise merit betimes. 4 
 There was not a semblance of truth in his premise, nor was the plea 
 which he grounded upon it admissible in his mouth. " How vain," 
 he exclaimed, "that second life in other's breath," 5 aud if post- 
 humous fame was worthless there was no claim for compensation. 
 In reality the value is not in the posthumous fame, but in the antici- 
 pation which converts it into an immediate possession, the mind 
 feasting in imagination upon plaudits to come. The successful author 
 adds them to the chorus of present praise, and the unsuccessful 
 creates for himself the fame he hicks. The parental partiality which 
 appeals from contemporaries to posterity may deceive, but it soothes 
 and sustains. "A reputation after death," said Jortin, "is like a 
 favourable wind after a shipwreck." 6 Rather the faith in a future 
 reputation is the preservative against shipwreck, unless when men are 
 indifferent to literary immortality. 
 
 Ver. 719. 
 
 Poetical Works of Dryden, ed. Robert Bell, vol. i. p. 75. 
 
 Ver. 395, 406. Ver. 480 
 
 Temple of Fame, ver. 505. 
 
 J(rtin's Works, vol. xiii. p. 124
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 23 
 
 // ' The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intel- 1 
 lectual superiority. X)f old the poets " who but endeavoured well," 
 / were praised by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights 
 of Parnassus " employed their pains in spurning down others." Of 
 old again the professional critic was " generous and fanned the poet's 
 fire." Now critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had 
 learned from him the art of criticism. 1 A freedom from jealousy, a 
 liberality of eulogy were universal with pagans ; malice and euvy 
 reigned supreme in Christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had 
 the luxury of indulging in the vice he reprobated. He preached up 
 "good-nature," he would suffer no leaven of " spleen and sour dis- 
 dain," 2 and his Essay throughout is a diatribe against English critics. 
 The entire crew were spiteful blockheads without sense or principle. 
 The excessive rancour points to some personal offence, and it is pro- 
 bable that his estimate of critics was regulated by their low opinion 
 of his Pastorals, which was the chief work he had hitherto published. 
 When he speaks of poets he keeps no better to the leniency he advo- 
 cates. He would "sometimes have censure restrained, and would 
 charitably let the dull be vain," upon the uncharitable allegation that 
 the more they were corrected the worse they grew. He engrafts upon 
 his recommendation of a " charitable silence," an invective against 
 the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have not discovered that 
 they are superannuated. For this inability to detect the decay of 
 their faculties he calls them " shameless bards, impenitently bold." 3 
 No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be treated with tender- 
 ness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less excusable that it 
 was certainly directed against his former friend Wycherley. 
 
 There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the 
 minor positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth 
 when he said of the whole that it was " very superficial." There 
 remains the question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty 
 of expression signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his 
 work to be a combination of highly wrought passages, and of that 
 more easy style described by Dryden, when he says 
 
 And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose, 
 As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose. 4 
 
 The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are 
 far the best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile 
 of the traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to 
 his improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. 
 
 1 Ver. 511, 514, 100, 629644, 107. 
 
 2 Ver. 524, 526. 3 Ver. 596610. 4 Religio Laici.
 
 24 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 One or two only are good ; the rest have little point or appropriate- 
 ness. Anxious to string together as many smart comparisons as pos- 
 sible, Pope was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of 
 abusing paltry versifiers, he says, 
 
 * Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 
 And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep, 
 i False steps but help them to renew the race, 
 As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace. 1 
 
 The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets 
 become callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure ; the mean- 
 ing of the second that failure stimulated them to improvement. In 
 the first couplet they proceed from drowsiness to slumber ; in the 
 second their false steps stir them up to mend their pace. They are 
 first represented as proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad 
 to better. 
 
 / / The attempt in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only 
 partially successful Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in 
 different ways of the familiar style, pour out words in their natural 
 order with a marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this 
 unforced idiomatic flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles 
 of rhymes. Almost anybody may convert ordinary prose into de- 
 fective verse, and much of the verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a 
 low order. The phraseology is frequently mean and slovenly, the 
 construction inverted and uu grammatical, the ellipses harsh, the ex- 
 pletives feeble, the metre inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving 
 to be poetical, Pope fell below bald and slip-shod prose. Examples 
 lie thick, and a couple of specimens will be enough : 
 
 But when t' examine ev'ry part he came. 
 
 Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do. 
 
 The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the 
 rule with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of pre- 
 serving the legitimate arrangement of words ; yet it is an anomaly in 
 literature that with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate 
 such despicable examples of the licence, and this in enunciating 
 hacknied precepts, only to be raised above insipidity by the per- 
 fection with which they were moulded into verse. Where the plain 
 portions of the poem are not positively bad, they are seldom of 
 any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity, relieved by occasional well- 
 wrought passages, forms the staple of the work, and Hazlitt must 
 surely have given loose to one of his wilful paradoxes when he con- 
 tended that the general characteristics of the Essay were originality, 
 thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous expression, and brilliant 
 illustration. 
 
 1 Yer. 600-603.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 25 
 
 In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of 
 Pope's poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. 
 " There are," says Hazlitt, " no less than half a score couplets 
 
 \rhyming to sense. This appears almost incredible without giving the 
 instances, and no less so when they are given," 
 
 But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence 
 
 To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. lines 3, 4. 
 
 In search of wit, these lose their common sense, 
 
 And then turn critics in their own defence. 1. 28, 29. 
 
 Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, 
 
 And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 1. 209, 10. 
 
 Some by old words to fame have made pretence, 
 
 Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense. 1. 324, 5. 
 
 "Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, 
 
 The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 1. 364, 5. 
 
 At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, 
 
 That always shows great pride, or little sense. 1. 386, 7. 
 
 Be silent always when you doubt your sense ; 
 
 And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence. L 566, 7. 
 
 Be niggards of advice on no pretence : 
 
 For the worst avarice is that of sense. 1. 578, 9. 
 
 Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense, 
 And rhyme with all the rage of impotence. 1. 608, 9. 
 
 Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 
 And without method talks us into sense. 1. 653, 4. 
 / 
 The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always 
 
 varied. "Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and pre- 
 tence " are each employed twice. 
 
 Hazlitt might have remarked, that wit was even more favoured than 
 sense, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of 
 Queen Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction ; 
 and wit, besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed 
 as synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific mean- 
 . ings, already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient 
 for Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a 
 poet, and now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was 
 the intellect, the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and 
 poetry. The word does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, 
 throughout the essay, and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone : 
 
 Nature to all things fixed the limits fit, 
 
 And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. lines 52, 3. 
 
 One science only will one genius fit ; 
 
 So vast is art, so narrow human wit. 1. 60, 1.
 
 2 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 A perfect judge will read each work of wit 
 
 With the same spirit that its author writ. 1. 233, 4. 
 
 Nor lose for that malignant dull delight, 
 
 The gen'rons pleasure to be charmed with wit. 1. 237, 8. 
 
 As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, 
 
 T' avoid great errors, must the less commit. 1. 259, 60. 
 
 Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit ; 
 One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. 1. 291, 2. 
 
 As shades more sweetly recommend the light, 
 
 So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. 1. 301, 2. 
 
 So schismatics the plain believers quit, 
 
 And are but damned for having too much wit. 1. 428, 9. 
 
 Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, 
 
 The current folly proves the ready wit. 1. 448, 9. 
 
 Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ : 
 
 Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit. 1. 538, 9. 
 
 Received his laws ; and stood convinced 'twas fit, 
 
 \Yho conquered nature, should preside o'er wit. 1. 651, 2. 
 
 He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, 
 
 Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ. 1. 657, 8. 
 
 In these twelve instances " wit " rhymes five times to " fit," 
 and three times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. 
 " Art," in the singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every 
 case rhymes to "part," "parts," or "imparts." 
 
 Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the 
 order in which they are set down. "None, own showed, trod 
 proved, beloved steer, character esteem, them full, rule take, 
 track rise, precipice thoughts, faults joined, mankind delight, 
 wit appear, regular caprice, nice light, wit good, blood glass, 
 place sun, upon still, suitable ear, repair join, line line, join 
 Jove, love own, town fault, thought worn, turn safe, laugh 
 lost, boast boast, lost (bis) join, divine prove, love ease, increase 
 care, war join, shine disapproved, beloved take, speak fool, 
 dull satires, dedicators read, head speaks, makes extreme, 
 phlegm find, joined joined, mind revive, live chased, passed 
 good, blood desert, heart receive, give." In numerous instances, 
 " the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it, when speaking 
 of Denham, " is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it." 
 
 Some positive, persisting fops we know, 
 Who, if once wrong, will needs be always to 
 
 We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow, 
 Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 27 
 
 Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong 
 emphasis, as 
 
 False eloquence like the prismatic glass, 
 
 which only ceases to be prose when " the," and the last syllable 
 of "eloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. 
 Examples like 
 
 Atones not fflr that envy which it brings ; 
 
 That ill proud dullness joins with quality ; 
 
 That not alone what US yoor sense iff due ; 
 
 are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen, 
 offend the ear by the succession of "low "and " creeping words. " 
 P*y> Pope belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who 
 V freely dispensed with the laws they had made.' 
 
 Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the 
 sense, thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to 
 describe the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used 
 the same measure to denote " the march of slow-paced majesty." 
 There was no need to look for an instance at the interval of thirty 
 years. It would have been found at an interval of half thirty lines 
 in the Essay on Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to 
 portray the dragging progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposi- 
 tion was doubtless deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the 
 opposite movements of sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunder- 
 stood the theory. The Alexandrine was not supposed to represent 
 speed, but space. Thus when Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, 
 in his translation of the Iliad, he says in a note, " Homer is very 
 particular here in giving the picture of the blood running in a long 
 trace, lower and lower. The author's design being only to image the 
 streaming of the blood, it seemed equivalent to make it trickle through 
 the length of an Alexandrine line." 
 
 As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood. 
 
 A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long dis- 
 tance, the retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be ex- 
 pressed by the slow or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. 
 The end was not answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break 
 in the middle of the Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has 
 equally shown that Pope was not happy in the application of his 
 mistaken rule. The slow march outstrips the swift Camilla, who is 
 even left behind by the wounded snake in the first half of the line. 
 Had the examples been a complete illustration of the theory, the gain 
 would have been nothing. Representative metre, in the strict sense 
 of the term, though sanctioned by eminent names, would degrade
 
 28 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 poetry. There cannot be a paltrier poetic effect than to mimic the 
 roll of stones, the trickling of blood, and the dragging motion of 
 wounded snakes. 
 
 "Mr. Walsh used to tell me," says Pope, "that there was one 
 way left of excelling ; for though we had several great poets, we 
 never had any one great poet that was correct, and he desired me to 
 make that my study and aim." 1 Warton calls this "very im- 
 portant advice," 2 and both he and Pope seem to assume that it had 
 been effectual. The notion has been generally accepted. " To dis- 
 tinguish this triumvirate from each other," says Young, " Swift is a 
 singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a great author." 3 "He 
 is the most perfect of our poets," said Byron ; " the only poet 
 whose faultiessiiess has been made his reproach." 4 Hazlitt took the 
 opposite side. " Those critics who are bigoted idolisers of our 
 author, chiefly on the score of his correctness, seem to be of opinion 
 that there is but one perfect writer, even Pope. This is, however, a 
 mistake ; his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he had no 
 great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical construction 
 is often lame and imperfect. His rhymes are constantly defective, 
 being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear ; and this to a greater 
 degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding, writers. The 
 praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform smoothness 
 and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been con- 
 sidered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually 
 changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the 
 rhyme, which shows either a want of technical resources, or great 
 inattention to punctilious exactness." 5 De Quincey confirms Hazlitt ; 
 but, with his profounder knowledge of the characteristics of Pope's 
 poetry, he saw that the incorrectness was spread wider, and went 
 deeper. "Let us ask," he says, "what is meant by correctness? 
 Correctness in developing the thought ? In connecting it, or effecting 
 the transitions ? In the use of words ? In the grammar ? In the 
 metre ?" In all these points he maintains that Pope, " by com- 
 parison with other great poets, was conspicuously deficient." 6 For 
 an example of incorrectness in developing the thought De Quiucey 
 refers to the character of Addison : 
 
 Who would not laugh, if such a man there be f 
 Who but must weep if Atticus were he ? 
 
 " Why must we laugh ? Because we find a grotesque assembly of 
 
 1 Spence, p. 212. 2 Essay on the Genius of Pope, vol. i. p. 195. 
 
 * Works of Edward Young, ed. Doran, vol. ii. p. 578. 
 
 4 Moore's Life of Byron, 1 vol. ed., p. 699. 
 
 5 Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Poets, p. 145. 
 
 6 De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 141 : xii. p. 58.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 29 
 
 noble and ignoble qualities. Very well ; but why, then, must we 
 weep ? Because this assemblage is found actually existing in an 
 eminent man of genius. Well, that is a good reason for weeping ; 
 we weep for the degradation of human nature. But then revolves 
 the question, Why must we laugh ? Because, if the belonging to a 
 man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping, so much we know 
 from the very first. The very first line says, 
 
 Peace to all such : but were there one whose fires 
 True genius kindles, and fair fame aspires. 
 
 Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous cha- 
 racter. We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a 
 sudden discovery that the character belonged to a man of genius ; 
 and this we had already known from the beginning. Match us this 
 prodigious oversight in Shakspeare." 1 Pope was still more deficient 
 in logical correctness, in the power of preserving consistency, and 
 coherency between congregated ideas. " Of all poets," says De 
 Quincey, " that have practised reasoning in verse he is the one 
 most inconsequential in the deduction of his thoughts, and the mcjst 
 severely distressed in any effort to effect or to explain the de- 
 pendency of their parts. There are not ten consecutive lines in Pope 
 unaffected by this infirmity. All his thinking proceeded by insulated 
 and discontinuous jets, and the only resource for him, or chance of 
 even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty of stringing his aphoristic 
 thoughts, like pearls, having no relation to each other but that of 
 contiguity." 2 Many of his arguments are capable of a double con- 
 struction ; absolute contradictions are not uncommon ; and when we 
 try to get a connected view of his principles we are irritated by their 
 discordance, indefiniteness, and obscurity. As little will his grammar 
 bear the test of correctness. " His syntax," says De Quincey, " is 
 so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other times to 
 defeat it. Preterites and participles he constantly confounds, and 
 registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron index of 
 rhymes that never can mend." Another defect of language was, in 
 De Quincey's opinion, "almost peculiar to Pope." "The language 
 does not realise the idea : it simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to 
 give a single illustration : 
 
 Know God and Nature only are the same ; 
 In man the judgment shoots at flying game. 
 
 The first line one would naturally construe into this : that God and 
 Nature were in harmony, whilst all other objects were scattered into 
 incoherency by difference and disunion. Not at all ; it means nothing 
 
 1 De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 142. 
 5 De Quincey's Works, vol. viii. p. 14.
 
 
 30 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 of the kind ; but that God and Nature only are exempted from the 
 infirmities of change. This might mislead many readers ; but the 
 second line must do so : for who would not understand tho syntax to 
 be, that the judgment, as it exists in mau, shoots at flying game ? 
 But, in fact, the meaning is, that the j i Igment in aiming its calcula- 
 tions at man, aims at an object that is still on the wing, and never 
 for a moment stationary." 1 This, De Quincey contends, is the worst 
 of all possible faults in diction, since perspicuity, ungrammatical and 
 inelegant, is preferable to conundrums of which the solution is diffi- 
 cult, and often doubtful. He says that there are endless varieties of 
 the vice in Pope, and that " he sought relief for himself from half an 
 hour's labour at the price of utter darkness to his reader." De 
 Quincey was in error when he imputed the imperfections to indo- 
 lence. There never was a more painstaking poet than Pope. His 
 works were slowly elaborated, and diligently revised. " I corrected," 
 he says, "because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write," 2 
 and his manuscripts attest his untiring efforts to mend his compo- 
 sition. Language and not industry failed him. Happy in a multi- 
 tude of phrases, lines, couplets, and passages, his vocabulary and 
 turns of expression were often unequal to the exactions of verse. 
 Not even rhymes, dearly purchased by violations of grammar and a 
 false order of words, nor the imperfection of the rhymes themselves, 
 could always enable him to satisfy the double requirement of metre 
 and clearness. Most of his usual deviations from correctness are 
 especially prominent in the Essay on Criticism, and any one who 
 reads it with common attention might be tempted to think that the 
 claim which Warton and others set up for Pope, was an insidious 
 device to injure his reputation by diverting attention from his merits, 
 and basing his fame upon a foundation too unstable to support it. 
 The advice of Walsh was foolish. A poet who believed originality to 
 be exhausted, and who merely aspired to echo his predecessors, with 
 no distinguishing quality of his own beyond some additional correct- 
 ness, might have spared his pains. The correct imitator would be 
 intolerable by the side of the fresh and vigorous genius he copied. 
 The assumption that the domain of poetic thought had been traversed 
 in every direction, and that no untrodden paths were left for future 
 explorers, was itself a delusion, soon to be refuted by Pope's own 
 Rape of the Lock. Many immortal works have since belied the 
 shallow doctrine of Walsh, who made his dim perceptions the measure 
 of intellectual possibilities. The aspects under which the world, 
 animate and inanimate, may be regarded by the poet are practically 
 endless. The latent truths of science do not offer to the philosopher 
 a more unbounded field of novelty. 
 
 1 De Quincey's Works, vol. viii. p. 15 17. 
 1 Pope's Poetical Works, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 7.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION : That it is as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill, and a 
 more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1 That a true taste is as rare 
 to be found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18 That most men are bora 
 with some taste, but spoiled by false education, ver. 19 to 25 The mul- 
 titude of critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to 45 That we are to study 
 our own taste, and know the limits of it, ver. 46 to 67 Nature the best 
 guide of judgment, ver. 68 to 87 Improved by art and rules, which are 
 but methodised nature, ver. 88 Rules derived from the practice of the 
 ancient poets, ver. 88 to 110 That therefore the ancients are necessary 
 to be studied by a critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to 138 
 Of licenses, and the use of them by the ancients, ver. 142 to 180 Keve- 
 rence due to the ancients, and praise of them, ver. 181, &c. 
 
 PART II. VER. 201, &c. 
 
 Causes hindering a true judgment 1. Pride, ver. 208 2. Imperfect learning, 
 ver. 215 3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver. 233 to 288 
 Critics in wit, language, versification, only, ver. 288, 305, 339, &c. 
 4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire, ver. 384 5. Partiality, 
 too much love to a sect, to the ancients or moderns, ver. 394 6. Pre- 
 judice or prevention, ver. 408 7. Singularity, ver. 424 8. Inconstancy, 
 ver. 430 9. Party spirit, ver. 452, &c. 10. Envy, ver. 466 Against 
 envy and in praise of good nature, ver. 508, &c. When severity is chiefly 
 to be used by critics, ver. 526, &c. 
 
 PART III. VER. 660, &c. 
 
 Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic 1. Candour, ver. 563 Modesty, 
 ver. 566 Good breeding, ver. 572 Sincerity and freedom of advice, ver. 
 578. 2. When one's counsel is to be restrained, ver. 584 Character of 
 an incorrigible poet, ver. 600 And of an impertinent critic, ver. 610 
 Character of a good critic, ver. 629 The history of criticism, and cha- 
 racters of the best critics, Aristotle, ver. 645 Horace, ver. 653 Dio- 
 nysius, ver. 665 Petronius, ver. 667 Quintilian, ver. 670 Longinus, 
 ver. 675 Of the decay of criticism, audits revival. Erasmus, ver. 693 
 Vida, ver. 705 Boileau, ver. 714 Lord Roscommon, &c. ver. 725 
 Conclusion.
 
 ESSAY ON CEITICISM. 
 
 Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill 
 Appear in writing or in judging ill ; 
 But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence 
 To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. 
 Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 
 Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss ; 
 A fool might once himself alone expose, 
 Now one in verse makes many more in prose. 1 
 
 'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none 
 Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 
 In poets as true genius is but rare, 
 True taste as seldom is the critic's share ; 2 
 Both must alike from heav'n derive their light, 
 These born to judge, as well as those to write. 
 Let such teach others who themselves excel, 
 And censure freely, who have written well. 3 
 
 10 
 
 1 Dryden'a Epilogue to All for 
 Love : 
 
 This difference grows, 
 Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in 
 proae. 
 
 2 An extravagant assertion. Those 
 who can appreciate, are beyond com- 
 parison more numerous than those 
 who can produce, a work of genius. 
 
 3 Qui scribit artificiose, ab aliis 
 commode scripta facile intelligere pro- 
 terit. Cic. ad Herenn. lib. iv. De 
 pictore, sculptore, fictore, nisi artifex, 
 judicare non potest. Pliny. POPE, 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 Poets and painters must appeal 
 to the world at large. Wretched in- 
 deed would be their fate, if their 
 merits were to be decided only by their 
 rivals. It is on the general opinion 
 of persons of taste that their indivi- 
 dual estimation must ultimately rest, 
 and if the public were excluded from 
 judging, poets might write and 
 painters paint for each other. 
 ROSCOE. 
 
 The execution of a work and the 
 appreciation of it when executed are 
 separate operations, and all experience 
 D
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, 
 But are not critics to their judgment too ? 
 
 Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find 
 Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind : ' 
 Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light, 
 The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right ; 
 But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced, 
 Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced, 1 
 So by false learning is good sense defaced : * 
 Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, 4 
 And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools. 5 
 In search of wit, these lose their common sense, 
 And then turn critics in their own defence : 8 
 
 25 
 
 has shown that numbers pronounce 
 justly upon literature, architecture, 
 and pictures, though they may not 
 be able to write like Shakespeare, 
 design like Wren, or paint like Rey- 
 nolds. Taste is acquired by studying 
 good models as well as by emulating 
 them. Pope, perhaps, copied Addi- 
 son, Tatler, Oct. 19, 1710 : " It is 
 ridiculous for any man to criticise on 
 the works of another who has not 
 distinguished himself by his own per- 
 formances." 
 
 1 Omnes tacito quodam sensu, sine 
 ulla arte aut ratione, qus sint in 
 artibus ac rationibus, recta et prava 
 dijudicant. Cic. de Orat. lib. iii. 
 POPE. 
 
 2 The phrase "more disgraced" 
 implies that slight sketches "justly 
 traced " are a disgrace at best, whereas 
 they have often a high degree of 
 merit. 
 
 3 Plus sine doctrina prudentia, 
 quam sine prudentia valet doctrina. 
 Quint. POPE. 
 
 4 Between ver. 25 and 26 were these 
 lines, since omitted by the author : 
 
 Many are spoiled by that pedantic throng, 
 Who with great pains teach youth to reason 
 wrong. 
 
 Tutors, like virtuosos, oft inclined J[mind, 
 By strange transfusion to improve the 
 Draw off the sense we have, to pour in new ; 
 Which yet, with all their skill, they ne'er 
 could do. POPE. 
 
 The transfusion spoken of in the 
 fourth verse of this variation is the 
 transfusion of one animal's blood into 
 another. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 "Nature," it is said in the Spec- 
 tator, No. 404, " has sometimes made 
 a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a 
 man's own making, by applying his 
 talents otherwise than nature de- 
 signed. " The idea is expressed more 
 happily by Dryden in his Hind and 
 Panther : 
 
 For fools are doubly fools endeav'ring to be 
 wise. 
 
 Pope contradicts himself when he 
 says in the text that the men made 
 coxcombs by study were meant by 
 nature but for fools, since they are 
 among his instances of persons upon 
 whom nature had bestowed the "seeds 
 of judgment," and who possessed 
 " good sense " till it was " defaced by 
 false learning." 
 
 6 Drydeii's Medal : 
 
 The wretch turned loyal in bis own de- 
 fence.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 
 
 Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. 1 
 
 All fools have still an itching to deride, 
 
 And fain would be upon the laughing side.* 
 
 If Msevius scribble in Apollo's spite, 3 
 
 There are who judge still worse than he can write. 
 
 Some have at first for wits, then poets passed, 
 Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last. 
 Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, 
 As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. 4 
 Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle, 
 As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile ; ' 
 Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,' 
 Their generation's so equivocal : 7 
 
 1 The couplet ran thus in the first 
 edition, with less neatness and per- 
 spicuity : 
 
 Those hate as rivals all that write ; and 
 
 others 
 But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers. 
 
 The inaccuracy of the rhymes ex- 
 cited him to alteration, which occa- 
 sioned a fresh inconvenience, that of 
 similar rhymes in the next couplet 
 but one. WAKEFIELD, 
 
 Dryden's Prologue to the Second 
 Part of the Conquest of Granada : 
 
 They who write ill, and they who ne'er 
 
 durst write, 
 Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite. 
 
 2 In the manuscript there are two 
 more lines, of which the second was 
 afterwards introduced into the Dun- 
 ciad : 
 
 Though such with reason men of sense 
 
 abhor ; 
 
 Fool against fool is barb'rous civil war. 
 Though Msevius scribble and the city 
 
 knight, &c. 
 
 The city knight was Sir Richard 
 Blackmore, who resided in Cheapside. 
 " In the early part of Blackmore' s 
 time," says Johnson, " a citizen was 
 a term of reproach, and his place of 
 abode was a topic to which his adver- 
 
 saries had recourse in the penury of 
 scandal." 
 
 5 Dryden's Persius, Sat. i. 100 : 
 Who would bo poets in Apollo's spite. 
 
 4 "The simile of the mule," says 
 "Warton, "heightens the satire, and is 
 new," but the comparison fails in the 
 essential point. Pope's "half-learn'd 
 witlings," who aim at being wit and 
 critic, are inferior to both, whereas 
 the mule, to which he likens the 
 literary pretender, is in speed and 
 strength superior to the ass. 
 
 6 "I am confident," says Dryden 
 in the dedication of his Virgil, "that 
 you will look on those half-lines 
 hereafter as the imperfect products of 
 a hasty muse, like the frogs and ser- 
 pents in the Nile, part of them 
 kindled into life, and part a lump of 
 unformed, unanimated mud." 
 
 6 The diction of this line is coarse, 
 and the construction defective. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The omission of ' ' them " after 
 " call" exceeds the bounds of poetic 
 licence. 
 
 7 Equivocal generation is the pro- 
 duction of animals without parents. 
 Many of the creatures on the 
 
 D 2
 
 86 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require, 
 Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire. 1 
 
 But you who seek to give and merit fame, 
 And justly bear a critic's noble name, 
 Be sure yourself and your own reach to know, 
 How far your genius, taste, and learning go ; a 
 Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, 
 And mark that point where sense and dulness meet. 
 
 Nature to all things fixed the limits fit, 
 And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. 
 As on the land while here the ocean gains, 
 In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains ; 
 Thus in the soul while memory prevails, 
 The solid pow'r of understanding fails ; 3 
 Where beams of warm imagination play, 4 
 The memory's soft figures melt away. 5 
 
 M 
 
 Nile were supposed to be of this 
 class, and it was believed that they 
 were fashioned by the action of the 
 sun upon the slime. The notion was 
 purely fanciful, as was the idea that 
 the insects were half-formed a com- 
 pound of mud and organisation. 
 1 Dryden's Persius, v. 36 : 
 
 For this a hundred voices I desire 
 To tell thee what an hundred tongues would 
 tire. 
 
 "I have often thought," says the 
 author of the Supplement to the Pro- 
 found, speaking of Pope's couplet, 
 " that one pert fellow's tongue 
 might tire a hundred pair of attend- 
 ing ears ; but I never conceived that 
 it could communicate any lassitude 
 to the tongues of the bystanders 
 before. " The evident meaning of Pope 
 is that it would tire a hundred ordin- 
 ary tongues to talk as much as one 
 vain wit, but the construction is 
 faulty. 
 
 * This is a palpable imitation of 
 Horace's Art of Poetry, 38: 
 Sumito matcriam vestris, qul scribitis, 
 
 Viribus ; et versate diu, quid f erre recusent, 
 Quid valeant humeri WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Pope is unfortunate in his selec- 
 tion of instances to illustrate his posi- 
 tion that the various mental facul- 
 ties are never concentrated in the 
 same individual. Men of great intel- 
 lect have sometimes bad memories, 
 and a good memory is sometimes 
 found in persons of a feeble intellect ; 
 but it is a monstrous paradox to 
 assert that a retentive memory and a 
 powerful understanding cannot go 
 together. No one will deny that Dr. 
 Johnson and Lord Macaulay were 
 gifted with vigorous, brilliant minds ; 
 yet the memory of the first was extra- 
 ordinary, and that of the second 
 prodigious. In general, men of tran- 
 scendent abilities have been remark- 
 able for their knowledge. 
 
 4 Dryden, in his Character of a 
 Good Parson : 
 
 But when the milder beams of mercy play. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 From the second couplet, appa- 
 rently meant to be the converse of 
 the first, one would suppose that he
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 One science only will one genius fit ; 
 So vast is art, so narrow human wit : ' 
 Not only bounded to peculiar arts, 
 But oft in those confined to single parts. 
 Like kings we lose the conquests gained before, 
 By vain ambition still to make them more 
 Each might his sev'ral province well command, 
 Would all but stoop to what they understand. 
 
 First follow nature, and your judgment frame 
 By her just standard/ which is still the same : 
 Unerring nature, still divinely bright, 
 One clear, unchanged, and universal light,* 1 
 Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, 4 
 At once the source, and end, and test of art. 
 
 37 
 
 60 
 
 70 
 
 considered the understanding and 
 imagination as the same faculty, 
 else the counterpart is defective. 
 WARTON. 
 
 The structure of the passage re- 
 quires the interpretation put upon it 
 by Warton, in which case the lan- 
 guage is incorrect. The statement is 
 not even true of the imagination pro- 
 per, as the example of Milton would 
 alone suffice to prove. His imagina- 
 tion was grand, and the numberless 
 phrases he adopted from preceding 
 writers evince that it was com- 
 bined with a memory unusually tena- 
 cious. 
 
 1 This position seems formed from 
 the well-known maxim of Hippo- 
 crates, which is found at the entrance 
 of his aphorisms, "Life is short, but 
 art is long." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The standard of excellence in any 
 art or science, must always be that 
 which is attained by the persons who 
 follow it with the greatest success ; 
 and those who give themselves up to 
 a particular pursuit will, with equal 
 talents, eclipse the rivals who devote 
 to it only fragments of time. For 
 
 this reason men can rarely attain to 
 the highest skill in more than one 
 department, however many accom- 
 plishments they may possess in a 
 minor degree. The native power to 
 shine in various callings may exist, 
 but the practice which can alone 
 make perfect, is wanting. 
 
 2 These are the words of Lord 
 Shaftesbury in his Advice to an 
 Author: "Frame taste by the just 
 standard of nature." The principle 
 is as old as poetry, and has been laid 
 down by multitudes of writers ; but 
 the difficulty, as Bowles remarks, is 
 to determine what is " nature," and 
 what is "her just standard." 
 " Nature" with Pope meant Homer. 
 
 3 Eoscommon's Essay : 
 
 Truth still is one : Truth is divinely bright ; 
 No cloudy doubts obscure her native light. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Translation of Boileau's Art of 
 Poetry by Sir William Soame and 
 Dryden, canto i. 
 
 Love reason then, and let whate'er you 
 
 write [light. 
 
 Borrow from her its beauty, force, and
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Art from that fund each just supply pro-sides ; 
 Works without show, and without pomp presides : 
 In some fair hody thus th' informing soul 
 With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,* 
 Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains ; 
 Itself unseen, hut in th' effects remains. 3 
 Some, to whom heav'n in wit has heen profuse, 
 Want as much more, to turn it to its use ; 4 
 For wit and judgment often are at strife, 5 
 Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 
 'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed ; 
 Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed ; 
 The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse, 6 
 Shows most true mettle when you check his course. 
 
 Those rules of old discovered, not devised, 
 Are nature still, but nature methodised ; 7 
 
 1 In the early editions, 
 
 That art is best which most resembles her, 
 Which still presides, yet never does appear. 
 
 2 Dryden's Virgil, jEn. vi. 982 : 
 one common soul 
 
 Inspires, and feeds, and animates the 
 whole. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 So Ovid, exactly, Metam. iv. 287: 
 causa latet ; vis est notissima. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Duke of Buckingham's Essay on 
 
 Poetry : 
 
 A. spirit which inspires the work through- 
 out, 
 
 Aa that of nature moves the world about ; 
 
 Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown. 
 
 4 In all editions before the quarto 
 of 1743, it was, 
 
 There are whom heav'n has blest with store 
 
 of wit, 
 Tet want as much again to manage it. 
 
 The idea was suggested by a sen- 
 tence in Sprat's Account of Cowley : 
 " His fancy flowed with great speed, 
 and therefore it was very fortunate to 
 him that his judgment was equal to 
 manage it. " Pope gave a false sparkle 
 to his couplet by first using "wit" 
 in one sense and then in another. 
 "Wit to manage wit," says the 
 
 author of the Supplement to the Pro- 
 found, "is full as good as one tongue's 
 tiring another. Any one may per- 
 ceive that the writer meant that 
 judgment should manage wit ; but 
 as it stands it is pert." "Warburton 
 observes that Pope's later version 
 magnified the contradiction ; for he 
 who had already "a profusion of 
 wit," was the last person to need 
 more. 
 
 5 "Ever are at strife," was the 
 reading till the quarto of 1743. 
 
 6 We shall destroy the beauty of the 
 passage by introducing a most insipid 
 parallel of perfect sameness, if we un- 
 derstand the word "like" as intro- 
 ducing a simile. It is merely as if he 
 had said: "Pegasus, as a generous 
 horse is accustomed to do, shows his 
 spirit most under restraint." Our 
 author might have in view a couplet 
 of Waller's, in his verses on Eos- 
 common's Poetry : 
 
 Direct us how to back the winged horse, 
 Favour his flight, and moderate his force. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 7 Dryden's preface to Troilus and
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Nature, like liberty, 1 is but restrained 
 
 By the same laws which first herself ordained, 
 
 Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites, 
 When to repress, and when indulge our flights : 
 High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed, 
 And pointed out those arduous paths they trod ; 
 Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize, 2 
 And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. 
 Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n, 3 
 She drew from them what they derived from heav'n. 4 
 The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire, 
 And taught the world with reason to admire. 
 Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved, 
 To dress her charms, and make her more beloved : 
 But following wits from that intention strayed, 
 Who couid not win the mistress, wooed the maid ; 5 
 Against the poets their own arms they turned, 
 Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned. 6 
 
 95 
 
 100 
 
 105 
 
 Cressida : "If the rules be well con- 
 sidered, we shall find them to be 
 made only to reduce nature into 
 method." 
 
 1 It was "monarchy" until the 
 edition of 1743. 
 
 2 Translation of Boileau's Art of 
 Poetry, by Dryden and Soame : 
 
 And afar off hold up the glorious prize. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Nec enim artibus editis factum 
 est ut argumenta inveniremus, sed 
 dicta sunt omnia antequam prsecipe- 
 rentur ; mox ea scriptores observata et 
 collecta ediderunt. Quintil. POPE. 
 
 4 This seems to have been suggested 
 by a couplet in the Court Prospect of 
 Hopkins : 
 
 How are these blessings thus dispensed and 
 
 giv'n ? [heav'n. 
 
 To us from William, and to him from 
 
 5 After this verse followed another, 
 to complete the triplet, in the first 
 impressions : 
 
 Set up themselves, and drove a sep'rate 
 trade. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 A feeble line of monosyllables, 
 consisting of ten low words. WAR- 
 TON. 
 
 The entire passage seems to be con- 
 structed on some remarks of Dryden 
 in his Dedication to Ovid : ' ' For- 
 merly the critics were quite another 
 species of men. They were defenders 
 of poets, and commentators on their 
 works, to illustrate obscure beauties, 
 to place some passages in a better 
 light, to redeem others from malicious 
 interpretations. Are our auxiliary 
 forces turned our enemies? Are they 
 from our seconds become principals 
 against us ? " The truth of Pope's 
 assertion, as to the matter of fact, 
 will not bear a rigorous inquisition, 
 as I believe these critical persecutors 
 of good poets to have been extremely 
 few, both in ancient and modern 
 times. WAKEFIELD.
 
 40 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art 
 
 By doctors' bills 1 to play the doctor's part, 
 
 Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, no 
 
 Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. 
 
 Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey, 
 
 Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled 1 so much as they ; 
 
 Some dryly plain, without invention's aid, 
 
 Write dull receipts how poems may be made ; us 
 
 These leave the sense, their learning to display, 
 
 And those explain the meaning quite away. 
 
 You then whose judgment the right course would steer, 
 Know well each ancient's proper character ; 
 His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page ; 120 
 
 Religion, country, genius of his age : 3 
 Without all these at once before your eyes, 
 Cavil you may/ but never criticise. 8 
 
 1 The prescription of the physician 
 was formerly called his bill. John- 
 son, in his Dictionary, quotes from 
 L'Estrange, " The medicine was pre- 
 pared according to the bill," and 
 Butler, in Hudibras, speaks of 
 
 him who took the doctor's bill, 
 
 And swallowed it instead of the pilL 
 
 The story ran that a physician 
 handed a prescription to his patient, 
 saying, "Take this," and the man 
 immediately swallowed it. 
 
 3 This is a quibble. Time and 
 moths spoil books by destroying 
 them. The commentators only spoiled 
 them by explaining them badly. The 
 editors were so far from spoiling 
 books in the same sense as time, that 
 by multiplying copies they assisted 
 to preserve them. 
 
 3 Soame and Dryden's Translation 
 of Boileau's Art of Poetry : 
 
 Keep to each man his proper character; 
 Of countries and of times the humours 
 
 know; 
 From diff rent climates diffring customs 
 
 grow. 
 
 The principle here is general. Pope, 
 in terms and in fact, applied it only 
 
 to the ancients. Had he extended 
 the precept to modern literature he 
 would have been cured of his de- 
 lusion that every deviation from the 
 antique type arose from unlettered 
 tastelessness. 
 
 4 In the first edition, 
 
 You may confound, but never criticise, 
 which was an adaptation of a line from 
 Lord Eoscommon : 
 You may confound, but never can translate. 
 
 s The author, after this verse, ori- 
 ginally inserted the following, which 
 he has however omitted in all the 
 editions : 
 Zoilus, had these been known, without a 
 
 name [to fame ; 
 
 Had died, and Perrault ne'er been damned 
 The sense of sound antiquity had reigned, 
 And sacred Homer yet been unprophaned. 
 None e'er had thought his comprehen- J 
 
 sive mind [fined ; f 
 
 To modern customs, modern rules con- f 
 Who for all ages writ, and all mankind. J 
 Be his great works, &c. POPE. 
 
 Perrault, in his Parallel between 
 the ancients and the moderns, carped 
 at Homer in the same spirit that 
 Zoilus had done of old.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 41 
 
 Be Homer's works your study and delight, 
 
 Bead them by day, and meditate by night ; ' 125 
 
 Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bnng, 
 
 And trace the muses upward to their spring.* 
 
 Still with itself compared, his text peruse ; 3 
 
 And let your comment be the Mantuan muse. 
 
 When first young Maro in his boundless mind iw 
 
 A work t' outlast 4 immortal Rome designed, 5 
 Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, 
 And but from nature's fountain scorned to draw : 
 But when t' examine ev'ry part he came, 
 Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 135 
 
 1 Horace, Ars Poet., ver. 268 : 
 
 vos exemplaria Grseca 
 Noctuma versate manu, versate diurna. 
 
 Tate and Brady's version of the 
 first psalm : 
 
 But makes the perfect law of God 
 
 His business and delight ; 
 Devoutly reads therein by day, 
 
 And meditates by night. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Dryden, Virg. Geor. iv. 408 : 
 
 And upward follow Fame's immortal spring. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Lord Roscommon's Essay on 
 Translated Verse : 
 
 Consult your author with himself compared. 
 
 4 The word outlast is improper ; 
 for Virgil, like a true Roman, never 
 dreamt of the mortality of the city. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 Variation : 
 
 When first young Maro sung of kings and 
 
 wars, [bling ears. 
 
 Ere warning Phoebus touched his trem- 
 
 Cum canerem reges et praelia, Cyuthius 
 
 aurem 
 Vellit Virg. Eel. vi. 3. 
 
 It is a tradition preserved by Servius, 
 that Virgil began with writing a poem 
 of theAlban and Roman affairs, which 
 he found above his years, and de- 
 scended, first to imitate Theocritus 
 on rural subjects, and afterwards to 
 
 copy Homer in heroic poetry. 
 POPE. 
 
 The second line of the couplet in 
 the note was copied, as Mr. Car- 
 ruthers points out, from Milton's 
 Lycidas : 
 
 Phoabus replied, and touched my trembling 
 ears. 
 
 The couplet in the text, with 
 the variation of "great Maro" for 
 "young Maro," was Pope's original 
 version, but Dennis having asked 
 whether he intended "to put that 
 figure called a bull upon Virgil" by 
 saying that he designed a work "to 
 outlast immortality," the poet wrote 
 in the margin of his manuscript ' ' alter 
 the seeming inconsistency," which he 
 did, by substituting the lines in the 
 note. In the last edition, he rein- 
 stated the "bull." The objection of 
 Dennis was hypercritical . The phrase 
 only expresses the double fact that 
 the city was destroyed, and that its 
 fame was durable. The manuscript 
 supplies another various reading, 
 which avoids both the alleged bull in 
 the text, and the bad rhyme of the 
 couplet in the note : 
 
 When first his voice the youthful Maro 
 
 tried, 
 Ere Phoebus touched his ear and checked 
 
 his pride.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 
 
 Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design : 
 And rules as strict his laboured work confine, 1 
 As if the Stagyrite* o'erlooked each line. 3 
 Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem ; 
 To copy nature is to copy them." 
 
 Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, 
 For there's a happiness as well as care. 
 Music resembles poetry ; in each 
 Are nameless graces which no methods teach, 5 
 And which a master hand alone can reach. 
 If, where the rules not far enough extend,' 
 (Since rules were made but to promote their end,) 
 Some lucky licence answer to the full 
 Th' intent proposed, that licence is a rule. 
 Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 
 May boldly deviate from the common track. 
 
 150 
 
 And did his work to rules as strict 
 confine. POPE. 
 
 2 Aristotle, born at Stagyra, B.C. 
 384. CEOKER. 
 
 8 In the manuscript a couplet fol- 
 lows which was added by Pope in the 
 margin, when he erased the expres- 
 sion " a work t" outlast immortal 
 Rome : " 
 
 "Arms and the Man," then rung the 
 
 world around, 
 And Rome commenced immortal at the 
 
 sound, 
 
 4 When Pope supposes Virgil to 
 have properly "checked in his bold 
 design of drawing from nature's 
 fountain," and in consequence to have 
 confined his work within rules as 
 strict, 
 
 As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line, 
 
 how can he avoid the force of his own 
 ridicxile, where a little further, in this 
 very piece, he laughs at Dennis 
 for 
 
 Concluding all were desp'rate sots and 
 
 fools, 
 
 Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. 
 DR. AIKIN. 
 
 The argument of Pope is sophistical 
 and inconsistent. It is inconsistent, 
 because if Virgil found Homer and 
 nature the same, his work would not 
 have been confined within stricter 
 rules when he copied Homer than 
 when he copied nature. It is sophis- 
 tical, because though Homer may be 
 always natural,, all nature is not con- 
 tained in Ms works. 
 
 5 Rapin's Critical Works, vol. ii. 
 p. 173 : "There are no precepts to 
 teach the hidden graces, and all that 
 secret power of poetry which passes 
 to the heart." 
 
 6 Neque enim rogationibus plebisve 
 scitis sancta sunt ista pracepta, sed 
 hoc, quicquid est, utilitas excogitavit. 
 Non negabo autern sic utile esse pie- 
 rumque ; verum si eadem ilia nobis 
 aliud suadebit utilitas, hanc, relictis 
 magistrorum auctoritatibus, seqtie-
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, 1 
 
 And rise to faults true critics dare not mend ; * 
 
 From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, 
 
 And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, 3 
 
 Which, without passing through the judgment, gains 
 
 The heart, and all its end at once attains. 
 
 In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes, 
 
 Which out of nature's common order rise/ 
 
 The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. 5 
 
 But though the ancients thus their 6 rules invade, 
 
 (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made/) 
 
 Moderns, beware ! or if you must offend 
 
 Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end ; 
 
 155 
 
 16C 
 
 mur. Quintil. lib. ii. cap. 13. 
 POPE. 
 
 1 Dryden' s Aurengzebe : 
 
 Mean soul, and dar"st not gloriously offend I 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 2 This couplet, in the quarto of 
 1743, was for the first time placed 
 immediately after the triplet which 
 ends at ver. 160. The effect of this 
 arrangement was that "Pegasus," in- 
 stead of the "great wits," became 
 the antecedent to the lines, " From 
 vulgar bounds," &c., and the poetic 
 steed was said to "snatch a grace." 
 "Warton commented upon the absur- 
 dity of using such language of a 
 horse, and since it is evident that 
 Pope must have overlooked the in- 
 congruity, when he adopted the trans- 
 position, the lines were restored to 
 their original order in the editions of 
 "Warton, Bowles, and Roscoe. 
 
 3 So Soame and Dryden of the 
 Ode, in the Translation of Boileau's 
 Art of Poetry : 
 
 Her generous style at random oft will part, 
 And by a brave disorder shows her art. 
 
 And again : 
 
 A generous Muse, [art, 
 
 When too much fettered with the rules of 
 May from her stricter bounds and limits 
 part. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 This allusion is perhaps inac- 
 curate. The shapeless rock, and 
 hanging precipice do not rise out of 
 nature's common order. These objects 
 are characteristic of some of the 
 features of nature, of those especially 
 that are picturesque. If he had said 
 that amid cultivated scenery we are 
 pleased with a hanging rock, the allu- 
 sion would have been accurate. - 
 BOWLES. 
 
 The criticism of Bowles does not 
 apply to the passage in Sprat's Ac- 
 count of Cowley, from which Pope 
 borrowed his comparison : " He knew 
 that in diverting men's minds there 
 should be the same variety observed 
 as in the prospects of their eyes, 
 where a rock, a precipice, or a rising 
 wave is often more delightful than a 
 smooth even ground, or a calm sea." 
 
 5 Another couplet originally fol- 
 lowed here : 
 
 But care in poetry must still be had ; 
 It asks discretion ev'n in running mad : 
 And though, <fcc. 
 
 which is the insanire cum ratione 
 taken from Terence by Horace, at 
 Sat. ii. 3, 271. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 "Their" means "their own." 
 WAETON. 
 
 7 Dryden in his dedication to the
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Let it be seldom, and compelled by need ; 
 And have, at least, their precedent to plead. 
 The critic else proceeds without remorse, 
 Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force. 
 
 I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts 
 Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults. 1 
 Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped* appear, 
 Considered singly, or beheld too near, 
 Which, but proportioned to their light, or place, 
 Due distance reconciles to form and grace. 8 
 A prudent chief not always must display 4 
 Hjs pow'rs in equal rank, and fair array, 
 But with th' occasion and the place comply, 
 Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly. 
 Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, 5 
 Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.* 
 
 165 
 
 17C 
 
 175 
 
 180 
 
 JJneis: "Virgil might make this 
 anachronism by superseding the 
 mechanic rules of poetry, for the 
 same reason that a monarch may 
 dispense with or suspend his own 
 kws." 
 
 1 Pope's manuscript supplies two 
 omitted lines : 
 
 The boldest strokes of art we may despise, 
 Viewed in false lights with undisceming 
 
 eyes. 
 
 J A violation of grammatical pro- 
 priety, into which many of our first 
 and most accurate writers have fallen. 
 "Mishapen" is doubtless the true 
 participle. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Pope took his imagery from 
 Horace, Ars Poet., 361 : 
 Ut pictura, poesia erit: quae, si propihs 
 
 stes, [abates : 
 
 Te capiat magis; et qusedam, si longiits 
 Hsec amat obscurum ; volet haec sub luce 
 
 videri. 
 
 He was also indebted to the trans- 
 lation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by 
 Dryden and Soame : 
 Each object must be fixed in the due place, 
 And difFring parts have corresponding 
 
 grace. 
 
 4 O?ov ri TOIOV<TU> ol <pp6viu.oi 0"rpar>j\<- 
 rat KOTO ray rdfas ruv (rrparfvijidrtiiv. 
 Dion. Hal. De Struct. Orat WAR- 
 
 BTTETON. 
 
 5 It may be pertinent to subjoin 
 Roscommon's remark on the same 
 subject : 
 
 Far the greatest part 
 
 Cf what some call neglect is studied art. 
 
 When Virgil seems to trifle in a lino, 
 
 Tis but a warning piece which gives the 
 
 sign, 
 
 To wake your fancy and prepare your sight 
 To reach the noble height of some unusual 
 
 flight WABTOJJ. 
 
 Variety and contrast are necessary, 
 and it is impossible all parts should 
 be equally excellent. Yet it would 
 be too much to recommend introduc- 
 ing trivial or dull passages to enhance 
 the merit of those in which the whole 
 effort of genius might be employed. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 6 llodeste, et circumspecto judicio 
 de tantis viris pronunciandum est, 
 ne (quod plerisque accidit) damnent 
 quod non intelligunt. Ac si necesse 
 cst in alteram errare partem, omnia
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, 
 Above the reach of sacrilegious hands ; l 
 Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, 
 Destructive war, and all-involving age.* 
 See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring ; 
 Hear, in all tongues consenting Paeans ring ! 
 In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined, 
 And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind. 8 
 Hail, bards triumphant ! born in happier days; 4 
 Immortal heirs of universal praise ! 
 Whose honours with increase of ages grow, 
 As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow ; 
 
 189 
 
 190 
 
 eorum legentibus placere, quam multa 
 displicere maluerim. Quint. POPE. 
 
 Lord Roscommon was not disposed 
 to be so diffident in those excellent 
 verses of his Essay : 
 For who, without a qualm, hath ever 
 
 looked [cooked? 
 
 On holy garbage, though by Homer 
 Whose railing heroes, and whose wounded 
 
 gods, 
 Make some suspect he snores as well as 
 
 nods. WA KEFIELD. 
 
 Pope originally wrote in his manu- 
 script, 
 
 Nor Homer nods so often as we dream, 
 which was followed by this couplet : 
 In sacred writ where difficulties rise, 
 Tis safer far to fear than criticise. 
 
 1 So Roscommon' s epilogue to Alex- 
 ander the Great : 
 
 Secured by higher pow'rs exalted stands 
 Above the reach of sacrilegious hands. 
 WAXEFIELD. 
 
 2 The poet here alludes to the four 
 great causes of the ravage amongst 
 ancient writings. The destruction of 
 the Alexandrine and Palatine libraries 
 by tire; the fiercer rage of Zoilus, 
 Maevius, and their followers, against 
 wit ; the irruption of the barbarians 
 into the empire ; and the long reign 
 of ignorance and superstition in the 
 cloisters. WARBURTON. 
 
 I like the original verse better 
 
 Destructive war, and all-devouring age, 
 as a metaphor much more perspicu- 
 ous and specific. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 In his epistle to Addison, Pope has 
 "all-devouring age," but the epithet 
 here is more original and striking, 
 and admirably suited to the subject. 
 This shows a nice discrimination. 
 "All-involving "would be as improper 
 in the Essay on Medals as "all-de- 
 vouring" would be in this place. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 A couplet in Cooper's Hill suggested 
 the couplet of Pope : 
 Now shalt thou stand, though sword, or 
 
 time, or fire, [spire. 
 
 Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall con- 
 
 8 Thus in a poem on the Fear of 
 Death, ascribed to the Duke of 
 Wharton: 
 
 There rival chiefs combine 
 
 To fill the gen'ral chorus of her reign. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Cowley on the death of Crashaw : 
 Hail, bard triumphant. 
 
 Virg. Mn. vi. 649 : 
 Magnanimi heroes ! nati melioribus aimfa. 
 WAKBFIELD. 
 
 Dryden's Religio Laici : 
 Those giant wits in happier ages born. 
 From Pope's manuscript it ap- 
 pears that he had originally written 
 Hail, happy heroes, born in better days.
 
 46 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, 
 
 And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found ! ' 
 
 may some spark of your celestial fire, 103 
 
 The last, the meanest of your sons inspire, 
 
 (That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights ; 
 
 Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,) 
 
 To teach vain wits a science little known, 
 
 T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own ! 200 
 
 n. 
 
 OF all the causes which conspire to blind 
 Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, 
 What the weak head with strongest bias rules, 
 Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. 
 Whatever nature has in worth denied,* ws 
 
 She gives in large recruits of needful pride ; 
 For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find 
 What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind : ' 
 Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, 
 And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 210 
 
 If once right reason drives that cloud away, 
 Truth breaks upon us with resistless day. 
 
 Jn a note he gave the line from and are there separated by some organ 
 Virgil of which his own was a trans- destined to the purpose." Pope 
 lation. adopted the doctrine "allowed by 
 
 -i L- t n i -n -j everybody," but which consisted of 
 
 1 An imitation of Cowley, David. 
 
 .. QOO . assumptions without proof. The very 
 
 existence of these fluid spirits had 
 Round the whole earth his dreaded name neyer been ascertained. The remain- 
 
 shall sound . , . , ., _, , , . 
 
 And reach to worlds that must not yet be m S P^^ology of Pope s couplet was 
 found. WAKEFIEID. erroneous. When there is a deficiency 
 
 of blood, its place is not supplied by 
 
 2 Oldham's Elegies : wind The grammatical construction, 
 
 What nature has in bulk to me denied. a g ain > is vici US > and ascribes ' ' blood 
 
 and spirits " to souls as well as to 
 
 3 "Everybody allows," says Male- bodies. The moral reflection illus- 
 branche, " that the animal spirits are trated by the simile is but little more 
 the most subtle and agitated parts of correct. Men in general are not 
 the blood. These spirits are carried proud in proportion as they have 
 with the rest of the blood to the brain, nothing to be proud of.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 47 
 
 Trust not yourself ; but your defects to know, 
 Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe. 
 
 A little learning is a dang'rous thing ; 215 
 
 Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: 1 
 There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 
 And drinking largely sobers us again. 
 Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,* 
 In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,' 220 
 
 While from the bounded level of our mind, 
 Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind ; 4 
 But more advanced, behold with strange surprise, 
 New distant scenes of endless science rise ! 
 So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,* 225 
 
 Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky, 
 Th' eternal snows appear already past, 
 And the first clouds and mountains seem the last : 
 But those attained, we tremble to survey 
 The growing labours of the lengthened way, 230 
 
 Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, 
 Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise ! 6 
 
 1 Pope is commonly considered to 4 The proper word would have been 
 have laid down the general proposition ' ' beyond. ' ' 
 
 that total ignorance was preferable 
 
 5 [Much we begin to doubt and much to foar 
 to imperfect knowledge. The con- Our slght less toting as we see moro 
 
 text shows that he was speaking only clear.] 
 
 of conceited critics, who were pre- So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps to try, 
 
 sumptuous because they were ill-in- led with , ideas f fair Ital y- 
 
 f j TT j. -n 1 ii_ a. "he traveller beholds with cheerful eyes 
 
 formed. He tells such persons that The less , ning valeS) and seemg to tread 
 
 the more enlightened they become the skies. POPE. 
 
 the humbler they will grow. 
 
 2 In the early editions The couplet between brackets is from 
 Fired with the charms fair science does the manuscript. The next couplet, 
 
 impart. with a variation in the first line, was 
 
 Though "does" is removed, "with transferred to the epistle to Jervas. 
 what " is less dignified and grace- 6 Tnis is > perhaps, the best simile 
 
 ful than "with the charms." The in our language that in which the 
 
 diction of the couplet is prosaic and most exact resemblance is traced 
 
 devoid of elegance. WAKEFIELD. between things in appearance utterly 
 
 3 Dryden, in the State of Innocence, unrelated to each other. JOHN- 
 Act i. Sc. i. : SON - 
 
 Nor need we tempt those heights which l wiU own l am not of this opinion, 
 
 angels keep. WAKEFIELD. The simile appears evidently to have
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 A perfect judge will read each work of wit ' 
 With, the same spirit that its author writ : * 
 Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 
 Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind ; 
 Nor lose for that malignant dull delight, 
 The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit. 
 But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow, 3 
 Correctly cold/ and regularly low, 
 That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep, 
 We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep. 
 In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts 
 Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts ; 
 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, 
 But the joint force and full result of all. e 
 Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome, 
 (The world's just wonder, and-ev'n thine, Rome !') 
 No single parts unequally surprise, 
 AH comes united to th' admiring eyes ; 
 
 23J 
 
 240 
 
 24! 
 
 250 
 
 been suggested by the following one 
 in the works of Drummond : 
 
 All as a pilgrim who the Alps doth pass, 
 Or Atlas' temples crowned with winter's 
 
 glass, 
 
 The airy Caucasus, the Apennine, 
 Pyrene's cliffs where sun doth never shine, 
 When he some heaps of hills hath overwent, 
 Begins to t.Viink on rest, his journey spent, 
 Till mounting some tall mountain he doth 
 
 find 
 
 More heights before Mm than he left be- 
 hind. WABTON. 
 
 The simile is undoubtedly appro- 
 priate, illustrative, and eminently 
 beautiful, but evidently copied. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 1 Diligenter legendum est ac psene 
 ad scribendi solicitudinem : nee per 
 partes modo scrutanda stint omnia, 
 sed perlectus liber utique ex integro 
 resumendus. Quint. POPE. 
 
 * The Bible never descends to the 
 mean colloquial preterites of " chid" 
 
 for "did chide," or "writ" for "did 
 write," but always uses the full-dress 
 word "chode" and "wrote." Pope 
 might have been happier had he read 
 his Bible more, but assuredly he 
 would have improved his English. 
 DE QTJINCEY. 
 
 3 Boileau's Art of Poetry by Dry- 
 den and Soame, canto i. : 
 
 A frozen style, that neither ebbs or flows, 
 Instead of pleasing makes us gape and doze. 
 
 4 Much in the same strain Garth's 
 Dispensary, iv. 24 : 
 
 So nicely tasteless, so correctly dull. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 This is an adaptation of a couplet 
 in Dryden's Eleonora : 
 
 Nor this part musk, or civet can we call, 
 Or amber, but a rich result of all. 
 
 6 It is impossible to determine 
 whether he refers to St. Peter's or th 
 Pantheon.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear; 1 
 The whole at once is bold, and regular. 
 
 "Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, 
 Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.' 
 In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, 2sj 
 
 Since none can compass more than they intend ; 
 And if the means be just, the conduct true, 
 Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. 3 
 As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, 
 T' avoid great errors, must the less commit : aac 
 
 Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, 4 
 For not to know some trifles is a praise. 5 
 Most critics, fond of some subservient art, 
 Still make the whole depend upon a part : 
 They talk of principles, but notions prize, ass 
 
 And all to one loved folly sacrifice. 
 
 Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say/ 
 A certain bard encount'ring on the way, 
 
 1 An impropriety of the grossest 
 kind is here committed. Grammar 
 requires "appears." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Dryden's translation of Ovid's 
 Met. book xv. 
 
 Greater than whate'er was, or is, or e'er 
 shall be. HOLT WHITE. 
 
 Epilogue to Suckling's Goblins : 
 Things that ne'er were, nor are, nor ne'er 
 will be. ISAAC REED. 
 
 3 Horace, Ars Poet. 351 : 
 
 Verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non 
 
 ego paucis 
 Offendar maculis. 
 
 4 Lays for lays down, but, as War- 
 ton remarks, the word thus used is 
 very objectionable. 
 
 5 To the same effect Quintilian, lib. 
 i. Ex quo mihi inter virtutes gram- 
 matici habebitur, aliqua nescire. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 The incident is taken from the 
 Second Part of Don Quixote, first 
 written by Don Alonzo Fernandez de 
 
 VOi- II. POETRY. 
 
 Avellanada, and afterwards trans 
 lated, or rather imitated and new- 
 modelled, by no less an Author than 
 the celebrated Le Sage. "But, Sir, 
 quoth the Bachelor, if you would have 
 me adhere to Aristotle's rules, I must 
 omit the combat. Aristotle, replied 
 the Knight, I grant was a man of 
 some parts ; but his capacity was not 
 unbounded ; and, give me leave to 
 tell you, his authority does not ex- 
 tend over combats in the list, which 
 are far above his narrow rules. Be- 
 lieve me the combat will add such 
 grace to your play, that all the rulea 
 in the universe must not stand in com- 
 petition with it. Well, Sir Knight, 
 replied the Bachelor, for your Bake, 
 and for the honour of chivalry, I will 
 not leave out the combat. But still 
 one difficulty remains, which is, that 
 our common theatres are not large 
 enough for it. There must be one 
 erected on purpose, answered the 
 K
 
 50 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage, 
 
 As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage ; ' 2/0 
 
 Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools, 
 
 Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. 
 
 Our author, happy in a judge so nice, 
 
 Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice ; 
 
 Made him observe the subject, and the plot, 275 
 
 The manners, passions, unities, what not, 
 
 All which, exact to rule, were brought about, 
 
 Were but a combat in the lists left out. 
 
 " What ! leave the combat out ! " exclaims the knight 
 
 Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite. 2so 
 
 " Not so, by heav'n ! " he answers in a rage, 
 
 " Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage." 
 
 So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. 
 
 " Then build a new, or act it in a plain." 2 
 
 Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 235 
 
 Curious not knowing, 3 not exact but nice, 
 Form short ideas ; and offend in arts, 
 As most in manners, by a love to parts. 4 
 
 Some to conceit alone their taste confine, 
 And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line ; .00 
 
 Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit ; 
 One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. 
 
 Knight; and in a word, rather than ing," is from Petronius, and Pope 
 
 leave out the combat, the play had has written the words of his original 
 
 better he acted in a field or plain." on the margin of the manuscript : 
 
 WARTON. Est et alter, non quidem doctus, 
 
 1 In all editions till the quarto of sed curiostis, qui plus docet quam 
 
 1743, scit. 
 
 Afle'ercouldD s of the laws o'th" stage. \ The Conventionalities of foppery 
 
 and ceremony are always changing, 
 
 1 In the manuscript the reply of the and what Pope says of manners may 
 
 knight is continued through another have been extensively true of his own 
 
 couplet : generation. At present bad manners 
 
 In all besides let Aristotle sway, commonly proceed either from defec- 
 
 But knighthood's sacred, and he must give tive sensibility, or from men having 
 
 more regard to themselves than to 
 
 1 The phrase "curious not know- their company
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace 
 
 The naked nature, and the living grace, 
 
 With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, 
 
 And hide with ornaments their want of art. 1 
 
 True wit is nature* to advantage dressed ; 
 
 What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed ; s 
 
 Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find, 
 
 That gives us back the image of our mind. 
 
 As shades more sweetly recommend the light," 
 
 So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit ; 5 
 
 300 
 
 1 This had been the practice of 
 some artists. "Their heroes," says 
 Reynolds, speaking of the French 
 painters in 1752, "are decked out so 
 nice and fine that they look like 
 knights-errant just entering the lists 
 at a tournament in gilt armour, and 
 loaded most unmercifully with silk, 
 satin, velvet, gold, jewels, &c." Pope 
 had in his mind a passage of Cowley's 
 Ode on "Wit: 
 
 Yet 'tis not to adorn, and gild each part ; 
 
 That shows more cost than art. 
 Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear ; 
 Rather than all things wit, let none be 
 there. 
 
 2 Naturam intueamur, hanc sequa- 
 mur : id facillime accipiuut animi 
 quod agnoscunt. Quint, lib. 8, c. 3. 
 POPE. 
 
 Drydeu's preface to the State of 
 Innocence : ' ' The definition of wit, 
 which has been so often attempted, 
 and ever unsuccessfully, by many 
 poets, is only this, that it is a pro- 
 priety of thoughts and words." 
 
 3 Pope's account of wit is undoubt- 
 edly erroneous ; he depresses it below 
 its natural dignity, and reduces it 
 from strength of thought to happiness 
 of language. JOHNSON. 
 
 The error was in stating a partial 
 as an universal truth ; for the second 
 line of the couplet correctly describes 
 
 the quality which gives the charm to 
 numberless passages both in prose and 
 verse. Instead of "ne'er so well," 
 the reading of the first edition was 
 ' ' ne'er before, " which was not equally 
 true. But Pope followed the passage 
 in Boileau, from which the line in 
 the Essay on Criticism was derived : 
 " Qu'est-ce qu'une pensee neuve, bril- 
 lante, extraordinaire ? Ce n'est point, 
 comme se le persuadent les ignorarits, 
 une pensee que personne n'a jamais 
 eu, ni du avoir. C'est au contraire 
 une pensee qui a du venir a tout le 
 monde, et que quelqu'un s'avise le 
 premier d'exprimer. Tin bon mot 
 n'est bon mot qu'en ce qu'il dit une 
 chose que chacun pensoit, et qu'il la 
 dit d'uue maniere vive, fine et nou- 
 velle." 
 
 4 Light "sweetly recommended" 
 by shades, is an affected form of 
 speech. "Does 'em good," in the 
 next couplet, offends in the opposite 
 direction, and is meanly colloquial. 
 
 5 Two lines, which follow in the 
 manuscript, are, from such a poet, 
 worth quoting as a curiosity, since 
 in the ruggedness of the metre, the 
 badness of the rhyme, and the gross- 
 ness of the metaphor, they are among 
 the worst that were ever written: 
 Justly to think, and readily express, 
 
 A full conception, and brought forth with 
 ease.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 For works may have more wit than does 'em good, 1 
 As bodies perish through excess of blood. 
 
 Others for language all their care express, 
 And value books, as women men, for dress : 
 Their praise is still, the style is excellent ; 
 The sense, they humbly take upon content.* 
 Words are like leaves ; and where they most abound, 
 Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found : 
 False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, 
 Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place ; 
 The face of nature we no more survey, 
 All glares alike, without distinction gay : 
 But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, 
 Clears and improves whatever it shines upon, 
 It gilds all objects, but it alters none. 3 
 Expression is the dress of thought, and still 
 Appears more decent/ as more suitable : * 
 A vile conceit in pompous words expressed 
 Is like a clown in regal purple dressed : 
 
 305 
 
 310 
 
 319 
 
 320 
 
 1 "Let us," says Mr. Webb, in a 
 passage quoted by Warton, "substi- 
 tute the definition in the place of the 
 thing, and it will stand thus : 'A work 
 may have more of nature dressed to 
 advantage than will do it good.' 
 This is impossible, and it is evident 
 that the confusion arises from the 
 poet having annexed different ideas 
 to the same word." 
 
 2 "Take upon content" for "take 
 upon trust" was a form of speech 
 sanctioned by usage in Pope's day. 
 Thus Rymer says of Hart the actor, 
 "What he delivers every one takes 
 upon content. Their eyes are pre- 
 possessed and charmed by bis ac- 
 tion." 
 
 3 Nothing can be more just, or 
 more ably and eloquently expressed 
 than this observation and illustration 
 respecting the character of false 
 eloquence. Fine words do not make 
 
 fine poems, and there cannot be a 
 stronger proof of the want of real 
 genius than those high colours and 
 meretricious embellishments of lan- 
 guage, which, while they hide the 
 poverty of ideas, impose on the un- 
 practised eye with a gaudy semblance 
 of beauty. BOWLES. 
 
 4 "Decent " has not here the signi- 
 fication of modest, but is used in the 
 once common sense of becoming, 
 attractive. 
 
 * Dryden's preface to All for Love : 
 "Expressions are a modest clothing 
 of our thoughts, as breeches and 
 petticoats are for our bodies." Pope's 
 couplet should have been more in 
 accordance with his precept. ' ' Still ' ' 
 is an expletive to piece out the line, 
 and upon this superfluous word, he 
 has thrown the emphasis of the 
 rhyme, which, in its turn, is mean 
 and imperfect.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CK1TICISM. 53 
 
 For diff'rent styles with diff 'rent subjects sort, 
 
 As sev'ral garbs with, country, town, and court. 
 
 Some by old words to fame have made pretence, 1 
 
 Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense ; 323 
 
 Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style, 
 
 Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. 
 
 Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, 8 
 
 These sparks with awkward vanity display 
 
 What the fine gentleman wore yesterday ; sso 
 
 And but so mimic ancient wits at best, 
 
 As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest. 
 
 In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold ; 
 
 Alike fantastic, if too new, or old : 
 
 Be not the first by whom the new are tried, 8 SM 
 
 Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. 
 
 But most by numbers judge a poet's song, 
 And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong : * 
 In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire, 
 Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; s*o 
 
 Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
 Not mend their minds ; as some to church repair, 
 Not for the doctrine, but the music there. 5 
 
 1 Abolita et abrogata retinere, inso- obeyed no new word could be intro- 
 lentise cujusdam est, et frivolse in duced. Dryden was more judicious, 
 parvis jactantise. Quint, lib. i. c. 6. "When I find," he said, "an Eng- 
 
 Opus est, ut verba a vetustate repe- lish word significant and sounding, I 
 
 tita neque crebra sint, neque mani- neither borrow from the Latin nor 
 
 festa, quia nil est odiosius affectatione, any other language ; but when I want 
 
 nee utique ab ultimis repetita tempo- at home I must seek abroad." 
 
 ribus. Oratio cujus summa virtus est * Quis populi sermo est? quis enim? nisi 
 perspicuitas, quam sit vitiosa, si egeat carmina molli [severos 
 
 interprete ? Ergo ut novorum optima Nunc f em . um * umero fluere - ut P cr H 9 ve 
 
 Effundat junctura ungues : scit tendere 
 erunt maxime vetera, ita veterum versum 
 
 maxfine nova. Idem. POPE. Non secus ac si oculo rubricam dirigat 
 
 2 See Ben Jonson's Every Man out uno. Pers., Sat. L POPE. 
 of his Humour. POPE. Garth in the Dispensary: 
 
 Dryden's Dedication to the Assig- Harsh wor <is, though pertinent, uncouth 
 nation: "He is only like Fungoso appear; 
 
 in the play, who follows the fashion None please the fancy who offend the ear. 
 at a distance." 6 "There "is a feeble excrescence 
 
 8 If Pope's maxim was universally to force a rhyme.
 
 64 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 These equal syllables alone require, 
 Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire ; ' 
 While expletives their feeble aid do join ;" 
 And ten low words 3 oft creep in one dull line :* 
 
 345 
 
 1 Fugiemus crebras vocalium con- 
 cursiones, qua? vastam atque hiantem 
 orationem reddunt. Cic. ad Heren. 
 lib. iv. Vide etiam Quintil. lib. ix. 
 c. 4. POPE. 
 
 Vowels were said to open on each 
 other when two words came together 
 of which the first ended, and the 
 second commenced with a vowel. 
 Pope has illustrated the fault by 
 crowding three consecutive instances 
 into his verse. The poets diminished 
 the conflict of vowels by a free re- 
 course to elisions. The most usual 
 were the cutting off the " e " in 
 "the," as " th' unlearned," ver. 327; 
 and the "o" in "to," as "tout- 
 last," ver. 131, " t' examine," ver. 
 134, " t' admire," ver. 200. The 
 two words were thus fused into one, 
 and the old authors combined them 
 in writing as well as in the pronuncia- 
 tion. The manuscripts of Chaucer 
 have " texcuse," not " t' excuse;" 
 "thapostle," not " th' apostle." The 
 custom has not kept its ground. 
 Whatever might be supposed to be 
 gained in harmony by the conversion 
 of "to examine" into "texamine," 
 or of " the unlearned " into " thun- 
 learned " was more than lost by the 
 departure from the common forms of 
 speech. 
 
 2 "The characters of bad critic 
 and bad poet are grossly confounded; 
 for though it be true that vulgar 
 readers of poetry are chiefly attentive 
 to the melody of the verse, yet it 
 is not they who admire, but the 
 paltry versifier who employs monoto- 
 nous syllables, feeble expletives, and 
 a dull routine of unvaried rhymes." 
 Essays Historical and Critical. 
 WARTON. 
 
 3 "Low" in contradistinction to 
 lofty. The phrase would now mean 
 coarse and vulgar words. 
 
 4 From Dryden. "He creeps along 
 with ten little words in every line, and 
 helps out his numbers with for, to, 
 and unto, and all the pretty expletives 
 he can find, while the sense is left 
 half-tired behind it." Essay on Dram. 
 Poetry. WAKBUKTON. 
 
 A collection of monosyllables when 
 it arises from a correspondence of 
 subject is highly meritorious. Let a 
 single example from Milton suffice : 
 
 O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, 
 Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and 
 shades of death. 
 
 How successfully does this range of 
 little words represent to our imagina- 
 tions, 
 
 The growing labours of the lengthened way 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 "It is pronounced by Dryden," 
 says Johnson, " that a line of mono- 
 syllables is almost always harsh. This 
 is evidently true, because our mono- 
 syllables commonly begin and end 
 with consonants." As Dryden ex- 
 pressed it, "they are clogged with 
 consonants," and "it seldom," he 
 says, "happens but a monosyllable 
 line turns verse to prose, and even that 
 prose is rugged and inharmonious." 
 The authority of Dryden has led 
 many persons to mistrust their own 
 ears, and imagine, like Johnson and 
 "Wakefield, that monosyllables were 
 only fitted at best to produce some 
 special effect. Numerous examples 
 in Dryden's poetiy contradict his 
 criticism, and Milton abounds in
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, 
 
 "With sure returns of still expected rhymes ; ' 
 
 Where'er you find " the cooling western breeze," 
 
 In the next line, it " whispers through the trees : " 
 
 If crystal streams " with pleasing murmurs creep," 
 
 The reader's threatened, not in vain, with "sleep :" 2 
 
 Then, at the last and only couplet fraught 
 
 With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 
 
 A needless Alexandrine ends the song, 
 
 That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. 3 
 
 350 
 
 355 
 
 sweet and sonorous monosyllabic 
 lines, as Par. Lost, v. 193 : 
 
 His praise, ye winds, that from four quar- 
 ters blow 
 
 Breathe soft or loud ; and wave yow tops, 
 ye pines, 
 
 With ev'ry plant, in sign of worship wave. 
 
 And ver. 199 : 
 
 ye birds, 
 
 That singing up to heaven gate ascend, 
 Bear on your wings and in your notes his 
 praise. 
 
 Melodious lines, such as the first 
 verse in the first of these passages, 
 which have the monosyllables re- 
 lieved but by a single dissyllable, are 
 past counting up. Addison praised 
 Pope for exemplifying the faults in 
 the language which condemned them. 
 "The gaping of the vowels in the 
 second line, the expletive ' do ' in the 
 third line, and the ten monosyllables 
 in the fourth, give such a beauty 
 to this passage, as would have been 
 very much admired in an ancient 
 poet." The feat was too easy to call 
 for much admiration. There was 
 more difficulty in eschewing than in 
 mimicking the vicious style of bad 
 versifiers. Pope himself has not 
 avoided the frequent use of ' ' low 
 words" and "feeble expletives." 
 
 1 Atterbury's Preface to "Waller's 
 Poems: "He had a fine -ear, and 
 
 knew how quickly that sense was 
 cloyed by the same round of chiming 
 words still returning upon it." 
 
 2 Hopkins's translation of Ovid's 
 Met., book xi. : 
 
 No tame nor savage beast dwells there ; no 
 breeze [the trees : 
 
 Shakes the still boughs, or whispers thro' 
 
 Here easy streams with pleasing murmurs 
 creep, 
 
 At once inviting and assisting sleep. 
 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope uses these trite ideas and "un- 
 varied chimes " himself. In the 
 fourth Pastoral we have "gentle 
 breeze, trembling trees, whispering 
 breeze, dies upon the trees," and in 
 Eloisa we have ' ' the curling breeze, 
 panting on the trees." CHOKER. 
 Pope took the idea from Boileau : 
 
 Si je louois Philis "en miracles fe'conde," 
 Je trouverois bient6t, " & nulle autre se- 
 
 eonde ; " 
 
 Si je voulois vanter un objet " nonpareil," 
 Je mettrois a 1'instant, "plus beau que le 
 
 soleil;" 
 Enfin, parlant toujours d' " astres " et de 
 
 " merveilleH," 
 De " chefs-d'oeuvres des cieux," de " beau- 
 
 tes sans pareilles." 
 
 3 Diyden in his Annus Mirabilis, 
 stanza 123 : 
 
 So glides the trodden serpent on the grass, 
 And long behind his wounded volume trails. 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, 1 and know 
 
 What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow ; 
 
 And praise s the easy vigour of a line, aoc 
 
 Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join." 
 
 True ease in writing comes from art, not chance/ 
 
 As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 
 
 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, 
 
 The sound must seem an echo to the sense.* scs 
 
 Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows, 8 
 
 And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; 
 
 But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, 7 
 
 The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar : 
 
 When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, " 370 
 
 The line too labours, and the words move slow : 9 
 
 1 Boileau's Art of Poetry translated 
 by Soame and Dryden : 
 
 Ihose tuneful readers of their own dull 
 rhymes. 
 
 2 The construction might be for 
 anything that the composition shows 
 to the contrary, "leave such to 
 praise," which is subversive of the 
 poet's meaning. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Sufficient justice is not done to 
 Sandys, who did more to polish and 
 tune the English versification by his 
 Psalms and his Job, than those two 
 writers, who are usually applauded 
 on this subject. WARTON. 
 
 Bowles adds his testimony to "the 
 extraordinary melody and vigour " of 
 the versification of Sandys. Ruff- 
 head, in his life of Pope, having 
 called the Ovid of Sandys an "in- 
 different translation," Warburton has 
 written on the margin, " He was not 
 an indifferent, but a very fine trans- 
 lator and versifier." 
 
 4 "Writers who seem to have com- 
 posed with the greatest ease have ex- 
 erted much labour in attaining this 
 facility. It is well known that the 
 writings of La Fontaine were laboured 
 into that facility for which they are 
 
 so famous, with repeated alterations 
 and many erasures. Moliere is re- 
 ported to have passed whole days in 
 fixing upon a proper epithet or rhyme, 
 although his verses have all the flow 
 and freedom of conversation. I have 
 been informed that Addison was so 
 extremely nice in polishing his prose 
 compositions that when almost a 
 whole impression of a Spectator was 
 worked off he would stop the press to 
 insert a new preposition or conjunc- 
 tion. WARTON. 
 
 5 Lord Roscommon says : 
 The sound is still a comment to the sense. 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 The whole of this passage on the 
 adaptation of the sound to the sense 
 is imitated, and, as may be seen by 
 the references of Warburton, is in 
 part translated, from Vida's Art of 
 Poetry. 
 
 6 Turn is Iseta canunt, &c. Vida, Poet. I. iii. 
 
 ver. 403. WARBURTON. 
 
 7 Turn longe sale saxa sonant, &c. Vida, 
 
 Poet. 1. iii. v. 388. WARBURTON. 
 
 8 Atque ideo si quid geritur molimine 
 
 magno, [verba laborent 
 
 Adde inorain et pariter tecum quoque 
 Segnia. Vida, ib. 417. WARBURTON. 
 * At mora si fuerit damno, properare 
 
 jubebo, &c. Vida, ib. 420. WARBURTON.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 57 
 
 Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, 
 
 Flies o'er th' unbending corn, 1 and skims along the main.* 
 
 Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, 8 
 
 And bid alternate passions fall and rise ! 4 
 
 While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove 
 
 Now burns with glory, and then melts with love ; 
 
 Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, 
 
 Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow : * 
 
 Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, 
 
 And the world's victor stood subdued by sound ! 
 
 The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, 
 
 And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.' 
 
 075 
 
 3SC 
 
 1 Our poet here endeavours to fasten 
 on Virgil a most insufferable absur- 
 dity, which no poetical hyperbole 
 will justify, samely, the reality of 
 these wonderful performances, a flight 
 over the unbending corn, and across 
 the sea with unbathed feet. Virgil 
 only puts the supposition, and speaks 
 of her extraordinary velocity in the 
 way of comparison, that she seemed 
 capable of accomplishing so much 
 had she made the attempt. She 
 could fly, if she had chosen, nor 
 would have injured, in that case, the 
 tender blades of corn. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 The verse intended to represent 
 the whisper of the vernal breeze must 
 surely be confessed not much to excel 
 in softness or volubility ; and the 
 smooth stream runs with a perpetual 
 clash of jarring consonants. The noise 
 and turbulence of the torrent is, in- 
 deed, distinctly imaged ; for it re- 
 quires very little skill to make our 
 language rough. But in the lines 
 which mention the effort of Ajax, 
 there is no particular heaviness or 
 delay. The swiftness of Camilla is 
 rather contrasted than exemplified. 
 Why the verse should be lengthened 
 to express speed, will not easily be 
 discovered. In the dactyls, used for 
 
 thai purpose by the ancients, two 
 short syllables were pronounced with 
 such rapidity, as to be equal only to 
 one long ; they therefore naturally 
 exhibit the act of passing through 
 a long space in a short time. But 
 the Alexandrine, by its pause in the 
 midst, is a tardy and stately measure ; 
 and the word "unbending," one of 
 the most sluggish and slow which 
 our language affords, cannot much 
 accelerate its motion. JOHNSON. 
 
 "Wakefield says that "the tripping 
 word labours, inver. 371, is unhappy," 
 and Aaron Hill contended that three 
 at least of the five concluding words 
 of the line " danced away upon the 
 tongue with a tripping and lyrical 
 lightness." 
 
 3 See Alexander's Feast, or the 
 Power of Music ; an Ode by Mr. 
 Dryden. POPE. 
 
 4 This resembles a line in Hughes's 
 Court of Neptune : 
 
 Beholds th' alternate billows all and rise. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 And now and then, a sigh he stole, 
 And tears began to flow. Dryden. 
 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 Pope confounds vocal and instru 
 mental with poetical harmony. Ti- 
 motheus owed his celebrity to his
 
 68 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Avoid extremes ; and shun the fault of such, 
 Who still are pleased too little or too much. 
 At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, 
 That always shows great pride, or little sense : 
 Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, 
 Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. 
 Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move ; 
 For fools admire, hut men of sense approve : ' 
 As things seem large which we through mists descry, 
 Dullness is ever apt to magnify. 
 
 Some foreign writers,* some our own despise ; 
 The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 
 Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied 
 To one small sect, and all are damned beside. 3 
 
 300 
 
 395 
 
 music, and Dryden never wrote & 
 note. 
 
 1 Creech's translation of Horace's 
 Art of Poetry : 
 
 men of sense retire, 
 
 The boys abuse, and only fools admire. 
 
 Aaron Hill says, that Pope was very 
 fond of the line in the text, and 
 often repeated it. Hill, who "abhorred 
 the sentiment," once asked him if he 
 still adhered to the opinion of Longi- 
 nus, that the true sublime thrilled 
 and transported the reader. On Pope 
 replying in the affirmative, his inter- 
 rogator pressed him with the con- 
 tradiction, and the perplexed poet, 
 according to Hill's report, took re- 
 fuge in nonsense, and made this 
 unintelligible answer, " that Longi- 
 nus's remark was truth, but that, like 
 certain truths of more importance, it 
 required assent from faith, without 
 the evidence of demonstration. " It 
 must be evident that Shakespeare, 
 Milton, and scores besides, are worthy 
 of admiration ; and no man would 
 show his sense by protesting that he 
 did not admire but only approved of 
 them. Pope is inconsistent, for at 
 ver. 230 he speaks of "rapture 
 
 wanning the mind," and of "the 
 generous pleasure to be charmed with 
 wit." 
 
 2 In all editions before the quarto 
 of 1743, "Some the French writers." 
 
 3 This was directed against Pope's 
 co-religionists, and greatly annoyed 
 them. The offence was not that he 
 had misrepresented their views, but 
 that he had denounced a doctrine 
 which all zealous papists maintained. 
 "Nothing," he said, when writing 
 in vindication of the passage to 
 Caryll, "has been so much a scare- 
 crow to our opponents as that too 
 peremptory and uncharitable asser- 
 tion of an utter impossibility of sal- 
 vation to all but ourselves. I own to 
 you I was glad of any opportunity 
 to express my dislike of so shocking 
 a sentiment as those of the religion 
 I profess are commonly charged with, 
 and I hoped a slight insinuation, in- 
 troduced by a casual similitude only, 
 could never have given offence, but on 
 the contrary, must needs have done 
 good in a nation wherein we are the 
 smaller party, and consequently most 
 misrepresented, and most in need of 
 vindicition." The Roman Catholics
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 59 
 
 Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, 
 
 And force that sun but on a part to shine, 
 
 Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, 400 
 
 But ripens spirits in cold northern climes ; 
 
 Which, from the first has shone on ages past, 
 
 Enlights 1 the present, and shall warm the last; 
 
 Though each may feel increases and decays, 2 
 
 And see now clearer and now darker days : *os 
 
 Regard not then if wit be old or new, 
 
 But blame the false, and value still the true. 
 
 Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own,* 
 But catch the spreading notion of the town : 
 They reason and conclude by precedent, M 
 
 And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. 
 Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then 
 Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. 
 Of all this servile herd, the worst is he 
 That in proud dulness joins with quality, 4 415 
 
 A constant critic at the great man's board, 
 To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord. 
 What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, 
 In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me ! * 
 But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420 
 
 How the wit brightens ! how the style refines ! 
 
 took to themselves the couplet And neither gives increase, nor brings 
 
 "Meanly they seek," which followed decay. 
 
 the simile, but Pope pointed out that 3 There is very little poetical ex- 
 
 the plural "some," and not the sin- p res sion from this line to ver. 450. 
 
 gular " each man," was the antece- It is on i y mere prose f r i nge d with 
 
 dent to " they." The comparison was r h yme . Good sense in a very prosaic 
 
 not kept up throughout the para- sty i e . reasoning, not poetry. WAR- 
 
 graph, and the lines after ver. 397 TON> 
 
 refer solely to the critics. 4 Joins w i t h quality " for "joins 
 
 1 The word < < enlights " is, I believe, with men of rank is a vu i gar collo . 
 of our poet's coinage, analogically quialism 
 
 formed from "light, "as "enlighten" 
 
 ., 5 In smg-song Durfey, Oldmixon or me, 
 
 from "lighten. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Sir Robert Howard's poem against was the original reading of the manu- 
 the Fear of Death : script.
 
 60 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, 
 And each, exalted stanza teems with thought I 
 
 The vulgar thus through imitation err ; 
 As oft the learn'd by being singular ; 42* 
 
 So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng 
 By chance go right, they purposely go wrong : 
 So schismatics the plain believers quit,* 
 And are but damned for having too much wit. 
 Some praise at morning what they blame at night ; 430 
 
 But always think the last opinion right 
 A muse by these is like a mistress used, 
 This hour she's idolised, the next abused ; 
 While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, 
 'Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.* 435 
 
 Ask them the cause ; they're wiser still they say ; 
 And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day. 
 We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow ; 
 Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. 
 Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread ; 440 
 
 Who knew most Sentences/ was deepest read ; 
 
 1 This couplet is succeeded by two believers dull." There is a culpable 
 
 more lines in the manuscript : levity in the language of Pope's lines, 
 
 And while to thoughts refined they make but he could uot intend to espouse 
 
 pretence, [sense. the cause of the sceptics when he 
 
 Hate all that's common, ev'n to common gelects them M an instance of people 
 
 3 In the first edition the reading who "purposely go wrong" because 
 
 was "dull believers," which Pope in " the crowd go right. " 
 the second edition altered to "plain." 3 If this couplet is interpreted by 
 
 The change was occasioned by the the grammatical construction, the 
 
 outcry against the couplet. "An "unfortified towns daily changed their 
 
 ordinary man," he wrote to Caryll, sides" in consequence of vacillating 
 
 "would imagine the author plainly "betwixt sense and nonsense." Of 
 
 declared against these schismatics course Pope only meant that in war 
 
 for quitting the true faith out of con- weak towns frequently changed sides, 
 
 tempt of the understanding of some but not for the same reason that weak 
 
 few of its believers. But these be- heads changed their opinions, 
 lievers are called 'dull,' and because 4 The Book of Sentences was a 
 
 I say that these schismatics think work of Peter Lombard, which con- 
 
 some believers dull, therefore these sisted of subtle disquisitions on theo- 
 
 charitable well-disposed interpreters logy. Thomas Aquinas wrote a com- 
 
 of my meaning say that I think all mentary upon it.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, 
 And none had sense enough to be confuted : 
 Scotists and Thomists, 1 now, in peace remain, 
 Amidst their kindred cobwebs* in Duck-lane. 3 445 
 
 If faith itself has din 'rent dresses worn, 
 What wonder modes in wit should take their turn? 4 
 Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, 
 The current folly proves the ready wit ; 
 And authors think their reputation safe, 450 
 
 Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh. 
 Some valuing those of their own side or mind, 
 Still make themselves the measure of mankind : 
 Fondly we think we honour merit then, 
 When we but praise ourselves in other men. 455 
 
 Parties in wit attend on those of state, 
 And public faction doubles private hate.' 
 
 1 St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274. 
 Scotus, who died in 1308, disputed the 
 doctrines of his predecessor, and their 
 respective disciples divided for a cen- 
 tury the theological world. CROKER. 
 
 2 Cowley speaks of "the cobwebs 
 of the schoolmen's trade," and says 
 in a note, "the distinctions of the 
 schoolmen may be likened to cob- 
 webs either because of the too much 
 fineness of the work, or because they 
 take not the materials from nature, 
 but spin it out of themselves." 
 
 3 A place where old and second- 
 hand books were sold formerly, near 
 Smithfield. POPE. 
 
 4 Between this and verse 448 : 
 The rhyming clowns that gladded Shake- 
 spear's age, 
 
 No more with crambo entertain the stage. 
 Who now in anagrams their patron praise, 
 Or sing their mistress in acrostic lays? 
 Ev'n pulpits pleased with merry puns of 
 
 yore; 
 
 Now all are banished to th" Hibernian shore I 
 [And thither soon soft op'ra shall repair, 
 Conveyed by Sw y to his native air. 
 There, languishing awhile, prolong its 
 
 breath, 
 Till like a swan it sings itself to death.] 
 
 Thus leaving what was natural and fit, 
 The current folly proved their ready wit ; 
 And authors thought their reputation 
 
 safe, 
 Which lived as long as fools were pleased to 
 
 laugh. POPE. 
 
 The lines between brackets are from 
 the manuscript, and were not printed 
 by Pope. The whole passage was 
 probably written after the poem was 
 first published, since the topics seem 
 to have been suggested by Addison's 
 papers upon false wit in the Spectator 
 of May, 1711, where the anagrams, 
 acrostics, and punning sermons of the 
 reign of James I. are all enumerated. 
 Swiney was the director of the Italian 
 opera, which, at the commencement 
 of 1712, failed to meet with adequate 
 support, and he withdrew, not to 
 Ireland, but to the continent. " He 
 remained there," says Gibber, "twenty 
 years, an exile from his friends and 
 country." 
 
 * An additional couplet follows in 
 the manuscript : 
 
 To be spoke ill of, may good works befall, 
 But those are bad of which none speak at alL
 
 C2 
 
 AN ESSAY 0* CRITICISM. 
 
 Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose, 
 In various shapes of parsons, critics, beans ; l 
 But sense survived when merry jests were past ; 
 For rising merit will buoy up at last. 
 Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,* 
 New Blackmores and new Milbourues must arise : 
 Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head, 
 Zoilus 4 again would start up from the dead. 
 
 465 
 
 1 The parson alluded to was Jeremy 
 Collier ; the critic was the Duke of 
 Buckingham ; the first of whom very 
 powerfully attacked the profligacy, 
 and the latter the irregularity and 
 bombast of some of Dryden' s plays. 
 These attacks were much more than 
 merry jests. WARTON. 
 
 2 Dryden himself, Virg. Geor. iv. 
 729: 
 
 But she returned no more to bless his long- 
 ing eyes. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Blackmore's attack upon Dryden 
 occurs in a poem which appeared in 
 1700, called a Satire against "Wit. 
 The author treats wit as money, and 
 proposes that the whole should be 
 recoined for the purpose of separating 
 the base metal from the pure. 
 
 Into the melting pot when Dryden comos 
 What horrid stench will rise, what noisome 
 
 fumes 1 
 
 How will he shrink when all his lewd allay 
 And wicked mixture shall be purged away I 
 When once his boasted heaps are melted 
 
 down, [crown. 
 
 A chestful scarce will yield one sterling 
 
 This is exaggerated, but the cen- 
 sure is directed against the indecency 
 which was really infamous. The 
 invectives of Milboume in his Notes 
 on Dryden's Virgil, 1698, had not 
 the same excuse. The strictures are 
 confined to the translation of the 
 Eclogues and Georgics, and are 
 throughout rabid, insolent, coarse, 
 and contemptible. To demonstrate 
 his own superiority, Milboume in- 
 serted specimens of a rival transla- 
 tion, which is on a par with his 
 
 criticisms. He was in orders, and 
 acknowledges that one of his reasons 
 for not sparing Dryden was that 
 Dryden never spared a clergyman. 
 "I am only," replied the poet, with 
 exquisite sarcasm, " to ask pardon of 
 good priests, and am afraid his part 
 of the reparation will come to little." 
 Dryden retaliated upon both antago- 
 nists together in the couplet, 
 
 Wouldst thoube soon dispatched, and perish 
 
 whole ? [with thy soul. 
 
 Trust Maurus with thy life, and Milboume 
 
 Pope's line in the first edition was 
 New Bl s and new M a must arise. 
 
 In the second edition he substi- 
 tuted S s, which meant Shad wells, 
 
 for Bl s, but in the quarto of 1717 
 
 he again coupled Blackmore with 
 Milbourne, and printed both uames 
 at full length. Blackmore was living, 
 and the changes indicate Pope's vary- 
 ing feelings towards him. 
 
 4 In the fifth book of Vitmvius is 
 an account of Zoilus' s coming to the 
 court of Ptolemy at Alexandria, and 
 presenting to him his virulent and 
 brutal censures of Homer, and begging 
 to be rewarded for his work ; instead 
 of which, it is said, the king ordered 
 him to be crucified, or, as some said, 
 stoned. His person is minutely de- 
 scribed in the eleventh book of ^Elian's 
 various History. WARTON. 
 
 Boileau's Art of Poetry, translated 
 by Soame and Dryden : 
 
 Let mighty Spenser raise his reverend head, 
 Cowley and Denham start up from the 
 dead.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 63 
 
 Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue ; 
 But like a shadow, proves the substance true : 
 For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known 
 Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own. 
 When first that sun too pow'rful beams displays, 
 It draws up vapours which obscure its rays ; 
 But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way, 
 Reflect new glories, and augment the day. 1 
 Be thou the first true merit to befriend; 
 His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. 
 Short is the date, alas ! of modern rhymes, 
 And 'tis but just to let them live betimes. 
 No longer now that golden age appears, 
 When patriarch wits survived a thousand years : 
 Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 
 And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast ; 2 
 Our sons their fathers' failing language see, 
 And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be. 
 So when the faithful pencil has designed 
 Some bright idea of the master's mind, 
 
 470 
 
 475 
 
 480 
 
 4S5 
 
 1 A beautiful and poetical illustra- 
 tion. Pope has the art of enlivening 
 his subject continually by images and 
 illustrations drawn from nature, which 
 by contrast have a particularly pleas- 
 ing effect, and which are indeed ab- 
 solutely necessary in a didactic poem. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 The passage originally stood thus 
 in the manuscript : 
 
 Wit, as the sun, such pow'rful beams 
 displays, 
 
 It draws up vapours that obscures its 
 rays. 
 
 But, like the sun eclipsed, makes only 
 known 
 
 The shadowing body's grossness, not its 
 own j 
 
 And all those clouds that did at first in- 
 vade 
 
 The rising light, and interposed a shade. 
 
 When once transpierced with its prevailing 
 
 ray 
 Reflect its glories, and augment the day. 
 
 2 His instance refuted his position 
 that "bare threescore" was the dura- 
 tion of modern fame. "It is now 
 a hundred years," said Dennis in 
 1712, "since Shakespeare began to 
 write, more since Spenser flourished, 
 and above three hundred years since 
 Chaucer died. And yet the fame of 
 none of these is extinguished." An- 
 other century and a half has elapsed, 
 and the reputation of Chaucer, Spen- 
 ser, and Shakespeare is greater than 
 ever. The notion of the "failing 
 language" is not more sound. Though 
 it is a hundred and fifty years since 
 the Essay on Criticism was pub- 
 lished, there is not a line which has 
 an antiquated air.
 
 64 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM, 
 
 Where a new world leaps out at his command, 
 And ready nature waits upon his hand ; 
 "When the ripe colours soften and unite, 
 And sweetly melt into just shade and light ; 
 When mellowing years their full perfection give, 
 And each hold figure just begins to live, 
 The treach'rous colours the fair art betray, 
 And all the bright creation fades away ! 
 
 Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things, 2 
 Atones not for that envy which it brings. 
 In youth alone its empty praise we boast,* 
 But soon the short-lived vanity is lost : 
 Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies, 4 
 That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies. 
 What is this wit, which must our cares employ P* 
 The owner's wife, 6 that other men enjoy ; 
 Then most our trouble still when most admired, 
 And still the more we give, the more required; 7 
 
 40C 
 
 195 
 
 1 The treach'rous colours In few years 
 
 decay. POPB. 
 
 The next line is from Addison : 
 And all the pleasing landscape fades away. 
 
 2 That is, of which those, who do 
 not possess it, form an erroneous 
 estimate, as productive of more hap- 
 piness and enjoyment to the owner, 
 than he really receives from it. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 In the previous paragraph Pope 
 admitted that the fame of a mo- 
 dern might last three-score years. 
 Here, contradicting himself and the 
 facts, he limits its duration to the 
 youth of the author. He applies to 
 poets in general what was only true 
 of inferior writers. The ephemeral 
 versifiers were examples of deficient 
 "wit," and not of the unhappy con- 
 sequences of genuine poetic power. 
 
 * Like some fair flow'r that in the spring 
 does rise. POPE. 
 
 This line was an example both of 
 
 the "feeble expletive" and of the 
 "ten low words." " Supplies" in the 
 amended version is, as "Wakefield 
 observes, a poor expression. 
 
 5 TheDukeofBuckingham'sVision: 
 
 The dearest care that all my thought em- 
 ploys. 
 
 6 "Wakefield objects to the "slovenly 
 superfluity of words," and asks "to 
 whom can a wife possibly belong but 
 the owner ? " He misunderstood Pope, 
 who, by "the wife of the owner," 
 meant the wife of the owner of the 
 wit. The metaphor is coarse, and 
 out of keeping with the theme. 
 
 7 Thus in the first edition : 
 
 The more his trouble as the more admired, 
 Where wanted scorned, and envied where 
 acquired. 
 
 Against this Pope wrote, "To be 
 altered. See Dennis, p. 20." "How," 
 said Dennis, "can wit be scorned 
 where it is not ? The person who 
 wants this wit may indeed be scorned.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 65 
 
 Whose fame with, pains we guard, but lose with ease, 1 
 Sure some to vex, but never all to please ; 
 'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun, 
 By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone ! 
 
 If wit so much from ign'rance undergo, 
 Ah let not learning too commence its foe ! 2 
 Of old, those met rewards who could excel, 
 And such were praised who but endeavour'd well : 3 
 Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due, 
 Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too. 
 Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown, 4 
 Employ their pains to spurn some others down ; 
 And while self-love each jealous writer rules, 
 Contending wits become the sport of fools : s 
 
 505 
 
 210 
 
 515 
 
 but such a contempt declares the 
 honour that the contemner has for 
 wit." Pope, in a letter to Caryll, 
 admitted that he had been guilty of 
 a bull, and the reading in the second 
 edition was, 
 
 'Tis most our trouble when 'tis most ad- 
 mired, 
 The more we give, the more is still required. 
 
 1 In the first edition, 
 Maintained with pains, but forfeited with 
 
 ease ; 
 
 and in the second edition, 
 The fame with pains we gain, but lose with 
 ease. 
 
 The original version appears better 
 than the readings which successively 
 replaced it. 
 
 2 Another couplet follows in the 
 manuscript : 
 
 Learning and wit were friends designed by 
 
 heav'n ; [giv'n. 
 
 Those arms to guard it, not to wound, were 
 
 3 Dryden's Prologue to the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford : 
 
 Be kind to wit| which but endeavours well, 
 And, where you judge, presumes not to 
 excel. 
 
 The feelings of antiquity were 
 doubtless represented truly by Horace 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 when he said that indifferent poets 
 were not tolerated by anybody. 
 There is not the least foundation for 
 Pope's statement that it was the habit 
 of old to praise bad authors for en- 
 deavouring well, and if it had been, 
 the authors would not have cared for 
 commendations on their abortive in- 
 dustry to the disparagement of their 
 intellect. 
 
 4 "Wakefield remarks upon the un- 
 happy effect of ' ' crowns " and ' ' crown" 
 in consecutive lines, and thinks the 
 phrase "some others" in the next 
 verse too mean and elliptical. Soame 
 and Dryden, in their translation of 
 Boileau's Art of Poetry, speak of the 
 " base rivals" who 
 
 aspire to gam renown 
 By standing up and pulling others down. 
 
 5 Mr. Harte related to me, that 
 being with Mr. Pope when he re- 
 ceived the news of Swift's death, 
 Harte said to him, he thought it 
 a fortunate circumstance for their 
 friendship, that they had lived so 
 distant from each other. Pope re- 
 sented the reflection, but yet, said 
 Harte, I am convinced it was true. 
 WARTON.
 
 66 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 520 
 
 525 
 
 But still the worst with most regret commend, 
 For each ill author is as bad a friend. 1 
 To what hase ends, and by what abject ways, 
 Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise !* 
 Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, 3 
 Nor in the critic let the man be lost. 
 Good-nature and good sense must ever join ; 
 To err is human, to forgive, divine. 
 
 But if in noble minds some dregs remain 
 Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain ; 
 Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, 
 Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times. 
 No pardon vile obscenity should find, 4 
 Though wit and art conspire to move your mind; * 
 But dulness with obscenity must prove 
 As shameful sure as impotence in love. 
 In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease, 
 Sprung the rank weed,' and thrived with large increase : 534 
 
 530 
 
 1 That is, all the unsuccessful 
 authors maligned the successful. The 
 unsuccessful writers never said any- 
 thing more slanderous. 
 
 3 Boileau's Art of Poetry, trans- 
 lated by Soame and Dryden : 
 
 Never debase yourself by treach'rous ways 
 Nor by such abject methods seek for praise. 
 
 Pope's own life is the strongest 
 example upon record of the degrada- 
 tion he deplores. 
 
 3 In the margin of the manuscript 
 Pope has written the passages of Vir- 
 gil from which he took his expres- 
 sions. ./En. iii. 56 : 
 
 quid non mortalia pectora cogis 
 Auri sacra fames ? 
 
 Geor. i. 37 : 
 Nee tibi regnandi veniat tarn dira cupido, 
 
 which Dryden translates, 
 Nor let so dire a thirst of empire move. 
 
 4 Such a manly and ingenuous cen- 
 
 sure from a culprit in this way, as in 
 the case of Pope, is entitled to great 
 praise. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 If his indecorums had been the 
 failing of youth and thoughtlessness, 
 and he had publicly recanted his 
 errors, his self-condemnation would 
 be meritorious. The larger portion 
 of his offences were, on the con- 
 trary, committed after he had declared 
 indecency to be unpardonable. Any 
 man, however persistently reprobate, 
 might earn "great praise " on terms 
 like these. 
 
 5 No one has expressed himself 
 upon this subject so pithily as 
 Cowley : 
 
 'tis just 
 
 The author blush, there where the reader 
 must. 
 
 6 H:\mlet: 
 
 And duller shoulds't thou be than the fat 
 weed. BOWLES,
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 67 
 
 When love was all an easy monarch's care; 
 
 Seldom at council, never in a war : 
 
 Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ : 
 
 Nay, wits had pensions, 1 and young lords had wit 
 
 The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, 
 
 And not a mask 3 went unimproved away: 
 
 The modest fan was lifted up no more, 4 
 
 And virgins smiled at what they blushed before. 
 
 The following licence of a foreign reign 
 
 Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain ; 8 
 
 540 
 
 545 
 
 1 Wits, says he, in Charles the 
 Second's reign had pensions, when 
 all the world knows that it was one 
 of the faults of that reign that none 
 of the politer arts were then en- 
 couraged. Butler was starved at the 
 same time that the king had his book 
 in his pocket. Another great wit 
 [Wycherley] lay seven years in prison 
 for an inconsiderable debt, and Otway 
 dared not to show his head for fear 
 of the same fate. DENNIS. 
 
 2 "The young lords who had wit 
 in the court of Charles II. were," 
 says Dennis, " Villiers Duke of Buck- 
 ingham, the Earl of Mulgrave, after- 
 wards Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, 
 Lord Buckhurst afterwards Earl of 
 Dorset, the Marquess of Halifax, the 
 Earl of Rochester, Lord Vaughan, 
 and several others." The jilts who 
 ruled the state were the mistresses of 
 the king. The Duke of Bucking- 
 ham and his Rehearsal are chiefly 
 aimed at in the expression ' ' states- 
 men farces writ." CROKER. 
 
 3 Pepys, under the date of June 12, 
 1663, notices that wearing masks at 
 the theatre had "of late become a 
 great fashion among the ladies." 
 Gibber states that the immorality of 
 the plays was the cause of the usage. 
 When he wrote in 1739 the custom 
 had been abolished for many years 
 in consequence of trie ill effects which 
 attended it. 
 
 4 He must mean in everyday life. 
 There was no use for the "modest 
 fan " at the theatre after the ladies 
 had adopted the more effectual plan 
 of wearing masks. Popa, ver. 535, 
 ascribes the introduction of ' ' ob- 
 scenity " to the Restoration. In the 
 theatre the grossness was a legacy 
 from the older drama, and particu- 
 larly from the plays of Beaumont 
 and Fletcher, which were the most 
 popular pieces on the stage. 
 
 5 The author has omitted two 
 lines which stood here as contain- 
 ing a national reflection, which in 
 his stricter judgment he could not 
 but disapprove, on any people what- 
 ever. POPE. 
 
 The cancelled couplet was as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 Then first the Belgian morals were extolled, 
 We their religion had, and they our gold. 
 
 This sneer was dictated by the poet's 
 dislike to William III. and the Dutch, 
 for displacing the popish king James 
 II. CROKER. 
 
 This ingenious and religious author 
 seems to have had two particular an- 
 tipathies one to grammatical and 
 verbal criticism, the other to false 
 doctrine and heresy. To the first we 
 may ascribe his treating Bentley, 
 Burman, Kuster, and Wasse with a 
 contempt which recoiled upon him- 
 self. To the second we will impute 
 
 F2
 
 63 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation, 1 
 And taught more pleasant methods of salvation ; * 
 Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute, 
 Lest God himself should seem too absolute : 
 Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, 
 And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there ! * 
 Encouraged thus, wit's Titans braved the skies, 
 And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies. 
 These monsters, critics ! with your darts engage, 
 Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage ! 
 Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice, 
 "Will needs mistake an author into vice ; 
 AH seems infected that th' infected spy, 
 As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye/ 
 
 550 
 
 555 
 
 III. 
 
 LEARN then what morals critics ought to show, 
 For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know. 
 
 his pious zeal against those divines 
 of king "William, whom he supposed 
 to he infected with the infidel, or the 
 socinian, or the latitudinarian spirit, 
 and not so orthodox as himself, and 
 his friends Swift, Bolingbroke, etc. 
 Thus he laid about him, and censured 
 men of whose literary, or of whose 
 theological merits or defects, he was 
 no more a judge than his footman 
 John Searle. DR. JOBTIX. 
 
 1 Jortin asserted that by the " un- 
 believing priests" Pope alluded to 
 Burnet. If Jortin is right, the pas- 
 sage was not satire but falsehood. 
 That there was, however, much infi- 
 delity and socinianism during the 
 reign of William III. is proved by 
 an address of the House of Commons 
 to the king, quoted by Bowles, 
 "beseeching his majesty to give 
 effectual orders for suppressing all per- 
 nicious books and pamphlets which 
 
 contained impious doctrines against 
 the Holy Trinity, and other funda- 
 mental articles of the protestant 
 faith, tending to the subversion of 
 the Christian religion." This address 
 was presented in February 1698. 
 
 2 In this line he had Kennet in 
 view, who was accused of having said, 
 in a funeral sermon on some noble- 
 man, that converted sinners, if they 
 were men of parts, repented more 
 speedily and effectually than dull 
 rascals. JORTIX. 
 
 3 The published sermons of the 
 reign of William III. do not answer 
 to this description, which is certainly 
 a calumny. 
 
 4 So Lucretius, iv. 333 : 
 
 Lurida prseterea fiunt qusecunque tuentur 
 Arquati. 
 
 Besides, whatever jaundice-eyes do view, 
 Looks pale as well as those, and yellow 
 too. Creech.
 
 AX ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 69 
 
 *Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join ; 
 In all you speak, let truth and candour shine, 
 That not alone what to your sense is due 
 All may allow, but seek your friendship too. 
 
 Be silent always when you doubt your sense; 
 And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence : ' 
 Some positive, persisting fops we know, 
 Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so; 
 But you with pleasure own your errors past, 
 And make each day a critique on the last. 
 
 3 Tis not enough your counsel still be true ; 
 Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do ; 
 Men must be taught as if you taught them not, 
 And things unknown proposed as things forgot. 
 Without good-breeding truth is disapproved ; 
 That only makes superior sense beloved. 
 
 Be niggards of advice on no pretence : 
 For the worst avarice is that of sense. 
 
 565 
 
 570 
 
 575 
 
 This notion of the transfusion of 
 the colour to the object from a jaun- 
 diced eye, though current in all our 
 authors, is, I believe, a mere vulgar 
 error. WAKEFIELB. 
 
 It is still a disputed point whether 
 jaundice ever affects the eye in a de- 
 gree to permit only the passage of 
 the yellow rays. The instances are 
 at least very rare ; but popular belief 
 is a sufficient ground for a poetical 
 comparison. Pope h&d just exempli- 
 fied his simile ; for everything looked 
 yellow to him in the reign of William 
 III. 
 
 1 In the first edition, 
 
 Speak when you're sure, yet speak with 
 diffidence. 
 
 Dennis objected that a man when 
 sure should speak ' ' with a modest 
 assurance," and Pope wrote on the 
 margin of the manuscript, ' ' Dennis, 
 p. 21. Alter the inconsistency." 
 
 Pope's maxim was commended by 
 Franklin. He found that his over- 
 bearing, dictatorial manner roused 
 needless opposition, and he resolved 
 never "to use a word that imported 
 a fixed opinion," but he employed 
 instead the qualifying phrases, " I 
 conceive," "I imagine," or "it so 
 appears to me at present." "To 
 this," he says, "after my character 
 of integrity, I think it principally 
 owing that I had early so much 
 weight with my fellow citizens when 
 I proposed new institutions or alter- 
 ations in the old ; for I was but a bad 
 speaker, subject to much hesitation, 
 and yet I generally carried my point." 
 He admits that his humility was 
 feigned. Had it been real there would 
 have been no need for "I conceive," 
 " I imagine," which are implied with- 
 out a tiresome, superfluous repetition. 
 Unless the dogmatism is 'in the mind 
 opinions have not the tone of decrees.
 
 70 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 With mean complaisance ne'er betray your trust, 
 Nor be so civil as to prove unjust. 1 
 Fear not the anger of the wise to raise ; 
 Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise. 
 
 'Twere well might critics still this freedom take, 
 But Appius reddens* at each word you speak, 
 And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye, 
 Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.* 
 
 580 
 
 585. 
 
 1 Warton praises Pope for practis- 
 ing the precept in correcting the 
 poems of Wycherley, and condemned 
 Wycherley for ungenerously resenting 
 the candour of his critic. Bowles 
 extenuates the conduct of Wycherley, 
 and says that " the superannuated 
 bard" bore the corrections with "great 
 temper till Pope seriously advised 
 him to turn the whole into prose." 
 "Warton and Bowles were deceived 
 by the printed correspondence of Pope 
 and "Wycherley, and were not aware 
 that the letters were garbled in the very 
 particulars which relate to the cause 
 of the quarrel, a quarrel so discre- 
 ditable to Pope that he had recourse 
 to forgery to shield himself and throw 
 the blame upon Wycherley. It is 
 certain that "the superannuated 
 bard" did not take offence at the 
 advice to turn his works into prose, 
 and there is no reason to doubt the 
 contemporaneous report that his anger 
 arose from discovering that Pope, 
 while professing unlimited friend- 
 ship, had made him the subject of 
 some satirical verses. 
 
 2 This picture was taken to himself 
 by John Dennis, a furious old critic by 
 profession, who, upon no other provo- 
 cation, wrote against this Essay and 
 its author in a manner perfectly 
 lunatic : for, as to the mention made 
 of him in ver. 270, he took it as a 
 compliment, and said it was treache- 
 rously meant to cause him to overlook 
 this abuse of his person. POPE. 
 
 Pope's acrimonious note on his 
 
 early antagonist first appeared in the 
 edition of 1743, when Dennis had 
 been some years dead. "His book 
 against me," the poet wrote to Caryll, 
 Nov. 19, 1712, "made me very 
 heartily merry in two minutes' time," 
 and here we find him still smarting 
 with resentment after thirty years 
 and upwards had gone by, and his 
 enemy was in the grave. The original 
 reading in the manuscript of ver. 585 
 
 was "But D reddens." The 
 
 substituted name is taken from Den- 
 nis's tragedy of "Appius and Vir- 
 ginia," which appeared in 1709. The 
 stare was one of his characteristics. 
 " He starts, stares, and looks round 
 him at every jerk of his person for- 
 ward," says Sir Richard Steele, when 
 describing his walk. The "tremen- 
 dous " was not only a sarcasm on his 
 appearance, but on his partiality for 
 the epithet-, which was an old topic of 
 ridicule. "If," said Gildon, in 1702, 
 "there is anything of tragedy in the 
 piece, it lies in the word 'tremen- 
 dous,' for he is so fond of it he had 
 rather use it in every page than slay 
 his beloved Iphigeuia." Gay, in 1712, 
 jeeringly dedicated his Mohocks to 
 Mr. D[ennis], and assigned, among 
 the reasons for the selection, that his 
 theme was "horrid and tremendous." 
 
 3 This thought occurs also in 
 Donne's fourth Satire, which our poet 
 has modernised : 
 
 And though his face be <os ill 
 As theirs, which in old hangings whip 
 
 Christ, still 
 He strives to look worse. WAKEFIEJLD.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CKITICISM. 71 
 
 Fear most to tax an Honourable fool, 
 
 Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull ; 
 
 Such, without wit, are poets when they please, sw 
 
 As without learning they can take degrees. 1 
 
 Leave dang'rous truths to unsuccessful satires, 
 
 And flattery to fulsome dedicators, 
 
 Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more, 
 
 Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 595 
 
 'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain, 
 
 And charitably let the dull be vain : 2 
 
 Your silence there is better than your spite, 
 
 For who can rail so long as they can write ? 3 
 
 Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, eoo 
 
 And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep/ 
 
 False steps but help them to renew the race, 
 
 As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace. 
 
 What crowds of these, impenitently bold, 
 
 In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, ew 
 
 Still run on poets in a raging vein, 
 
 Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain, 
 
 Strain out the last dull droppings 5 of their sense, 
 
 And rhyme with all the rage of impotence. 
 
 1 It may not bo known to every 4 Pope may have derived this corn- 
 reader that noblemen and the sons of parison from the "Epilogue, written 
 noblemen are admitted of course at by a person of honour," to Dryden's 
 our universities to the degree of Secret Love : 
 
 M. A. , after keeping the terms of two But t - other day x heard this rhyming fop 
 
 years. WAKEFIELD. Say critics were the whips, and he the 
 The privilege is now abolished. *P : 
 
 2 If Gibber was the dull fellow For^as a top spins best the more you baste 
 
 Pope would have had him thought, go "^ ^ you gi vej he writes the faster, 
 no conduct could have been more 
 
 proper towards him than that which The author of the E P ll S ue was 
 
 Pope here recommends. Pope seems more exact than P P e > whose "W^ 
 
 to have anticipated Colley's subse- cation of the sim l 1 e 1S . inacc ; urate > for 
 
 quent resolution to write as long" the to P 1S m M1 s P m when li 18 
 
 as Pope ' ' could rail. "-BowLES. popularly said to be asleep. 
 
 3 Duke of Buckingham's Essay on 5 Dryden's Aurengzebe : 
 
 batire, r^he dregs and droppings of enervate love 
 
 But who can rail so long as he can sleep ? STEEVENS.
 
 72 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Such shameless bards we have ; and yet, 'tis true, 
 There are as mad, abandoned critics too. 
 The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, 
 "With loads of learned lumber in his head, 1 
 "With his own tongue still edifies his ears, 
 And always list'ning to himself appears. 
 All books he reads, and all he reads assails, 
 From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales. 
 With bim most authors steal their works, or buy ; 
 Garth did not write his own Dispensary.* 
 Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, 
 Nay, showed his faults but when would poets mend ? 
 
 610 
 
 615 
 
 620 
 
 It has been suggested that he al- 
 ludes to "Wycherley. WARTON. 
 
 Whom else could the lines suit at 
 that period, when Pope says, " Such 
 bards we have t" If "Wycherley was 
 intended, what must we think of 
 Pope, who could wound, in this man- 
 ner, his old friend, for whom he pro- 
 fessed so much kindness, and who 
 first introduced him to notice and 
 patronage. BOWLES. 
 
 The application was too obvious 
 for Pope to have ventured on the lines 
 unless he had designed to expose his 
 former ally. The original reading 
 of ver. 610 in the manuscript was, 
 
 But if incorrigible bards we view, 
 Know there are mad, &c. 
 
 And the alteration turned an unap- 
 propriated description into a particu- 
 lar censure on living men. Wycherley 
 would be the last person to detect 
 the likeness, and relaxing, some 
 months after the Essay appeared, in 
 his indignation against Pope, "he 
 praised the poem," according to a 
 letter of Cromwell, dated Oct. 26, 
 1711, but which rests on the autho- 
 rity of Pope alone. 
 
 1 In allusion to this class of pedants 
 Gray said, " Learning never should 
 
 be encouraged ; it only draws out 
 fools from their obscurity." 
 
 2 A common slander at that time 
 in prejudice of that deserving author. 
 Our poet did him this justice, when 
 that slander most prevailed ; and it 
 is now (perhaps the sooner for this 
 very verse) dead and forgotten. 
 POPE. 
 
 The accusation from which he de- 
 fended Garth was brought against 
 Pope himself. " This poem," says 
 Johnson, of Cooper's Hill, "had 
 such reputation as to excite the com- 
 mon artifice by which envy degrades 
 excellence. A report was spread that 
 the performance was not Denham's 
 own, but that he had bought it of a 
 vicar for forty pounds. The same 
 attempt was made to rob Addison of 
 his Cato and Pope of his Essay on 
 Criticism." The story told was that 
 Wycherley sent the Essay to Pope for 
 his revision, and that Pope published 
 it as his own. Authors are not the 
 only persons who are exposed to such 
 calumnies. The victories of a great 
 general are almost invariably im- 
 puted to some subordinate officer, and 
 it was long a favourite theory of the 
 malignant that Napoleon owed his 
 successes to Berthier, and the Duke 
 of Wellington to Sir George Murray.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 73 
 
 025 
 
 No place so sacred from such, fops is barred, 1 
 
 ]S T or is Paul's church 11 more safe than Paul's churchyard : 
 
 Nay, fly to altars ; there they'll talk you dead ; 
 
 For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 4 
 
 Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, 
 
 It still looks home, and short excursions makes ; * 
 
 But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, 
 
 And never shocked, and never turned aside, 
 
 Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide. 
 
 But where's the man, who counsel can bestow, 
 Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know ? 
 Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite ; 
 Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right ; 
 Though learn'd, well-bred ; and though well-bred, sincere ; 
 Modestly bold, and humanly " severe ; 636 
 
 630 
 
 1 There is an ellipse of "that" 
 after "sacred," and of "it" after 
 ' ' fops, " or the line is not English, and 
 when the omitted words are supplied 
 the inversion is intolerable. 
 
 2 The propriety of the specification 
 in this proverbial remark is founded 
 on a circumstance no longer existing 
 in our poet's time, and derived, there- 
 fore, by him from older writers. "In 
 the reigns of James I. and Charles I.," 
 says Pennant, " the body of St. 
 Paul's cathedral was the common 
 resort of the politicians, the news- 
 mongers, and the idle in general. It 
 was called Paul's Walk, and the fre- 
 quenters known by the name of Paul's 
 walkers." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Between this and ver. 624 
 
 In vain you shrug and sweat and strive to 
 
 fly: 
 
 These know no manners but in poetry. 
 They'll stop a hungry chaplain in his grace, 
 To treat of unities of time and place. 
 POPE. 
 
 4 This stroke of satire is literally 
 taken from Boileau : 
 
 Gardez-vous d'imiter ce rimeur furieux, 
 Qui, de ses vains Merits, lecteur harmonieux, 
 
 Aborde en recitant quiconque le salue, 
 
 Et poursuit de ses vers les passants dans la 
 
 rue. 
 
 II n'est temple si saint, des auges respecte', 
 Qui soit centre sa muse un lieu de surete 1 . 
 
 Which lines allude to the imperti- 
 nence of a French poet called Du 
 Perrier, who finding Boileau one 
 day at church, insisted upon repeat- 
 ing to him an ode during the eleva- 
 tion of the host. WABTON. 
 
 Boileau tells the incident of an 
 individual poetaster. Pope generalises 
 the exceptional trait, and represents 
 it to have been the usual practice of 
 foppish critics to talk criticism at the 
 altar. The probability is that he had 
 never known an instance. The line 
 "For fools rush in," is certainly 
 fashioned, says Bishop Hurd, on 
 Shakespeare, Richard iii. Act 1, 
 Sc. 3: 
 
 Wrens make prey where eagles dare not 
 perch. 
 
 5 Virgil, Geo. iv. 194 : 
 Excursusque breves tentant. 
 
 Nor forage far, but short excursions make. 
 Dryden. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 "Humanly" is improperly put
 
 74 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Who to a friend his faults can freely show, 
 
 And gladly praise the merit of a foe ? 
 
 Blest with a taste exact, yet un confined ; 
 
 A knowledge both of books and human kind ; MO 
 
 Gen'rous converse ; a soul exempt from pride ; 
 
 And love to praise, 1 with reason on his side ? 
 
 Such once were critics ; such the happy few, 
 Athens and Rome in better ages knew.* 
 The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore, MS 
 
 Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore ; ' 
 He steered securely, and discovered far, 4 
 Led by the light of the Mseonian star. 5 
 Poets, a race long unconfined, and free, 
 Still fond and proud of savage liberty, wo 
 
 Received his laws ; " and stood convinced 'twas fit, 
 Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit. 7 
 
 for humanely. The only authorised 
 sense of the former is belonging to 
 man ; of the latter, kindly, compas- 
 sionately. DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL. 
 
 1 " Love to praise " means "a love 
 of bestowing praise," but, as Wake- 
 field says, it is an " obscure expres- 
 sion, and repugnant to usage." 
 
 8 This is followed by two additional 
 lines in the manuscript : 
 
 Such did of old poetic laws impart, 
 
 And what till then was fury turned to art. 
 
 3 Between ver. 646 and 647, I have 
 found the following lines, since sup- 
 pressed by the author : 
 
 That bold Columbus of the realms of wit, 
 Whose first discovery's not exceeded yet 
 Led by the light of the Mteonian star, 
 He steered securely, and discovered far. 
 He, when all nature was subdued before, 
 Like his great pupil, sighed and longed for 
 
 more; 
 
 Fancy's wild regions yet unvanquished lay, 
 A boundless empire, and that owned no 
 
 sway. 
 Poets, <fec. WABBURTOX. 
 
 4 Dr. Knightly Chetwood to Lord 
 Roscommon : 
 
 Hoist sail, bold writers ! search, discover far ; 
 You have a compass for a polar star. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 After ver. 648, in the first edi- 
 tion, came this couplet : 
 
 Not only nature did his laws obey, 
 But fancy's boundless empire owned bis 
 sway. 
 
 Dennis denied that nature obeyed 
 the laws of Aristotle. "The laws of 
 nature," he said, "are unalterable 
 but by God himself." Pope's lan- 
 guage is inaccurate. 
 
 6 The obvious interpretation of this 
 passage would be that poets, Homer 
 excepted, indulged in "savage li- 
 berty " till they were restrained by 
 the laws of Aristotle, which is incon- 
 sistent with ver. 92 99, where Pope 
 says that the Greek critics framed their 
 laws from the practice of the poets. 
 
 7 He presided over wit by his 
 Rhetoric and Poetics, and gave proofs 
 by his Physics that he had "con- 
 quered nature." Pope's panegyric on 
 the dominion exercised by Aristotle 
 is far inferior to Dryden's celebration 
 of the deliverance from it.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Horace still charms with graceful negligence, 1 
 And without method talks us into sense ; 
 Will, like a friend, familiarly convey 
 The truest notions in the easiest way. 
 He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, 
 Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ, 
 Yet judged with coolness,* though he sung with fire ; 
 His precepts teach but what his works inspire. 
 Our critics take a contrary extreme, 
 They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm : 3 
 Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations 
 By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations. 4 
 
 See Dionysius 5 Homer's thoughts refine, 
 And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line ! 
 
 ess. 
 
 The longest tyranny that ever swayed 
 Was that wherein our ancestors betrayed 
 Their free-born reason to the Stagyrite, 
 And made his torch their universal light. 
 Had we still paid that homage to a name, 
 Which only God and nature justly claim, 
 The western seas had been our utmost 
 
 bound, [drowned, 
 
 Where poets still might dream the sun was 
 And all the stars that shino in southern 
 
 skies 
 Had been admired by none but savage eyes. 
 
 1 Oldhaui 
 
 Each strain a graceful negligence does wear. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 " Before he goes ten lines fur- 
 ther," said Dennis, " he forgets him- 
 self, and commends Longinus for the 
 very contrary quality for which he 
 commended Horace. He commends 
 Horace for judging coolly in verse, and 
 extols Longinus for criticising with 
 fire in prose." With very little faith 
 in the traits he had ascribed to 
 Horace, Pope was tempted in the 
 manuscript to reverse the charac- 
 teristic, and write 
 
 He judged with spirit as he sung with fire. 
 He subsequently affixed to the 
 original reading the note, "Not to be 
 altered. Horace judged with cool- 
 ness as Longinus with fire." 
 
 3 Dennis notices that this couplet is 
 borrowed from Roscommon's Essay 
 on Translated Verse : 
 
 Thus make the proper use of each extreme, 
 And write with fury, but correct with 
 phlegm. 
 
 4 In all Pope's works there cannot 
 be found a couplet so paltry and im- 
 pertinent as this. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The construction of the last line is 
 deplorably faulty. ' ' Horace does not 
 suffer more by wits than he suffers 
 by critics" is Pope's meaning, but 
 interpreted by his language, he would 
 be read as asserting that Horace did 
 not suffer more by wrong translations 
 than critics suffered by wrong quota- 
 tions. 
 
 5 Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 
 POPE. 
 
 These prosaic lines, this spiritless 
 eulogy, are much below the merit of 
 the critic whom they are intended to 
 celebrate. WARTON. 
 
 A most meagre account of a very 
 excellent and judicious critic. But 
 what can we expect when men over- 
 step the limit of their enquiries, and 
 rush in where learning has not au- 
 thorised them to tread. WAKEFIELD.
 
 76 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, 
 The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease. 1 
 
 In grave Quintilian's 2 copious work, we find 
 The justest rules, and clearest method joined : 
 Thus useful arms in magazines we place, 
 All ranged in order, and disposed with grace, 
 But less to please the eye, than arm the hand, 
 Still fit for use, and ready at command. 3 
 
 Thee, bold Longinus ! all the Nine inspire, 4 
 And hless their critic with a poet's fire. 
 An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust, 
 "With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just : 
 
 670 
 
 675 
 
 The lines first appeared in the 
 second edition. In a pretended letter 
 to Addisoii, dated October 10, 1714, 
 Pope speaks of having found a par- 
 ticular remark in one of the treatises 
 of the Greek critic, but he had pro- 
 bably never looked into the original 
 when this couplet was written, and 
 seems to have falsely inferred frort 
 chance quotations that the comments 
 upon Homer were the special cha- 
 racteristic of the works of Dionysius. 
 Pope was indebted for the leading 
 phrase in his couplet to a passage of 
 Rochester, quoted by "Wakefield : 
 
 Compare each phrase, examine ev'ry line, 
 Weigh ev'ry word, and ev'ry thought refine. 
 
 1 This dissolute and effeminate 
 writer little deserved a place among 
 good critics for only two or three 
 pages on the subject of criticism. 
 WAETOX. 
 
 It is to be suspected that Pope had 
 never read Petronius, and mentioned 
 him on the credit of two or three 
 sentences which he had often seen 
 quoted, imagining that where there 
 was so much, there must necessarily 
 be more. Young men, in haste to 
 be renowned, too frequently talk of 
 books which they have scarcely seen. 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 If Pope had been acquainted with 
 the general tenor of the fragments 
 which remain of Petronius, he would 
 not have celebrated the most corrupt 
 and disgusting writer of antiquity for 
 an unalloyed combination of charming 
 qualities. 
 
 2 To commend Quintilian barely 
 for his method, and to insist merely 
 on this excellence, is below the merit 
 of one of the most rational and ele- 
 gant of Roman writers. Considering 
 the nature of Quintilian's subject, he 
 afforded copious matter for a more 
 appropriate and poetical character. 
 No author ever adorned a scientifical 
 treatise with so many beautiful meta- 
 phors. "WARTOX. 
 
 3 In the early editions, 
 
 Nor thus alone the curious eye to please, 
 But to be found, when need requires, with 
 
 ease. 
 
 * The Muses sure Longinus did inspire. 
 POPE. 
 
 The taste and sensibility of Longi- 
 nus were exquisite ; but his observa- 
 tions are too general, and his method 
 too loose. The precision of the true 
 philosophical critic is lost in the 
 declamation of the florid rhetorician. 
 Instead of showing for what reason a 
 sentiment or image is sublime, and 
 discovering the secret power by which
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 77 
 
 Whose own example strengthens all his laws ; 
 And is himself that great sublime he draws. 1 
 Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned, 
 Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained. 
 Learning and Rome alike in empire grew ; 
 And arts still followed where her eagles flew ; 
 From the same foes, at last, both felt* their doom, 
 And the same age saw learning fall and Borne. 3 
 "With tyranny, then superstition joined, 
 As that the body, this enslaved the mind ; 4 
 Much was believed, but little understood,* 
 And to be dull was construed to be good ; 8 
 
 680 
 
 685 
 
 690 
 
 they afi'ect a reader with pleasure, 
 he is ever intent on producing some- 
 thing sublime himself, and strokes of 
 his own eloquence. WAETON. 
 
 1 This verse is ungrammatical. 
 With respect to the thought, Boileau, 
 whose translation of Longinus our 
 poet had most probably read, has 
 said, in his preface to that work, 
 exactly the same thing: " Souvent 
 il fait la figure qu'il enseigne; et, 
 en parlant du sublime, il est lui- 
 meme tres-sublime." Pope's couplet 
 seems indebted also to the Prologue of 
 Dryden's Tempest, speaking of Shake- 
 speare : 
 
 He, monarch-like, gave those his subjects 
 
 law ; 
 And is that nature, which they paint and 
 
 draw. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 "Wakefield calls ver. 680 "un- 
 grammatical," because, literally con- 
 strued, it reads, "And whose own 
 example is himself, etc." 
 
 8 " Felt" is a flat, insipid word in 
 this place. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 " Rome," as invariably pro- 
 nounced by Pope's contemporaries 
 had the same sound with "doom," 
 and the pronunciation is not quite 
 obsolete in our own time among 
 persons who were born in the last 
 
 century. In the previous part of the 
 poem he had made Rome rhyme to 
 "dome," which itself was often pro- 
 nounced like "doom." 
 
 4 ' ' The superstition of some ages- 
 after the subversion of the Roman 
 Empire," wrote Pope to Gary 11, July 
 19, 1711, "is too manifest a truth to 
 be denied, and does in no sort reflect 
 upon the present catholics, who are 
 free from it. Our silence on these 
 points may, with some reason, make 
 our adversaries think we allow and 
 persist in those bigotries, which in 
 reality all good and sensible men 
 despise, though they are persuaded, 
 not to speak against them." Most 
 of Pope's associates were men of 
 letters or men of the world, and he 
 could know little of the spirit of the 
 church to which he nominally be- 
 longed, when he was simple enough 
 to believe that the Romanists of his 
 day would sanction a sweeping de- 
 nunciation of the ignorance and super- 
 stition of the monks. 
 
 s All was believed, but nothing understood. 
 POPE. 
 
 6 Between ver. 690 and 691, the 
 
 author omitted these two : 
 
 Vain wits and critics were no more allowed, 
 When none but saints had licence to be 
 proud. POPE.
 
 78 
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 A second deluge learning thus o'er-run, 
 
 And the monks finished what the Goths begun. 1 
 
 At length Erasmus, that great injured name, 
 (The glory of the priesthood and the shame !)* 
 Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,' 
 And drove those holy Yandals off the stage. 
 
 But see ! each muse, in Leo's golden days, 
 Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays, 
 Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread, 4 
 Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head. 
 Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive ; 
 Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live ; * 
 
 695 
 
 700 
 
 1 Here he forms the tenses wrong. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope told Caryll that he did not 
 speak in this conplet " of learning in 
 general, but of polite learning, cri- 
 ticism, poetry, etc. which was the 
 only learning concerned in the subject 
 of the Essay." He at the same time 
 confessed his belief that the learning 
 which the monks possessed "was 
 barely kept alive by them." The ex- 
 planation would not contribute to 
 conciliate the offended catholics. 
 
 2 The "glory" from his own great- 
 ness, the "shame" from the rancour 
 with which some of his brother 
 priests assailed him. CHOKER. 
 
 Oldham in his Satire : 
 
 On Butler, who can think without just rage, 
 The glory and the scandal of the age. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope avowed his conviction to Caryll 
 that the priests had openly accused 
 him of heterodoxy in other passages 
 of his poem, because they were se- 
 cretly exasperated at his eulogy upon 
 Erasmus. " What in their own opi- 
 nion," he said, "they are really angry 
 at is that a man whom their tribe 
 oppressed and persecuted should be 
 vindicated after a whole age of obloquy 
 by one of their own people, who is 
 
 free and bold enough to utter a gene- 
 rous truth in behalf of the dead, whom 
 no man sure will flatter, and few do 
 justice to." 
 
 3 If the restoration of learning con- 
 sisted in recovering the works and 
 reviving the spirit of the ancients, it 
 had. been in a great degree accom- 
 plished before the time of Erasmus. 
 EOSCOE. 
 
 4 Genius is here personified, and 
 this person is said by Pope to have 
 been "spread over the ruins of Rome." 
 The poet has evidently mixed up 
 genius considered as a quality of the 
 remains of antiquity with genius 
 considered as a presiding being. 
 
 5 For the expression in the last 
 half of this verse, "VVakefield quotes 
 Addison on sculpture in the letter 
 from Italy, 
 
 Or teach their animated rocks to live. 
 
 And for the expression in the first 
 half, he quotes Dryden's Religio 
 Laid : 
 
 Or various atoms, interfering dance, 
 
 Leaped into form. 
 
 "Wakefield ascribes the origin of the 
 phrase to the fable that the stones of 
 Thebes moved into their places at the 
 music of Amphion, and it is thus
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 79 
 
 With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; ' 
 A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung. 2 
 Immortal Vida : on whose honoured brow 
 The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow :* 
 Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, 
 As next in place to Mantua, next in fame ! 4 
 
 But soon by impious arms from Latium chased, 
 Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed. 5 
 Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance, 
 But critic-learning flourished most in France ; 
 The rules a nation, born to serve," obeys ; 
 And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. 7 
 
 705 
 
 710 
 
 used by "Waller in his poem upon his 
 Majesty's Repairing of St. Paul's : 
 
 He like Amphion makes those quarries leap 
 Into fair figures from a confused heap. 
 
 1 Leo was not only an admirer of 
 music, but a skilful performer, and 
 we are informed by Pietro Aaron that 
 ' ' though he had acquired a consum- 
 mate knowledge in most arts and 
 sciences, he seemed to love, encourage, 
 and exalt music more than any other." 
 To sacred music he paid a more par- 
 ticular attention, and sought through- 
 out Europe for the most celebrated 
 performers, both vocal and instru- 
 mental. ROSCOE. 
 
 2 M. Hieronymus Yida, an excel- 
 lent Latin poet, who writ an Art of 
 Poetry in verse. He flourished in 
 the time of Leo X. POPE. 
 
 But Yida was by no means the 
 most celebrated poet that adorned the 
 age of Leo X. His merits seem not 
 to have been particularly attended to 
 in England till Pope had bestowed 
 this commendation upon him, al- 
 though the Poetics had been correctly 
 published at Oxford by Basil Kennet 
 some time before. They are perhaps 
 the most perfect of his compositions ; 
 they are excellently tianslated by 
 Pitt WARTON. 
 
 3 "The ancients," says the writer of 
 the Supplement to the Profound, " al- 
 ways gave ivy to the poets, as may ap- 
 pear from numberless places in tho 
 classics, nor was it ever applied to pa- 
 trons or critics, in contradistinction 
 to poets, by any but this ingenious 
 author." 
 
 4 Alluding to 
 
 " Mantua, v misersp, nimiiim vicina 
 Cremonae." Virg. WARBURTON. 
 
 This application is made in Ken- 
 net's edition of Vida. WARTON. 
 
 To say that the birth-place of Yida 
 would be next in fame to the birth- 
 place of Virgil was to rank him before 
 all the other poets that Italy had 
 produced before Dante, Petrarch, 
 Tasso, and Ariosto. The antithesis is 
 marred by its want of truth. 
 
 5 This, "Warburton says, refers to 
 the sack of Rome by the Duke of 
 Bourbon, which Pope assumed had 
 driven poetry out of Italy. The 
 assigned cause is inadequate to ac- 
 count for the effect. 
 
 6 The "born to serve" is a sarcasm 
 on the readiness with which the 
 French submitted to the despotism of 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 7 May I be pardoned for declaring 
 it as my opinion, that Boileau' s is
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised, 
 And kept unconquered, and uncivilized ; 
 Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold, 
 "We still defied the Romans, as of old. 1 
 Yet some there were, among the sounder few 
 Of those who less presumed, and better knew, 
 Who durst assert the juster ancient cause, 
 And here restored wit's fundamental laws. 
 Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell 
 " Nature's chief master-piece is writing well." 2 
 
 720 
 
 the Lest Art of Poetry extant ? The 
 brevity of his precepts, the justness 
 of his metaphors, the harmony of his 
 numbers, as far as Alexandrine lines 
 will admit, the exactness of his 
 method, the perspicacity of his re- 
 marks, and the energy of his style, 
 all duly considered, may render this 
 opinion not unreasonable. It is 
 scarcely to be conceived, how much 
 is comprehended in four short cantos. 
 He that has well digested these, can- 
 not be said to be ignorant of any 
 important rule of poetry. WARTON. 
 
 Boileau is said by Pope to sway in 
 right of Horace because the French- 
 man avowed that he based his Art of 
 Poetry on that of the Roman. The 
 English poet has been indebted to 
 both. 
 
 1 The comparison fails. The Ro- 
 mans of old subdued the Britons, 
 and ruled over them for centuries. 
 
 2 Essay on Poetry, by the Duke of 
 Buckingham. Our poet is not the 
 only one of his time who compli- 
 mented this Essay and its noble 
 author. Mr. Dryclen had done it 
 very largely in the Dedication to his 
 Translation of the Mncid ; and Dr. 
 Garth, in the first edition of his Dis- 
 pensary, says : 
 
 The Tyber now no courtly Gallus sees, 
 But smiling Thames enjoys his Normanbys ; 
 
 though afterwards omittea, when par- 
 
 ties were carried so high in the reign 
 of Queen Anne, as to allow no com- 
 mendation to an opposite in politics. 
 The duke was all his life a steady 
 adherent to the church of England 
 party, yet an enemy to the extrava- 
 gant measures of the court in the 
 reign of Charles II. On which ac- 
 count, after having strongly patron- 
 ized Mr. Dryden, a coolness succeeded 
 between them on that poet's absolute 
 attachment to the court, which carried 
 him some length beyond what the 
 duke could approve of. This noble- 
 man's true character had been very 
 well marked by Mr. Dryden before : 
 
 The muse's friend, 
 
 Himself a muse. In Sanadrin's debate 
 True to his prince, but not a slave of state. 
 Abs. and Achit. 
 
 Our author was more happy ; he was 
 honoured very young with his friend- 
 ship, and it continued till his death 
 in all the circumstances of a familiar 
 esteem. POPE. 
 
 The Duke of Buckingham, in his 
 Essay, has followed the method of 
 Boileau, in discoursing on the various 
 species of poetry in their different 
 gradations, to no other purpose than 
 to manifest his own inferiority. His 
 reputation was owing to his rank. In 
 reading his poems one is apt to 
 exclaim with our author, "What
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 81 
 
 Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good, ' 725 
 
 "With manners gen'rous as his noble blood ; 
 
 To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known, 
 
 And ev'ry author's merit, but his own. 2 
 
 Such late was AValsh, 3 the muse's judge and friend, 
 
 "Who justly knew to blame or to commend : rso 
 
 To failings mild, but zealous for desert ; 
 
 The clearest head, and the sincerest heart. 
 
 This humble praise, lamented shade ! receive, 
 
 This praise at least a grateful muse may give : 
 
 The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing, rss 
 
 Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing, 
 
 woeful stuff this madrigal would be," 
 &c. WARTOX. 
 
 Pope must have been well aware 
 that, amongst all the poetic triflers 
 of the day, there was not one more 
 ripe for the Dunciad. The fact, I 
 fear, is that Pope admired him, in 
 spite of his verses, as a man rich and 
 prosperous. DE QUINCEY. 
 
 The couplet in which the duke is 
 mentioned was first inserted in the 
 quarto of 1717, and the note on him 
 in the edition of 1743. In the ori- 
 ginal manuscript Pope had made the 
 same character serve for him and Lord 
 Roscommon : 
 Such learn'd and modest, not more great 
 
 than good, 
 
 With manners gen'rous as his noble blood, 
 E'er saints impatient snatched him to the 
 
 sky, 
 Roscommon was, and such is X ormanby. 
 
 1 An Essay on translated Verse 
 seems, at first sight, to be a barren 
 subject ; yet Roscommon has deco- 
 rated it with many precepts of utility 
 and taste. It is indisputably better 
 written, in a closer and more vigo- 
 rous style, than the last-mentioned 
 essay. WARTON. 
 
 When Warton wrote, some tradi- 
 tional reputation still lingered round 
 the poems of Roscommon. His 
 foozle platitudes are now forgotten. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRT. 
 
 2 Rochester's Poems : 
 
 to her was known 
 
 Every one's fault or merit but her own. 
 CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 3 "Walsh was in general a flimsy 
 and frigid writer. The Rambler calls 
 his works pages of inanity. His three 
 letters to Pope, however, are well 
 written. His remarks on the nature 
 of pastoral poetry, on borrowing from 
 the ancients, and against florid con- 
 ceits, are worthy perusal. WARTON. 
 
 In the manuscript, the eulogy on 
 Walsh was at first somewhat different : 
 
 Such late was Walsh nor can'st thou, 
 Muse, offend, [friend ; 
 
 Next these to name the Muse's judge and 
 
 Who free from envious censure, partial 
 praise, 
 
 Showed ancient candour in malicious days 
 
 To frailties mild, &c. 
 
 The Muse did offend notwithstand- 
 ing. After speaking of the irritation 
 he excited by his commendations of 
 Erasmus, Pope thus continued in his 
 letter to Caryll of July 19, 1711 : 
 " Others, you know, were as angry 
 that I mentioned Mr. Walsh with 
 honour, who as he never refused to 
 any one of merit of any party the 
 praise due to him, so honestly de- 
 served it from all others of never 
 so different interests or sentiments." 
 The objections seem to have come
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 (Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise, 
 But in low numbers short excursions tries ; ' 
 Content, if hence th* unlearn' d their wants may view, 
 The learn'd reflect on what before they knew : 
 Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame ; 
 Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame ;* 
 Averse alike to flatter, or offend ; 
 Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend. 3 
 
 740 
 
 from the Roman Catholics, and to 
 have been made on religious or poli- 
 tical grounds, from which it may be 
 inferred that "Walsh was an active op- 
 ponent of the exiled family. Neither 
 the laudation of Dryden, who said he 
 was " the best critic of our nation," 
 nor the poetical tribute of Pope, could 
 do more than preserve the bare name 
 of an author whose literary qualifica- 
 tions were of the most trivial kind. 
 Dennis, who was acquainted with him, 
 and who admits that he was an in- 
 different poet, adds that "he was 
 learned, candid and judicious, and a 
 man of a very good understanding in 
 spite of his being a beau." He was a 
 country gentlemen of fortune, and a 
 member of parliament, which were the 
 principal circumstances that conferred 
 lustre upon his small talents in the 
 eyes of the wits. 
 
 1 Pope fell into the prevalent vice 
 of uttering extravagant, insincere 
 compliments ; for it is impossible to 
 believe that he "no more attempted 
 to rise " in verse because he had lost 
 
 the guidance of "Walsh. The guide 
 had not done much towards directing 
 Pope's flight, and "teaching him to 
 sing." The Pastorals were his only 
 work, antecedent to the Essay on 
 Criticism, which had a nominal ori- 
 ginality, and three of these Pastorals 
 were written before he and "Walsh 
 were acquainted. 
 
 2 The hint for the first verse in this 
 couplet seems to have been supplied 
 by Dryden' P conclusion of the Religio 
 Laici : 
 
 Tot neither praise expect, nor censure fear. 
 
 The second verse of the couplet 
 seems to be an adaptation of a line in 
 Prior's Henry and Emma : 
 
 Joyful to live yet not afraid to die. 
 
 3 These concluding lines bear a 
 great resemblance to Boileau's con- 
 clusion of his Art of Poetry, but are 
 perhaps superior : 
 
 Censeur un peu fScheux, mais souvent 
 
 necessaire ; 
 Plus enclin & bl&mer, que savant & bien 
 
 faire. WARTOK.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 DR. WARBURTON, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could 
 not discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of 
 his intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this 
 Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has 
 accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in 
 which he has tortured many passages to support this groundless 
 opinion. "Warburton had certainly wit, genius, and much miscel- 
 laneous learning ; but was perpetually dazzled and misled, by the 
 eager desire of seeing everything in a new light unobserved before, 
 into perverse interpretations and forced comments. It is painful to 
 see such abilities wasted on such unsubstantial objects. Accordingly 
 his notes on Shakspeare have been totally demolished by Edwards 
 and Malone ; and Gibbon has torn up by the roots his fanciful and 
 visionary interpretation of the sixth book of VirgiL And but few 
 readers, I believe, will be found that will cordially subscribe to an 
 opinion lately delivered,* that his notes on Pope's Works are the very 
 best ever given on any classic whatever. For, to instance no other, 
 surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines of the Essay on Man to 
 the doctrines of revelation, is the rashesb adventure in which ever 
 critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to divine, rather than to explain 
 an author's meaning. WARTON. 
 
 If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, 
 as Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have 
 approved of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest 
 terms of admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of 
 the poem. To assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own 
 meaning, is an insult not only to his understanding, but to common 
 sense ; and to discard the commentary of Warburton, as Warton has 
 done in his edition, in order to replace it by a series of notes, intended 
 to impress the reader with his own opinions, is a kind of infringement 
 on those rights, which had already been decided on by the only person 
 who was entitled to judge on the subject. For these reasons I have 
 
 * By Bishop Hurd.
 
 84 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 thought it advisable, in this edition, to restore the commentary of 
 Warburton entire, which has only been partially done by Mr. Bowles j 
 conceiving that it is as injurious, if not more so, to the commentator, 
 whose object it is to demonstrate the order and consistency of the 
 poem, to deprive him of a portion of his remarks, as it is to deprive 
 him of them altogether. ROSCOB. 
 
 Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which 
 are not complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which 
 had contracted no obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series 
 of simple precepts, was written in a manner so confused that it would 
 not be intelligible to ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in 
 cumbrous prose. The second assumption was that Pope was so 
 deficient in power of expression that his ideas were constantly at 
 variance with his words. One of the sarcastic canons of criticism 
 which Edwards deduced from Warburton's Shakspeare was that an 
 editor " may interpret his author so as to make him mean directly 
 contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if Warburton's 
 explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly inaccurate. 
 Boscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges that Pope, 
 who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his meaning 
 to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another, and 
 more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own 
 meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views 
 which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in 
 consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind 
 when he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his 
 works should be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an 
 editor is not warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and 
 on this account the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed 
 in their integrity, though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, 
 and barren.
 
 THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF 
 W. WARBURTON 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ESSAY ON CEITICISM. 
 
 COMMENTARY. 
 
 An Essay.] The poem is in one book, but divided into three principal parts 
 or members. The first, to ver. 201, gives rules for the study of the art of 
 criticism : the second, from thence to ver. 560, exposes the causes of wrong 
 judgment : and the third, from thence to the end, marks out the morals of the 
 critic. 
 
 In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be necessary to observe, 
 that though it be entitled simply An Essay on Criticism, yet several of the 
 precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to the true judging of a 
 poem. This is so far from violating the unity of the subject, that it preserves 
 and completes it : or from disordering the regularity of the form, that it adds 
 beauty to it, as will appear by the following considerations : 1. It was impos- 
 sible to give a full and exact idea of the art of poetical criticism, without con- 
 sidering at the same time the art of poetry ; so far as poetry is an art. These 
 therefore being closely connected in nature, the author has, with much judg- 
 ment, interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally through his whole poem. 2. 
 As the rules of the ancient critics were taken from poets who copied nature, 
 this is another reason why every poet should be a critic : therefore as the sub- 
 ject is poetical criticism, it is frequently addressed to the critical poet. And 
 3dly, the art of criticism is as properly, and much more usefully exercised in 
 writing than in judging. 
 
 But readers have been misled by the modesty of the title, which only 
 promises an art of criticism, to expect little, where they will find a great deal, 
 a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the art both of criticism and 
 poetry. This, and the not attending to the considerations offered above, 
 was what, perhaps misled a very candid writer, after having given the 
 Essay on Criticism all the praises on the side of genius and poetry which 
 his true taste could not refuse it, to say, that ' ' the observations follow one 
 another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regu- 
 larity which would have been requisite in a prose writer." Spect. No. 235. 
 I do not see how method can hurt any one grace of poetry: or what prerogative 
 there is in verse to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every
 
 86 AX ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 part of it. Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism, the reader will soon see, is a 
 regular piece, and a very learned critic has lately shown that Horace had the 
 same attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. Kurd's Comment on 
 the Epistle to the Pisos. 1 
 
 Ver. 1. 'Tis hard to say, <L-c.~\ The poem opens, from ver. 1 to 9, with 
 showing the use and seasonableness of the subject. Its use, from the greater 
 mischief in wrong criticism than in ill poetry this only tiring, that mislead- 
 ing the reader. Its seasouableness, from the growing number of bad critics, 
 which now vastly exceeds that of bad poets. 
 
 Ver. 9. 'Tis ui'tfi our judgments, <tc.] The author having shown us the 
 expediency of his subject, the art of criticism, inquires next, from ver. 8 to 
 15, into the proper qualities of a true critic, and observes first, that judgment 
 alone is not sufficient to constitute this character, because judgment, like the 
 artificial measures of time, goes different, and yet each man relies upon his 
 own. The reasoning is conclusive, and the similitude extremely just. For 
 judgment, when it is alone, is generally regulated, or at least much influenced, 
 by custom, fashion, and habit ; and never certain and constant but when 
 founded upon and accompanied by taste, which is in the critic, what in the poet 
 we call genius. Both are derived from heaven, and like the sun, the natural 
 measure of time, always constant and equable. 
 
 Judgment alone, it is allowed, will not make a poet ; where is the wonder 
 then, that it will not make a critic in poetry ? For on examination we shall 
 find, that genius and taste are but one and the same faculty, differently exert- 
 ing itself under different names, in the two professions of poetry and criticism. 
 The art of poetry consists in selecting, out of all those images which present 
 themselves to the fancy, such of them as are truly beautiful ; and the art of 
 criticism in discerning, and fully relishing what it finds so selected. The 
 main difference is, that in the poet, this faculty is eminently joined to a bright 
 imagination, and extensive comprehension, which provide stores for the selec- 
 tion, and can form that selection, by proportioned parts, into a regular whole: 
 in the critic, it is joined to a solid judgment and accurate discernment, which 
 can penetrate into the causes of an excellence, and display that excellence in 
 all its variety of lights. Longiuus had taste in an eminent degree ; therefore, 
 this quality, which all true critics have in common, our author makes his dis- 
 tinguishing character: 
 
 Thee, bold Longiuus ! all the Nine inspire, 
 And bless their critic with a poet's fire. 
 
 i. e. with taste, or genius. 
 
 1 Warburton's remarks on the quotation from Addison's paper in the Spectator, originally 
 ran thus : " Whereas nothing can be more unlike, in this respect, than these two poems 
 the Essay on Criticism having, as we shall show, all the regularity that method can 
 demand, and the Art of Poetry all the looseness and inconnection that a familiar conversa- 
 tion would indulge. Neither, were it otherwise, would this excellent author's observation 
 excuse our poet, who, writing in the formal way of a discourse, was obliged to observe 
 the method of such compositions, while Horace in an easy epistle needed no apology for 
 want of it. For it is the nattire of the composition that makes method proper or 
 unnecessary." The passage was altered out of compliment to the commentary of his 
 friend Hurd on the Art of Poetry, and Warburton, who had previously contended that 
 method was needless in Horace, now maintained that there was no "prerogative in verse 
 to dispense with regularity." It was common with him to regulate his critical opinions 
 by his personal partialities or aversions.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 87 
 
 Ver. 15. Let such teach others, <kc.~\ But it is not enough that the critic 
 hath these natural endowments of judgment and taste, to entitle him to exer- 
 cise his art; he should, as our author shows us, from ver. 14 to 19, in order 
 to give a further test of his qualification, have put them successfully into use. 
 And this on two accounts: 1. Because the office of a critic is an exercise of 
 authority. 2. Because he being naturally as partial to his judgment as the 
 poet is to his wit, his partiality would have nothing to correct it, as that of 
 the person judged hath by the very terms. Therefore some test is necessary; 
 and the best and most unexceptionable, is his having written well himself 
 an approved remedy against critical partiality, and the surest means of so 
 maturing the judgment as to reap with glory what Longinus calls ' ' the last 
 and most perfect fruits of much study and experience." H yap TUV \oytav 
 KpKTis TroAArjs ecrri -rrttpas re\fvraiov eirryewjj^a. 
 
 Ver. 19. Yet, if we look, <L-c.~\ But the author having been thus free with 
 the fundamental quality of criticism, judgment, so as to charge it with incon- 
 stancy and partiality, and to be often warped by custom and affection, that he 
 may not be misunderstood, he next explains, from ver. 18 to 36, the nature of 
 judgment, and the accidents occasioning those miscarriages before objected to 
 it. He owns, that the seeds of judgment are indeed sown in the minds of 
 most Snen, but by ill culture, as it springs up, it generally runs wild, either 
 on the one hand, by false learning, which pedants call philology, and by false 
 reasoning, which philosophers call school-learning, or, on the other, by 
 false wit, which is not regulated by sense, and by false politeness, 
 which is solely regulated by the fashion, j Both these sorts, who have their 
 judgment thus doubly depraved, the poer observes, are naturally turned to 
 censure and abuse, only with this difference, that the learned dunce always 
 affects to be on the reasoning, and the unlearned fool on the laughing side. 
 And thus, at the same time, our author proves the truth of his introductory 
 observation, that the number of bad critics is vastly superior to that of bad 
 poets. 
 
 Ver. 36. Some have at first for wits, &c.~\ The poet having enumerated, in 
 this account of the nature of judgment and its various depravations, the 
 several sorts of bad critics, and ranked them into two general classes, as the 
 first sort, namely, the men spoiled by false learning are but few in com- 
 parison of the other, and likewise come less within his main view (which is 
 poetical criticism) but keep grovelling at the bottom amongst words and 
 syllables, he thought it enough for his purpose here, just to have mentioned 
 them, proposing to do them right hereafter. But the men spoiled by false 
 taste are innumerable, and these .are his pjojr_j^mTggirrr He therefore, 
 from ver. 35 to 46, subdivides them again into the two classes of the volatile 
 and heavy. He describes, in few words, the quick progression of the one 
 through criticism, from false jwit to plain folly, where they end ; and the fixed 
 station of the other, between the confines of both ; who under the name of 
 witlings, have neither end nor measure. A kind of half-formed creature from 
 he equivocal generation of vivacity and dulness, like those on the banks of 
 Nile, from heat and mud. 
 
 Ver. 46. But you who seek, <L-c. ] Our author having thus far, by way of 
 introduction, explained the nature, use, and abuse of criticism, in a figura- 
 tive description of the qualities and characters of critics, proceeds now to 
 deliver the precepts of the art. The first of which, from ver. 45 to 68, is, 
 that he who sets up for a critic should previously examine his own strength, 
 and see how far he is qualified for the exercise of his profession. He puts
 
 88 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 him in a way to make this discovery, in that admirable direction given 
 Ter. 51. 
 
 And mark that point where sense and dulness meet. 
 
 He had shown above, that judgment, withoujjaste_or genius^Js equally inca- 
 pably of maHng_a__cntic_papoet. In whatsoever subject then the critic's 
 taste no longer accompanies his judgment, there he may be assured he is going 
 out of his depth. This our author finely calls, 
 
 that point where sense and dulness meet. 
 
 and immediately adds the reason of his precept, the author of nature having 
 so constituted the mental faculties, that one of them can never greatly excel, 
 but at the expense of another. From this state of co-ordination in the mental 
 faculties, and the influence and effects they have upon one another, the poet 
 draws this consequence, that no one genius can excel in more than one art or 
 science- The consequence"~shows t'Ee necessity of the precept, just as the 
 premises, from which the consequence is drawn, show the reasonableness 
 of it. 
 
 Ver. 68. First follow nature, <fcc.] The critic observing the directions 
 before given, and now finding himself qualified for his office, is shown next 
 how to exercise it. And as he was to attend to nature for a call, so he is first 
 and principally to follow nature when called. And here again in this, as in 
 the foregoing precept, our poet, from ver. 67 to 88, shows both the fitness 
 and necessity of it. I. Its fitness. 1. Because nature is the source of poetic 
 art, this art being only a representation of nature, who is its great exemplar 
 and original. 2. Because nature is the end of art, the design of poetry being 
 to convey the knowledge of nature in the most agreeable manner. 3. Because 
 nature is the test of art, as she is unerring, constant, and still the same. 
 Hence the poet observes, that as nature is the source, she conveys life to art ; 
 as she is the end, she conveys force to it, for the force of any thing arises from 
 its being directed to its end ; and as she is the test, she conveys beauty to it, 
 for everything acquires beauty by its being reduced to its true standard. Such 
 is the sense of these two important lines, 
 
 Life, force, and beauty must to all impart, 
 At once the source, and end, and test of art. 
 
 II. The necessity of the precept is seen from hence. The two constituent qua- 
 lities of a composition, as such, are art and wit ; but neither of these attains 
 perfection, till the first be hid, aud the other judiciously restrained. This only 
 happens when nature is exactly followed ; for then art never makes a parade ; 
 nor can wit commit an extravagance. Art, while it adheres to nature, and 
 has so large a fund in the resources which nature supplies, disposes every 
 thing with so much ease and simplicity, that we see nothing but those natural 
 images it works with, while itself stands unobserved behind ; but when art 
 leaves nature, misled either by the bold sallies of fancy, or the quaint oddness 
 of fashion, she is then obliged at every step to come forward, in a painful or 
 pompous ostentation, in order to cover, to soften, or to regulate the shocking 
 disproportion of unnatural images. In the first case, our poet compares art 
 to the soul within, informing a beauteous body ; but in the last, we are bid to 
 consider it but as a mere outward garb, fitted only to hide the defects of a mis-
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 89 
 
 shapeu one. As to wit, it might perhaps be imagined that this needed only 
 judgment to govern it ; but, as he well observes, 
 
 wit and judgment often are at strife, 
 Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 
 
 They want therefore some friendly mediator ; and this mediator is nature : 
 and in attending to nature, judgment will learn where he should comply 
 with the charms of wit ; and wit how she ought to obey the sage directions 
 of judgment. 
 
 Yer. 88. Those rules of old, <ke.} Having thus, in his first precept, to follow 
 nature, settled criticism on its true foundation ; he proceeds to show, what 
 assistance may be had from art. But lest this should be thought to draw the 
 critic from the ground where our poet had before fixed him, he previously 
 observes, from ver. 87 to 92, that these rules of art, which he is now about 
 to recommend to the critic's observance, were not invented by abstract specu- 
 lation ; but discovered in the book of nature ; and that therefore, though they 
 may seem to restrain nature by laws, yet as they are laws of her own making, 
 the critic is still properly in the very liberty of nature. These rules the 
 ancient critics borrowed from the poets, who received them immediately from 
 nature. 
 
 Just precepts thus from great examples givX 
 
 These drew from them what they derived from heav'n, 
 
 so that both are to be well studied. 
 
 Ver. 92. Hear how learn'd Greece, <fcc.] He speaks of the ancient critics 
 first, and with great judgment, as the previous knowledge of them is necessary 
 for reading the poets, with that fruit which the end here proposed requires. 
 But having, in the foregoing observation, sufficiently explained the nature of 
 ancient criticism, he enters on the subject treated of from ver. 91 to 118, 
 with a sublime description of its end ; which was to illustrate the beauties of 
 the best writers, in order to excite others to an emulation of their excellence. 
 From the raptures which these ideas inspire, the poet is brought back, by the 
 follies of modern criticism, now before his eyes, to reflect on its base degene- 
 racy. And as the restoring the art to its original purity and splendour is the 
 great purpose of this poem, he first takes notice of those, who seem not to 
 understand that nature is exhaustless ; that new models of good writing may 
 be produced in every age ; and consequently, that new rules may be formed 
 from these models, in the same manner as the old critics formed theirs, which 
 was, from the writings of the ancient poets : but men wanting art and ability 
 to form these new rules, were content to receive and file up for use, the old 
 ones of Aristotle, Quintilian, Longinus, Horace, &c. with the same vanity and 
 boldness that apothecaries practise, with their doctors' bills : and then rashly 
 applying them to new originals (cases which they did not hit) it was no more 
 in their power, than in their inclination, to imitate the candid practice of the 
 ancients when 
 
 The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire, 
 
 And taught the world with reason to admire. 
 
 For, as ignorance, when joined with humility, produces stupid admiration, on 
 which account it is commonly observed to be the mother of devotion and 
 blind homage, so when joined with vanity (as it always is in bad critics) it 
 gives birth to every iniquity of impudent abuse and slander. See an example
 
 90 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 (for want of a better) in a late ridiculous and now forgotten thing, called the 
 Life of Socrates ;* where the head of the author (as a man of wit observed) has 
 just made a shift to do the office of a camera obscura, and represent things in 
 an inverted order, himself above, and Sprat, Rollin, Voltaire, and every other 
 writer of reputation, below. 
 
 Ver. 118. You then whose judgment, etc.] He comes next to the ancient 
 poets, the other and more intimate commentators of nature, and shows, from 
 ver. 117 to 141, that the study of these must indispensably follow that of 
 the ancient critics, as they furnish us with what the critics, who only give 
 us general rules, cannot supply, while the study of a great original poet, in 
 
 His fable, subject, scope in eVry page : 
 Religion, country, genius of his age ; 
 
 will help us to those particular rules which only can conduct us safely through 
 every considerable work we undertake to examine ; and without which, we 
 may cavil indeed, as the poet truly observes, but can never criticise. We 
 might as well suppose that Vitruvius's book alone would make a perfect judge 
 of architecture, without the knowledge of some great master-piece of science, 
 such as the rotunda at Rome, or the temple of Minerva at Athens, as that 
 Aristotle's should make a perfect judge of wit, without the study of Homer 
 and Virgil. These therefore he principally recommends to complete the critic 
 in his art. But as the latter of these poets has, by superficial judges, been 
 considered rather as a copier of Homer, than an original from nature, our 
 author obviates that common error, and shows it to have arisen (as often error 
 does) from a truth, viz., that Homer and nature were the same ; that the am- 
 bitious young poet, though he scorned to stoop at anything short of nature, 
 when he came to understand this great truth, had the prudence to contem- 
 plate nature in the place where she was seen to most advantage, collected in 
 all her charms in the clear mirror of Homer. Hence it would follow, that 
 though Virgil studied nature, yet the vulgar reader would believe him to be a 
 copier of Homer ; and though he copied Homer, yet the judicious reader would 
 see him to be an imitator of nature, the finest praise which any one, who came 
 after Homer, could receive. 
 
 Ver. 141. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, <tc.] Our author, in 
 these two general directions for studying nature and her commentators, having 
 considered poetry as it is, or may be reduced to rule, lest this should be mis- 
 taken as sufficient to attain perfection either in writing or judging, he pro- 
 ceeds from ver. 140 to 201, to point up to those sublimer beauties which rules 
 will never reach, nor enable us either to execute or taste, beauties, which rise 
 so high above all precept as not even to be described by it ; but being entirely 
 the gift of heaven, art and reason liave no further share in them than just 
 to regulate their operations. These sublimities of poetry^ (like the mysteries 
 of religion, some of which are above reason, and some contrary to it) may be 
 divided into two sorts, such as are above rules, and such as are contrary to 
 them. 
 
 Ver. 146. If, where the rules, etc.] The first sort our author describes from 
 ver. 145 to 152, and shows that where a great beauty is in the poet's view, 
 
 1 The author of this work, in which some of Warburton's opinions were attacked, was 
 John Gilbert Cooper. He was a vain man, with a slight tincture of learning, and very 
 mnall abilities. Burke called him an insufferable coxcomb.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 91 
 
 which no stated rules will authorise him how to reach, there, as the purpose of 
 rules is only to attain an end like this, a lucky licence will supply the place 
 of them: nor can the critic fairly object, since this licence, for the reason 
 given above, has the proper force and authority of a rule. 
 
 Ver. 152. Great ivits sometimes tnay gloriously offend, <c.] He describes 
 next the second sort, the beauties against rule. And even here, as he observes, 
 from ver. 151 to 161, the offence is so glorious, and the fault so sublime, that 
 the true critic will not dare either to censure or reform them. Yet still the 
 poet is never to abandon himself to his imagination. The rules laid down for 
 his conduct in this respect areTthese r 1. TllaTTthough he transgress the letter 
 of some one particular precept, yet that he be still careful to adhere to the 
 end or spirit of them all, which end is the creation of one uniform perfect 
 whole. And 2. That he have, in each instance, the authority of the dis- 
 pensing power of the ancients to plead for him. These rules observed, this 
 licence will be seldom used, and only when he is compelled by need, which 
 will disarm the critic, and screen the offender from his laws. 
 
 Ver. 169. I know there are, &c.~\ But as some modern critics have pre- 
 tended to say, that this last reason is only justifying one fault by another, our 
 author goes on, from ver. 168 to 181, to vindicate the ancients ; and to show 
 that this presumptuous thought, as he calls it, proceeds from mere ignorance, 
 as where their partiality will not let them see that this licence is sometimes 
 necessary for the symmetry and proportion of a perfect whole, in the light, 
 and from the point, wherein it must be viewed ; or where their haste will not 
 give them time to observe, that a deviation from rule is for the sake of attain- 
 ing some great and admirable purpose. These observations are further useful, 
 as they tend to give modern critics an humbler opinion of their own abilities, 
 and a higher of the authors they undertake to criticise. On which account 
 he concludes with a fine reproof of their use of that common proverb perpe- 
 tually in the mouths of the critics, ' ' quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus ; " 
 misunderstanding the sense of Horace, and taking quandoque for aliquando : 
 
 Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, 
 Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. 
 
 Ver. 181. Still green with bays, <fcc.] But now fired with the name of 
 Homer, and transported with the contemplation of those beauties which a 
 cold critic can neither see nor conceive, the poet, from ver. 180 to 201, breaks 
 out into a rapturous salutation of the rare felicity of those few ancients who 
 have risen superior over time and accidents ; and disdaining, as it were, any 
 longer to reason with his critics, offers this as the surest confutation of their 
 censures. Then with the humility of a suppliant at the shrine of immortals, 
 and the sublimity of a poet participating of their fire, he turns again to these 
 ancient worthies, and apostrophises their Manes : 
 
 Hail, bards triumphant ! &c. 
 
 Ver. 200. T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own/] This line con- 
 cludes the first division of the poem ; in which we see the subject of the first 
 and second part, and likewise the connexion they have with one another. It 
 serves likewise to introduce the second. The effect of studying the ancients, 
 as here recommended, would be the admiration of their superior sense, which, 
 if it will not of itself dispose moderns to a diffidence of their own (one of tho 
 great uses, as well as natural fruits of that study), our author, to help forward 
 their modesty, in his second part shows them (in a regular deduction of the
 
 92 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 causes and effects of wrong judgment) their own bright image and amiable 
 turn of mind. 
 
 Ver. 201. Of all the causes, JL-c.] Having, in the first part, delivered rules 
 for perfecting the art of criticism, the second is employed in explaining the 
 impediments to it. The order of the two parts was well adjusted. For the 
 causes of wrong judgment being pride, superficial learning, a bounded capa- 
 city, and partiality, they to whom this part is principally addressed, would 
 not readily be brought either to see the malignity of the causes, or to own 
 themselves concerned in the effects, had not the author previously both en- 
 lightened and convinced them, by the foregoing observations, on the vast- 
 ness of art, and narrowness of wit ; the extensive study of human nature and 
 antiquity; and the characters of ancient poetry and criticism ; the natural 
 remedies to the four epidemic disorders he is now endeavouring to redress. 
 
 Ver. 201. Of all the causes, &c.~\ The first cause of wrong judgment is jgide. 
 He judiciously begins with this, from" ver. iuo to 5J15," as on other accounts, 
 so on this, that it is the veiy thing which gives modern criticism its character, 
 whose complexion is abuse and censure. He calls it the vice of fools, by which 
 term is not meant those to whom nature has given no judgment (for he is here 
 speaking of what misleads the judgment), but those to whom learning and 
 Btudy have given more erudition than taste, as appears from the happy simili- 
 tude of an ill-nourished body, where the same words which express the cause, 
 express likewise the nature of pride : 
 
 For as in bodies, thus in souls, we fiud, 
 
 What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind. 
 
 It is the business of reason, he tells us, to dispel the cloud in which pride 
 involves the mind : but the mischief is, that the rays of reason, diverted by 
 self-love, sometime gild this cloud, instead of dispelling it. So that the judg- 
 ment, by false lights reflected back upon itself, is still apt to be a little dazzled, 
 and to mistake its object. He therefore advises to call in still more helps : 
 
 Trust not yourself ; but your defects to know, 
 Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe. 
 
 Both the beginning and conclusion of this precept are remarkable. The 
 question is of the means to subdue pride. He directs the critic to begin with a 
 distrust of himself ; and this is modesty, the first mortification of pride : and 
 then to seek the assistance of others, and make use even of an enemy ; and 
 this is humility, the last mortification of pride : for when a man can once 
 bring himself to submit to profit by an enemy, he has either already subdued 
 his vanity, or is in a fair way of so doing. 
 
 Ver. 215. A little learning, <fcc.] "We must here remark the poet's skill in 
 his disposition of the causes obstructing true judgment. Each general cause 
 which is laid down first, has its own particular cause in that which follows. 
 Thus, the second cause of wrong judgment, superficial learning, is what occa- 
 sions that critical pride, which he places first. 
 
 Ver. 216. Drink deep, <fcc.J Nature and learning are the pole-stars of all 
 true criticisTn : but pride obstructs the view of nature ; and a smattering of 
 letters makes us insensible of our ignorance. To avoid this ridiculous situa- 
 tion, the poet, from vei. 214 to 233, advises, either to drink deep, or not to 
 drink at all ; for the least sip at this fountain is enough to make a bad critic, 
 while even a moderate draught can never make a good one. And yet the
 
 AN ESSAY ON CEITICISM. 93 
 
 labours and difficulties of drinking deep are so great, that a young author, 
 " tired with ideas of fair Italy," and ambitious to snatch a palm from Rome, 
 here engages in an undertaking like that of Hannibal : finely illustrated by 
 the similitude of an inexperienced traveller penetrating through the Alps. 
 
 Ver. 233. A perfect jiulge, <fcc.] The third cause of wrong judgment is a 
 narrow capacity ; the natural cause of the foregoing defect, acquiescence in 
 superficial learning. This bounded capacity our author shows, from ver. 232 
 to 384, betrays itself two ways : in its judgment both of the matter, and the 
 manner of the work criticised. Of the matter, in judging by parts, or in hav- 
 ing one favourite part to a neglect of all the rest. Of the manner, in confining 
 men's regard only to conceit, or language, or numbers. This is our poet's 
 order, and we shall follow him as it leads us, only just observing one general 
 beauty which runs through this part of the poem ; it is, that under each of 
 these heads of wrong judgment, he has intermixed excellent precepts for the 
 right. We shall take notice of them as they occur. 
 
 He exposes the folly of judging by parts very artfully, not by a direct 
 description of that sort of critic, but of his opposite, a perfect judge, &c. Nor 
 is the elegance of this conversion less than the art ; for as, in poetical style, one 
 word or figure is still put for another, in order to catch new lights from dis- 
 tant images, and reflect them back upon the subject in hand, so in poetical 
 matter one person or description may be commodiously employed for another, 
 with the same advantage of representation. It is observable that our author 
 makes it almost the necessary consequence of judging by parts, to find fault : 
 and this not without much discernment : for the several parts of a complete whole, 
 when seen only singly, and known only independently, must always have the 
 appearance of irregularity, often of deformity ; because the poet's design being 
 to create a resultive beauty from the artful assemblage of several various parts 
 into one natural whole, those parts must be fashioned with regard to their 
 mutual relations in the stations they occupy in that whole, from whence the 
 beauty required is to arise ; but that regard will occasion so unreducible a 
 form in each part, when considered singly, as to present a very mis-shapen 
 form. 
 
 Ver. 253. Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,'] He shows next, from 
 ver. 252 to 263, that to fix our censure on single parts, though they happen to 
 want an exactness consistent enough with their relation to the rest, is even 
 then very unjust : and for these reasons: 1. Because it implies an expec- 
 tation of a faultless piece, which is a vain fancy. 2. Because no more is to- 
 be expected of any work than that it fairly attains its end. But the end may 
 be attained, and yet these trivial faults committed : therefore, in spite of such, 
 faults, the work will merit that praise that is due to everything which attains 
 its end. 3. Because sometimes a great beauty is not to be procured, nor a 
 notorious blemish to be avoided, but by suffering one of these minute and 
 trivial errors. 4. And lastly, because the general neglect of them is a praise, 
 as it is the indication of a genius, attentive to greater matters. 
 
 Ver 263. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, &c.} II. The second way 
 Ji which a narrow capacity, as it relates to the matter, shows itself, is judg- 
 ing by a favourite part. The author has placed this, from ver. 262 to 285, 
 after the other of judging by parts, with great propriety, it being indeed a 
 natural consequence of it. For when men have once left the whole to turn 
 their attention to the separate parts, that regard and reverence due only to a 
 whole is fondly transferred to one or other of its parts. And thus we see, 
 that heroes themselves, as well as hero-makers, even kings, as well as poets
 
 94 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 and critics, when they chance never to have had, or long to have lost the idea 
 of that which is the only legitimate object of their office, the care and con- 
 servation of the whole, are wont to devote themselves to the service of some 
 favourite part, whether it be love of money, military glory, despotic power. 
 &c. And all, as our author says on this occasion, 
 to one loved folly sacrifice. 
 
 This general misconduct much recommends that maxim in good poetry and 
 politics, to give a principal attention to the whole, a maxim which our author 
 has elsewhere shown to be equally true likewise in morals and religion, as 
 being founded in the order of things ; for if we examine we shall find the 
 misconduct here complained of to arise from this imbecility of our nature, 
 that the mind must always have something to rest upon, to which the pas- 
 sions and affections may be interestingly directed. Nature prompts us to 
 seek it in the most worthy objects ; and reason points us to a whole, or 
 system : but the false lights which the passions hold out confound and dazzle 
 us : we stop short ; and, before we get to a whole, take up with some part, 
 which thenceforth becomes our favourite. 
 
 Ver. 285. Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 
 Curious not knoioing, not exact but nice, 
 Form short ideas, <frc.] 
 
 2. He concludes his observations on those two sorts of judges by parts, with 
 this general reflection : The curious not knowing are the first sort, who 
 judge by parts, and with a microscopic sight (as he says elsewhere) examine 
 bit by bit. The not exact but nice, are the second, who judge by a favourite 
 part, and talk of a whole to cover their fondness for a part, as philosophers do 
 of principles, in order to obtrude notions and opinions in their stead. But 
 the fate common to both is, to be governed by caprice and not by judgment, 
 and consequently to form short ideas, or to have ideas short of truth ; though 
 the latter sort, through a fondness to their favourite part, imagine that it com- 
 prehends the whole in epitome, as the famous hero of La Mancha, mentioned 
 just before, used to maintain, that knight errantry comprised within itself the 
 quintessence of all science, civil, military, and religious. 
 
 Ver. 239. Some to conceit alone, ttc.] We come now to that second sort 
 of bounded capacity, which betrays itself in its judgment on the manner of the 
 work criticised. And tliis our author prosecutes from ver. 288 to 384. These 
 are again subdivided into divers classes. 
 
 Ver. 289. Some to conceit alone, otrc.] The first, from ver. 288 to 305, are 
 those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit. And here again the 
 critic by parts, offends doubly in the manner, just as he did in the matter ; 
 for he not only confines his attention to a part, when it should be extended to 
 the whole, but he likewise judges falsely of that part. And this, as the other, 
 is unavoidable, the parts in the manner bearing the same close relation to the 
 whole, that the parts in the matter do ; to which whole, the ideas of this 
 critic have never yet extended. Hence it is, that our author, speaking here of 
 those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit, describes the distinct 
 species of true and false wit, because they not only mistake a wrong disposi- 
 tion of true wit for a right, but likewise false wit for true. He describes false 
 wit first, from ver. 288 to 297, 
 
 Some to conceit alone, <fcc., 
 wlxere the reader may observe our author's address in representing, in a
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 95 
 
 description of false wit, the false disposition of the true ; as the critic by parts 
 is apt to fall into both these errors. 
 
 He next describes true wit, from ver. 296 to 305, 
 
 True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c. 
 
 And here again the reader may observe the same beauty ; not only an expla- 
 nation of true wit, but likewise of the right disposition of it, which the poet 
 illustrates, as he did the wrong, by ideas taken from the art of painting, in 
 the theory of which he was exquisitely skilled. 
 
 Ver. 305. Others for language, cfcc.] He proceeds secondly to those con- 
 tracted critics, whose whole concern turns upon language, and shows, from 
 ver. 304 to 337, that this quality, where it holds the principal place in a work, 
 deserves no commendation: 1. Because it excludes qualities more essential. 
 And when the abounding verbiage has choked and suSbcated the sense, the 
 writer will be obliged to varnish over the mischief with all the false colouring 
 of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because the critic who busies himself with this 
 quality alone, is unable to make a right judgment of it ; because true expres- 
 sion is only the dress of thought, and so must be perpetually varied according 
 to the subject, and manner of treating it. But those who never concern them- 
 sel/es with the sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between 
 that and the language. 
 
 Expression is the dress of thought, and still 
 Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c. 
 
 Now as these critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole judgment 
 in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination of single words ; 
 and generally those which are most to his taste, are (for an obvious reason) such 
 as smack most of antiquity, on which account our author has bestowed a little 
 raillery upon it ; concluding with a short and proper direction concerning the 
 use of words, so far as regards their novelty and ancientry. 
 
 Ver. 337. But mast by numbers judge, &c. ] The last sort are those, from 
 ver. 336 to 384, whose ears are attached only to the harmony of a poem. Of 
 which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other sort did of the 
 eloquence, and for the same reason. Our author first describes that false 
 harmony with which they are so much captivated ; and shows that it is 
 wretchedly flat and unvaried: for 
 
 Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong. 
 
 He then describes the true: 1. As it is in itself, constant ; with a happy mix- 
 ture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the roughness and flatness 
 of false harmony: and 2. As it is varied in compliance to the subject, where 
 the sound becomes an echo to the sense, so far as is consistent with the pre- 
 servation of numbers, in contradiction to the monotony of false harmony. Of 
 this he gives us, in the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of 
 smoothness, roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this corre- 
 spondence of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter 
 and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is to 
 calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and warm the 
 beneficent, which he illustrates in the famous adventure of Timotheus and 
 Alexander, where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that subject, he turns 
 it to a high compliment on his favourite poet.
 
 96 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM 
 
 Ver. 384. Avoid extremes, dcc.~\ Our author is now come to the last cause of 
 wrong judgment, partiality, the parent of the immediately preceding cause, 
 a bounded capacity, nothing so much narrowing and contracting the mind as 
 prejudices entertained for or against things or persons. This, therefore, as 
 the main root of all the foregoing, he prosecutes at large, from ver. 383 to 
 474. First, to ver. 394, he previously exposes that capricious turn of mind, 
 which, by running into extremes, either of praise or dispraise, lays the founda- 
 tion of an habitual partiality. He cautions, therefore, both against one and 
 the other ; and with reason ; for excess of praise is the mark of a bad taste ; 
 and excess of censure, of a bad digestion. 
 
 Ver. 394. Some foreign writers, <fcc.] Having explained the disposition of 
 mind which produces an habitual partiality, he proceeds to expose this par- 
 tiality in all the shapes in which it appears both amongst the unlearned and 
 the learned. 
 
 I. In the unlearned it is seen, first, in an unreasonable fondness for, or 
 aversion to, our own or foreign, to ancient or modern writers. And as it is the 
 mob of unlearned readers he is here speaking of, he exposes their folly in a 
 very apposite similitude : 
 
 Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied 
 To one small sect, and all are damned beside. 
 
 But he shows, from ver. 396 to 408, that these critics have as wrong notions 
 of reason as those bigots have of God ; for that genius is not confined to 
 times or climates ; but, as the common gift of nature, is extended throughout 
 all ages and countries ; that indeed this intellectual light, like the material 
 light of the sun, may not shine at all times, and in every place with equal 
 splendour, but be sometimes clouded with popular ignorance, and sometimes 
 again eclipsed by the discountenance of the great ; yet it shall still recover 
 itself, and, by breaking through the strongest of these impediments, manifest 
 the eternity of its nature. 
 
 Yer. 408. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their ovm,] A second instance 
 of unlearned partiality is (as he shows from ver. 407 to 424) men's going 
 always along with the cry, as having no fixed nor well-grounded principles 
 whereon to raise any judgment of their own. A third is reverence for names, 
 of which sort, as he well observes, the worst and vilest are the idolizers of 
 names of quality ; whom therefore he stigmatises as they deserve. Our 
 author's temper as well as his judgment is here seen, in throwing this species 
 of partiality amongst the unlearned critics. His affection for letters would 
 not suffer him to conceive, that any learned critic could ever fall into so low a 
 prostitution. 
 
 Ver. 424. The vulgar thus As oft the learned ] II. He comes in the 
 second place, from ver. 423 to 452, to consider the instances of partiality in 
 the learned. 1. The first is singularity. For, as want of principles, in the 
 unlearned, necessitates them to rest on the common judgment as always right, 
 so adherence to false principles (that is, to notions of their own) mislead the 
 learned into the other extreme of supposing the common judgment always 
 wrong. And as, before, our author compared those to bigots, who made true 
 faith to consist in believing after others, so he compares these to schismatics, 
 who make it to consist in believing as no one ever believed before, which folly 
 he marks with a lively stroke of humour in the turn of the thought : 
 
 So schismatics the plain believers quit, 
 
 And are but damned for having too much wit-
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 97 
 
 2. The second is norelty. And as this proceeds sometimes from fondness, 
 sometimes from vanity, he compares the one to the passion for a mistress, and 
 the other to the pride of being in fashion ; but the excuse common to both is, 
 the daily improvement of their judgment : 
 
 Ask them the cause ; they're wiser still they say ; 
 And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day. 
 
 Now as this is a plausible pretence for their inconstancy, and our author has 
 himself afterwards approved of it, as a remedy against obstinacy and pride, 
 where he says, ver. 570, 
 
 But you with pleasure own your errors past, 
 And make each day a critique on the last, 
 
 he has been careful, by the turn of the expression in this place, to show the 
 difference between the pretence and the remedy. For time, considered only 
 as duration, vitiates as frequently as it improves. Therefore to expect wisdom 
 as the necessary attendant of length of days, unrelated to long experience, is 
 vain and delusive. This he illustrates by a remarkable example, where we 
 see time, instead of becoming wiser, destroying good letters, to substitute 
 school divinity in their place ; the genius of which kind of learning, the cha- 
 racter of its professors, and the fate, which, sooner or later, always attends 
 whatsoever is wrong or false, the poet sums up in those four lines : 
 
 Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, &c. 
 
 And in conclusion he observes, that perhaps this mischief, from love of novelty, 
 might not be so great, did it not, along with the critic, infect the writer 
 likewise, who, when he finds his readers disposed to take ready wit on the 
 standard of current folly, never troubles himself to think of better payment. 
 
 Ver. 452. Some valuing those of their own side or mind, d-c.] 3. The third 
 and last instance of partiality in the learned, is party and faction, which is 
 considered from ver. 451 to 474, where he shows how men of this turn deceive 
 themselves, when they load a writer of their own side with commendation. 
 They fancy they are paying tribute to merit, when they are only sacrificing to 
 self-love. But this is not the worst. He further shows, that this party spirit 
 has often very ill effects on science itself, while, in support of faction, it 
 labours to depress some rising genius, that was, perhaps, raised by nature to 
 enlighten his age and country. By which he would insinuate, that all the 
 baser and viler passions seek refuge, and find support in party madness. 
 
 Ver. 474. Be thou the first, <kc.] The poet having now gone through the 
 last cause of wrong judgment, and the root of all the rest, partiality, and 
 ended his remarks upon it with a detection of the two rankest kinds, those 
 which arise out of party rage and envy, takes the occasion, which this affords 
 him, of closing his second division in the most graceful manner, from ver. 
 473 to 560, by concluding from the premises, and calling upon the true critic 
 to be careful of his charge, which is the protection and support of wit ; for, 
 the defence of it from malevolent censure is its true protection, and the 
 illustration of its beauties, is its true support. 
 
 He first shows, the critic ought to do this service without loss of time, and 
 on these motives: 1. Out of regard to himself, for there is some merit in 
 giving the world notice of an excellence, but little or none, in pointing, like 
 an index, to the beaten road of admiration. 2. Out of regard to the poem, 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. II
 
 98 AN ESSAY ON CKITICISM. 
 
 for the short duration of modern works requires that they should begin to 
 live betimes. He compares the life of modern wit (which in a changeable 
 dialect, must soon pass away), and that of the ancient (which survives in an 
 universal language), to the difference between the patriarchal age and our own, 
 and observes, that while the ancient writings live for ever, as it were, in brass 
 and marble, the modern are but like paintings, which, of how masterly a hand 
 soever, have no sooner gained their requisite perfection by the softening and 
 ripening of their tints, which they do in a very few years, but they begin to 
 fade and die away. 3. Lastly, our author shows that the critic ought in 
 justice to do this service out of regard to the poet, when he considers the 
 slender dowry the muse brings along with her. In youth it is only a vain 
 and short-lived pleasure ; and in maturer years, an accession of care and 
 labour, in proportion to the weight of reputation to be sustained, and of the 
 increase of envy to be opposed: and therefore, concludes his reasoning on this 
 head with that pathetic and insinuating address to the critic, from ver. 508 
 to 526. 
 
 Ah ! let not learning, <fec. 
 
 Ver. 526. But if in noble minds some dregs remain, <fcc.] So far as to what 
 ought to be the true critic's principal study and employment. But if the sour 
 critical humour abounds, and must therefore needs have vent, he directs to its 
 proper object, and shows, from ver. 525 to 556, how it may be innocently and 
 usefully pointed. This is very observable ; our author had made spleen and 
 disdain the characteristic of the false critic, and yet here supposes them inherent 
 in the true. But it is done with judgment, and a knowledge of nature. For 
 as bitterness and astringeucy in unripe fruits of the best kind are the founda- 
 tion and capacity of that high spirit, race, and flavour which we find in them, 
 when perfectly concocted by the warmth and influence of the sun, and which, 
 without those qualities, would gain no more by that influence than only a 
 mellow insipidity, so spleen and disdain in the true critic, when improved by 
 long study and experience, ripen into an exactness of judgment and an elegance 
 of taste, although, in the false critic, lying remote from the influence of good 
 letters, they remain, in all their first offensive harshness and acerbity. The poet 
 therefore shows how, after the exaltation of these qualities into their state of 
 perfection, the very dregs (which, though precipitated, may possibly, on some 
 occasions, rise and ferment even in a noble mind) may be usefully employed, 
 that is to say, in branding obscenity and impiety. Of these, he explains the 
 rise and progress, in a beautiful picture of the different geniuses of the two 
 reigns of Charles II. and William III. The former of which gave course to 
 the most profligate luxury ; the latter to a licentious impiety. These are the 
 crimes our author assigns over to the caustic hand of the critic ; but concludes 
 however, from ver. 555 to 560, with this necessary admonition, to take care 
 not to be misled into unjust censure, either on the one hand, by a pharisaical 
 niceness, or on the other by a self-consciousness of guilt. And thus the second 
 division of his Essay ends : the judicious conduct of which is worthy our 
 observation. The subjects of it are the causes of wrong judgment. These he 
 derives upwards from cause to cause, till he brings them to their source, an 
 immoral partiality : for as he had, in the first part, 
 
 traced the Muses upward to their spring, 
 and shown them to be derived from heaven, and the offspring of virtue, so
 
 AX ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 99 
 
 hath he here pursued this enemy of the muses, the bad critic, to his low ori- 
 ginal, in the arms of his nursing mother immorality. This order naturally 
 introduces, and at the same time shows the necessity of, the subject of the 
 third and last division, which is, on the morals of the critic. /^* 
 
 Ver. 560. Learn then, <fcc.] "We enter now on the third part, the moralsof 
 the critic. There seemed a peculiar necessity of inculcating precepts of this 
 sort to the critic, by reason of that native acerbity so often found in the pro- 
 fession ; of which, a short memorial will soon convince the reader, and at the 
 same time inform him why our author has here included all critical morals in 
 candour, modesty, and good breeding. When, in these latter ages, human 
 learning reared its head in the "West, and its tail, verbal criticism, was of 
 course to rise with it, the madness of critics presently became so offensive, 
 that the sober stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. 
 J. Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy after 
 the sacking of Constantinople by the Turk, used to maintain that Cicero under- 
 stood neither philosophy nor Greek ; while another of his countrymen, J. Las- 
 caris by name, threatened to demonstrate that Virgil was no poet. However, 
 these men raised in the west of Europe an appetite for the Greek language. 
 So that Hermolaus Barbaras, a noted critic and most passionate admirer of 
 it, used to boast that he had invoked and raised the devil, about the meaning 
 of the Aristotelian fi>rf\extia. As this man was famous for his enchantments, 
 so one, whom Balzac speaks of, was as useful to letters by his revelations, and 
 was wont to say, that the meaning of such a verse in Persius, no one knew 
 but God and himself. But they were not all so modest. The celebrated 
 Pomponius Lsetus, in excess of veneration for antiquity, became a real pagan, 
 raised altars to Romulus, and sacrificed to the gods of Greece. But if the 
 Greeks cried down Cicero, the Italian critics knew how to support his credit. 
 Eveiy one has heard of the childish excesses into which the fondness for being 
 thought Ciceronians carried the most celebrated Italians of this tune. They 
 generally abstained from reading the scripture for fear of spoiling their style, 
 and Cardinal Bembo used to call the epistles of St. Paul by the contemptuous 
 name of epistolaccias, great overgrown epistles. But Erasmus cured this 
 frenzy in that masterpiece of good sense, entitled Ciceronianus, for which, as 
 lunatics treat their physicians, the elder Scaliger insulted him with all the 
 brutal fury peculiar to his family and profession. His son Joseph and Sal- 
 masius had such endowments of art and nature as might have made them 
 public blessings ; yet how did these savages tear and worry one another. 
 The choicest of Joseph's flowers of speech were stcrcus diaboli, and lutum 
 stercore maceratum. It is true these were strewn upon his enemies. He 
 treated his friends better ; for in a letter to Thuanus, speaking of two of them, 
 Clavius and Lipsius, he calls the first "a monster of ignorance," and the 
 other " a slave to the Jesuits " and an " idiot." But so great was his love of 
 sacred amity, that he says, at the same time, " I still keep up a correspon- 
 dence with him, notwithstanding his idiotry, for it is my principle to be 
 constant in iny friendships. Je ne reste de lui ecrire uonobstant son idioterie, 
 d'autant que je suis constant en amitie." The character he gives of his own 
 work, in the same letter, is no less extraordinary: "Vous vous pouvez 
 assurer que nostre Eusebe sera un tresor des merveilles de la doctrine 
 chronologique." But this modest account of his chronology is a trifle in com- 
 parison of the just esteem Salmasius conceived of himself, as Mr. Colomies 
 tells the story : This critic one day meeting two of his brethren, Messrs. 
 Gaulmin and Maussac, in the royal library at Paris, Gaulmin, in a virtuous 
 
 n2
 
 100 AN 1 ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 consciousness of their importance, told the other two that he believed they 
 three could make head against all the learned in Europe. To which the 
 great Salmasius fiercely replied, "Do you and Mr. Maussac join yourselves to 
 all that is learned in the world, and you shall find that I alone am a match 
 for you all." Vossius tells us that, when Laur. Valla had snarled at every 
 name of the first order in antiquity, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and one whom 
 I should have thought this critic was likeliest to pass by, the redoubtable 
 Priscian, he impiously boasted that he had arms even against Christ himself. 
 But Codrus Urcaeus went further, and actually used those arms the other only 
 threatened with. This man while he was preparing some trifling piece of 
 criticism for the press, had the misfortune to hear his papers were burned, on 
 which he is reported to have broke out, ' ' Quodnam ego tan turn scelus concepi, 
 Christe ; quern ego tuorum unquam Isesi, ut ita inexpiabili in me odio debac- 
 cheris ? Audi ea, quse tibi mentis compos et ex animo dicam. Si forte, cum ad 
 nltimam vitse finem pervenero, supplex accedam ad te oratum, neve audias, 
 neve inter tuos accipias oro; cum infernis DiLs in seternum vitam agere decrevi" 
 Whereupon, says my author, he quitted the converse of men, threw himself 
 into the thickest of a forest, and there wore out the wretched remains of life 
 in all the agonies of despair. 
 
 But to return to the poem. This third and last part is in two divisions. 
 In the first of which, from ver. 559 to 631, our author inculcates the morals 
 by precept. In the second, from ver. 630 to the end, by example. His first 
 precept, from ver. 561 to 566, recommends candour, for its use to the critic, 
 and to the writer criticised. 
 
 2. The second, from ver. 565 to 572, recommends modesty, which manifests 
 itself in these four signs : 1. Silence where it doubts, 
 
 Be silent always when you doubt your sense ; 
 
 2. A seeming diffidence where it knows, 
 
 And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence ; 
 
 3. A free confession of error where wrong, 
 
 But you with pleasure own your errors past ; 
 
 4. And a constant review and scrutiny even of those opinions which it still 
 thinks right. 
 
 And make each day a critique on the last. 
 
 3. The third, from ver. 571 to 584, recommends good-breeding, which will 
 not force truth dogmatically upon men, as ignorant of it, but gently insinu- 
 ates it to them, as not sufficiently attentive to it. But as men of breeding 
 are apt to fall into two extremes, he prudently cautions against them. The 
 one is a backwardness in communicating their knowledge, out of a false 
 delicacy, and for fear of being thought pedants : the other, and much more 
 common extreme, is a mean complaisance, which those who are worthy of your 
 advice do not need, to make it acceptable ; for such can best bear reproof 
 in particular points, who best deserve commendation in general 
 
 Ver. 584. 'Twcre well might critics, <fcc.] The poet having thus recom- 
 mended in his general rules of conduct for the judgment, these three critical 
 virtues to the heart, shows next, from ver. 583 to 631, upon what three sorts 
 of writers these virtues, together with the advice conveyed under them, would 
 b thrown away ; and which is worse, be repaid with obloquy and scorn.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 101 
 
 These are the false critic, the dull man of quality, and the bad poet, each of 
 which species of incorrigible writers he hath very exactly painted. But 
 having drawn the last of them at full length, and being always attentive to 
 the two main branches of his subject, which are, of writing and judging well, 
 he re-assumes the character of the had critic (whom he had touched' upon 
 before), to contrast him with the other ; and makes the characteristic common 
 to both, to be a never-ceasing repetition of their own impertinence. 
 
 The poet still runs on in a raging vein, &c. ver. 606, &c. 
 
 The critic with his own tongue still edifies his ears, 614, &c. 
 Than which there cannot be an observation more just, or more grounded on 
 experience. 
 
 Ver. 631. But where's the man, <fcc.] II. The second division of this last 
 part, which we now come to, is of the morals of critics, by example. For, 
 having in the first, drawn a picture of the false critic, at large, he breaks 
 out into an apostrophe, containing an exact and finished character of the true, 
 which, at the same time, serves for an easy and proper introduction to this 
 second division. For having asked, from ver. 630 to 643, Where's the man, 
 &c., he answers, from ver. 642 to 681, that he was to be found in the happier 
 ages of Greece and Rome ; in the characters of Aristotle and Horace, 
 Dionysius and Petronius, Quintilian and Longinus, whose several excellencies 
 he has not only well distinguished, but has contrasted them with a peculiar 
 elegance. The profound science and logical method of Aristotle is opposed to 
 the plain common sense of Horace, conveyed in a natural and familiar negli- 
 gence ; the study and refinement of Dionysius, to the gay and courtly ease of 
 Petrouius ; and the gravity and minuteness of Quintilian, to the vivacity and 
 general topics of Longinus. Nor has the poet been less careful in these 
 examples, to point out their eminence in the several critical virtues he so 
 carefully inculcated in his precepts. Thus in Horace he particularizes his 
 candour ; in Petronius, his good-breeding ; in Quintilian, his free and 
 copious instruction ; and in Louginus, his great and noble spirit. 
 
 Ver. 681. Thus long succeeding critics, tt<r.] The next period in which the 
 true critic, he tells us, appeared, was at the revival and restoration of letters 
 in the "West. This occasions his giving a short history, from ver. 682 to 709, 
 of the decline and re-establishment of arts and sciences in Italy. He shows 
 that they both fell under the same enemy, despotic power ; and that when 
 both had made some little efforts to recover themselves, they were soon again 
 overwhelmed by a second deluge of another kind, namely, superstition ; and a 
 calm of dulness finished upon Rome and letters what the rage of barbarism 
 had begun : 
 
 A second deluge learning thus o'er-run, 
 And the monk finished what the Goth begun. 
 
 When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of recoveiy 
 now seemed desperate, it was a critic, our author shows us, for the honour of 
 the art he here teaches, who at length broke the charm of dulness, who dis- 
 sipated the enchantment, and, like another Hercules, drove those cowled and 
 hooded serpents from the Hesperian tree of knowledge, which they had so 
 long guarded from human approach. 
 
 Ver. 697. But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days,] This presents us 
 with the second period in which the true critic appeared, of whom he has 
 given us a complete idea in the single example of Marcus Hieronymus Vida ; 
 for his subject being poetical criticism, for the use principally of a critical
 
 102 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 poet, his example is an eminent poetical critic, who had written of the Art of 
 Poetry in verse. 
 
 Ver. 709. But soon by impious arms, <fcc.] This brings us to the third 
 period, after learning had travelled still further West, when the arms of the 
 Emperor, in the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, had driven it out of 
 Italy, and forced it to pass the mountains. The examples he gives in this 
 period, are of Boileau in France, and of the Lord Roscommon and the Duke 
 of Buckingham in England : and these were all poets, as well as critics 
 in verse. It is true, the last instance is of one who was no eminent poet, the 
 late Mr. "Walsh. This small deviation might be well overlooked, were it only 
 for its being a pious office to the memory of his friend. But it may be 
 further justified, as it was an homage paid in particular to the morals of the 
 critic, nothing being more amiable than the character here drawn of this 
 excellent person. He being our author's judge and censor, as well as friend, 
 it gives him a graceful opportunity to add himself to the number of the later 
 critics ; and with a character of his own genius and temper sustained by that 
 modesty and dignity which it is so difficult to make consistent, this perfor- 
 mance concludes. 
 
 I have here given a short and plain account of the Essay on Criticism, con- 
 cerning which, I have but one thing more to say, that when the reader 
 considers the regularity of the plan, the masterly conduct of each part, the 
 penetration into nature, and the compass of .learning so conspicuous through- 
 out, he should at the same time know, it was the work of an author who had 
 not attained the twentieth year of his age.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 Vor. 28. In search of wit, these lose their common sense,] This observation 
 is extremely just. Search of wit is not only the occasion, but the efficient 
 cause of the loss of common sense ; for wit consisting in choosing out, and 
 setting together such ideas from whose rtf5emblage pleasant pictures may be 
 drawn on the fancy, the judgment, through an habitual search of wit, loses, 
 by degrees, its faculty of seeing the true relation of things ; in which consists 
 the exercise of common sense. 
 
 Ver. 32. All fools have still an itching to deride, 
 
 And fain would be upon the laughing side."] 
 
 The sentiment is just, and if Hobbes's account of laughter be true, that it 
 arises from a silly pride, we see the reason of it. The expression too is fins ; 
 it alludes to the condition of idiots and natural fools, who are observed to be 
 ever on the grin. 
 
 Ver. 43. Their generation's so equivocal.] It is sufficient that a principle of 
 philosophy has been generally received, whether it be true or false, to justify 
 a poet's use of it to set off his wit. But to recommend his argument, he 
 should be cautious how he uses any but the true ; for falsehood, when it is 
 set too near the truth, will tarnish what it should brighten up. Besides, the 
 analogy between natural and moral truth makes the principles of true philo- 
 sophy the fittest for this use. Our poet has been pretty careful in observing 
 this rule. 
 
 Ver. 51. And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.'] Besides the 
 peculiar sense explained in the comment, the words have still a more general 
 meaning, and caution us against going on, when our ideas begin to grow 
 obscure, as we are then most apt to do, though that obscurity be an admoni- 
 tion that we should leave off, for it arises, either from our small acquaintance 
 with the subject, or the incomprehensibility of its nature, in which circum- 
 stances a genius will always write as badly as a dunce. An observation well 
 worth the attention of all profound writers. 
 
 Ver. 56. Thus in the soul while memory prevails, 
 
 The solid jjow'r of understanding fails ; 
 Where beams of warm imagination play, 
 The memory's soft figures melt away.] 
 
 These observations are collected from an intimate knowledge of human 
 nature. The cause of that languor and heaviness in the understanding, 
 which is almost inseparable from a very strong and tenacious memory, seems 
 to be a want of the proper exercise of that faculty, the understanding being 
 in a great measure unactive, while the memory is cultivating. As to the
 
 104 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 other appearance, the decay of memory by the vigorous exercise of fancy, the 
 poet himself seems to have intimated the cause of it in the epithet he has 
 given to the imagination. For if, according to the atomic philosophy, the 
 memory of things be preserved in a chain of ideas, produced by the animal 
 spirits moving in continued trains, the force and rapidity of the imagination, 
 breaking and dissipating the links of this chain by forming new associations, 
 must necessarily weaken, and disorder the recollective faculties. 
 
 Ver. 67. Would all but stoop to what they understand. ] The expression is 
 delicate, and implies what is very true, that most men think it a degradation 
 of their genius to employ it in what lies level to their comprehension, but had 
 rather exercise their talents in the ambition of subduing what is placed 
 above it. 
 
 Ver. 80. Same, to whom heaven, c.] Here the poet (in a sense he was not, at 
 first, aware of) has given an example of the truth of his observation, in the 
 observation itself. The two lines stood originally thus : 
 
 There are whom heav*n has blest with store of wit, 
 Yet want as much again to manage it. 
 
 In the first line, wit is used, in the modern sense, for the effort of fancy ; in 
 the second line it is used in the ancient sense, for the result of judgment. 
 This trick, played the reader, he endeavoured to keep out of sight, by altering 
 the lines as they now stand, 
 
 Some, to whom heav"n in wit has been profuse, 
 Want as much more, to turn it to its use. 
 
 For the words, " to manage it," as the lines were at first, too plainly discovered 
 the change put upon the reader, in the use of the word "wit." This is now a 
 little covered by the latter expression of " turn it to its use." But then the 
 alteration, in the preceding line, from "store of wit," to "profuse," was an 
 unlucky change. For though he who has ' ' store of wit " may want more, yet 
 he to whom it was given in "profusion" could hardly be said to want more. 
 The truth is, the poet had said a lively thing, and would, at all hazards, 
 preserve the reputation of it, though the very topic he is upon obliged him to 
 detect the imposition, in the very next lines, which show he meant two very 
 different things, by the very same term, in the two preceding : 
 
 For wit and judgment often are at strife, 
 Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 
 
 Ver. 88. Those rules of old, <fec.] Cioero has, best of any one I know, ex- 
 plained what that thing is which reduces the wild and scattered parts of 
 human knowledge into arts. " Nihil est quod ad artem redigi possit, nisi ille 
 prius, qui ilia tenet, quorum artem instituere vult, habeatillam scientiam, ut ex 
 iis rebus, quarum ars nondum sit, artem efficere possit. Omnia fere, quse sunt 
 conclusa nunc artibus, dispersa et dissipata quondam fuerunt, ut in rausicis, 
 &c. Adhibita est igitur ars quaedam extrinsecus ex alio genere quodam, quod 
 sibi totum PHILOSOPHI assumunt, quse rem dissolutam divulsamque conglu- 
 tinaret, et ratione quadam constringeret. " De Orat. 1. i. c. 41, 42. 
 
 Ver. 112, 114. Some on the leaves Some dryly plain.] The first are the apes 
 of those learned Italian critics who at the restoration of letters, having found 
 the classic writers miserably deformed by the hands of monkish librarians, 
 very commendably employed their pains and talents in restoring them to 
 their native purity. The second, the plagiarists from the French critics, who
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 105 
 
 had made some admirable commentaries on the ancient critics. But that 
 acumen and taste, which separately constitute the distinct value of those two 
 species of Italian and French criticism, make no part of the character of these 
 paltry mimics at home described by our poet in the following lines, 
 
 These leave the sense, their learning to display, 
 And those explain the meaning quite away. 
 
 Which species is the least hurtful, the poet has enabled us to determine in the 
 lines with which he opens his poem, 
 
 But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence 
 To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. 
 
 From whence we conclude that the Reverend Mr. Upton was much more 
 innocently employed, when he quibbled upon Epictetus, than when he com- 
 mented upon Shakespeare. 1 
 
 Yer. 150. Thus Pegasus, <L-c.] We have observed how the precepts for 
 waiting and judging are interwoven throughout the whole poem. The 
 sublime flight of a poet is first described, soaring above all vulgar bounds, to 
 snatch a grace directly which lies beyond the reach of a common adventurer ; 
 and afterwards, the effect of that grace upon the true critic ; whom it pene- 
 trates with an equal rapidity, going the nearest way to his heart, without 
 passing through his judgment. By which is not meant that it could not stand 
 the test of judgment ; but that, as it was a beauty uncommon, and above rule, 
 and the judgment habituated to determine only by rule, it makes its direct 
 appeal to the heart, which, when once gained, soon brings over the judgment, 
 whose concurrence (it being now enlarged and set above forms) is easily pro- 
 cured. That this is the poet's sublime conception appears from the conclud- 
 ing words : 
 
 And all its end at once attains. 
 
 For poetry doth not attain all its end, till it hath gained the judgment as 
 well as heart. 
 
 Yer. 209. Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, 
 
 And Jills up all the mighty void of sense.] 
 
 A very sensible French writer makes the following remark on this species of 
 pride : "Un homme qui scait plusieurs langues, qui entend les auteurs grecs 
 et latins, qui s'eleve meme jusqu'a la dignite' de scholiaste ; si cet homme 
 venoit a peser son veritable merite, il trouveroit souvent qu'il se reduit avoir 
 eu des yeux et de la memoire ; il se garderoit bien de donner le nom respec- 
 table de science a uue Erudition sans lumiere. II y a une grande difference 
 entre s'enrichir des mots ou des choses, entre alllguer des autorites ou des 
 raisona. Si un homme pouvoit se surprendre a n' avoir que cette sorte de 
 merite, il en rougiroit plut&t que d'en etre vain." 
 
 Ver. 235. Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 
 
 WJierc Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind ,] 
 
 The second line, in apologizing for those faults which the first says should 
 be overlooked, gives the reason of the precept. For when a great writer's 
 
 1 Upton published Critical Observations upon Shakespeare, and says that he offended 
 Warburton by omitting to mention him. After Warburton had attacked him Upton 
 retaliated.
 
 106 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 attention is fixed on a general view of nature, and his imagination becomes 
 warmed with the contemplation of great ideas, it can hardly be, but that there 
 must be small irregularities in the disposition both of matter and style, because 
 the avoiding these requires a coolness of recollection, which a writer so 
 qualified and so busied is not master of. 
 
 Ver. 248. The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, Some/] The Pantheon 
 I would suppose ; perhaps St. Peter's ; no matter which ; the observation is 
 true of both. There is something very Gothic in the taste and judgment of a 
 learned man, who despises the masterpiece of art, the Pantheon, for those 
 very qualities which deserve our admiration. "Nous esmerveillons comme 
 Ton fait si grand cas de ce Pantheon, veu que son edifice n'est de si grande 
 industrie comme 1'on crie : car chaque petit masson peut bien concevoir la 
 maniere de sa fa^on tout en un instant : car estant la base si massive, et lea 
 murailles si espaisses, ne nous a semble difficile d'y adj ouster la voute a claire 
 voye." Pierre Belon's Observations, &c. The nature of the Gothic struc- 
 tures apparently led him into this mistake of the architectonic art in general ; 
 that the excellency of it consists in raising the greatest weight on the least 
 assignable support, so that the edifice should have strength without the 
 appearance of it, in order to excite admiration. But to a judicious eye such a 
 building would have a contrary effect, the appearance (as our poet expresses 
 it) of a monstrous height, or breadth, or length. Indeed, did the just propor- 
 tions in regular architecture take off from the grandeur of a building, by all 
 the single parts coming united to the eye, as this learned traveller seems 
 to insinuate, it would be a reasonable objection to those rules on which this 
 masterpiece of art was constructed. But it is not so. The poet tells us 
 truly, 
 
 The whole at once is bold, and regular. 
 
 Ver. 267. Once on a time, etc.] This tale is so very apposite, that one 
 would naturally take it to be of the poet's own invention ; and so much in 
 the spirit of Cervantes, that we might easily mistake it for one of the chief 
 beauties of that incomparable satire. Yet, in truth it is neither ; but a story 
 taken by our author from the spurious Don Quixote, which shows how proper 
 an use may be made of general reading, when if there be but one good thing in 
 a book (as in that wretched performance there scarce was more) it may be 
 picked out, and employed to an excellent purpose. 
 
 Ver. 285. Thus critics, <fcc.] In these two lines the poet finely describes 
 the way in which bad writers are wont to imitate the qualities of good ones. 
 As true judgment generally draws men out of popular opinions, so he who 
 cannot get from the crowd by the assistance of this guide, willingly follows 
 caprice, which will be sure to lead him into singularities. Again, true know- 
 ledge is the art of treasuring up only that which, from its use in life, is worthy 
 of being lodged in the memory, and this makes the philosopher ; but curiosity 
 consists in a vain attention to every thing out of the way, and which for its 
 inutility the world least regards, and this makes the antiquarian. Lastly, 
 exactness is the just proportion of parts to one another, and their harmony in 
 a whole ; but he who has not extent of capacity for the exercise of this quality, 
 contents himself with nicety, which is a busying oneself about points and 
 syllables, and this makes the grammarian. 
 
 Ver. 297. True wit is nature to advantage dressed, etc.] This definition is 
 very exact. Mr. Locke had defined wit to consist "in the assemblage ot 
 ideas, and putting those together, with quickness and variety, wherein can
 
 AN ESSAY ON CKITICISM. 107 
 
 he found any resemblance or congruity, whereby to make up pleasant pictures 
 and agreeable visions in the fancy." But that great philosopher, in separating 
 wit from judgment, as he does in this place, has given us (and he could there- 
 fore give us no other) only an account of wit in general, in which false wit, 
 though not every species of it, is included. A striking image, therefore, oi 
 nature is, as Mr. Locke observes, certainly wit ; but this image may strike on 
 several other accounts, as well as for its truth and beauty, and the philosopher 
 has explained the manner how. But it never becomes that wit which is the 
 ornament of true poesy, whose end is to represent nature, but when it dresses 
 that nature to advantage, and presents her to us in the brightest and most 
 amiable light. And to know when the fancy has done its office truly, the 
 poet subjoins this admirable test, viz. "When we perceive that it gives us back 
 the image of our mind. When it does that, we may be sure it plays no 
 tricks with us ; for this image is the creature of the judgment, and whenever 
 wit corresponds with judgment, we may safely pronounce it to be true. 
 
 Ver. 311. False eloquence, &c.~\ This simile is beautiful. For the false 
 colouring given to objects by the prismatic glass is owing to its untwisting, 
 by its obliquities, those threads of light which nature had put together, in 
 order to spread over its work an ingenious and simple candour, that should 
 not hide but only heighten the native complexion of the objects. And false 
 expression is nothing else but the straining and divaricating the parts of true 
 expression ; and then daubing them over with what the rhetoricians very 
 properly term colours, in lieu of that candid light, now lost, which was 
 reflected from them in their natural state, while sincere and entire. 
 
 Ver. 364. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, 
 The sound must seem an echo to the sense.] 
 
 The judicious introduction of this pi'ecept is remarkable. The poets, and even 
 some of the best of them, have been so fond of the beauty arising from this 
 trivial observance, that their practice has violated the very end of the precept, 
 which is the increase of harmony ; and so they could but raise an echo, did 
 not care whose ears they offended by its dissonance. To remedy this abuse 
 therefore, our poet, by the introductory line, would insinuate, that harmony 
 is always to be presupposed as observed, though it may and ought to be per- 
 petually varied, so as to produce the effect here recommended. 
 
 Ver. 365. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.] Lord Eoscommon 
 says, 
 
 The sound is still a comment to the sense. 
 
 They are both well expressed, although so differently ; for Lord Eoscommon 
 is showing how the sense is assisted by the sound ; Mr. Pope, how the sound 
 is assisted by the sense. 
 
 Ver. 402. Which, from the first, &c.~\ Genius is the same in all ages; but its 
 fruits are various, and more or less excellent as they are checked or matured 
 by the influence of government or religion upon them. Hence in some parts 
 of literature the ancients excel ; in others, the moderns, just as those acci- 
 dental circumstances occurred. 
 
 Ver. 444. Scotisls.] So denominated from Johannes Duns Scotus. 
 Erasmus tells us, an eminent Scotist assured him, that it was impossible to 
 understand one single proposition of this famous Duns, unless you had his 
 whole metaphysics by heart. This hero of incomprehensible fame suffered a 
 miserable reverse at Oxford in the time of Henry VIII. That grave anti-
 
 108 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 quary, Mr. Antony Wood (in the vindication of himself and his writings from 
 the reproaches of the Bishop of Salisbury), sadly laments the deformation, as 
 he calls it, of that university, hy the King's commissioners ; and even records 
 the blasphemous speeches of one of them, in his own words- "We have set 
 Duns in Boccardo, with all his blind glossers, fast nailed up upon posts in all 
 common houses of easement." Upon which our venerable antiquary thus 
 exclaims: "If so be, the commissioners had such disrespect for that most 
 famous author, J. Duns, who was so much admired by our predecessors, and 
 so difficult to be understood, that the doctors of those times, namely, Dr. 
 William Roper, Dr. John Keynton, Dr. William Mowse, &c. professed that, 
 in twenty-eight years' study, they could not understand him rightly, what 
 then had they for others of inferior note?" What indeed ! But if so be, that 
 most famous J. Duns was so difficult to be understood (for that this is a most 
 theologic proof of his great worth is past all doubt), 1 should conceive our 
 good old antiquary to be a little mistaken, and that the nailing up this 
 Proteus of the schools was done by the commissioners in honour of the most 
 famous Duns, there being no other way of catching the sense of so slippery 
 and dodging an author, who had eluded the pursuit of three of their most 
 renowned doctors in full cry after him, for eight and twenty years together. 
 And this Boccardo in which he was confined, seemed very fit for the purpose, 
 it being observed that men are never more serious and thoughtful than in that 
 place of retirement. Scribl. 
 
 Ver. 444. Thomisls,} From Thomas Aquinas, a truly great genius, who, 
 in those blind ages, was the same in theology, that our Friar Bacon was in 
 natural philosophy ; less happy than our countryman in this, that he soon 
 became surrounded with a number of dark glossers, who never left him till 
 they had extinguished the radiance of that light, which had pierced through 
 the thickest night of monkery, the thirteenth century, when the Waldenses 
 were suppressed, and Wickliffe not yet risen. 
 
 Ver. 445. Amidst their kindred cobwebs.'] Were common sense disposed to 
 credit any of the monkish miracles of the dark and blind ages of the church, 
 it would certainly be one of the seventh century recorded by honest Bale. 
 "In the sixth general council," says he, "holdenat Constantinople, Anno Dom 
 80, contra Monothelitas, where the Latin mass was first sipproved, and the 
 Latin ministers deprived of their lawful wives, spiders' webs, in wonderfull 
 copye were seen falling down from above, upon the heads of the people, to the 
 marvelous astonishment of many." The justest emblem and prototype of 
 school metaphysics, the divinity of Scotists and Thomists, which after- 
 wards fell, in wonderfull copye on the heads of the people, in support of 
 transubstantiation, to the marvelous astonishment of many, as it continues 
 to do to this day. 
 
 Ver. 450. And autliors think, etc.] This is an admirable satire on those 
 called authors in fashion, the men who get the laugh on their side. He shows 
 on how pitiful a basis their reputation stands, the changeling disposition of 
 fools to laugh, who are always carried away with the last joke. 
 
 Ver. 463. Milbourn] The Rev. Mr. Luke Milbourn. Dennis served Mr. 
 Pope in the same office. But these men are of all times, and rise up on all 
 occasions. Sir Walter Raleigh had Alexander Ross ; Chillingworth had 
 Cheynel ; Milton a first Edwards ; and Locke a second ; neither of them 
 related to the third Edwards of Lincoln's Inn. They were divines of parts 
 and learning: this a critic without one or the other. Yet (as Mr. Pope says 
 of Luke Milbourn) the fairest of all critics ; for having written against the 

 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 109 
 
 editor's remarks on Shakspear, he did him justice in printing, at the same 
 time, some of his own. 1 
 
 Ver. 468. For envied wit, etc.] This similitude implies a fact too often 
 verified ; and of which we need not seek abroad for examples. It is this, that 
 frequently those very authors, who have at first done all they could to obscure 
 and depress a rising genius, have at length been reduced to borrow from him, 
 imitate his manner, and reflect what they could of his splendour, merely to 
 keep themselves in some little credit. Nor hath the poet been less artful, to 
 insinuate what is sometimes the cause. A youthful genius, like the sun 
 rising towards the meridian, displays too strong and powerful beams for the 
 dirty temper of inferior writers, which occasions their gathering, condensing, 
 and blackening. But as he descends from the meridian (the time when the 
 sun gives its gilding to the surrounding clouds) his rays grow milder, his heat 
 more benign, and then 
 
 ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way, 
 Reflect new glories, and augment the day. 
 
 484. So when, <frc.] This similitude from painting, in which our author 
 discovers (as he always does on that subject) real science, has still a more 
 peculiar beauty, as at the same time that it confesses the just superiority of 
 ancient writings, it insinuates one advantage the modern have above them, 
 which is this, that in these latter, our more intimate acquaintance with the 
 occasion of writing, and with the manners described, lets us into those living 
 and striking graces which may be well compared to that perfection of imitation 
 given only by the pencil, while the ravages of time, amongst the monuments 
 of former ages, have left us but the gross substance of ancient wit, so much 
 only of the form and fashion of bodies as may be expressed in brass or 
 marble. 
 
 Ver. 507. by knaves undone.'] By which the poet would insinuate a 
 common but shameful truth, that men in power, if they got into it by 
 illiberal arts, generally left wit and science to starve. 
 
 Ver. 545. Did all the dregs of bold Sodnus drain ; ] The seeds of this 
 religious evil, as well as of the political good from whence it sprung (for good 
 and evil are incessantly arising out of one another) were sown in the preceding 
 fat age of pleasure. The mischiefs done during Cromwell's usurpation, by fana- 
 ticism, inflamed by erroneous and absurd notions of the doctrine of grace and 
 satisfaction, made the loyal latitudinarian divines (as they were called) at the 
 restoration, go so far into the other extreme of resolving all Christianity into 
 morality, as to afford an easy introduction to socimanism, which in that reign, 
 (founded on the principles of liberty) men had full opportunity of propagating. 
 
 Ver. 561. For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know.] The critic acts in two- 
 capacities, of assessor and of judge: in the first, science alone is sufficient ; 
 but the other requires morals likewise. 
 
 Ver. 631. But where' s the man, <tc.] The poet, by his manner of asking 
 after this character, and telling us, when he had described it, that such once 
 were critics, does not encourage us to search for it amongst modern writers. 
 And indeed the discovery of him, if it could be made, would be but an 
 invidious affair. However, I will venture to name the piece of criticism in 
 
 1 When Warburton published his Shakespeare in 1747, Edwards exposed, in his Canons 
 of Criticism, the dogmatism and absurdity of many of the comments and conjectures, 
 Hia book was unanswerable, and Warburton was reduced to display his spleen in such- 
 sneers as the present.
 
 110 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 
 
 which all these marks may be found. It is entitled, Q. Hor. Fl. Ars Poetica, 
 et ejusd. Ep. ad Aug. with an English Commentary and Notes. 1 
 
 Ver. 642. with reason on his side?] Not only on his side, but iu actual 
 employment. The critic makes but a mean figure, who when he has found out 
 the beauties of his author, contents himself with showing them to the world in 
 only empty exclamations. His office is to explain their nature, show from 
 whence they arise, and what effects they produce, or in the better and fuller 
 expression of the poet, 
 
 To teach the world with reason to admire. 
 
 Ver. 652. Who conquered nature, <fcc.] By this we must not understand 
 physical nature, but moral. The force of the observation consists in giving it 
 this sense. The poet not only uses the word nature, for human nature, 
 throughout this poem ; but also, where in the beginning of it, he lays down 
 the principles of the arts he treats of, he makes the knowledge of human 
 nature the foundation of all criticism and poetry. Nor is the observation less 
 true than apposite. For Aristotle's natural inquiries were superficial and ill 
 made, though extensive ; but his logical and moral works are supremely 
 excellent. In his moral, he has unfolded the human mind, and laid open all 
 the recesses of the heart and understanding ; and in his logical, he has not 
 only conquered nature, but by his categories, has kept her in tenfold chains ; 
 not as dulness kept the muses in the Dunciad, to silence them ; but as 
 Aristeeus held Proteus in Virgil, to deliver oracles. 
 
 Ver. 665. See Dionysius, <fcc.] In the first of these lines, on which the 
 other depends, the peculiar excellence of this critic, and indeed the most 
 material and useful part of a critic's office, is touched upon, who, like the 
 refiner, purifies the rich ore of an original writer ; for such a one busied in 
 creating, often neglects to separate and refine the mass, pouring out his riches 
 rather in bullion than in sterling. 
 
 Ver. 667. Fancy and art, <fcc.] "The chief merit of Petronius," says an 
 objector, 2 "is that of telling a story with grace and ease." But the poet is 
 not here speaking, nor was it his purpose to speak, of the chief merit of 
 Petronius, but of his merit as a critic, which consisted, he tells us, in soften- 
 ing the art of a scholar with the ease of a courtier, and whoever reads and 
 understands the critical part of his abominable story-telling will see that the 
 poet has given his true character as a critic, which was the only thing he had 
 to do with. 
 
 Ver. 693. At length Erasmus, <fcc.] Nothing can be more artful than the 
 application of this example, or more happy than the turn of the compliment. 
 To throw glory quite round the character of this admirable person, he makes 
 it to be (as in fact it really was) by his assistance chiefly, that Leo was 
 enabled to restore letters and the fine arts in his pontificate. 
 
 Ver. 694. The glory of the priesthood and the shame ! ] Our author else- 
 where lets us know what he esteems to be the glory of the priesthood as well 
 as of a Christian in general, where comparing himself to Erasmus, he says, 
 In moderation placing all my glory, 
 
 1 The work which Warburton vaunts as the only honest piece of modern criticism, was 
 by his friend and flatterer Hurd. Personal partiality might excuse the undue exaltation 
 of a feeble production, but is no apology for calumniating men who were quite as candid 
 and far more able. 
 
 * The objector was War-ton. He justly intimated that the character which Pope had 
 given of Petronius, conveyed an erroneous idea of the nature of his writings.
 
 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. ill 
 
 and consequently what he regards as the shame of it. The whole of this 
 character belonged eminently and almost solely to Erasmus : for the other re- 
 formers, such as Luther, Calvin, and their followers, understood so little in what 
 true Christian liberty consisted, that they carried with them, into the 
 reformed churches, that very spirit of persecution, which had driven them 
 from the church of Rome. 
 
 Ver. 696. And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.] In this attack on the 
 established ignorance of the times, Erasmus succeeded so well as to bring 
 good letters into fashion, to which he gave new splendour, by preparing for 
 the press correct editions of many of the best ancient writers, both ecclesias- 
 tical and profane. But having laughed and shamed his age out of one folly, 
 he had the mortification of seeing it run headlong into another. The virtuosi 
 of Italy, in a superstitious dread of that monkish barbarity which he had so 
 severely handled, would use no term (for now almost every man was become 
 a Latin writer), not even when they treated of the highest mysteries of religion, 
 which had not been consecrated in the capitol, and dispensed unto them from 
 the sacred hand of Cicero. Erasmus observed the growth of this classical folly 
 with the greater concern, as he discovered under all their attention to the 
 language of old Rome, a certain fondness for its religion, in a growing impiety 
 which disposed them to think irreverently of the Christian faith. And he no 
 sooner discovered it than he set upon reforming it ; which he did so effec- 
 tually in the dialogue, entitled Ciceronianus, that he brought the age back to 
 that just temper, which he had been all his life endeavouring to mark out to 
 it, purity, but not pedantry in letters, and zeal, but not bigotry, in religion. 
 In a word, by employing his great talents of genius and literature on subjects 
 of general importance ; and by opposing the extremes of all parties in their 
 turns ; he completed the real character of a true critic and an honest man.
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 AN HEBOI-COMICAL POEM. 
 
 WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 17UL 
 
 VOL. II. POETRT.
 
 THE RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 AN HEROI-COJIICAL POEM. 
 
 Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos, 
 Bed juvat hoc crsecibus me tribuisse tuis. 
 SIART. LIB. 12. Ep. 86. 
 
 Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT. 1712. 8vo. 
 
 This is the title-page of the original Eape of the Lock, in two cantos, which 
 appeared anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany. The poem begins on p. 353 of 
 the volume, and the previous piece ends at p. 320. What purported to be a 
 second edition of the Miscellany came out in 1714, but except that the gap 
 between p. 320 and p. 353 had been filled up, and that the Essay on Criticism 
 is inserted at the end of the book, the work is merely a reissue, with a new 
 title-page, of the first edition, and the Rape of the Lock, like the rest, is the 
 old impression of 1712. Even the primitive ' ' Table of Contents " was retained, 
 though it omits the additional pieces, which were chiefly poems by Pope. 
 His contributions to the Miscellany are, however, enumerated on the title-page 
 of the second edition. 
 
 THE EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 AN HKEOI-COMIOAL POEM. IN FIVE CANTOS. 
 
 Written by Mr. POPE. 
 A tonso est hoc nomen adepta capillo. OVID. 
 
 London : Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross Keys in Fleet Street. 
 1714. 8vo. 
 
 The first enlarged edition. A second and third edition followed in the same 
 year. After the Rape of the Lock had been included in the quarto of 1717, 
 it was still printed in a separate form, and a "fifth edition corrected" was 
 published by Lintot in 1718. He also inserted the work in the four editions 
 of his Miscellanies, which appeared in the twelve years from 1720 to 1732. 
 Lintot paid Pope 7 on March 21, 1712, for the Rape of the Lock in its first 
 form, and gave 15 for the enlarged poem on February 20, 1714.
 
 THE first sketch of this poem was written in less than a fortnight's 
 time in 1711, in two cantos, and so printed in a Miscellauy, without 
 the name of the author. The machines were not inserted till a year 
 after, when he published it, and annexed the dedication. POPE, 
 1736. 
 
 The stealing of Miss Belle Fermor's hair was taken too seriously, 
 and caused an estrangement between the two families, though they 
 had lived so long in great friendship before. A common acquain- 
 tance, and well-wisher to both, desired me to write a poem to make 
 a jest of it, and laugh them together again. It was with this view 
 that I wrote the Rape of the Lock, which was well received, and 
 had its effect in the two families. Nobody but Sir George Brown 
 was angry, and he was a good deal so. and for a long time. He 
 could not bear that Sir Plume should talk nothing but nonsense. 
 Copies of the poem got about, and it was like to be printed, ou 
 which I pxiblished the first draught of it (without the machinery) in 
 a Miscellany of Touson's. The machinery was added afterwards to 
 make it look a little more considerable, and the scheme of adding it 
 was much liked and approved of by several of my friends, and parti- 
 cularly by Dr. Garth, who, as he was one of the best natured men in 
 the world, was very fond of it. The making the machinery, and 
 what was published before, hit so well together is, I think, one of 
 the greatest proofs of judgment of anything I ever did. POPE in 
 SPENCE. 
 
 It appears by the motto " Nolueram," etc., that the following 
 poem was written or published at the lady's request. Bub there are 
 .some further circumstances not unworthy relating. Mr. Caryll (a 
 gentleman who was secretary to Queen Mary, wife of James II., 
 whose fortunes he followed into France, author of the comedy of Sir 
 Solomon Single, and of several translations in Dryden's Miscellanies) 
 originally proposed the subject to him, in a view of putting an end, 
 by this piece of ridicule, to a quarrel that was risen between two 
 noble families, those of Lord Petre and of Mrs. Fermor, on the trifling 
 occasion of his having cut off a lock of her hair. The author sent it 
 to the lady, with whom he was acquainted ; and she took it so well 
 as to give about copies of it. That first sketch, we learn from one of 
 his letters, was written in less than a fortnight, in 1711, in two 
 cantos only, and it was so printed ; first, in a Miscellauy of Bern. 
 Lintot's, without the name of the author. But it was received so 
 
 i 2
 
 116 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 well, that lie made it more considerable the next year by the addition 
 of the machinery of the sylphs, and extended it to five cantos. We 
 shall give the reader the pleasure of seeing in what manner these 
 additions were inserted, so as to seem not to be added, but to grow 
 out of the poem. See Notes, Cant. I. ver. 9, etc. This insertion he 
 always esteemed, and justly, the greatest effort of his skill and art as 
 
 a poet. WARBt/RTON. 
 
 I hope it will not be thought an exaggerated panegyric to say that 
 the Rape of the Lock is the best satire extant ; that it contains the 
 truest and liveliest picture of modern life ; and that the subject is 
 of a more elegant nature, as well as more artfully conducted than 
 that of any other heroi-comic poem. If some of the most candid 
 among the French critics begin to acknowledge that they have pro- 
 duced nothing, in point of sublimity and majesty, equal to the 
 Paradise Lost, we may also venture to affirm that in point of 
 delicacy, elegance, and fine-turned raillery, on which they have so 
 much valued themselves, they have produced nothing equal to the 
 Rape of the Lock. It is in this composition Pope principally appears 
 a poet, in which he has displayed more imagination than in all his 
 other works taken together. It should, however, be remembered, 
 that he was not the first former and creator of those beautiful 
 machines, the sylphs, on which his claim to imagination is chiefly 
 founded. He found them existing ready to his hand ; but has, 
 indeed, employed them with singular judgment and artifice. 
 WARTON. 
 
 The Rape of the Lock is the most airy, the most ingenious, and 
 the most delightful of all Pope's compositions. At its first appear- 
 ance it was termed by Addison " merum sal." Pope, however, saw 
 that it was capable of improvement ; and having luckily contrived to 
 borrow his machinery from the Rosicruciaus, imparted the scheme, 
 with which his head was teeming, to Addison, who tolJ him that his 
 work, as it stood, was " a delicious little thing," and gave him no 
 encouragement to retouch it. This has been too hastily considered 
 as au instance of Addison's jealousy ; for as he could not guess the 
 conduct of the new design, or the possibilities of pleasure comprised 
 in a fiction, of which there had been no examples, he might very 
 reasonably and kindly persuade the author to acquiesce in his own 
 prosperity, and forbear an attempt which he considered as an unne- 
 cessary hazard. Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope 
 foresaw the future efHorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, 
 and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation. The soft 
 luxuriance of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties 
 of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it. His 
 attempt was justified by ita success. The Rape of the Lock stands 
 forward- in the classes of literature., as the most exquisite example
 
 ItAFE OF THE LOCK. 117 
 
 of ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display 
 of powers more truly poetical than he had shown before. With 
 elegance of description and justness of precepts he had now exhibited 
 boxiudless fertility of invention. He always considered the inter- 
 mixture of the machinery with the action as his most successful 
 exertion of poetical art. He indeed could never afterwards produce 
 anything of such unexampled excellence. Those performances which 
 strike with wonder are combinations of skilful genius with happy 
 casualty ; and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of 
 a new race of preternatural agents, should happen twice to the same 
 man. 
 
 Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the psaise 
 for a long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards Dennis 
 published some remarks upon it with very little force and with no 
 effect ; for the opinion of the public was already settled, and it was 
 no longer at the mercy of criticism. 1 
 
 To the praises which have been accumulated on the Rape of the 
 Lock by readers of every class, from the critic to the v, r aiting-niaid, 
 it is difficult to make any addition. Of that which is universally 
 allowed to be the most attractive of all ludicrous compositions, let it 
 rather be now inquired from v. hat sources the power of pleasing is 
 derived. Dr. Warburtou, who excelled in critical perspicacity, has 
 remarked that the preternatural agents are very happily adapted to 
 the purposes of the poem. The heathen deities can no longer gain 
 attention : we should have turned away from a contest between 
 Venus and Di'tna. The employment of allegorical persons always 
 excites conviction of its own absurdity ; they may produce effects, 
 but cannot conduct actions : when the phantom is put in motion it 
 dissolves. Thus Discord may raise a mutiny, but Discord cannot 
 conduct a march, nor besiege a town. Pope brought in view a new 
 race of beings, with powers and passions proportionate to their 
 operation. The sylphs and gnomes act at the toilet and the tea- 
 table, what more terrific and more powerful phantoms perform on 
 the stormy ocean or the field of battle ; they give their proper help 
 
 1 Dennis's Remarks on the Rape of the Lock were written in 1714, and pub- 
 lished in 1728. " To cure the little gentleman of his wretched conceiteduess, by 
 giving him a view of his ignorance, his folly, and his natural impotence," 
 Dennis, in 1717, brought out a critical pamphlet on three of his works, and kept 
 back the exposure of the Rape of the Lock " in terrorem, which had so good an 
 effect, that the author endeavoured for a time to counterfeit humility, and a sincere 
 repentance, but no sooner did he believe that time had caused these things to 
 be forgot, than he relapsed into ten times the folly and the madness that ever he 
 had shown before." The fresh provocation was the Dunciad, and the treatise 
 on the Profound, and poor Dennis printed his awe-inspiring Remarks on the 
 Rape of the Lock, to give "the little gentleman" another lessor, in humility.
 
 118 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 and do their proper mischief. Pope is said by an objector, 1 not to 
 have been the inventor of this petty nation ; a charge which might 
 with more justice have been brought against the author of the Iliad, 
 who doubtless adopted the religious system of his country ; for what 
 is there but the names of his agents which Pope has not invented ? 
 Has he not assigned them characters and operations never heard of 
 before ? Has he not, at least, given them their first poetical 
 existence ? if this is not sufficient to denominate his work original, 
 nothing original ever can be written. 
 
 In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most 
 engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and 
 familiar things are made new. A race of aerial people, never heard 
 of before, is presented to us in a manner so clear and easy, that the 
 reader seeks for no further information, but immediately mingles 
 with his new acquaintance, adopts their interests, and attends their 
 pursuits, loves a sylph and detests a gnome. That familiar things 
 are made new, every paragraph will prove. The subject of the poem 
 is an event below the common incidents of common life ; nothing 
 real is introduced that is not seen so often as to be no longer 
 regarded ; yet the whole detail of a female day is here brought 
 before us, invested with so much art of decoration, that, though 
 nothing is disguised, everything is striking, and we feel all the 
 appetite of curiosity for that from which we have a thousand times 
 turned fastidiously away. 
 
 The purpose of the poet is, as he tells us, to laugh at " the lit:l; 
 unguarded follies of the female sex." It is therefore without justice 
 that Dennis charges the Rape of the Lock with the want of a moral, 
 and for that reason sets it below the Lutriu, which exposes the pride 
 and discord of the clergy. Perhaps neither Pope nor Boileau has 
 made the world much better than he found it, but, if they had both 
 succeeded, it were easy to tell who would have deserved most from 
 public gratitude. The freaks, and humours, and spleen, and vanity 
 of women, as they embroil families in discord, and fill houses with 
 disquiet, do more to obstruct the happiness of life in a year than 
 the ambition of the clergy in many centuries. It has been well 
 observed, that the misery of man proceeds not from any single 
 crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually 
 repeated, 
 
 It is remarked by Dennis likewise that the machinery is super- 
 fluous ; that by all the bustle of preternatural operation the main event 
 is neither hastened nor retarded. To this charge an efficacious 
 answer is not easily made. The sylphs cannot be said to help or to 
 oppose, and it must be allowed to imply some want of art, that their 
 
 Joseph \\~arUn.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 119 
 
 power has not been sufficiently intermingled with the action. Other 
 parts may likewise be charged with want of connection ; the game at 
 ombre might be spared ; but if the lady had lost her hair while she 
 was intent upon her cards, it might have been inferred that those 
 who are too fond of play will be in danger of neglecting more 
 important interests. These perhaps are faults, but what are such 
 faults to so much excellence ? JOHNSON. 
 
 The Rape of the Lock at once placed Pope higher than any modern 
 writer, and exceeded everything of the kind that had appeared in the 
 republic of letters. Dr. Johnson truly says that it is the most airy, 
 the most ingenious, and the most delightful of ail Pope's compositions. 
 Indeed, upon this subject there cannot be two opinions. This poem 
 is founded, however, upon local manners. And of all poems of that 
 kind it is undoubtedly far the best, whether we consider the exquisite 
 tone of raillery, a certain musical sweetness and suitableness in the 
 versification, the management of the story, or the kind of fancy and 
 airiness given to the whole. But what entitles it to its high claim of 
 peculiar poetic excellences ? the powers of imagination, and the 
 felicity of invention displayed in adopting, and most artfully con- 
 ducting, a machinery so fanciful, so appropriate, so novel, and so 
 poetical. The introduction of Discord, &c., as machinery in the 
 Lutrin, &c., is not to be mentioned at the same time. Such a being 
 as Discord will suit a hundred subjects ; but the elegant, the airy 
 sylph, 
 
 Loose to the wind, whose airy garments flew, 
 
 Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew, 
 
 Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies, 
 
 Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes : 
 
 such a being as this, is suited alone to the identical and peculiar 
 poem in which it is employed. I will n;/w go a step farther in 
 appreciating the elegance and beauty of this poem, and I would ask 
 the question, Let any other poet, Drydeu, Waller, Cowley, or 
 Gray, be assigned this subject, and this machinery : could they 
 have produced a work altogether so correct and beautiful from the 
 same given materials ? Let us, however, still remember, that this 
 poem is founded on local manners, and the employment of the sylphs 
 is in artificial life. For this reason the poem must have a secondary 
 rank, when considered strictly and truly with regard to its poetry. 
 Whether Pope would have excelled as much in loftier subjects of a 
 general nature, in the "high mood" of Lycidas, the rich colourings 
 of Comu, and the magnificent descriptions and sublime images of 
 Paradise Lost ; or in painting the characters and employments of 
 aerial beings, 
 
 That tread the ooze of the salt deep, 
 
 Or rnn upon the sharp wind of the north,
 
 120 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Is another question. He has not attempted it : I have no doubt he 
 would have failed. But to have produced a poem, infinitely the 
 highest of its kind, and which no other poet could perhaps altogether 
 have done so well, is surely very high praise. The excellence is 
 Pope's own, the inferiority is in the subject. No one understood 
 better that excellent rule of Horace : 
 
 Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis, aequam 
 Viribus. l BOWLES. 
 
 From the statement of Pope in the edition of 1736, it would be 
 inferred that the Rape of the Lock in its second form was prepared 
 and published in 1712. As usual he ante-dated his work. The 
 original sketch came out in 1712 ; the machinery was aided in 1713, 
 and the enlarged poem was not published till the spring of 1714. 
 Warbtirton's narrative, which in some editions had Pope's initial 
 affixed by an error of the press, 2 is in part derived from Pope, and 
 the rest is erroneous. The person who bespoke the Rape of the 
 Lock was not Mr. Secretary Caryll, but his nephew, the Sussex 
 squire, and for years the correspondent of Pope. The assertion of 
 Warburtou, that Pope, when he wrote the work-, was acquainted with 
 his heroine, is discredited by his letter to Caryll on May 28, 1712. 
 " Mr. Bedingfield," he there says, "has done me the favour to send 
 some books of the Rape to my Lord Petro and Mrs. Fermor," and 
 unless the poet had been a total stranger to them he would have pre- 
 sented the copies himself. The language of the motto can only bear 
 the interpretation of Warburton, that the Rape of the Lock " was 
 written or published at the lady's request," but Warburton ought to 
 have seen that the motto was a deception. The piece was not 
 vrritten at Miss Former's request, for it was absurd to imagine that 
 she would ask any one to compose a poem to allay her own resent- 
 ment against Lord Petre, and there is the direct statement of Pope 
 in the body of the work, and in his conversation with Sprnce, that 
 the suggestion did not come from her. 3 The piece was not published 
 at her request, for in the Dedication of the second edition to Miss 
 
 1 In his Observations on the Poetic character of Pope, Bowles reiterates that the 
 Rape of the Lock is "a composition to which it will be in vain to compare any- 
 thing of the kind, that it stands alone, unrivalled, and possibly never to be 
 rivalled." "The Muse," he adds, "has no longer her great characteristic attri- 
 butes, pathos or sublimity ; but she appears so interesting that we almost doubt 
 whether the garb of elegant refinement is not as captivating, as the most beautiful 
 appearances of nature." 
 
 2 "The small edition of Pope," writes Warburton to Hurd, June 30, 1753, "is 
 the correctest of all ; and I was willing you should always seethe best of me." 
 Warburton refers to his 12mo. ed. 1753, and in this corrected edition Pope's 
 initial is omitted. 
 
 8 Rape of the Lock, cant. i. ver. 3 ; Singer's Spence, p. 147.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOOK. 121 
 
 Fennor, Pope says of the first edition, " An imperfect copy having 
 been offered to a bookseller, you had the good nature for my sake to 
 consent to the publication of one more correct. This I was forced 
 to before I had executed half my design, for the machinery was 
 entirely wanting to complete it." Warburtou reversed the parts. 
 The requester was Pope, and Miss Fermor gave a consent which it 
 was vain to refuse when the sole alternative preseuted to her was 
 whether the poem should be printed surreptitiously, or under the 
 supervision of its author. The miserable farce of circulating copies 
 of a work, and then alleging that the publication had become a 
 necessary measure of self-defence, was one of those transparent pre- 
 tences which deceived no one except the person who fancied that he 
 was deceiving. Pope never wrote a line of the smallest value which 
 was not intended for the printer. 
 
 The motto from Martial was doubtless attached to the Rape of the 
 Lock in the belief that Miss Fermor would be proud to countenance 
 the misrepresentation. The poet was mistaken. " A few years ago," 
 says Dr. Johnson, " a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an 
 English convent at Paris, mentioned Pope's work with very little 
 gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour ; and she may be 
 supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family." 1 Pope told 
 Speuce that " noboay but Sir George Brown was angry," and War- 
 burton says that Miss Fermor " took the poem so well as to give 
 about copies of it," but we now know that Johnson was right in his 
 inference. " Sir Plume blusters, I hear," wrote Pope to the younger 
 Gary 11, Nov. 8, 1712, five months after the Rape of the Lock 
 appeared ; " nay, the celebrated lady herself is offended, and, which 
 is stranger, not at herself, but me. Is not this enough to make a 
 writer never be tender of another's character or fame ? " Respect for 
 the fame and feelings of his heroine was not an act of grace ; it was 
 an imperious duty. At the request of a common friend he had 
 composed a poem for an amiable purpose upon an incident of private 
 life, and it would have been a hateful abuse of his commission, a 
 sLtiuleious violation of domestic sanctities, if he had penned a word 
 which could sully the reputation of an innocent maiden. He is not 
 free from reproach. Without intending to transgress he offended 
 from inherent want of delicacy. He made Belinda the subject of 
 some gross double meanings, which provoked the ribald comments 
 of the critics, and, unless a morbid love of notoriety had extinguished 
 feminine purity, she must have been deeply outraged by being asso- 
 ciated with these licentious allusions. Her indignation may appear 
 
 1 Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, vol. iii., p. 19 ; BoswelFs 
 Life of Johnson, 1 vol. ed., p. 462. Johnson's conversation wilh the Abbess 
 took place in 1775. " She knew Pope, and thought him disagreeable."
 
 122 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 to have come too late, for though her consent to the publication of 
 the work, when there was no real choice, does not involve approval, 
 she might, through her friends, have effectually demanded the 
 suppression of degrading couplets. Her very resentment, however, 
 when she read the work in print, is a presumption that they were 
 not in the manuscript which was sent her, and indeed it is incredible 
 that she, or her family, could ever have sanctioned such revolting 
 personalities. They are a sad exhibition of the ingrained coarseness 
 of Pope's taste, of his incapacity to conceive the idea of womanly 
 homage to outward decency, to say nothing of innate refinement and 
 modesty. 
 
 In the interval between the first and second edition of the Rape 
 of the Lock, Pope was compelled to acknowledge that he had inflicted 
 an injury on Miss Fermor. " I have some thought*," he wrote to 
 Caryll, Dec. 15, 171 3, "of dedicating the poem to her by name, as 
 a piece of justice in return to the wrong interpretations she has 
 suffered under on the score of that piece." He tried a preface 
 " which salved the lady's honour without affixing her name," but she 
 preferred the dedication. She wished to be dissociated from his 
 heroine, and he propitiated her by saying, all the incidents are 
 " fabulous except the loss of your hair ; and the character of 
 Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but beauty." 
 " I believe," he wrote to Caryll, January 9, 1714, "I have managed 
 the dedication so nicely that it can neither hurt the lady nor the 
 author. I writ it very lately, and upon great deliberation. The 
 young lady approves of it, and the best advice in the kingdom, of 
 the men of sense, has been made use of in it, even to the treasurer's.'' 
 Plainer understandings will be puzzled to discover what scope there 
 could be for the " great deliberation " of the poet, and the advice of 
 all the ablest men throughout the kingdom, including the prime 
 minister, Lord Oxford, in making a simple declaration of a simple 
 fact. To complete the absolution of Miss Fermor, Pope substituted 
 another motto for the lines from Martial, and when their temporary 
 withdrawal had answered his purpose he restored them in the quarto 
 edition of his works. 
 
 A more celebrated feud, if we are to trust the account of \Var- 
 burton, took its rise from the Rape of the Lock. The success of the 
 first edition " encouraged the author to give it a more important air " 
 by the addition of the supernatural machinery. " Full," says War- 
 burton, " of this noble conception he communicated it to Mr. Addi- 
 son, who he imagined would have teen equally delighted with the 
 improvement. On the contrary, he had the mortification to see 
 his friend receive it coldly ; and even to advise him against any 
 alteration, for that the poem in its original state was a delicious little 
 thing, and, as he expressed it, merum sal. Mr. Pope was shrclced
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 123 
 
 for his friend, and then first began to open his eyes to his cha- 
 racter." i The charge has been exposed by Johnson, Macaulay, and 
 Croker. Mr. Croker denies that the machinery was a plausible sug- 
 gestion. "I believe Addison's advice," he says, "to have been a 
 sincere and just opinion, and such as I should have expected from 
 the purity of his taste. The original poem tells the actual story 
 and exhibits a picture of real manners with so much wit and poetry, 
 but also with so much simplicity and clearness, that I can well 
 imagine that Addison might be alarmed at the proposition of intro- 
 ducing sylphs and gnomes into a scene of common life already so 
 admirably described. Even now, with the advantage of seeing all 
 the brilliancy with which Pope has worked out what Addisou thought 
 an unfortunate conception, I will not deny that such is the charm 
 of truth that I have lately read the first sketch with more interest, 
 though certainly with less admiration than its more fanciful and 
 more gorgeous successor, which really seems something like a beauty 
 oppressed with the weight and splendour of her ornaments. The 
 game at cards, the most ingenious and beautiful of all the additions, 
 is only reality splendidly embellished, and would have been equally 
 well placed in the first sketch." Macaulay vindicates the counsel of 
 Addison upon a general principle, irrespective of the apparent want 
 of fitness between supernatural agents and the frivolities of fashion, 
 a principle " the result of wide and long experience," which is, that a 
 successful work of imagination is injured by being recast. " We 
 cannot at this moment," he says, " call to mird a single instance in 
 which this rule has been transgressed with happy effect, except the 
 instance of the Rape of the Lock. Tasso recast his Jerusalem. 
 Akenside recast his Pleasures of the Imagination, and his Epistle to 
 Curio. Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with 
 which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the Lock, made 
 the same experiment on the Dunciad. All these attempts failed. 
 Who was to foresee that Pope would once in his life be able to do 
 what he could not himself do twice, and what nobody else has ever 
 done ? Addison's advice was good, but if it had been bad, why 
 should we pronounce it dish' nest ? Scott tells us that one of his 
 best friends predicted the failure of Waverley. Herder adjured 
 Goethe not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. Hum tried 
 to dissuade Robertson from writing the History of Charles the 
 Fifth. Nay Pope himself was one of those who prophesied that 
 Cato would never succeed on the stage, and advised Addisou to 
 print it without risking a representation. 2 But Scott, Goethe, 
 
 1 Warburton's Pope, ed. 1760, vol. iv. p. 27. 
 
 2 Pope's Poetical Works, ed. Elwin, vol. i. p. 327. Pope told Spence that he 
 gave the advice, but this was a faise pretence. He may have had a two-fold 
 motive for the misrepresentation, first, the wish to exalt bis critical perspicacity,
 
 124 1JAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Robertson, AdJi-oa, had the good sense and generosity to give their 
 advisers creel t for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of the 
 same kind with theirs." l Of the examples, which Macaulay quotes, 
 of poems marred in the attempt to mend them, the Jerusalem of 
 Tasso was the onlj one which existed in the days of Addison ; and 
 the Jerusalem was not a parallel case, for the mind of Tasso was 
 diseased when he remodelled his work, and he yielded, against his 
 judgment, to the cavils of critics instead of obeying the self-bom 
 calls of imagination. Most men nevertheless would instinsmely 
 recommend that whatever was beautiful should be let alone, lest it 
 should be deteriorated in the effort to make it better. When Pope 
 boasted that the adaptation of the new parts to the old, in the Rape 
 of the Lock, was the greatest triumph of his skill, he himself con- 
 fessed the risk and difficulty of the process, and justified the mis- 
 givings of Addison. But besides the general hazard, we should 
 expect, with Mr. Croker, that Addison would have thought the 
 particular project for improving the poem to be essentially bad. 
 Pope had shown a predilection for heathen mythology, and hi.s 
 management of it had been clumsy and lifeless. His scheme 
 would have called up to Addisou's mind the interposition of the 
 gods and goddesses in Homer and VirgiL The conjunction of 
 these obsolete figments, under new names, with the trivialities 
 of modern society, would have seemed incongruous and pedantic, 1 
 and the previous works of Pope would have compelled the conclu- 
 sion that he had not the skill to deal with ethereal fiction. Addison 
 -could neither have divined from a conversational description how 
 perfectly the agents would be adapted to their office, nor from 
 Pope's existing poetry how delicious they would be rendered by the 
 felicity of the execution. Unless there was the strongest presump- 
 tion that the recommendation to leave the poem unaltered was made 
 in good faith, we should not be warranted in believing the story, 
 for no reliance could be placed on the unsupported testimony of Pope 
 when he was safe from contradiction, and his object was to damage 
 the reputation of a rival. 
 
 Pope is convicted on his own evidence. He admits that the inci- 
 dent "first opened his eyes to the character of Addison," and by 
 
 since it was then acknowledged that Cato was unfitted for the stage, and had owed 
 its success to party passion ; secondly, the desire of appearing to have adopted 
 a manly tone towards Addison in the infancy of their acquaintance. 
 
 1 Macaulay's Essays, 1 vol. ed., p. 717. 
 
 2 "In mock heroic poems," said Addison, Spectator, No. 523, "the use of 
 the heathen mythology is not only excusable but graceful, because it is the 
 design of such compositions to divert by adapting the fabulous machines of the 
 ancients to low subjects, and at the same time by ridiculing such kinds of 
 machinery in modern writers." Pope's projected machinery was not to be 
 burlesque, and did not com* under A'l<!is>n's e.v-j ti.m.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 125 
 
 consequence that Addison's conduct had been hitherto blameless. 
 He thus bears witness against himself of his readiness to impute the 
 basest motives upon the most trumpery pretexts. Being "shocked" 
 at the mcral turpitude of " his friend," he could never again have 
 treated him with cordiality and confidence, and the alienation which 
 ensued, must, on Pope's own showing, have had its origin in Pope's 
 morbid suspicions. But there was an earlier transaction, which turns 
 the tables with fatal force upon Pope. Anterior to the conversation 
 on the Rape of the Lock, 1 he urged Lintot the bookseller to persuade 
 Dennis to criticise Addison's Cato. 2 Dennis published his Remarks, 
 and Pope followed with his anonymous pamphlet, Dr. Norris's Narrative 
 of thePhrenzy of J. D. , a coarse, dull production, consisting of nothing 
 but low, intemperate abuse. Pope's device pointed to three results. 
 He would damage the reputation of Addison's play ; he would provoke 
 him into turning his wrath upon Dennis ; and he would secure an 
 opening for venting his own spleen against the critic without seeming 
 to be actuated by personal spite. Addison was disgusted with the 
 pamphlet ; and, ignorant probably of its parentage, he let Dennis 
 know that he repudiated and condemned it. 3 The worst was to come. 
 More than twenty years afterwards Pope dressed up a letter which he 
 had written to Caryll, on the occasion of an attack in the Flying 
 Post, and pretended that it had been written to Addison when his 
 play was assailed by Dennis. In this fraudulent document Pope 
 congratulates him on his share in " the envy and calumny, which 
 is the portion of all good and great men," and declares that "he 
 felt more warmth " at the Remarks on Cato than when he read the 
 Reflections on the Essay on Criticism. 4 Having prompted the abuse, 
 
 1 Warburton's Pope, vol. iv. p. 26. 
 
 2 Dennis's Remarks on Pope's Rape of the Lock, preface, p. ix. ; Dennis's 
 Remarks upon the Dunciad, p. 41 ; Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i. 
 p. 398, note. 
 
 3 Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 400. The disclaimer of Addison is in a 
 letter which lie directed Steele to write to Lintot. Steele says that the pamphlet 
 "was offered to be communicated" to Addison before it was published, and 
 Dennis concluded that the offer came from Pupe. It doubtless came from the book- 
 seller, for Pope was anxious to preserve his incognito. He assured Cromwell and 
 Caryll, that he was not the author, and to have avowed the satire would have 
 betrayed his double-dealing to Lintot, and proclaimed to the public that the 
 rancour towards Dennis was dictated by revenge. When the Narrative of Dennis's 
 Frenzy was offered to Addison, he answered, that " he could not in honour and 
 conscience be privy to such treatment, and was sorry to hear of it." If this 
 reply was communicated to Pope, zeal for Addison could not be the motive for 
 persevering in a publication which was thoroughly distasteful to him, let alone 
 the absurdity of the supposition that Addison's interests could have weighed with 
 the person who had instigated the attack. Accordingly, Pope in his pamphlet 
 scoffed at Dennis, but did not reply to his criticisms upon Cato. 
 
 4 Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. p. 398.
 
 126 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 he published a fictitious letter to persuade the world that he had 
 overflowed with generous indignation. He wanted posterity to be- 
 lieve that he had poured out these magnanimous sentiments to 
 Addison, who returned him envy and malice. His object was to 
 magnify his own virtues, and transfer his meanness and jealousy to 
 the amiable genius he had formerly wronged. " Addisou," he siid, 
 "was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy after v. -arris," J 
 and with the consciousness of guilt, he tried to conceal th-.it he L.-;d 
 forfeited the kindness by misconduct. He was bold with his forge: ios 
 and falsehoods in the confidence that a dead man could tell no tales. 
 Happily there are flaws in the best-laid dishonest plots, and the hour 
 of retribution comes at last. At what period or in what degree 
 Addison himself detected Pope's practices is not definitely known, 
 but he discovered euoxigh to avoid him. " Leave htm as soon as you 
 can," he said to Lady Mary W. Montagu ; "he will certainly play 
 you some devilish trick else. He has an appetite to satire." 
 
 Up to the Rape of the Lock, Pope had only put borrowed thoughts 
 into verse. He now broke out into originality, but not without some 
 obligation to his predecessors. In one place De Quincey maintains 
 that the Rape of the Lock was not suggested by the Lutrin, because 
 Pope did not read French with ease to himself, and in another place 
 that Voltaire must have been wrong in saying that " Pope could 
 hardly read French," inasmuch as there are "numerous proofs that 
 he had read Boileau with so much feeling of his peculiar merit that 
 he has appropriated and naturalised some of his best passages." 3 
 The second statement of De Quincey was the latest and the truest. 
 Pope refers to the Lutrin in his manuscript notes on the Remarks of 
 Dennis, and certainly had it in his mind when he framed the scheme 
 of his poem. " The treasurer," it is said, in the summary prefixed 
 to Boileau's work, "is the highest dignitary in the chapter. The 
 precentor is the second dignitary. In front of the seat of the latter 
 there was formerly an enormous reading-desk, which almost concealed 
 him. He had it removed, and the treasurer wanted to put it back. 
 Hence arose the dispute which is the subject of the present poem." 
 Boileau converted the squabble into a satire on the indolence, the 
 sensuality, and pride of the cathedral clergy in the licentious reign of 
 Louis XIV. Pope converted the quarrel between Miss Fermor and 
 Lord Petre into a satire on the frivolities of a youn t j lady of fashion 
 from her morning toilet to the close of her giddy day. Boileau called 
 the Lutrin a new species of burlesque, " because," he said, " in other 
 burlesques Dido and ./Eneas speak like fishwomen and scavengers ; 
 here a barber and his wife speak like Dido and vEneas." Pope 
 
 1 Spence, p. 35. 2 Spence, p. 178. 
 
 3 De Quincey's Works, vol. vii. p. 66 ; XT. p. 98.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 127 
 
 adopted a similar vein, and invested the trifles of a gay and frivolous 
 life with an adventitious importance. Boileau parodied some well- 
 known passages of Virgil. Pope parodied both Virgil and Homer. 
 The Lutrin opens with Discord appearing to the sleeping treasurer, 
 and warning him against the encroachments of the rebellious precen- 
 tor. The enlarged Rape of the Lock opens with Ariel appearing, in 
 a dream, to Belinda, and beseeching her to beware of some disastrous 
 impending event. The raillery on the foibles of women, which is the 
 central idea in Pope's poem, was caught up from the exquisite 
 pleasantry of Addison, who, in the Tatlers and Spectators, had en- 
 deavoured to laugh the fair sex out of their levities of behaviour, and 
 extravagances of dress. Through his delicate humour, it had become 
 the popular topic in the light literature of the day. 
 
 Johnson says of the sylphs that they are " a new race of beings," 
 and that there is nothing " but the names of his agents which Pope has 
 not invented." This is an exaggeration. The names were a consi- 
 derable part of the novelty ; for, in the fundamental conception, the 
 sylphs in the Rape of the Lock were the time-honoured fairies of 
 English literature. Their immediate prototypes are the elves of 
 Shakespeare. The sprites of Pope belong to the same family with 
 the diminutive, joyous, ethereal creatures which anciently crept into 
 acorn cups, couched in the bells of cowslips, or lived under blossoms ; 
 who sported in air, rode on the curled clouds, and flitted with the 
 swiftness of thought over land and sea ; who hung dew-drops on 
 flowers, fetched jewels from the deep, shaded sleeping eyes from 
 moonbeams with wings plucked from painted butterflies, and who 
 mingled, benignly or maliciously, in all but the graver varieties of 
 human affairs. Pope acknowledges the ancestry of his newly-named 
 race when Ariel, whose own name confesses his parentage, ad- 
 dressing his subjects, says, 
 
 Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear ; 
 Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons hear. 
 
 The benevolent and mischievous fairies of old days were, in their 
 turn, little more than the good and evil angels dwarfed to suit their 
 lighter functions. For the precise outward aspect which Pope assigned 
 to the sylphs, he was beholden to Spenser, with whose works he was 
 well acquainted : 
 
 And all about her neck and shoulders flew 
 A flock of little loves, and sports, and joys, 
 
 With nimble wings of gold and purple hue, 
 
 Whose shapes seemed not like to terrestial boys, 
 But like to angels playing heav'nly toys. 
 
 These are just the beings who hover round Belinda. But though 
 Johnson's claim for Pope is over-stated, his supernatural agents ara
 
 123 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 
 
 the product of genius. The vividness with which they are described, 
 the novel offices they fulfil, the poetic beauty with which they are 
 invested, even when engaged in employments not in their nature 
 poetic, constitute them a distinct variety, and they rise up before 
 our minds like a fresh creation, and not as the reflection of ante- 
 cedent familiar forms. The remark is true of the work through- 
 out. What Pope borrowed he varied, embellished, and combined in 
 a manner which leaves the poem unique. Some of the parts may be 
 traced to earlier sources, but few master-pieces have more originality 
 in the aggregate. 
 
 " The Rape of the Lock," says De Quiucey, " is the most exquisite 
 monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers." 1 " The 
 Rape of the Lock," says Hazlitt, " is the most exquisite specimen of 
 filigree work ever invented. It is made of gauze and silver spangles. 
 The most glittering appearance is given to everything to paste, 
 pomatum, billets-doux, and patches. Airs, languid airs, breathe 
 around ; the atmosphere is perfumed with affectation. A toilet is 
 described with the solemnity of an altar raised to the goddess of 
 vauity, and the history of a silver bodkin is given with all the pomp 
 of heraldry. No pains are spared, no profusion of ornament, no 
 splendour of poetic diction to set off the meanest things. The balance 
 between the concealed irony and the assumed gravity is as nicely 
 trimmed as the balance of power in Europe. The little is made great 
 and the great little. You hardly know whether to laugh or weep. 
 It is the triumph of insignificance, the apotheosis of foppery and 
 folly. It is the perfection of the mock-heroic." 2 The world of 
 fashion is displayed in its most gorgeous and attractive hues, and 
 everywhere the emptiness is visible beueath the outward splendour. 
 The beauty of Belinda, the details of her toilet, her troops of admirers, 
 her progress up the Thames, the game at cards, the aerial escort which 
 attend upon her, are all set forth with unrivalled grace and fascina- 
 tion, and all bear the impress of vanity and vexation. Nothing can 
 exceed the art with which the satire is blended with the pomp, 
 mocking without disturbing the unsubstantial gewgaw. The double 
 vein is kept up with sustained skill in the picture of the outward 
 charms and inward frivolity of women. Ariel, describing the influence 
 of the sylphs upon them, says, that 
 
 With varying vanities from ev'ry part, 
 
 They shift the moving toy -shop of their heart. 
 
 This is the tone throughout. Their hearts are toy-shops. They 
 reverse the relative importance of things, and, as Hazlitt says, the 
 "little" with them "is great, and the great little." The Bible is 
 
 1 De Quincey's Works, vol. xv. p. 116. 
 
 1 Hazlitt 1 s Lectures on the English Poets, 3rd ed., p. 140.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOOK, 129 
 
 mixed up with "files of pins, puffs, powders, patches, billets-doux." 
 Chastity and china, prayers and masqiierades, love and jewellery are 
 put upon a nominal equality, but with a manifest preponderance in 
 favour of the china, masquerades, and jewellery. The female passion 
 is for carriages, dress, cards, rank, and it is an insoluble mystery that 
 "a belle should reject a lord." The "grave Clarissa," who rebukes 
 the "airs and flights" of Belinda, can offer no higher motive for 
 intermixing solid with trifling qualities than 
 
 That men may say, when we the front-box grace, 
 " Behold the first in virtue as in face ! " 
 
 The continuous raillery against female foibles is playful in its poignancy. 
 The whole wears a festive air, and has none of the ill-nature and 
 venom which marked Pope's later satire. 
 
 In allotting their several functions to the sylphs, Ariel reserves 
 Belinda's lap-dog for his own especial charge : 
 
 Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock. 
 
 Dennis said it was " contrary to all manner of judgment and decorum" 
 that the chief of the aerial train should be " only the keeper of a vile 
 Iceland cur," instead of protecting " the lady's favourite lock." l 
 Buff head repeated the futile objection. 2 "Black omens" announced 
 that some misfortune would befall Belinda, but the precise calamity 
 had been " wrapped by the fates in night." For aught Ariel knew, 
 the attack might be directed against the favourite dog, which is 
 neither " vile " nor " a cur" in Pope's poem, and which we may do 
 Belinda the justice to believe was more precious in her eyes than even 
 a favourite ringlet. She would rather have sacrificed her lock than 
 her dog. Dennis from hostility, and Ruff head from dullness, missed 
 the meaning of the stroke. The climax of the omens which prefigured 
 the coming disaster was that "Poll sat mute, and Shock was most 
 unkind." The "shrieks" of the heroine, when the catastrophe 
 arrived, were such as " when husbands or when lap-dogs breathe their 
 last." A gnome bent upon mischief made pampered lap-dogs ill, and 
 bright eyes wept over them. The undue fondness for dogs and 
 parrots, to the depreciation of the higher claims of humanity, was no 
 uncommon failing, and Pope's design was to ridicule it. Locks of 
 hair did not usurp the same supreme dominion, and Ariel, ignorant 
 where the danger would light, is properly represented as guarding the 
 pet dog, which had the first place in the affections of heartless women 
 of fashion. 
 
 To the distempered mind of Dennis the sylphs appeared an absurd 
 
 1 Remarks on Mr. Pope's Kape of the Lock, p. 27. 
 8 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 113. 
 
 VOti. II. rOKTRY. K
 
 130 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 excrescence. " They neither promote," he says, " nor retard the 
 danger of Belinda." ' Johnson admits the force of the observation, 
 and thinks it " implies some want of art that their power has not been 
 sufficiently intermingled with the action." The criticism seems hasty. 
 The sylphs have a large share in the fascination of Belinda. Their 
 province is to heighten and protect her charms, to preside at her 
 toilet, to imprison essences, to save the powder from too rude a gale, 
 to steal washes from the rainbow, to assist her blushes, and inspire 
 her airs. They perform these offices up to the fatal moment, and are 
 not an incumbrance to the narrative merely because they cannot avert 
 the final stroke. Nay, their impotence to stay the crisis is in keeping 
 with the general spirit of the poem. Belinda leads a life of vanity, 
 and the sylpha are the ministers of vanity. They are lustrous with 
 a butterfly beauty, the patrons of ephemeral folly, and it would be 
 inconsistent with the moral if they could have ensured a perpetual 
 triumph to weaknesses which inevitably terminate in mortification. 
 Pope accounts for the failure of the watchful legion to turn aside the 
 catastrophe. Ariel recognises that his power is gone when he perceives 
 " an earthly lover lurking at Belinda's heart," an intimation, perhaps, 
 that lovers are headstrong and incapable of guidance. Johnson asserts, 
 and with as little reason, that the game of cards, like the machinery, 
 has no connection with the subject of the poem. That subject is the 
 exaltation of a beautiful young lady throughout a day of glittering 
 fashion, till the hollow pomp ends in humiliation, angor, and tears. 
 Whatever amusements and pageantry entered into a day of the kind 
 belonged directly to the theme, provided they could be made sub- 
 servient to poetic effect. 
 
 When Ariel, baffled and weeping, is compelled to resign his charge, 
 the gnomes rush upon the scene, and retain their ascendancy till near 
 the end. They are but slightly sketched, and all we hear of the 
 appearance they present is that they have " a dusky, melancholy " 
 aspect, and " sooty pinions." Their functions are the opposite to 
 those of the sylphs, they give lap-dogs diseases, discompose head- 
 dresses, raise pimples on beauteous faces, engender pride, and spoil 
 graces. Dennis detected a flaw. Umbriel descends to the Cave of 
 Spleen, and procures from the goddess a bag filled with the impetuous, 
 and a phial with the depressing passions. The gnome empties the 
 bag of " sighs, sobs, and the war of tongues" on Belinda, who im- 
 mediately "burns with more than mortal ire." The gnome next 
 breaks over her the phial of " fainting fears and soft sorrows," when 
 she exchanges her expression of rage for " eyes half-languishing, half- 
 drowned in tears. " Now," says Dennis, " what could be more 
 useless, whether we look upon the bag or the bottle ?" s Without any 
 
 1 Dennis's Remarks, p. 24. * Dennis's Remarks, p. 40.
 
 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 131 
 
 assistance from the contents of the bag the " livid lightning had 
 flashed from Belinda's eyes," and she had "rent the affrighted skies 
 with her screams of horror. " Without any assistance from the bottle 
 she was found, on the gnome's return, sunk in the arms of a friend, 
 "her hair unbound, and her eyes dejected." Pope replied on the 
 margin of his copy of Dennis's pamphlet, that Juno in the ./Eneid 
 summons Alecto from the infernal regions to stir up Araata, who was 
 already burning with anger. This was no answer if the cases had 
 been parallel, which they were not, for Amata's anger was only a 
 passive irritation, and Alecto was sent to goad her into active fury. 
 A few words would have obviated the criticism of Dennis, but the 
 Cave of Spleen would still be out of place. The personifications of 
 ill-nature, affectation, and diseased fancies are literal descriptions of 
 men and women transferred from the surface of the globe to a pre- 
 tended world at its centre. Where no invention is displayed, where 
 there is nothing to gratify and beguile the imagination, the departure 
 from fact is distasteful to the mind. Instead of copying classic fables, 
 unsuited to modern times, Pope might have exhibited the inhabitants 
 of his Cave of Spleen in the midst of that society to which they be- 
 longed, and ascribed their repulsive qualities to the instigation of the 
 gnomes. These rather nugatory beings would have gained in import- 
 ance, and the pictures of the peevish, the affected, and the splenetic 
 would have gained in force and truth. 
 
 Dennis justly found fault with particular passages, which are equally 
 false to social usages, and the general conception of the poem. The 
 exultation of Belinda at winning a game of cards takes the form of 
 "shouts which fill the sky," and which are echoed back from "the 
 woods and long canals." The impertinence of the baron in cutting off 
 her curl required a strong expression of indignation, but not that " the 
 affrighted skies should be rent with screams of horror." At the con- 
 clusion of the battle, which in some of its incidents is a mere vulgar 
 brawl, Belinda again manifests her stentorian propensities by " roaring 
 in a louder strain than fierce Othello." There is no affinity between 
 Belinda gentle, graceful, and captivating, and Belinda shouting, 
 screaming, and roaring. Pope called his poem " heroi-comical," and 
 it is evident that he attached different meanings to the word. It 
 was " heroi-comical " to bring supernatural machinery to bear upon 
 common-place life, and stirround the toilet and card-table with a fairy 
 brilliancy. It was equally "heroi-comical" to give vent to the ebul- 
 litions of tragic or jovial frenzy on trivial occasions. The first 
 species of the " heroi-comical " lent a borrowed splendour to its 
 objects ; the second species was burlesque, and reduced the heroine 
 in her angry moods, to the level of a coarse, plebeian termagant, and 
 in her joyous moments to that of an unmannerly, low-bred romp. 
 The two species of the " heroi-comical " could not be applied to the
 
 132 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 same person without jarring discordance, and fortunately the burlesque 
 and disenchanting element is only sparingly introduced. 
 
 " The Rape of the Lock," said Dennis, " is an empty trifle, which 
 cannot have a moral." The Lutrin, he maintains, on the contrary, 
 is " an important satirical poem upon the luxury, pride, and animosi- 
 ties of the popish flergy, and the moral is, that when Christians, and 
 especially the clergy, run into great heats about religious trifles, their 
 animosity proceeds from the want of that religion which is the pre- 
 tence of their quarrel." 1 Pope era-ed the epithet " religious," and 
 substituting "female sex" for "popish clergy," " la lies" for "clergy," 
 and " sense " for " religion," claimed the description for the Rape of 
 the Lock. Dennis quotes some lines in which Boileau, he says, gives 
 " broad hints of his real meaning," and Pope writes on the margin 
 the words, "Clarissa's speech," a speech which is more definite than 
 any of the hints in the Lutrin. In delicious verse Clarissa dwells on 
 the transitory power of a handsome face, insists on the superior in- 
 fluence of good humour, and concludes with the couplet, 
 
 Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll ! 
 Charms strike the sight, but merit wins ths soul. 
 
 The moral here summed up pervades the poem, which is a continuous 
 satire on a tinsel existence. The injunction to be sweet-tempered is 
 indignantly rejected by Belinda, for the piece was professedly founded 
 on a subsisting feud, but the common sense of the admonitions 
 shames the folly which rejects them. Dennis undertook an impos- 
 sible task when he laboured to demonstrate the superiority of Boileau. 
 The Lutrin is stilted, extravagant, and prosaic by the side of the 
 Rape of the Lock. 
 
 Dennis's pamphlet against the Rape of the Lock consisted of 
 seven letters and a preface. Of four of the^e letters, Pope has 
 written, in his copy, sarcastic summaries, which throw no light 
 on his poem, but which betray by their exaggeration, his soreness 
 at the criticisms. Letter 1. "Proving that Boileau did not call 
 his Lutrin, Poeme He'roi-Comique, that Bossu does not say [anything 
 of] the machines, and that Butler [wrote] - the notes to his own 
 Hudibras." Letter 2. " Mr. Dennis's positive word that the Rape 
 of the Lock can be nothing but a trifle, and that the Lutrin cannot 
 be so, however it may appear." Letter 3. " Where it appears to 
 demonstration that no handsome lady ought to dress herself, and no 
 modest one to cry out or be angry." Letter 5. " Showeth that the 
 Rosicrucian doctrine is not the Christian, and that Callimachus and 
 Catullus were a couple of fools." Catullus and Callimachus are 
 
 1 Dennis's Remarks, p. 8, 9. 
 
 2 A fragment of Pope's writing has been cut away by the binder, and the words 
 in brackets are conjectural.
 
 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 133 
 
 not mentioned by Dennis. He had only condemned a passage 
 in Pope which was imitated from these poets. In the third letter 
 Dennis said nothing against handsome women dressing themselves, 
 or against modest women crying out, but maintained that simpli- 
 city of dress was more becoming than lavish adornments, and that 
 " well-brtd ladies," when joyful or angry, did not fill the skies and 
 surrounding country with their shoutings and roarings. In the first 
 letter the note of some commentator on Hudibras was ascribed by 
 Dennis to Butler, and in the second letter he asserted that Boileau 
 showed more judgment in styling the Lutriu an " heroic poem " than 
 did Pope in terming the Rape of the Lock " heroi-comical." Dennis 
 was not aware that Boileau in 1709 had replaced "he'roique" by 
 " heroi-comique," and that the English poet borrowed the epithet 
 from his French precursor. Pope's manuscript annotations are not 
 behind Dennis's text in petty cavils. The combatants were both too 
 angry to be candid ; or if Dennis shows candour, it is in his undis- 
 guised disregard of it. He fulminated against Pope for calling the 
 objects of his dislike " fool, dunce, blockhead, scoundrel." " No- 
 thing," he continues, " incapacitates a man so much for using foul 
 language as good sense, good-nature, and good-breeding ; and nothing 
 qualifies a man more for it than his being a clown, a fool, and a 
 barbarian." Therefore, said he, "I shall call A. P E neither fool 
 nor dunce, nor blockhead ; but I shall prove that he is all these in 
 a most egregious manner.'' 1 For boasting a virtue in the act of 
 violating it Dennis had no competitor. 
 
 Wordsworth, writing to Mr Dyce says, "Pope, in that production 
 of his boyhood, the Ode to Solitude, and in his Essay on Criticism, 
 has furnished proofs that at one period of his life he felt the charm 
 of a sober and subdued style, which he afterwards abandoned for one 
 that is, to my taste at least, too pointed and ambitious, and for a 
 versification too timidly balanced." 2 Southey and Coleridge accused 
 Pope of debasing the public taste, but they agreed in laying the 
 blame on his "meretricious" Homer, and excepted from their con- 
 demnation works which Wordsworth included in his censure. " The 
 mischief," says Southey, " was effected not by Pope's satirical and 
 moral pieces, for these entitle him to the highest place among poets 
 of his cla=s ; it was by his Homer. No other work in the language 
 so greatly vitiated the diction of English poetry. " 3 "In the course 
 of one of my lectures," says Coleridge, "I had occasion to point out 
 the almost faultless position and choice of words in Pope's original 
 compositions, particularly in his Satires, and Moral Essays, for the 
 
 1 Dennis's Remarks, Preface, p. v. vii. 
 
 2 Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. 5i. p. 221. 
 
 3 Cowper's \Vorks, ed. Southey, 1854, vol. i. p. 313.
 
 134 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 purpose of comparing them with his translation of Homer, which I do 
 not stand alone in regarding as the main source of our pseudo-poetic 
 diction." * Wordsworth loved simplicity of composition, and lan- 
 guage not ornate. His preference for the Essay on Criticism would 
 be intelligible if the piece had been free from adorned passages, and 
 the strained attempt to be pointed in some of the similes ; or if the 
 style, in the quieter passages, had been consummate of its kind. 
 Cowper has described the qualities which are essential to the highe*t 
 excellence in this species of poetry. " Every man," he says, " con- 
 versant with verse-making, knows by painful experience that the 
 familiar style is of all styles the most difficult to succeed in. To 
 make verse speak the language of prose, without beiug prosaic, to 
 marshal the words of it in such an order as they might naturally 
 take in falling from the lips of an extemporary speaker, yet without 
 meanness, harmoniously, elegantly, and without seeming to displace 
 a syllable for the sake of rhyme, is one of the most arduous tasks a 
 poet can undertake." 2 Pope, in his Essay on Criticism, did not 
 reach Cowper's standard, and far happier specimens of the style will 
 be found in some of his Satires. 
 
 The Rape of the Lock greatly surpasses in execution the Essay on 
 Criticism ; and austere, indeed, must be the taste which could con- 
 demn it. The "position of the words" is not always " faultless," 
 for Pope admitted too many of his usual inversions, but the phraseo- 
 logy is beautiful in itself, and exquisitely adapted to the subject. The 
 language, simple in its units, is rich in combination, without ever 
 being florid or profuse. The poet had to depict empty glories made 
 up of outward pageantry, and as rainbows cannot be painted with 
 grey, so Pope dipped his pen in the glowing colours which represented 
 the things. He could not have employed his radiant tints with 
 greater delicacy and power. Few as are the details, the scenic effect 
 is complete. He displayed his judgment in eschewing minuteness 
 which would have been tedious and prosaic ; the frail, superficial 
 show could only be imposing in a general view. The pointed lines 
 which offended Wordsworth, are not more numerous than befit the 
 theme. A certain sparkle of style accordel best with the glitter of 
 the world described. Dennis denounced the "puns." He said, 
 " they shocked the rules of true pleasantry, and bore the same pro- 
 portion to thought which bubbles held to bodies." 3 Two or three 
 of the double-meanings are offensive from that grossness which is the 
 single serious flaw in the brilliant gem. The few which remain are 
 legitimate in a lively poem, when thus sparingly introduced. Nor 
 
 1 Coleridge's Biographic Literaria, ed. 1847, vol. i. p. 39. 
 
 2 Cowper's Works, vol. ii. p. 399. 
 
 3 Dennis's Remarks, p. 33, 47.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 135 
 
 are they common puna, but words used at once in their literal and 
 metaphorical sense : 
 
 Or stain her honour or her new brocade. 
 Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball. 
 He first the snufF-box opened then the case. 
 
 Johnson has pointed out that Denham's verses on the Thames, " O ! 
 could I flow like thee," are marked by the same property, and no 
 one would call them punning lines. l 
 
 The enlarged edition of the Rape of the Lock had a rapid popu- 
 larity. " It has in four days' time," wrote Pope to Caryll, March 12, 
 1714, "sold to the number of three thousand, and is already re- 
 printed." " The sylphs and the gnomes," says Tyers, " were the 
 deities of the day." Much of the relish, with the herd of readers, 
 has passed away with the novelty. " Of the Rape of the Lock," says 
 Professor Reed, "I acknowledge my inability of admiration," 3 and 
 numbers who admire would qualify the superlative language of 
 De Quincey, Hazlitt, and Bowles. The conventional elegancies of a 
 particular class do not appeal to universal sympathy. Many persons 
 can enter no better into the fanciful beauty which is thrown around 
 routine trivialities. The facts with them are too strong to admit of 
 fiction. To these inaptitudes it must be added that the subtle 
 delicacies of humour, satire, language, and invention, which mingle 
 largely with the obvious beauties of the Rape of the Lock, can only 
 be perceived^ when the taste has been quickened by the early culture 
 of letters, l De Quincey remarks that, with all orders of men, the 
 elementary passions and principles are easiest understood, for the 
 seeds of them are sown in every mind, and Milton and Shakespeare 
 speak to understandings which are impervious to the refined and airy 
 graces of Pope's artificial world. 4 
 
 A few have gone into the opposite extreme, and placed Pope on a 
 level with Shakespeare and Milton themselves. His strongest claim 
 to the distinction is the Rape of the Lock, but wide is the interval, 
 whether the test is character, passions, manners, descriptions, or , 
 machinery. The characters in Pope's poem ;ire slight and superfi- 
 cial. There is a miniature sketch of an empty-headed fop, and an 
 outside view of a beautiful young lady fond of dress, amusements, 
 and admiration ; the rest of the human personages are shadows. 
 Passions, says Bowles, are the soul of poetry, and in poetry of the 
 highest order they are grand, terrible, pathetic, or lovely ; the grovel- 
 
 1 Lives of the Poets, vol. L p. 74. 
 
 Historical Rhapsody on Mr. Pope, 2nd ed. , p. 89. 
 
 3 Lectures on the British Poets, by Henry Reed. Philadelphia, 1857, vol. i. 
 p. 314. 
 
 4 De Quincey's Worts, vol. xii. p. 17. 
 

 
 136 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 ling, ludicrous, and trivial passions are of a less poetical species. 
 The passions of Belinda belong to this lower class. Her grief and 
 anger at the loss of her curl are professedly mock-heroic. They are 
 disproportioned to the frivolous cause, and neither kindle, nor are 
 meant to kindle, sympathy. The manners are not the index to 
 inner depths, the outward expression of the noble, the awful, or the 
 tender. They are an exterior varnish, the mere formalities of 
 fashion. The descriptions, apart from the sylphs, are chiefly of the 
 toilet, the card-table, and such-like things, which have no kin-ship 
 with the strong, abiding emotions. The very sylphs, by their em- 
 ployments, are, poetically, of an inferior race to the fairies who met 
 
 on bill, in dale, forest, or mead, 
 By paved fountain, or by rushy brook, 
 Or on the beached margin of the sea, 
 To dance their ringlets to the whistling wiud. 1 
 
 The beings who luxuriate in the everlasting beauties of nature have 
 a deeper charm for us than creatures whose chief delight is in the 
 little artifices of a woman's toilet. The skill is exquisite by which the 
 ephemeral nothings of gay fashion are coloured with the hues of poetic 
 fancy, but in spite of the brilliancy they remain nothings still, and 
 cannot compete with strains which are struck from the profoundest 
 chords in the heart and mind of man. Lord Byron, to save the 
 supremacy of Pope, asserted that " the poet is always ranked accord- 
 ing to his execution." 2 Bowles maintained that the test of poetical 
 excellence was the subject and execution combined. 3 He admitted 
 that the loftiest theme in feeble hands would be eclipsed by insig- 
 nificant topics when treated by a master, but he said that no genius 
 could render subordinate topics equal in poetry to the highest 
 where the execution, as in Shakespeare and Milton, was worthy of 
 the subject. Lord By roil stultified himself. He had no sooner com- 
 pleted his proof that execution was the sole criterion of poetry, than 
 he went on to argue that " the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, 
 as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth." 4 His 
 paradox did not deserve a reply, even if he had not contradicted it 
 the moment it was uttered. Hume wisely recommended that words 
 should not be wasted upon theories which it is inconceivable that any 
 human being could believe. 
 
 In his Observations on the Poetry of Pope, Bowles put the modes 
 and incidents of artificial life the secondary passions, and descrip- 
 
 1 Midsummer Night's Dream, Act ii. sc. 1. 
 
 2 Moore's Life of Byron, 1 vol. ed., p. 695. 
 8 Bowles's Pope, vol. x. p. 364. 
 
 * Moore's Life of Byron, p. 696.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 137 
 
 tions of outward objects in a lower grade than the development of 
 the impressive passions. 1 What he said of manners and passions 
 was supprsssed by Campbell, who based his reply upon his own mis- 
 statements, and proceeded to protest against "trying Pope exclusively 
 by his powers of describing inanimate phenomena." - No one could 
 be more emphatic than Bowles in placing souls before things. Of 
 " inanimate phenomena," he had said that " all images drawn from 
 what is beautiful or sublime in the works of nature, are more 
 beautiful and sublime than any images drawn from art." Again, hia 
 antagonists misrepresented him, and arguing as though he had 
 asserted that all images drawn from nature were beautiful, and that 
 there was no beauty in any image drawn from art, they imagined 
 they refuted him by adducing natural objects which were unsightly, 
 and artificial objects which were the reverse. The canal at Venice, 
 without the buildings and gondolas "would be nothing," said Lord 
 Byron, " but a clay-coloured ditch." 3 The illustration did not touch 
 the position of Bowles, who had never pretended that the ugly in 
 nature eclipsed the beautiful in art. His principle was that, beauty 
 for beauty, Solomon in the richest products of the loom was not 
 arrayed like the flowers of the field. Campbell did not reason better 
 than Byron. He selected the launching of a ship of the line for an 
 instance of the sublime. Admitting, what nobody could deny, that 
 his ship was poetical, it did not follow that the wooden structure had 
 the grandeur of the ocean. His language was a virtual confession 
 that it was inferior. He endowed his " vast bulwark " with attri- 
 butes borrowed from nature, human and inanimate. He thought 
 " of the stormy element on which the vessel was soon to ride, of the 
 days of battle and nights of danger she had to encounter, of the ends 
 of the earth which she had to visit, of all that she had to do and 
 suffer for her country." He found the sublimity, not in the ship, 
 but in the associations, in the stormy waves of the mighty deep 
 which was to be her home ; in the terrors of darkness when she was 
 tempest- driven ; in the vast distances she had to traverse ; in the 
 perils and patriotism of the crew ; in the fierce heroic contention of 
 the battle. Campbell was self-refuted. He fell into the same error 
 with respect to some fragments he quoted from the poets. Images 
 derived from nature and art were mixed together, and he did not 
 perceive that the passages owed their piincipal beauty to the nature. 
 The fallacies of disputants who wrote without thinking were easily 
 exposed, and Bowles got a signal victory over the whole of his 
 numerous opponents. 
 
 Many a work of man, like the ship, impresses us less by its intrinsic 
 
 1 Bowles's Pope, vol. x. p. 363 ; Bowles's Letters to Campbell, 2nd ed., p. 22 
 
 2 Campbell's Specimens of British Poets, 1 vol. ed., p. Ixxxvii. 
 s Moore's Life of Byron, p. 6S3.
 
 138 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 qualities than by the train of ideas it uuggests. Until the errors of 
 controversialists called for fuller explanations Bowles did not draw 
 the distinction, and Lord Byron was misled by overlooking it. " The 
 Parthenon," he said, "is more poetical than the rock on which it 
 stands." 1 "Not," replied Hazlitt, "because it is a work of art, 
 but because it is a work of art o'erthrown." J Prostrate and broken 
 columns, rent walls, and mouldering stone, exercise a more potent 
 sway over the feelings than temples in the freshness of their artistic 
 beauty. Hazlitt tells the obvious cause. Relics of departed glory, 
 dilapidated monuments of intellectual splendour, are mementos of 
 the fate which awaits the proudest works of man. With the 
 thoughts of mighty reverses mingle the reflections which are always 
 engendered by antiquity. The imagination reverts to shadowy, 
 remote generations, to a people and power long ago laid in dust, and 
 the ruins have a pathos which is the result of the centuries that have 
 swept over them, of the mysteries, vicissitudes, and havoc of time. 
 When Lord Byron asked if there was an image in Gray's Elegy more 
 striking than his "shapeless sculptures," his own question might 
 have revealed the truth to him. 3 Whatever poetry may be embodied 
 in the matchless art of Greece, there can be none in the " shapeless 
 sculptures" of country tomb- stones ; but they are memorials set up 
 by poor cottagers to protect the bones of kindred from insult, and 
 the whole force of the phrase in the Elegy arises from the prominence 
 given to the tenderness and affection of which " the shapeless 
 sculptures" are the symbols. The emotion is extrinsic to the 
 rude, prosaic, and often ludicrous art. The same image becomes 
 poetical or uupoetical according to the associations with which it is 
 linked. The rusting, disused needles of Cowper's Mary, stricken by 
 paralysis, are associated, Byron says, " with the darning of stockings, 
 the hemming of shirts, and the mending of breeches." 4 This is the 
 ordinary, mechanic association, and had it been the association called 
 up by Cowper's lines they would not have been, what Byron pro- 
 nounced them, " eminently poetical and pathetic." The associations 
 are of another kind. The thousands who have shed tears over the 
 lines to Mary did not pay a tribute to the needles, or the uses to 
 which the needles were applied. They were melted by the repre- 
 sentation true and strong as the living facts of love, of decay, of 
 desolation, and of anguish. The different aspect of the same in- 
 cident through the influence of association is exemplified in the 
 description of the tea in the Rape of the Lock, and in the Task. 
 The passage of Pope is not. united to any sentiment, and only pleases 
 
 1 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 693. 
 
 5 Lectures on the English Poets, p. 389. 
 
 3 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 694. 
 
 4 Moore's Life of Byron, p. 697.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 139 
 
 from the elegance of the verse and language. Cowper sets the heart 
 in a slow with the delicious picture he presents of " fire-side enjoy- 
 ments, and home-born happiness." 
 
 Oat-door nature, aud the imposing or beautiful passions, were not 
 " the haunt and main region of Pope's song," and Bowles, after 
 saying that the representation of nature demanded a susceptible 
 heart, and an observing eye, goes on to state that " the weak eyes 
 and tottering strength " of Pope were the reason that he seldom ex- 
 celled in depicting natural appearances. His legs would not serve 
 him to walk nor his eyes to see, and he was limited to the particulars 
 which " could be gained by books, or suggested by imagination." 
 " From his infirmities," Bowles continues, " he must have been 
 chiefly conversant with artificial life, but if he had been gifted with 
 the same powers of observing outward nature, I have no doubt he 
 would have evinced as much accuracy in describing the appropriate 
 and peculiar beauties such as nature exhibits in the Forest where he 
 lived, as he was able to describe in a manner so novel, at;d with 
 colours so vivid, a game of cards." ' The premises are erroneous. 
 Pope's vision was not bad ; his eyes, says Warburton, were " fine, 
 sharp, and piercing ; " 2 and though he was too feeble for long walks, 
 he could, and did, ramble through woods and meadows, and along the 
 banks of streams. Nine-tenths of the finest descriptions from nature 
 in the poets are of sights and sounds which were within the range of 
 his common experience. The decision of Bowles must be reversed, 
 aud we must ascribe the little nature in Pope's works to his want of 
 mental "susceptibility," and not to physical infirmity. His love of 
 the country was the cursory admiration which is seldom wanting. He 
 had none of the exceptional enthusiasm which could lead him to revel 
 in nature, to scrutinise it, aud enrich his mind with its memories. His 
 strongest sympathies and antipathies were directed to the society of 
 his day, to the men who praised or abused, caressed or defied him. 
 
 The object of Bowles in setting forth his critical principles, was 
 not to condemn descriptions of artificial life or images taken from 
 art, but to single out the circumstances which render one class of 
 poetry more exalted than another. The bulk of Pope's works were 
 satirical and didactic : and the affinity to the highest species of 
 poetry in the Rape of the Lock, and the Epistle of Eloisa, was not so 
 complete as to place him on a level with the mightiest masters 
 Warton and Bowles united in ranking him before Dryden and next 
 to Milton. 3 Johnson doubtfully, and Cowper unhesitatingly, put 
 
 1 Bowles's Pope, vol. x. p. 371. 
 
 2 Warburton's Pope, vol. iv. p. 16. 
 
 3 Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed., vol. ii. p. 404 ; Bowles's 
 T.rtt*rs to T. Campbell, 2nd ed., p. 28.
 
 140 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Dryden before him. 1 Cowper states that he had " known persons of 
 taste and discernment who would not allow that Pope was a poet at 
 all," and the language of some writers implies that his claim to be 
 called a poet was a serious moot-point with critics. Johnson gravely 
 replied to the question " whether Pope was a poet," and Hazlitt said 
 in 1818, that it was "a question which had hardly yet been 
 settled." 2 Who the sceptics were does not appear, and it is pro- 
 bable that the opinion was never maintained by a single person of 
 reputation. Pope was placed higher by Warton and Bowles, who 
 were accused of depreciating, than by Johnson who defended him. 
 Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge had " an antipathy to him," 
 according to Byron ; 3 but this was a false charge, originating in his 
 own antipathy to Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. They all 
 admitted that Pope had a brilliant poetical genius, and that many of 
 his poems were of extraordinary excellence. Wordsworth, the one 
 perhaps of the three who held him the cheapest, said he was " a 
 man most highly gifted, who unluckily took to the plain when the 
 heights were within his reach." Yet, while thinking that his poetry 
 was not of the most poetical kind "he committed much of him to 
 memory," acknowledged that " he succeeded as far as he went," 
 and in mentioning the persons, dramatists omitted, who were the 
 representatives of the "poetic genius of England," he specially 
 named " Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Drydeu, and Pope." 4 The real 
 Pope controversy was with the zealots who maintained that he was 
 of the same flight with Shakespeare and Milton. Their lofty esti- 
 mate of his comparative excellence, did not arise from their keener 
 appreciation of his merits ; they were simply men of cold, unimagi- 
 native minds, who were insensible to merits which were greater still. 
 
 " Pope," said Hazlitt, " had none of the enthusiasm of poetry ; 
 he was in poetry what the sceptic is in religion." 5 This was a 
 creed he sometimes avowed. " Poetry and criticism," he said in 
 the preface to his works, " are only the affair of idle men who write 
 in their closets, and of idle men who read there." ( He talked later 
 of his " idle songs," but in the same breath, with characteristic 
 inconsistency, he set up to be the moral reformer of his age, and had 
 undertaken a little before " to vindicate " in verse "the ways of 
 God to man." 7 His views of his art are contradictory and irrecon- 
 
 1 Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 116; Cowper to Unwin, Jan. 5, 
 1782. 
 
 3 Johnson's Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 137; Hazlitt's Lectures on the 
 English Poets, p. 133. 
 
 3 Byron's Works, 1 vol. ed., p. 804. 
 
 4 Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. ii. p. 215, 225, 470. 
 s Lectures on the English Poets, p. 137. 
 
 6 Pope's Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 4. 
 
 7 Prologue to the Satires, ver. 28, 342 ; Essay on Man, Ep. i. ver. 16.
 
 BAPE OF THE LOCK. 141 
 
 cileable. His disparagement of it was an affectation founded upon a 
 common definition of poetry, that its end was to please. The 
 premise, false from its incompleteness, led to degrading conclusions. 
 Hurd, who studied poetry for the purpose of analysing its ingre- 
 dients, and who should have known its true properties, adopted the 
 usual pleasure theory, and at thirty-seven he was naturally ashamed 
 of his frivolous pursuit. " He must not," he said, " pass more of 
 his life in these flowery regions ; the light food was not the proper 
 nourishment of age." Verse was the amusement of youth, and 
 unless very sparingly used, was unbecoming the gravity of mature 
 minds. 1 Milton had another conception of the office of poetry, and 
 he avowed that his purpose was " to inbreed and cherish in a great 
 people whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable 
 or grave." Wordsworth was of Milton's school. His aim was, " to 
 make men wiser, better, and happier." "Every great poet," he said, 
 " is a teacher ; I wish to be considered as a teacher or as nothing." 2 
 The right doctrine was enforced by a critic whom Pope despised. 
 " Poetry," wrote Dennis, " has two ends, a subordinate and a 
 final one : the subordinate one is pleasure, and the final one is 
 instruction." 3 He had the sanction of Lord Bacon, who declared that 
 "poesy" had three uses, of which two were to inculcate morality 
 and heroism ; the third alone was for " delectation." 4 Aristotle 
 long before had contended that poetry was a more effective school of 
 virtue than philosophy, and Horace avowed his conviction that right 
 and wrong were taught better by Homer than by the sages. The least 
 reflection upon the range of the noblest poetry must satisfy anybody 
 that entertainment is its smallest function. The poet has the world 
 of external things from which to cull his pictures. He gives definite- 
 ness to what was vague, fixes what was transitory, detects delightful 
 resemblances, and brings to view unnoticed beauties. He invests 
 the realities with the thoughts of his impassioned mind, creating in 
 us sentiments, and supplying us with associations which we should 
 not have derived from the actual objects. Nature, in itself en- 
 chanting, has meanings for us which were never dreamt of till wo 
 saw it through the medium of the poet's representations. He has 
 the world of mankind for his province. He can take us the circuit 
 of the passions ; he can summon them from the inner recesses of the 
 
 1 Kurd's Horace, 5th ed., vol. iii. p. 148. 
 
 2 Memoirs of Wordsworth, vol. i. p. 339, 342. 
 
 3 The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, chap. 3. 
 
 4 Advancement of Learning, ed. Montagu, p. 127. A sentence from the 
 passage is quoted hy Hurd, who concludes that "pleasure in the idea of Lord 
 Bacon is the ultimate and appropriate end of poetry." Hurd could not have 
 looked into the original, and must have been deceived by trusting to second-hand 
 extracts.
 
 142 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 soul, and set them in open array ; he can assign to each its rightful 
 force, stripping corruption of its disguises, and displaying what is 
 lovely in its unadulterated lustre. He can soar at pleasure into 
 loftier regions, and when his main theme lies in a lower sphere 
 can link it, openly or by implication, to the world of spirits, to the 
 divinity and the divine. Verse abounds in the strains which lift the 
 soul to heaven, or bring clown heaven to glorify earth, and sustain 
 its weakness and woes. In a word, the poet treats of nature, man, 
 the superhuman, and treats of them in a way which dilates our 
 faculties and feelings, till through the contemplation of the ideal we 
 attain to a grander real. " Poesy/' says Lord Bacon, " wa,a ever 
 thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise 
 and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of 
 the mind, whereas reason doth buckle and brw the mind unto the 
 nature of things." 1 The domain of high poetry is the sublime, the 
 solemn, the terrible, the pathetic, the tender, the sweet, and the 
 tranquil ; the office of poetry is to purify, to ennoble, to humanise, to 
 soften, to soothe, and to delight. Poetry is great, and participates of 
 divineness in proportion as it employs these means, and attains these 
 ends. The dry unprofitable seeds which lurk in the heart, are by 
 poetry quickened into a resplendent growth. Through poetry, ob- 
 scure vestiges of truth start into distinctness, and flash upon the 
 inward eye. Through poetry, the ethereal elements of the mind, 
 incessantly dissipated and deadened by common concerns, are re- 
 newed in their sanctity. In the reach and importance of the lessons 
 no hard prosaic facts can go beyond exalted poetry. The lesser kinds 
 have their lesser uses, and chiefly in this that they are often more 
 attractive in youth than healthier inspirations, and prepare the way 
 for them. Wordsworth, in his boyhood, was entranced by the false 
 glitter of famous poems which in his manhood seemed to him " dead 
 as a theatre fresh emptied of spectators." J Thrown aside when they 
 had served their purpose, they were the initial sparks which kindled 
 a spirit that took precedence even of Milton in the depth and compass 
 of thoughts and feelings almost deserving the name of revelations. 
 
 1 Advancement of Learning, p. 127. 
 J The Eecluse, 13ook T.
 
 TO MRS. 1 ARABELLA FERMOR. 
 
 MADAM, 
 
 It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this 
 piece, since I dedicate it to you. Yet you may hear me witness, 
 it was intended only to divert a few young ladies, who have 
 good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at 
 their sex's little unguarded follies, hut at their own. But as 
 it was communicated with the air of a secret, it soon found its 
 way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offered 
 to a bookseller, you had the good-nature, for my sake, to con- 
 sent to the publication of one more correct. This I was forced 
 to, before I had executed half my design, for the machinery 
 was entirely wanting to complete it. 
 
 The machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the critics, 
 to signify that part which the deities, angels, or demons, are 
 made to act in a poem. For the ancient poets are in one 
 respect like many modern ladies, let an action be never so 
 trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the utmost im- 
 portance. These machines I determined to raise on a very 
 new and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of spirits. 
 
 I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words 
 before a lady ; but it is so much the concern of a poet to have 
 his works understood, and particularly by your sex, that you 
 must give me leave to explain two or three difficult terms. 11 
 
 1 The title of Mrs. continued in He must bring "her acquainted with 
 
 Pope's early time to be applied indif- the Bosicrucians, " and explain what 
 
 ferently to all grown up ladies, whether is meant by "machinery." This is 
 
 married or single. The contracted done with such an air of conceited 
 
 form Miss was appropriated to young superiority, and of affected condescen- 
 
 girls, and women of loose character. sion, that it appears to me as pedantic 
 
 5 Pope never, I think, is so unsuc- as the pedantry he pretended to de- 
 
 cessful as when he is writing to the spise. The latter part of the epistle 
 
 ]adies. He talks of the impropriety is certainly urbane, elegant and un- 
 
 of using hard words before a lady. affected. BOWLES.
 
 H4 RAPE OP THE LOCK. 
 
 The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted 
 with. The best account I know of them is in a French book, 
 called Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its title and size is 
 so like a novel, that many of the fair sex have read it for one 
 by mistake. According to these gentlemen the four elements 
 are inhabited by spirits, which they call sylphs, gnomes, 
 nymphs, and salamanders. The gnomes or demons of earth 
 delight in mischief; but the sylphs, whose habitation is in the 
 air, are the best conditioned creatures imaginable. For they 
 say, any mortals may enjoy the most intimate familiarities 
 with these gentle spirits, upon a condition veiy easy to all 
 true adepts, an inviolate preservation of chastity. 
 
 As to the following cantos, all the passages of them are as 
 fabulous, as the vision at the beginning, or the transformation 
 at the end, except the loss of your hair, which I always 
 mention with reverence. The human persons are as fictitious 
 as the airy ones ; and the character of Belinda, as it is now 
 managed, resembles you in nothing but in beauty. 
 
 If this poem had as many graces as there are in your person, 
 or in your mind, yet I could never hope it should pass through 
 the world half so uncensured as you have done. But let its 
 fortune be what it will, mine is happy enough, to have given 
 me this occasion of assuring you that I am, with the truest 
 esteem, 
 
 Madam, 
 Your most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 A. POPE.
 
 THE 
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 WHAT dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 
 What mighty contests rise from trivial things, 
 I sing This verse to Caryll, 1 Muse ! is due : 
 This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view : * 
 Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 
 If she inspire, and he approve my lays.* 
 
 Say what strange motive, goddess ! could compel 4 
 A well-bred lord 5 1' assault a gentle belle ? 
 
 1 C or C 1 in all the im- 
 pressions which appeared in Pope's 
 lifetime. "In this more solemn 
 edition," Pope wrote to Caryll, Feb. 
 25, 1714, when the poem was about 
 to be published in its enlarged shape, 
 " I was strangely tempted to have 
 set your name at length, as well as I 
 have my own ; but I remembered the 
 desire you formerly expressed to the 
 contrary, besides that it may better 
 become me to appear as the offerer of 
 an ill present, than you as the re- 
 ceiver of it." 
 
 * Roscommon in his Essay : 
 
 Or Callus song, so tender and so true, 
 As e'en Lycoris might with pity view. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 This is formed from Virgil, Geor. 
 iv. 6. Sedley's version of the passsge 
 imitated : 
 
 The subject's humble, but not so the praise, 
 If any muse asists the poet's lays. 
 VOL, II. POETRT. 
 
 Dryden's Translation : 
 Slight is the subject, but the praise not 
 
 small 
 
 If heav'n assist, and Phosbus hear my call 
 WAK-EFIELD. 
 
 4 "Compel," says Dennis, "is a 
 botch for the sake of the rhyme. The 
 word that should naturally have been 
 used was either induce or provoke." 
 Impel would have fitted both the 
 rhyme and the sense. 
 
 5 " Belinda was Mrs. Arabella 
 Fermor ; the Baron was Lord Petre, 
 of small stature, who soon after 
 married a great heiress, Mrs. "Warms- 
 ley, and died, leaving a posthumous 
 son ; Thalestris was Mrs. Morley ; Sir 
 Plume was her brother, Sir George 
 Brown, of Berkshire." Copied from 
 a MS. in a book presented by K. Lord 
 Burlington, to Mr. "William Sherwin. 
 WARTON. 
 
 All these persons were Roman Ca-
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, 
 Could make a gentle belle reject a lord ? 
 In tasks so bold, can little men engage, 
 And in soft bosoms, dwells such mighty rage ? ' 
 
 Sol through white curtains shot a tiin'rous 4 ray, 3 
 And ope'd those eyes that must eclipse the day : 
 Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 
 And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake : 
 Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the ground, 4 
 And the pressed watch returned a silver sound. 
 
 10 
 
 tholics. The marriage of Lord Petre 
 toMissWarmsley took place in March, 
 1712, and he died the year after in 
 March, 1713, at the age of 22. Miss 
 Fermor married Mr. Perkins, of Ufton 
 Court, near Reading, in 1714. Her 
 husband died in 1736, and she her- 
 self in 1738. CROKER. 
 
 1 This passage is a palpable imita- 
 tion of the exordium of the ^Eneis, 
 and particularly the last line. 
 
 -tantaene animis coelestibus irae ? 
 
 And dwell such passions in coelestial minds? 
 
 VTAKEFIELD. 
 
 It was in the first editions : 
 r* 
 
 And dwells such rage hi softest bosoms then, 
 And lodge such daring souls in little men ? 
 
 POPS. 
 
 The second line of the rejected 
 reading was from Addison's transla- 
 tion of the fourth Georgic : 
 
 Their little bodies lodge a mighty soul 
 
 Pope probably altered the couplet 
 in consequence of an objection of the 
 author of the Supplement to the Pro- 
 found, who remarked upon the mean 
 effect which resulted from throwing 
 the rhyme upon ' ' then ; " " for the 
 rhyme," says Dr. Trapp, "draws out 
 the sound of little and ignoble words, 
 and makes them observed." 
 
 2 By timorous I understand feeble, 
 
 from the medium through which it 
 passed. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Verse 13, &c., stood thus in the 
 first edition : 
 
 Sol through white curtains did his beams 
 display, 
 
 And ope'd those eyes which brighter shine 
 than they : 
 
 Shock just had giv'n himself the rousing 
 shake, 
 
 And nymphs prepared their chocolate to 
 take; 
 
 Thrice the wrought slipper knocked against 
 the ground, 
 
 And striking watches the tenth hour re- 
 sound. POPE. 
 
 4 Belinda rung a hand-bell, which 
 not being answered, she knocked with 
 her slipper. Bell-hanging was not 
 introduced into our domestic apart- 
 ments till long after the date of the 
 Rape of the Lock. There are no 
 bells at Hampton Court, nor were 
 there any in the first quarter of the 
 present century at Chatsworth and 
 Holkham. I myself, about the year 
 year 1790, remember that it was still 
 the practice for ladies to summon 
 their attendants to their bedchambers 
 by knocking with a high-heeled shoe. 
 Servants, too, were accustomed to 
 wait in ante-rooms, whence they were 
 summoned by hand-bells, and this 
 explains the extraordinary number of 
 such rooms in the houses of the last 
 century. CROKER,
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 147 
 
 Belinda still her downy pillow pressed, 1 
 
 Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy rest : 20 
 
 'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed 
 
 The morning dream that hovered o'er her head, 
 
 A youth more glitt'ring than a birth-night beau,* 
 
 (That ev'n in slumber caused her cheek to glow) 
 
 Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, 25 
 
 And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say. 
 
 " Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished care 
 Of thousand bright inhabitants of air ! 
 If e'er one vision touched thy infant thought, 
 Of all the nurse and all the priest have taught ; so 
 
 Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen, 
 The silver token, and the circled green, 3 
 Or virgins visited by angel-pow'rs 
 With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs ; 
 Hear and believe ! thy own importance know, 35 
 
 Nor bound thy narrow views to things below. 
 Some secret truths, from learned pride concealed, 
 To maids alone and children are revealed. 
 What though no credit doubting wits may give ? 
 The fair and innocent shall still believe. *o 
 
 Know then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly, 
 The light militia of the lower sky : 
 
 1 All the verses from hence to the ficence of the dresses at the birth- 
 end of this canto were added after- night balls. 
 
 wards. POPE. 3 ' ' The silver token " alludes to the 
 
 And, as Mr. Croker observes, Pope, silverpennieswhich fairies were said to 
 
 in adding them, did not perceive that drop at night into the shoes of maids 
 
 he introduced an inconsistency. At who kept the house clean and tidy. 
 
 ver. 14 Belinda is represented as "The circled green" refers to those 
 
 waking, and at ver. 20 we have her rings of grass of a deeper hue than 
 
 still sleeping. the surrounding pasture, which were 
 
 2 The frequenters of the court ap- formerly believed to be caused by the 
 peared in clothes of unusual splendour midnight dances "of airy elves.' 
 on the birth-day of Bang, Queen, This was the lore taught by the nurse. 
 Prince or Princess of Wales. There The priest infused the legends of 
 are innumerable allusions in the "virgins visited by angel-powers." 
 writings of the time to the magm- CHOKER. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, 
 
 Hang o'er the box, and hover round the ring. 
 
 Think what an equipage thou hast in air, 45 
 
 And view with scorn two pages and a chair. 
 
 As now your own, our beings were of old, 
 
 And once inclosed in woman's beauteous mould ; 
 
 Thence, by a soft transition, we repair 
 
 From earthly vehicles to these of air. so 
 
 Think not, when woman's transient breath is fled, 
 
 That all her vanities at once are dead ; 2 
 
 Succeeding vanities she still regards, 
 
 And though she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards. 
 
 Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, 5* 
 
 And love of ombre, after death survive. 3 
 
 For when the fair in all their pride expire, 
 
 To their first elements, their souls retire : 
 
 The sprites of fiery termagants in flame 
 
 Mount up, and take a salamander's name. eo 
 
 Soft yielding minds to water glide away, 
 
 And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea. 
 
 The graver prude sinks downward to a gnome, 
 
 In search of mischief still on earth to roam. 
 
 1 The drive in Hyde Park is still 8 Epilogue to Dryden's Tyrannick 
 
 called the ring, though the site and Love : 
 shape have been changed. CEOKER. 
 
 The box at the theatre, and the F r after death w e sprites have just such 
 
 ring in Hyde Park, are frequently "^f 8 , 
 
 J . f J We had, for all the world, when human 
 
 mentioned as the two principal places creatures. STEE YENS. 
 for the public display of beauty and 
 
 fashion. Thus Lord Dorset, in his , Qvue g^^ currum 
 
 lines on Lady Dorchester : Armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentes 
 
 Pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure re- 
 Wilt thou still sparkle in the box postos. Virg. Mneid, vt POPE. 
 Or ogle in the ring. 
 
 And Garth, in the Dispensary, speak- To Dryden's version of which passage 
 
 ing of a deceased young lady, says : our P oet was indebted : 
 
 How lately did this celebrated thing The love of horses which they had alive, 
 
 Blaze in the box, and sparkle in the And care of chariots, after death survive, 
 
 ring. WAKEFIELD.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 149 
 
 G5 
 
 70 
 
 The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 
 
 And sport and flutter in the fields of air. 1 
 
 j^ f Know further yet ; whoever fair and chaste 
 
 Rejects mankind, is by some sylph embraced : 
 
 For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease 
 
 Assume what sexes and what shapes they please.* 
 
 What guards the purity of melting maids, 
 
 In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades, 
 
 Safe from the treach'rous friend, the daring spark, 
 
 The glance by day, the whisper in the dark, 
 
 When kind occasion prompts their warm desires, 75 
 
 When music softens, and when dancing fires ? 
 
 'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know, 
 
 Though honour is the word with men below.* 
 
 " Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face/ 
 For life predestined to the gnomes' embrace. so 
 
 These 5 swell their prospects and exalt their pride, 
 When offers are disdained, and love denied : 
 Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain, 
 While peers and dukes, and all their sweeping train, 
 
 ' Dryden, ^En. i. 196 : 
 
 The realms of ocean and the fields of air. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 In Le Comte de Gabalis the sala- 
 manders who dwelt in fire, the 
 nymphs who peopled the seas and 
 rivers, the gnomes who filled the 
 earth almost to the centre, and 
 the sylphs who in countless mul- 
 titudes floated in the air, are said to 
 be formed of the purest portion of 
 the elements they respectively inha- 
 bit. But their moral and mental 
 natures are not, as in the Rape of the 
 Lock, the counter-part of their cor- 
 poreal qualities, and they are a race 
 of beings distinct from man, and not 
 deceased mortals, as with Pope, who 
 was indebted for this circumstance 
 to the account of the fairy train in 
 Drydeii's Flower and Leaf : 
 
 And all those airy shapes you now behold 
 Were human bodies once, and clothed with 
 earthly mould. 
 
 2 The idea and the phraseology are 
 both from Paradise Lost, i. 423 : 
 
 For spirits when they please 
 Can either sex assume, or both .... 
 
 In what shape they choose, 
 
 Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 
 Can execute their aery purposes, 
 And works of love or enmity fulfil. 
 
 3 Parody of Homer. WARBHRTON. 
 Dryden, Hind and Panther, 3rd 
 
 part : 
 
 Immortal pow'rs the term of conscience 
 
 know, 
 
 But int'rest is her name with men below. 
 HOLT WHITE. 
 
 * That is, too sensible of their 
 beauty. WAKBTTSTON. 
 
 5 The gnomes who prompt the dis- 
 dain of the nymphs predestined to 
 disappointment. CROKKR.
 
 150 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 And garters, stars, and coronets appear, w 
 
 And in soft sounds ' Your Grace ' salutes their ear. 
 
 'Tis these that early taint the female soul, 
 
 Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll, 
 
 Teach infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know, 
 
 And little hearts to nutter at a beau. oo 
 
 " Oft, when the world imagine women stray, 
 The sylphs through mystic mazes guide their way, 
 Through all the giddy circle they pursue, 
 And old impertinence expel by new. 
 
 What tender maid but must a victim fall 95 
 
 To one man's treat, but for another's ball ? 
 When Florio speaks, what virgin could withstand, 
 If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand ? 
 With varying vanities, from ev'ry part, 
 They shift the moving toyshop of their heart ; 100 
 
 Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots 
 
 strive, 
 
 Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive. 
 This erring mortals levity may call ; 
 Oh blind to truth ! the sylphs contrive it all. 
 
 " Of these am I, who thy protection claim,* 105 
 
 A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. 
 Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, 
 In the clear mirror of thy ruling star * 
 I saw, alas ! some dread event impend, 
 Ere to the main this morning sun descend. no 
 
 But heaven reveals not what, or how, or where : 
 Warned by the sylph, oh pious maid, beware ! 
 
 1 Jam clypeus clypeis, umbone repellitur belles the thought of a previous 
 
 umbo. coach. 
 Enso minax ensis, pede pes, et cuspide 
 
 cuspis, &c. Statins. -WARBURTON. Claim thy protection signifies 
 
 " I claim to be protected bythee," 
 
 To drive a coach has an exclusive whereas the sense here is, "I claim 
 
 technical meaning, which renders to protect thee." 
 Pope's phrase improper for express- 3 The language of the Platonists, 
 
 ing that the thought of a second the writers of the intelligible world 
 
 coach obliterates from the minds of of Spirits, &c. POPE.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 151 
 
 This to disclose is all thy guardian can : 
 Beware of all, but most beware of man ! " 
 
 He said ; when Shock, who thought she slept too long, us 
 Leaped up, and waked his mistress with his tongue ; 
 'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true, 
 Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux ; ' 
 Wounds, charms, and ardours, were no sooner read, 
 But all the vision vanished from thy head. 120 
 
 And now, unveiled, the toilet stands displayed, 
 Each silver vase in mystic order laid. 
 First, robed in white, the nymph intent adores, 
 With head uncovered, the cosmetic pow'rs. 
 A heav'nly image in the glass appears, 125 
 
 To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears ; 
 Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side, 
 Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride. 
 Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here 
 The various off 'rings of the world appear ; * 130 
 
 From each she nicely culls with curious toil, 
 And decks the goddess with the glitt'ring spoil. 
 This casket India's glowing gems unlocks, 
 And all Arabia breathes from yonder box. 
 The tortoise here and elephant unite, 135 
 
 Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the white. 
 Here files of pins extend their shining rows, 
 Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billets-doux. 
 Now awful beauty puts on all its arms ; 
 The fair each moment rises in her charms, HO 
 
 1 It cannot be that Belinda then mates. The muff and the fan come 
 saw for the first time a billet-doux. together from the different ends of the 
 The meaning no doubt is that a billet- earth. The scarf is sent from the tor- 
 doux was the first thing she saw that rid zone, and the tippet from beneath 
 morning. CHOKER. the pole. The brocade petticoat arises 
 
 2 Evidently from Addison's Spec- out of the mines of Peru, and the dia- 
 tator, "So. 69, May, 1711. " The mond necklace out of the bowels of 
 single dress of a woman of quality is Indostan." WARTON. 
 
 often the product of an hundred cli-
 
 152 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Repairs her smiles, awakens ev'ry grace, 
 
 And calls forth all the wonders of her face ; 
 
 Sees by degrees a purer blush arise, 
 
 And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes. 
 
 The busy sylphs surround their darling care, 145 
 
 These set the head, and those divide the hair, 1 
 
 Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown ; 
 
 And Betty's praised for labours not her own. 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 NOT with more glories, in th' ethereal plain, 
 
 The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, 
 
 Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams * 
 
 Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames. 3 
 
 Fair nymphs, and well-dressed youths around her shone, 5 
 
 But ev'ry eye was fixed on her alone. 
 
 On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, 
 
 Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. 
 
 Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 
 
 Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those ; 10 
 
 Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ; 
 
 Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
 
 1 Ancient traditions of the Eabbis was "of this great world both eye 
 relate, that several of the fallen angels and soul," lie falls into an insipid 
 became amorous of women, and par- hyperbole. When Chaucer, in his 
 ticularize some ; among the rest Asael, Knight's Tale, says, 
 
 who lay with Naamah, the wife of Up rose the sun> md up rose Emily, 
 Noah, or of Ham ; and who, continu- 
 ing impenitent, still presides over the CYerv one feels the matchless charm 
 women's toilets. Bereshi Eabbi, in of the allusion. 
 Genes, vi. 2. POPE. * From hcnce the P ocm continues, 
 
 2 A comparison pressed too far loses in the first edition, to ver. 46 : 
 
 its beauty in departing from truth. " The rest, the winds dispersed in empty 
 
 When Pope makes Belinda equal, in air ; " 
 
 the glory of her appearance, to the all after, to the end of this Canto, 
 
 sun, "the rival of his beams" who being additional. POPE.
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 153 
 
 Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, 
 
 And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. 
 
 Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, is 
 
 Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide ; 
 
 If to her share some female errors fall, 
 
 Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. 1 
 
 This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, 
 Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind 20 
 
 In equal curls, and well conspired to deck, 
 With shining ringlets, the smooth iv'ry neck. 
 Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains, 
 And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. 
 With hairy springes we the birds betray, 25 
 
 Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey, 
 Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare, 
 And beauty draws us with a single hair. 2 
 
 Th' advent'rous baron the bright locks admired ; 
 He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. so 
 
 Resolved to win, he meditates the way, 
 By force to ravish, or by fraud betray ; 
 For when success a lover's toil attends, 
 Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends.' 
 
 For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored 35 
 
 Propitious heav'n, and ev'ry pow'r adored, 
 But chiefly Love to Love an altar built, 
 Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
 There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves, 
 And all the trophies of his former loves ; 40 
 
 1 Wakefield remarks, that this line Et modo membra pilo vinctus miser ab- 
 is marred by the abbreviation, you'll, strahoruno.-STEEVENs. 
 
 and he suggests that a better reading Dryden's Persius, v. 247 : 
 
 would be, gh e knows her man, and when you rant 
 
 Look on her face and you forget them all. and swear ' 
 
 Can draw you to her with a single hair. 
 
 2 Sandys's Paraphrase of the Song 
 
 ,. c, , .. .- 3 An imitation, or a translation 
 
 of Solomon, 1641 : . '.. 
 
 rather, of Jineid, 11. 390 : 
 One hah- of thine in fetters ties. 
 
 dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste re- 
 
 P.uchanan, Epigram, lib. i. xiv. : <mirat? WAKEFIELD.
 
 154 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 "With tender billets-doux lie lights the pyre, 
 And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire. 
 Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes 
 Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize : 
 The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r, 
 
 The rest, the winds dispersed in empty air. 1 
 But now secure the painted vessel glides, 
 The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides :* 
 While melting music steals upon the sky, 
 And softened sounds along the waters die ; s so 
 
 Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, 
 Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. 
 All but the sylph with careful thoughts oppressed, 
 Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast." 
 He summons straight his denizens of air ; w 
 
 The lucid squadrons round the sails repair : 
 Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, 
 That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath. 
 Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold, 
 Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ; eo 
 
 Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 
 Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. 
 
 1 Virgil, J5neid, xi. 798. POI-E. are the ebb and the flow, and cannot 
 Dryden's Translation : be applied to only one of the two. 
 Apollo heard, and granting half his pray'r, * Dryden's Virgin Martyr : 
 Shuffled in winds the rest, and tossed in ^ music 
 
 "lrty"-- STEEVENS. 
 
 So Dryden's version of Ceyx & Al- 
 
 n -i tt * A parody on the beginning of the 
 
 cyone, Ovid. Met. x. : , ^ , _ ,, , . 6 , .. T1 . , 
 
 second and tenth books of the Iliad. 
 
 This last petition heard of all her pray'r, WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The rest dispersed by winds were lost in _. , , .. .. ., 
 
 air. WAKEFIELD. rope s own translation of the com- 
 
 2 r a? mencement of the tenth book has a 
 Dryden, AL vii. 10 : dose resemblance to the lines in the 
 
 the moon was bright Rap e O f the Lock : 
 And the sea trembled with her silver light. 
 
 HOLT WHITE. All night the chiefs before theirvessels lay 
 
 Pope, says Wakefield, has put And lost in sleep the labours of tbo day : ' 
 
 .,..,,,. ,, , All but the king; with various thoughts 
 "tides m the plural "merely to oppressed 
 
 accommodate the rhyme. " The tides His country's cares lay rolling in his breast.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 155 
 
 Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, 
 
 Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew, 1 
 
 Dipped in the richest tincture of the skies,* 65 
 
 Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes ; 
 
 While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings, 
 
 Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings. 
 
 Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, 
 
 Superior by the head, was Ariel placed ; 70 
 
 His purple pinions opening to the sun, 
 
 He raised his azure wand, and thus begun. 
 
 " Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give ear ! 
 Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear ! 
 Ye know the spheres, and various tasks assigned 75 
 
 By laws eternal to th' aerial kind. 
 Some in the fields of purest ether play, 
 And bask and whiten in the blaze of day. 
 Some guide the course of wand'ring orbs on high, 8 
 Or roll the planets through the boundless sky. 4 se 
 
 Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light 
 Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night, 5 
 Or suck the mists in grosser air below, 
 Or dip their pinions in the painted bow, 
 
 1 The gossamer, which is spun in writes on the margin "expressly 
 autumn by a species of spider that has otherwise." He states that the 
 the power of sailing in the air, was "ethereal" kind are described down 
 formerly supposed to be the product to ver. 80, and that the "aerial 
 of sun-burnt dew. Thus Spenser kind" are the " less refined " beings 
 speaks of who dwell "beneath the moon." 
 
 Clearly the distinction had not oc- 
 The fine nets which oft we woven see 
 
 Of scorched dew. curred to hlm when he ^^ the 
 
 poem, for he calls both kinds 
 
 2 Milton of the wings of Raphael, "aerial" at ver. 76. 
 Par. Lost, v. 283 : 5 In the first edition : 
 
 And colours dipped in heav'n ; Hover, and catch the shooting stars by 
 
 Sky-tinctured grain. WAKEFIELD. night. 
 
 3 The comets. Dryden's Flower and Leaf : 
 
 ^ "Did you ever," says Dennis, At otber times we rcign by ^ ght alone , 
 
 "hear before that the planets were And posting through the skies pursue the 
 
 rolled by the aerial kind ?" and Pope moon.
 
 156 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main, ss 
 
 Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain. 
 
 Others on earth o'er human race preside, 
 
 "Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide : 
 
 Of these the chief the care of nations own, 
 
 And guard with arms divine the British throne. 1 so 
 
 " Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 
 Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care ; 
 To save the powder from too rude a gale, 
 Nor let th' imprisoned essences exhale ; 
 To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs ; oa 
 
 To steal from rainbows ere they drop in show'rs 
 A brighter wash ; to curl their waving hairs, 
 Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs ; 
 Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, 
 To change a flounce, or add a furbelow. 2 100 
 
 " This day, black omens threat the brightest fair 
 That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care ; 
 Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight ; 
 But what, or where, the fates have wrapped in night. 
 Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 105 
 
 Or some frail china jar receive a flaw ; 
 Or stain her honour, or her new brocade ; 
 Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade ; 
 Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball ; 
 Or whether heav'n has doomed that Shock must fall. no 
 Haste then, ye spirits ! to your charge repair : 
 The flutt'ring fan be Zephyretta's care ; 
 
 1 A compliment to Queen Anne, ries ascribed to our own inventions 
 
 whom he lavishly commends in his have been the courteous revelations 
 
 Windsor Forest. WAKEFIELD. of spirits ; for those noble essences in 
 
 The angel in Addison's Eosa- heaven bear a friendly regard unto 
 
 moncl, Act 3, says, their fellow natures on earth." The 
 
 comparative inferiority of Pope's 
 In hours of peace, unseen, unknown , . , . , e -,. 
 
 1 hover o'er the British throne. mlmlC Sub J ect 1S ?&J ffclt when 
 
 we bring the diminutive ideas into 
 
 2 Sir T.Browne, Relig. Med. Part I. immediate contrast with their eleva- 
 31 ; "I do think that many myste- ted originals.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 157 
 
 The drops to thee, Brillante, 1 we consign ; 
 And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine ; 
 Do thou, Crispissa, 2 tend her fav'rite lock ; ns 
 
 Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock.' 
 " To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note, 
 We trust th' important charge, the petticoat : 
 Oft have we known that seven-fold fence 4 to fail, 
 Though stiff with hoops and armed with ribs of whale ; 120 
 Form a strong line about the silver bound, 
 And guard the wide circumference around.* 
 ;x " Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, 
 His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large, 
 Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins, 125 
 
 Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins ; 
 Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, 
 Or wedged, whole ages, in a bodkin's eye : 
 Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain, 
 While clogged he beats his silken wings in vain ; iso 
 
 Or alum styptics with contracting pow'r 
 Shrink his thin essence like a rivelled flow'r : ' 
 Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel 
 The giddy motion of the whirling mill, 7 
 
 1 That is, her ear-drops set with the notion of Addison, that "a touch 
 brilliants. WAKEFIELD. of his pen would make it contract 
 
 2 To crisp in our earlier writers is itself like the sensitive plant," con- 
 a common word for curl, from the tinued in fashion as an ordinary 
 Latin crispo. WAKEFIELD. dress for upwards of threescore 
 
 3 "This," says Warburton, in a years, and remained the court cos- 
 manuscript note, "was a fine stroke tume till the death of Queen Char- 
 of satire to insinuate that the lap- lotte. CROKER. 
 
 dog is often the concern of the fair, s Many modern editions read shri- 
 
 superior to all the charities, as veiled, but Pope took his epithet, now 
 
 Milton calls them, of parental re- obsolete, from Dryden's Flower and 
 
 lation." Leaf: 
 
 Ovid, Met. xiii, 2 : Clypei do- Then drooped the fadillg flow>rS) theh 
 
 minus scptcmplicis Ajax. WAR- beauty fled, 
 
 BURTON. And rivelled up with heat, lay dying in 
 
 Sandys's Translation : ^ eir bed.-WAKEFi E LD. 
 
 Uprose the master of the seven-fold Shield. 7 Chocolate was made in a kind of 
 
 8 The hoop petticoat, in spite of mill. CROKER.
 
 158 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow, 135 
 
 And tremble at the sea that froths below ! " ' 
 
 He spoke ; the spirits from the sails descend : 
 Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend ; 
 Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair ; 
 Some hang upon the pendants of her ear ; no 
 
 "With beating hearts the dire event they wait, 
 Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate. 
 
 CANTO III. 
 
 CLOSE by those meads, for ever crowned with flow'rs,' 
 Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, 
 There stands a structure of majestic frame, 
 Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. 
 Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 5 
 
 Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home ; 
 Here thou, great ANNA ! whom three realms obey, 
 Dost sometimes.counsel take and sometimes tea. 8 
 
 Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, 
 To taste awhile the pleasures of a court ; 10 
 
 In various talk th' instructive hours they passed, 
 Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last ;" 
 
 The anonymous translator of 4 Originally in the first edition, 
 Ariadne to Theseus : 
 
 And trembling at the waves which roll be- In various talk tte cheerful hours the y 
 
 low. WAKEFIEUD. passed, 
 
 Of who was bit, or who capotted last 
 
 2 The first edition continues from POPE. 
 
 this line to ver. 24 of this Canto. 
 
 p When one party has won all the 
 
 3 The modern portion of Hampton tricks of cards at P ic 1 uet > he is said 
 Court, and the East and South fronts, to have *** hls antagonist- 
 were built by William III., who fre- J HXSON - 
 
 quently resided there. Queen Anne 
 
 only went there occasionally. while thus in talk the flying hours they 
 
 CHOKER. pass.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 ID* 
 
 One speaks the glory of the British Queen, 
 And one describes a charming Indian screen ; ' 
 A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes ; 
 At ev'ry word a reputation dies. 
 Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat, 2 
 "With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that. 
 
 Meanwhile, declining from the noon of day, 
 The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray ; 3 
 The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, 
 And wretches hang that jury-men may dine ; * 
 The merchant from th' Exchange returns in peace, 
 And the long labours of the toilet cease.* 
 Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites, 6 
 Burns to encounter two advent'rous knights, 
 At ombre singly to decide their doom ; 7 
 And swells her breast with conquests yet to come. 
 
 15 
 
 20 
 
 25 
 
 1 Japan screens, as appears from 
 the Spectator, were then the rage, 
 and in the Woman of Taste, 1733, we 
 have the couplet, 
 
 Ne'er chuse a screen, and never touch a fan, 
 Till it has sailed from India or Japan. 
 
 2 The snuff-box of the beau, and 
 the fan of the woman of fashion, are 
 frequent subjects of ridicule in the 
 Spectator. The fan was employed 
 to execute so many little coquettish 
 manoeuvres, that Addison ironically 
 proposed that ladies should be drilled 
 in the use of it, as soldiers were 
 trained to the exercise of arms. 
 
 3 The fifth Pastoral of A. Philips : 
 
 The sun now mounted to the noon of day 
 Began to shoot direct his burning ray. 
 
 4 From Congreve. WARTON. 
 
 A repulsive and unfounded couplet. 
 Judges never sign sentences, and if a 
 juryman is in haste to dine it is at 
 least as easy to acquit as to condemn. 
 CEOKER. 
 
 5 Dryden's Mn. vii. 170 : 
 
 And the long labours of your voyage end. 
 WAKSFIELD. 
 
 Owing to the change of fashion the 
 particulars in the text no longer serve 
 to mark the time of the day. From 
 Swift's Journal of a Modern Lady, 
 written in 1728, we learn that the 
 fashionable dinner-hour, when "the 
 long labours of the toilet ceased," was 
 four o'clock. Cards were reserved for 
 after tea; but the holiday-makers, 
 who in the Rape of the Lock, go by 
 water to Hampton Court, are repre- 
 sented as playing from the usual din- 
 ner-hour till coffee is brought in, 
 which may have been a common 
 arrangement in these pleasure-parties. 
 
 6 All that follows of the game at 
 ombre, was added since the first edi- 
 tion, till ver. 105, which connected 
 thus, 
 
 Sudden the board with cups and spoons is 
 crowned. POPE. 
 
 7 Ombre was invented in Spain, 
 and owed its name to the phrase 
 which was to be used by the person 
 who undertook to stand the game, 
 " Yo soy rhombre, I am the man." 
 In the Rape of the Lock Belinda was
 
 1*0 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Straight the three hands prepare in arms to join, 
 
 Each hand the numher of the sacred nine. 1 so 
 
 Soon as she spreads her hand, th' aerial guard 
 
 Descend, and sit on each important card : 
 
 First Ariel perched upon a Matadore, 1 
 
 Then each according to the rank they bore ; 
 
 For sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient race, ss 
 
 Are, as when women, wondrous fond of place. 
 
 Behold, four kings, in majesty revered, 
 "With hoary whisky and a forky heard ; 
 And four fair queens whose hands sustain a flow'r, 
 Th' expressive emhlem of their softer pow'r ; 40 
 
 Four knaves in garbs succinct, 3 a trusty band ; 
 Caps on their heads, and halberts in their hand ; 
 And parti-coloured troops, a shining train, 
 Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain. 
 
 The skilful nymph reviews her force with care : 45 
 
 Let spades be trumps ! she said, and trumps they were/ 
 
 Now move to war her sable Matadores, 5 
 In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors. 
 Spadillio first, unconquerable lord ! ' 
 Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board. so 
 
 the ombre, and hence she is described 4 The ombre had the privilege of 
 
 as encountering singly her two anta- deciding which suit should be trumps, 
 
 gonists. 5 The whole idea of this description 
 
 1 The game could be played with of a game at ombre is taken from 
 two, three, or five ; but three was the Vida's description of a game at Chess 
 usual number, and nine cards were in his poem intitled Scacchia Ludus. 
 dealt to each. WARBURTON. 
 
 2 From the Spanish matador, a Pope not only borrowed the general 
 murderer, because the matadors in conception of representing the game 
 ombre were the three best cards, and under the guise of a battle, but he 
 the slayers of all that came into has imitated particular passages of 
 competition with them. his Latin prototype. Vida's poem is 
 
 3 Knave was the old term for a a triumph of ingenuity, when the 
 servant, and Wakefield remarks that intricacy of chess is considered, and 
 they are represented "in garbs sue- the difficulty of expressing the moves 
 cinct," because, among the ancients, in a dead language. Yet the original 
 domestics, when at work, had their is eclipsed by Pope's more consum- 
 flowing robes gathered up to the mate copy. 
 
 girdle about the waist. 6 Spadillio is from EspadiUa, the
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 161 
 
 As many more Manillio forced to yield, 
 
 And marched a victor from the verdant field. 
 
 Him Basto followed, but his fate more hard 
 
 Gained hut one trump and one plebeian card. 
 
 With his broad sabre next, a chief in years, w 
 
 The hoary majesty of spades appears, 1 
 
 Puts forth one manly leg, to sight revealed, 
 
 The rest, his many-coloured robe concealed. 
 
 The rebel knave, who dares his prince engage, 
 
 Proves the just victim of his royal rage. w 
 
 Ev'n mighty Pam, that kings and queens o'erthrew, 
 
 And mowed down armies in the fights of loo, 3 
 
 Sad chance of war ! now destitute of aid, 
 
 Falls undistinguished by the victor spade ! 
 
 Thus far both armies to Belinda yield ; M 
 
 Now to the baron fate inclines the field. 
 His warlike Amazon her host invades, 
 Th' imperial consort of the crown of spades. 
 The club's black tyrant first her victim died, 
 Spite of his haughty mien, and barb'rous pride : TO 
 
 What boots the regal circle on his head,* 
 His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread ; 
 That long behind he trails his pompous robe, 
 And of all monarchs only grasps the globe ? 
 
 The baron now his diamonds pours apace ! 75 
 
 Th' embroidered king who shows but half his face, 
 And his refulgent queen, with pow'rs combined, 
 Of broken troops, an easy conquest find. 
 
 Spanish term for the ace of spades ; diamonds were trumps Manillio was 
 
 and Basto is the Spanish name for the seven of trumps. 
 
 the ace of clubs. Whatever suit was 1 Dryden's MacFlecknoe : 
 
 trumps the ace of spades was the first 
 
 The hoary pnnce in majesty appeared, 
 card in power, and the ace of clubs 
 
 the third. Manillio, the second in 2 Pam, the highest card in loo, is 
 
 power of the three Matadores, varied the knave of clubs, 
 
 with the trumps. When spades or 3 These lines are a parody of 
 
 clubs were trumps Manillio was the several passages in Virgil. WAKE- 
 
 two of trumps, and when hearts or FIELD. 
 
 VOL. II. POETEY. M
 
 162 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder seen, 
 
 "With throngs promiscuous strew the level green. &c 
 
 Thus when dispersed a routed army runs, 
 
 Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons, 
 
 With like confusion different nations fly, 
 
 Of various habit, and of various dye ; 
 
 The pierced battalions disunited fall, ss 
 
 In heaps on heaps ; one fate o'erwhelms them all. 
 
 The knave of diamonds tries his wily arts, 
 And wins (oh shameful chance !) the queen of hearts. 
 At this, the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, 
 A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look ; 90 
 
 She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, 
 Just in the jaws of ruin, and codille. 1 
 And now (as oft in some distempered state) 
 On one nice trick depends the geii'ral fate : 
 An ace of hearts steps forth : the king unseen 95 
 
 Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive queen : 
 He springs to vengeance with an eager pace, 
 And falls like thunder on the prostrate ace.* 
 The nymph exulting fills with shouts the sky ; 
 The walls, the woods, and long canals reply. 3 100 
 
 Oh thoughtless mortals ! ever blind to fate/ 
 Too soon dejected, and too soon elate. 
 
 1 Drydeil's /F.n vi. 384 : * Nescia mens hominum fati sortisque 
 
 futures; 
 
 Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell. Et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis ! 
 WAKKFIELD. Turno tempus eiit magno cum optaverit 
 
 emptum 
 
 If either of the antagonists made Intactum Pallanta; et cum spolia ista 
 more tricks than the ombre, the diemque 
 winner took the pool, and the ombre Oderit Virg.-WAHBUR-rox. 
 had to replace it for the next game. Drydcn's Translation, x. 698 : 
 
 This was called codille. O mortals ! blind of fate ; who never know 
 
 2 Unless hearts were trumps the To bear bi ^' h fortun . or endure the low ' 
 
 . 1 1 , j f, i The time shall come, when Turnus, but in 
 
 ace of hearts ranked after king, queen, 
 
 and knave. ghall ^ ish lm touched the trophies of the 
 
 3 Dryden's Mn. xii. 1344 : slain: 
 
 Shall wish the fatal belt were far away ; 
 
 With groans the Latins rend the vaulted sky, And curse the dire remembrance of the day. 
 Woods, hills, and valleys to the voice reply. WAKEHELD.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 168 
 
 Sudden these honours shall be snatched away, 
 And cursed for ever this victorious day. 
 
 For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, 1 105 
 The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; " 
 On shining altars of japan they raise 
 The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : 
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
 While China's earth receives the smoking tide : no 
 
 At once they gratify their scent and taste, 
 And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
 Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; 
 Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned, 
 Some o'er her, lap their careful plumes displayed, lu 
 
 Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade. 
 Coffee (which makes the politician wise, 
 And see through all things with his half- shut eyes) * 
 Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain 
 New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain. 120 
 
 Ah cease, rash youth ! desist ere 'tis too late, 
 Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate ! 
 Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, 
 She dearly pays for Msus' injured hair ! 4 
 
 1 From hence the first edition con- 4 Vide Ovid's Metamorphoses, viii. 
 tinues to ver. 134. POPE. POPE. 
 
 2 Coffee it seems was then not only Nisus had a purple hair on which 
 made but ground by the ladies, and depended the safety of himself and 
 from the expression ' ' the berries his kingdom. When the Cretans 
 crackle" it might almost be sup- made war upon him, his daughter 
 posed that they roasted it also. Scylla fell in love with their leader 
 CHOKER. Minos, whom she saw from a high 
 
 " There was a side-board of coffee," tower. Hurried away by her passion, 
 
 says Pope, in his letter describing she plucked out her father's hair as 
 
 Swift's mode of life at Letcombe in he slept, and carried it to Minos, who 
 
 1714, " which the Dean roasted with was victorious in consequence, and 
 
 his own hands in an engine for that Scylla was turned for her crime into 
 
 purpose." a bird. The line of Pope is made up 
 
 3 A sarcastic allusion to the pre- from a passage in Dryden's translation 
 tentious talk of the would-be politi- of the first Georgic, where, having 
 cians who frequented coffee-houses. applied the epithet "injured" to 
 These oracles were a standing topic Nisus, he adds 
 
 of ridicule. And thus the purple hair is dearly paid. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 But when to mischief mortals bend their will, us 
 
 How soon they find fit instruments of ill ! 
 Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace 
 A two-edged weapon from her shining case : 
 So ladies in romance assist their knight, 
 Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. iso 
 
 He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends 
 The little engine on his fingers' ends ; 
 This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 
 As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.* 
 Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, 135 
 
 A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the hair ; 
 And thrice they twitched the diamond in her ear ; 
 Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe drew near. 3 
 Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought 
 The close recesses of the virgin's thought : 140 
 
 As on the nosegay in her breast reclined, 
 He watched th' ideas rising in her mind, 
 Sudden he viewed in spite of all her art, 
 An earthly lover lurking at her heart. 
 Amazed, confused, he found his pow'r expired, U5 
 
 Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. 
 
 The peer now spreads the glitt'ring forfex wide, 
 T' inclose the lock ; now joins it, to divide. 
 Ev'n then, before the fatal engine closed, 
 A wretched sylph too fondly interposed ; iso 
 
 1 Dryden's Absalom and Acliito- The meeting points the sacred hair dis- 
 
 phel : sever> 
 
 From the fair head, for ever, and for ever. 
 
 But when to sin our biassed nature leans * er - !** 
 
 The careful devil is still at hand with All that is between was added after- 
 meuns. wards. POPE. 
 
 > In the first edition it was thus, ' This ^petition is formed on simi- 
 
 lar passages in Virgil. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her As, fur instance, Dryden's jn. vi. 
 
 head.-Ver. 134. 950 . 
 
 First he expands the glitt'ring forfex wide Then thrice around his neck his arms he 
 T inclose the lock ; then joins it. t.o threw ; 
 
 divide; And thrice the flitting shadow slipped away.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 365 
 
 Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in twain, 
 (But airy substance soon unites again,) ' 
 The meeting points the sacred hair dissever 
 From the fair head, for ever, and for ever ! 
 
 Then flashed the living lightning from her eyes, 
 And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies. 
 Not louder shrieks to pitying heav'n are cast, 
 When husbands, or when lap-dogs breathe their last ; 
 Or when rich china vessels fall'n from high, 
 In glitt'ring dust, and painted fragments lie ! 
 
 " Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine," 
 (The victor cried,) " the glorious prize is mine ! 
 While fish in streams, or birds delight in air," 
 Or in a coach and six the British fair, 
 As long as Atalantis 3 shall be read, 
 Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed/ 
 
 155 
 
 160 
 
 165 
 
 1 See Milton, lib. vi. 330, of Satan 
 cut asunder by the Angel Michael. 
 POPE. 
 
 But th' ethereal substance closed 
 Not long divisible. 
 
 2 Dum juga moutis aper, fluvios dum 
 
 piscis amabit. 
 
 Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudes- 
 que manebunt. Virg. POPE. 
 
 3 A famous book written about that 
 time by a woman : full of court and 
 party scandal ; and in a loose effemi- 
 nacy of style and sentiment, which 
 well-suited the debauched taste of the 
 better vulgar. WARBUKTON. 
 
 Mrs. Manley, the author of it, was 
 the daughter of Sir Roger Manley, 
 Governor of Guernsey, and the author 
 of the first volume of the famous Turk- 
 ish Spy, published from his papers, 
 by Dr. Midgley. She was known and 
 admired by all the wits of the times. 
 She died in the house of Alderman 
 Barber. Swift's friend ; and was said 
 to have been the mistress of the al- 
 derman. W ARTON. 
 
 Her actions were even more infamous 
 than her writings. One Mary Thomp- 
 son had been kept by a person named 
 Pheasant, and at his death, in 1705, 
 she endeavoured to pass herself off for 
 his wife, that she might have a right 
 of dower out of his estate. Accord- 
 ing to Mr. Nichols, in a note to 
 Stecle's Letters, Mrs. Manley was 
 bribed by the promise of IQOl. a-year 
 for life, to aid Mrs. Thompson in 
 getting a forged entry of the marriage 
 inserted in a register. The case was 
 heard in Doctors' Commons, and 
 Mrs. Manley's guilt was proved. But 
 neither her profligacy nor her frauds 
 could deprive her of the countenance 
 of political partisans like Swift and 
 Prior, or of good-natured men of 
 pleasure like Steele. 
 
 4 Ladies in those days sometimes 
 received visits in their bed-chambers, 
 when the bed was covered with a 
 richer counterpane, and "graced" by 
 a small pillow with a worked case 
 and lace edging. Of the female
 
 166 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 While visits shall he paid on solemn days, 
 
 When num'rous wax-lights in bright order blaze, 
 
 While nymphs take treats, or assignations give, 
 
 So long my honour, name, and praise shall live ! " ' no 
 
 What time would spare, from steel receives its date, 
 And monuments, like men, submit to fate ! * 
 Steel could the labour of the gods destroy, 3 
 And strike to dust th' imperial tow'rs of Troy ; 
 Steel could the works of mortal pride confound, ns 
 
 And hew triumphal arches to the ground." 
 What wonder then, fair nymph ! thy hairs should feel 
 The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel ? * 
 
 CANTO IV. 
 
 Bur anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed,' 
 And secret passions laboured in her breast. 
 Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, 
 Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, 
 Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss, 
 Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss, 
 
 fashions which. Pope pleasantly as- And laid the labour of the gods in dust. 
 
 sumes will be as lasting as the swim- WAKEFIELD. 
 
 ming of fishes or the flight of birds, 4 Addison's translation of Horace, 
 
 the greater part have passed away. Ode iii. 3 : 
 
 CHOKER. Thrice should my favourite Greeks his 
 
 1 Ogilby, Virg. Eel. v. : works confound, 
 
 So Ion? thy honoured name and praise And hew ** shinin f:lbric to tbe 8 n>imd 
 shall last. -WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 
 
 Dryden, JEn. i. 857 : IUe quoq ue eversus rnons c?t, ic. 
 
 Your honour, name, and praise shall never Quid faciant crines,eum ferro talia cednntt 
 die ! WAKEFIELD. Catull. de Com. Berenices. POPE. 
 
 2 So Juvenal exactly, x. 146 : 
 
 At regina gravi, <tc. ^ irg. An. iv. 1. 
 Quandoquidem data sunt ipsis quoque fata POPE. 
 sepulchris. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 But anxious cares already seized the queen: 
 
 3 Addison of Troy in his poem to glie fed wit hm her veins a flame unseen, 
 the king : Dryden's TransL WAKEFIELD.
 
 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 167 
 
 Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die, 1 
 Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry, 
 E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair, 
 As thou, sad virgin ! for thy ravished hair. 
 
 For, that sad moment, when the sylphs withdrew,* 
 And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew, 
 dmbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite, 
 As ever sullied the fair face of light, 
 Down to the central earth, his proper scene, 
 Repaired to search the gloomy cave of Spleen. 
 
 Swift on his sooty pinions flits the gnome, 3 
 And in a vapour reached the dismal dome. 
 No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, 
 The dreaded east is all the wind that blows." 
 Here in a grotto, sheltered close from air, 
 And screened in shades from day's detested glare, 5 
 She sighs for ever on her pensive bed, 
 Pain at her side, and Megrim 6 at her head. 
 
 Two handmaids wait 7 the throne : alike in place, 
 But diff 'ring far in figure and in face. 
 
 20 
 
 1 The thought and turn of these 
 lines is imitated from the Dispensary, 
 Canto iii. : 
 
 Not beauties fret so much if freckles come, 
 Or nose should redden in the drawing-room. 
 
 2 All the lines from hence to the 
 94th verse, that describe the house of 
 Spleen, are not in the first edition ; 
 instead of them followed only these : 
 
 While her racked soul repose and peace 
 
 requires, 
 The fU rce Thalestris fans the rising fires. 
 
 And continued at the 94th verse of 
 this Canto. POPE. 
 
 3 Garth in the Dispensary, canto iv. : 
 
 The bat with sooty wings flits through the 
 grove. 
 
 4 Spleen was thought to be engen- 
 dered by the east wind. Cowper, in 
 the Task, Bk. iv. ver. 363, speaks of 
 
 the uuhealthful east 
 That breathes the spleen. 
 
 5 In this description ovir poet seems 
 to have had before him the Cave of 
 Envy in Ovid, Met. ii. 760 : 
 
 Protinus Invidte nigro squallentia tabo 
 Tecta petit. Domus est imis in vallibus 
 
 antri 
 Abdita, sole carens, non ulli pervia veiito. 
 
 Shut from the winds and from the whole- 
 some skies, 
 
 In a deep vale the gloomy dungeon lies ; 
 
 Dismal and cold, where not a beam of 
 light 
 
 Invades the winter, or disturbs the uight. 
 Addisou's Trans. WAKEFIBLD. 
 
 6 For " Megrim," the first edition 
 has "Languor." 
 
 7 ' ' Wait " for ' ' wait on " or " by " 
 is a very harsh ellipse, though it has 
 the sanction of Dryden.
 
 168 
 
 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid, 
 Her wrinkled form in black and white arrayed ; 
 With store of pray'rs, for mornings, nights, and noons, 
 Her hand is filled ; her bosom with lampoons. 
 
 There Affectation with a sickly mien, 
 Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, 
 Practised to lisp, and hang the head aside, 
 Faints into airs, and languishes with pride, 
 On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 
 Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for show. 
 The fair ones feel such maladies as these, 
 When each new night-dress gives a new disease. 
 
 A constant vapour o'er the palace flies ; 
 Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise ; 
 Dreadful, as hermits' dreams in haunted shades, 
 Or bright, as visions of expiring maids. 1 
 Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling spires,* 
 Pale spectres, gaping tombs, and purple fires : 
 Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes, 
 And crystal domes, and angels in machines. 4 
 
 35 
 
 40 
 
 1 Hypochondriacal disorders, under 
 the name of vapours or spleen, were 
 then the fashionable complaint, 
 and as they often presented no defi- 
 nite bodily symptoms they could be 
 readily feigned. The "gown" and 
 "night-dress" of Pope are the 
 " dressing-gown " of our day. 
 
 3 Oldham had expressed the same 
 idea in The Dream : 
 Not dying saints enjoy such ecstacies 
 When they in visions antedate their bliss. 
 
 The ancients believed the spleen to 
 be the seat of mirth, and hence a 
 disordered spleen was supposed to 
 produce melancholy and moroseness. 
 The second sense, in modern usage, 
 has driven out the first, and spleen 
 has become synonymous with surli- 
 ness and gloom, but Pope in prose 
 as well as verse gave it a wider range, 
 and appears to ascribe to it those 
 
 creations of the imagination which 
 are mistaken for realities. " He- 
 thinks," he writes to Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu, "I am imitating 
 in my ravings the dreams of splenetic 
 enthusiasts and solitaires, who fall 
 in love with saints and fancy them- 
 selves in favour of angels and 
 spirits." 
 
 3 Snakes erect on the "rolling 
 spires," or coils of their bodies, as 
 Milton says that the neck of the 
 serpent was "erect amidst his circling 
 spires. " 
 
 4 In the last century the word 
 "machine" was currently employed 
 to designate the supernatural agents 
 in a fiction, and their proceedings 
 when acting in human affairs. Thus, 
 by the expression ' ' angels in ma- 
 chines" is meant angels interposing 
 on behalf of mankind.
 
 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 169 
 
 Unnumbered throngs, on ev'ry side are seen, 
 Of bodies changed to various forms by Spleen. 1 
 Here living tea-pots stand, one arm held out, 
 One bent ; the handle this, and that the spout : 
 A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod walks ; 2 
 Here sighs a jar, and there a goose"-pye talks ; 3 
 Men prove with child, as pow'rful fancy works, 4 
 And maids turned bottles, call aloud for corks. 5 
 
 Safe past the gnome through this fantastic band, 
 A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand. 6 
 Then thus addressed the pow'r " Hail, wayward queen ! 
 Who rule 7 the sex to fifty from fifteen : 
 
 50 
 
 55 
 
 1 Ovid, Met. i. 1 : 
 
 In nova fert animus mutatas dicere fonnas 
 Corpora. 
 
 Of bodies changed to various forms I sing. 
 Dryden's Trans. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 See Horn. Iliad, xviii., of Vulcan's 
 walking tripods. POPE. 
 
 Van Swieten, in his Commentaries 
 on Boerhaave, relates that he knew a 
 man who had studied till he fancied 
 his legs to be of glass. His maid 
 bringing wood to his fire threw it care- 
 lessly down. Our sage was terrified 
 for his legs of glass. The girl, out of 
 patience with his megrims, gave him 
 a blow with a log on the parts affected. 
 He started up in a rage, and from 
 that moment recovered the use of his 
 glass legs. WARTON. 
 
 3 Alludes to a real fact ; a lady of 
 distinction imagined herself in this 
 condition. POPE. 
 
 4 The fanciful person, here alluded 
 to, was Dr. Edward Felling, chap- 
 lain to several successive monarchs. 
 Having studied himself into hypo- 
 chondriasis between the age of forty 
 and fifty, he imagined himself to be 
 pregnant, and forbore all manner of 
 exercise lest motion should prove 
 injurious to his ideal burden. STEE- 
 
 VENS. 
 
 5 This is adopted from the Loyal 
 Subject of Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 6 In imitation of the golden branch 
 which ^neas carried as a passport 
 when he visited the infernal regions. 
 Spleenwort is a species of fern. " Its 
 virtues, ' ' says Cowley, ' ' are told in 
 its name." He makes it compare 
 itself with "painted flowers," and 
 exclaim, 
 
 They're fair, 'tis true, they're cheerful, and 
 
 they're green, 
 But I, though sad, procure a gladsome 
 
 mien. 
 
 The plant has lost the little credit 
 it once possessed as a remedy for 
 hypochondriacs! affections. 
 
 7 Bishop Lowth notices Pope's fre- 
 quent violation of grammar in joining 
 a pronoun in the singxilar to a verb 
 in the plural. Thus when he says 
 in the Messiah, 
 
 O thou my voice inspire 
 Who touched Isaiah's hallowed lips with 
 fire, 
 
 either "thou" should be "you," or 
 else "touched" should be "touchedst, 
 didst touch." Pope has committed 
 the same error in this speech to the 
 Queen of Spleen ; for that "thou," 
 and not "you," is, or ought to be, the
 
 170 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Parent of vapours l and of female wit, 
 
 Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit, eo 
 
 On various tempers act by various ways, 
 
 Make some take physic, others scribble plays ; 
 
 Who cause the proud their visits to delay, 
 
 And send the godly in a pet to pray ; 
 
 A nymph there is, that all thy pow'r disdains, es 
 
 And thousands more in equal mirth maintains. 
 
 But oh ! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a grace, 
 
 Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face, 
 
 Like citron- waters * matrons' cheeks inflame, 
 
 Or change complexions at a losing game ; 70 
 
 Tf e'er with airy horns I planted heads, 
 
 Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds, 
 
 Or caused suspicion when no soul was rude, 
 
 Or discomposed the head-dress of a prude, 
 
 Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease, 75 
 
 Which not the tears of brightest eyes could ease : 
 
 Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, 
 
 That single act gives half the world the spleen." 
 
 The goddess with a discontented air 
 
 Seems to reject him, though she grants his pray'r. so 
 
 A wondrous bag with both her hands she binds, 
 Like that where once Ulysses held the winds ; 
 There she collects the force of female lungs, 
 Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of tongues. 
 
 pronoun understood follows from the All hearts to sadness, and none more than 
 
 expression " thy power" at ver. 65. mine. 
 
 Hence "who rule" should be "who 8 Citron- water was a cordial dis- 
 
 rulest," or " who dost rule," and so tilled from a mixture of spirit of wine 
 
 with the other verbs in the second with the rind of citrons and lemons, 
 
 person. There are numerous allusions in the 
 
 1 The disease was probably named literature of Pope's day to the fond- 
 
 from the atmospheric vapours which ness of women of fashion for this 
 
 were reputed to be a principal cause drink, as in Swift's Journal of a 
 
 of English melancholy. Cowper says Modern Lady, where lie says that 
 
 of England in his Task, Bk. v. ver. "to cool her heated brains" when she 
 
 462, wakes at noon she 
 
 Thy clime is rude, 
 Replete with vapours, and disposes much Takes a lar^e dram of citron-water.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 171 
 
 A phial next she fills with fainting fears, 85 
 
 Soft sorrows, melting griefs, and flowing tears. 
 
 The gnome rejoicing bears her gifts away, 
 
 Spreads his black wings, and slowly mounts to day. 
 Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he found, 
 
 Her eyes dejected, and her hair unbound. 90 
 
 Full o'er their heads the swelling bag he rent, 
 
 And all the furies issued at the vent. 
 
 Belinda burns with more than mortal ire, 
 
 And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire. 
 
 " wretched maid ! " she spread her hands, and cried, 95 
 
 (While Hampton's echoes, " Wretched maid ! " re- 
 plied) 
 
 " Was it for this you took such constant care 
 
 The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare ? 
 
 For this your locks in paper durance bound ? 
 
 For this with tort'riug irons wreathed around ? 100 
 
 For this with fillets strained your tender head, 
 
 And bravely bore the double loads of lead ? ' 
 
 Gods ! shall the ravisher display your hair, 
 
 While the fops envy, and the ladies stare ! 
 
 Honour forbid ! at whose unrivalled shrine 105 
 
 Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign.* 
 
 Methinks already I your tears survey, 
 
 Already hear the horrid things they say, 
 
 Already see you a degraded toast, 
 
 And all your honour in a whisper lost ! no 
 
 How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend ? 
 
 'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend ! 
 
 And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize, 
 
 Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes, 
 
 And heightened by the diamond's circling rays, us 
 
 On that rapacious hand for ever blaze ? 
 
 1 The curl papers of ladies' hair 2 That is, at whose shrine all our 
 used to be fastened with strips of sex resign ease, pleasure, and virtue, 
 pliant lead. CHOKER. " Honour" means female reputation.
 
 172 
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Sooner shall grass in Hyde-Park Circus grow, 1 
 
 And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow ; 
 
 Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall, 
 
 Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish all ! " 120 
 
 She said ; then raging to Sir Plume * repairs, 
 And hids her beau demand the precious hairs : 
 (Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, 
 And the nice conduct of a clouded cane) 3 
 With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face, 125 
 
 He first the snuff-box opened, then the case, 
 And thus broke out " My Lord, why, what the devil ! 
 Zounds ! damn the lock ! 'fore Gad, you must be civil. 
 Plague on't ! 'tis past a jest nay prithee, pox ! 
 Give her the hair " he spoke, and rapped his box. iso 
 
 " It grieves me much," replied the peer again, 
 " Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain, 
 But by this lock, this sacred lock I swear, 4 
 (Which never more shall join its parted hair ; 
 Which never more its honours shall renew, iss 
 
 Clipped from the lovely head where late it grew) 
 
 1 A parody of Virgil, Eel. i. 60. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 Garth, Dispensary, Canto iii. : 
 
 The tow'ring Alps shall sooner sink to 
 
 vales, 
 
 And leeches in our glasses swell to whales ; 
 Or Norwich trade hi instruments of steel, 
 And Bromingham in stuffs and druggets 
 
 deal. 
 
 1 Sir George Brown. He was angry 
 that the poet should make him talk 
 nothing but nonsense : and in truth 
 one could not well blame him. 
 "WARBUKTON. 
 
 This is one instance out of many in 
 which Pope took unwarrantable liber- 
 ties with private character. Spence 
 had been told that the description 
 " was the very picture of the man." 
 
 8 A cane diversified with darker 
 spots. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The "nice conduct" of canes is 
 ridiculed by Addison in No. 103 of 
 the Tatler. A man of fashion, with 
 " a cane very curiously clouded, and 
 a blue ribbon to hang it on his wrist." 
 protests that the "knocking it upon 
 his shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or 
 whistling with it on his mouth are 
 such great reliefs to him in conversa- 
 tion that he does not know how to 
 be good company without it." A 
 second beau is warned that his cane 
 must be forfeited if ' ' he walks with 
 it under his arm, brandishes it in the 
 air, or hangs it on a button. " 
 
 4 In allusion to Achilles' s oath in 
 Homer, II. i. POPE. 
 
 But by this scepter solemnly I swear 
 Which never more green leaf or growing 
 
 branch sliall bear. 
 Dryden's Trans. WAKEFIELD.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 173 
 
 That while my nostrils draw the vital air, 1 
 
 This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear." 
 
 He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread 
 
 The long- contended honours of her head. 1 HO 
 
 But Umbriel, hateful gnome ! forhears not so ; 
 He breaks the phial whence the sorrows flow. 3 
 Then see ! the nymph in beauteous grief appears, 
 Her eyes half languishing, half drowned in tears ; 
 On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head, 145 
 
 Which, with a sigh, she raised ; and thus she said. 
 
 " For ever cursed be this detested day, 
 Which snatched my best, my fav'rite curl away ! 
 Happy ! ah ten times happy had I been/ 
 If Hampton-Court these eyes had never seen ! iso 
 
 Yet am not I the first mistaken maid, 
 By love of courts to num'rous ills betrayed. 
 Oh had I rather unadmired remained 
 In some lone isle, or distant northern land ; 
 Where the gilt chariot never marks the way, lu 
 
 Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea ! 
 There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye, 
 Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die. 
 What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam ? 
 had I stayed, ami said my pray'rs at home ! iso 
 
 1 Dryden's Mn. i. 770 : any machinery, to the end of the 
 
 Canto. POPE. 
 If yet he lives and draws this vital air. At yer Q1> rjmbricl empties the 
 
 -r, ,,, r__a uwi^rt bag which contains the angry pas- 
 
 - Borrowed from Dryden s Lpistle ^, , , ,.,?, , . 
 
 , ,, ~ .,, sions over the heads of Thalestris 
 
 to Mr. Granville : , , n . ^ , 
 
 and Belinda. At ver. 142 he 'breaks 
 
 The long contended honours of the field.- **"> P hial of sorrow over Belinda 
 
 HOLT WHITK. alone, whence Belinda's anger is 
 
 turned to grief, and Thalestris 
 
 3 These two lines are additional ; remains indignant, 
 
 and assign the cause of the different 4 ^ parody of Virg. Jin. iv. 657 : 
 
 operation on the passions of the two Je ^ heu nimium fdix , gi utora tantum 
 
 ladies. The poem went on before Nunquam Dardania tetioissent nostra 
 
 without that distinction, as without carinse. WAKEFIELD.
 
 174 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 'Twas this the morning omens seemed to tell, 1 
 
 Thrice from my trembling hand the patch-box' fell ; 
 
 The tott'ring china shook without a wind, 
 
 Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind ! 
 
 A sylph too warned me of the threats of fate, IGS 
 
 In mystic visions, now believed too late ! 
 
 See the poor remnants of these slighted hairs ! 
 
 My hands shall rend what ev'n thy rapine spares : 
 
 These in two sable ringlets taught to break, 
 
 Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck ; 3 no 
 
 The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone, 
 
 And in its fellow's fate foresees its own ; 4 
 
 Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands, 
 
 And tempts, once more, thy sacrilegious hands. 
 
 Oh hadst thou, cruel ! been content to seize 175 
 
 Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these ! " 
 
 . i 
 
 CANTO V. 
 
 SHE said : the pitying audience melt in tears, 
 But Fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears.* 
 In vain Thalestris with reproach assails, 
 For who can move when fair Belinda fails ? 
 Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain, 
 
 Pope originally wrote : 3 Prior's Henry and Emma : 
 
 'Twas this the morning omens did foretell. No longer shall thy comely tresses break 
 
 In flowing ringlets on thy snowy neck. 
 
 He altered the verse, together with WAKEFJELD. 
 one or two others of the same kind, 
 
 to get rid of the " did." 4 Sir William Bowles on the Death 
 
 2 Butler, the poet, says that the of Charles II. : 
 
 object of black patches was to make And in their ruler's fate bewail their own. 
 the complexion look fairer by the 
 
 contrast. Drydcn has a similar idea 5 Translated from Virgil, Mil. 
 
 in Palamon and Arcite : iv - 44 : 
 
 Some sprinkled freckles on his face were Fata obstant, placidasque viri deus obstruit 
 
 seen aures. 
 
 Whose dusk set off the whiteness of his Fate and great Jove had stopped his gentle 
 
 skin. tears. Waller. WAKEFIELD.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 175 
 
 While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain. 1 
 Then grave Clarissa 2 graceful waved her fan; 
 Silence ensued, and thus the nymph hegan. 
 
 " Say, why are beauties praised and honoured most,' 
 The wise man's passion, and the vain man's toast ? 4 
 Why decked with all that land and sea afford, 
 Why angels called, and angel-like adored ? * 
 Why round our coaches crowd the white-gloved beaux,' 
 Why bows the side-box from its inmost rows ? r 
 
 if 
 
 1 The entreaties to stay which 
 Dido's sister, Anna, addressed to 
 -^Eneas. CROKER. 
 
 Virgil says that the pathetic en- 
 treaties to stay sent a thrill of grief 
 through the mighty breast of ^Eneas, 
 but that his resolution was uushaken. 
 Pope's couplet supposes that he in- 
 wardly wavered. 
 
 ; .1 new character introduced in 
 the subsequent editions, to open more 
 clearly the moral of the poem, in a 
 parody of the speech of Sarpedon to 
 Glaucus in Homer. POPE. 
 
 The parody first appeared when the 
 Rape of tne Lock was inserted in the 
 quarto of 1717. In the previous en- 
 larged editions, which contained the 
 machinery, the sixth verse was fol- 
 lowed by what is now verse thirty- 
 seven : 
 To arms, to arms ! the bold Thalestris cries. 
 
 3 Homer. 
 Why boast we, Glaucus ! our extended 
 
 reign, 
 Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian 
 
 plain ; 
 
 Our num'rous herds that range each fruit- 
 ful field. 
 And hills where vines their purple harvest 
 
 yield ; 
 Our foaming bowls with gen'rous nectar 
 
 crowned, 
 Our feasts enhanced with music's sprightly 
 
 sound ; 
 
 Vi'hy on those shores are we with joy sur- 
 veyed, 
 
 Admired as heroes, and as gods obeyed ; 
 Unless great acts superior merit prove, 
 And vindicate the bounteous pow'rs above? 
 Tis ours, the dignity they give, to grace ; 
 The first in valour, as the first in place : 
 
 That while with wond'ring eyes our martial 
 
 bands 
 
 Behold our deeds transcending our com- 
 mands, 
 Such, they may cry, deserve the sov'reigu 
 
 state, 
 
 Whom those that envy, dare not imitate. 
 Could all our care elude the greedy grave, 
 Which claims no less the fearful than the 
 
 brave, 
 
 For lust of fame I should not vainly dare 
 In fighting fields, nor urge thy soul to war 
 But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, 
 Disease, and death's inexorable doom ; 
 The life which others pay, let us bestow, 
 And give to fame what we to nature owe ; 
 Brave though we fall, and honoured if we 
 
 live, 
 
 Or let us glory gain, or glory give. 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 The passage quoted by Warburton 
 is from Pope's own translation of the 
 Episode of Sarpedon, which appeared 
 in Dryden's Miscellany, in 1710. 
 
 4 Dryden's Absalom and Achi- 
 tophel : 
 
 The young men's vision, and the old men's 
 dream. WAKEFIKLD. 
 
 5 Denham, in his version of the 
 speech of Homer parodied by our 
 poet : 
 
 Why all the tributes land and sea affords? 
 As gods behold us, and as gods adore. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 Gay, in the Toilette : 
 
 Nor shall side-boxes watch my restless eyes. 
 And, as they catch the glance in rows arise 
 With humble bows ; nor white-gloved beau x 
 
 approach 
 
 In crowds behind to guard me to my coach. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 ' The ladies at this time always sat
 
 176 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 How vain are all these glories, all our pains, 15 
 
 Unless good sense preserve what heauty gains : 
 
 That men may say, when we the front box grace, 
 
 Behold the first in virtue as in face ! 
 
 Oh ! if to dance all night, and dress all day, 
 
 Charmed the small-pox, or chased old age away ; 20 
 
 Who would not scorn what housewifes' cares produce, 
 
 Or who would learn one earthly thing of use ? 
 
 To patch, nay ogle, might hecome a saint, 
 
 Nor could it sure he such a sin to paint. 
 
 But since, alas ! frail beauty must decay, 25 
 
 Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to grey ; 
 
 Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade, 
 
 And she who scorns a man, must die a maid ; 
 
 What then remains but well our pow'r to use, 
 
 And keep good humour still, whate'er we lose ? so 
 
 And trust me, dear! good humour can prevail, 
 
 When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail. 
 
 Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll ; 
 
 Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul." 
 
 So spoke the dame, but no applause ensued ; ' ss 
 
 Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her prude. 
 To arms, to arms ! the fierce virago cries, 2 
 And swift as lightning to the combat flies. 
 All side in parties, and begin th' attack ; 
 Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack ; 40 
 
 in the front, the gentlemen in the rear is generally made up of mothers 
 
 side-boxes. NICHOLS. of long standing, undesigning maids, 
 
 In Steele's Theatre, No. 3, Janu- and contented widows." CUNNING- 
 
 ary 9, 1720, his " representatives of HAM. 
 
 a British audience " are ' ' three of * It is a verse frequently repeated 
 
 the fair sex for the front boxes, two in Homer after any speech, 
 
 csntlemen of wit and pleasure for the 
 
 .. . . t . So spoke and all the heroes applauded. 
 
 side-boxes, and three substantial cm- _P O PK 
 
 zens for the pit." "The virgin 
 
 ladies," he said, in the Guardian, 2 From hence the first edition goes 
 
 No. 29, April 14, 1713, "usually on to the conclusion, except a very 
 
 dispose themselves in the front of the few short insertions added to keep 
 
 boxes, the young married women the machinery in view to the end of 
 
 compose the second row, while the the poem. POPE.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 177 
 
 Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise, 
 And base and treble voices strike the skies. 1 
 No common weapons in their hands are found, 
 Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound. 
 
 So when bold Homer makes the gods engage, * 45 
 
 And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage ; 
 'Gainst Pallas, Mars ; Latona, Hermes arms ; 
 And all Olympus rings with loud alarms : 
 Jove's thunder roars, heaven trembles all around, 
 Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound : so 
 
 Earth shakes her nodding towers, the ground gives way, 
 And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day ! s 
 
 Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height 4 
 Clapped his glad wings, and sate to view the fight. * 
 Propped on their bodkin spears, 8 the sprites survey u 
 
 The growing combat, or assist the fray. 
 
 While through the press enraged Thalestris flies, 
 And scatters death around from both her eyes, 
 A beau and witling perished in the throng, 
 One died in metaphor, and one in song. 7 eo 
 
 " O cruel nymph ! a living death I bear," * 
 Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair. 
 
 1 .iEneid. v. 140: even the similitude of caricature is 
 
 ferit aethera clamor. lost. 
 
 Their shouting strikes the skies. t < These four lines added, for the 
 
 reason before mentioned. POPE. 
 
 1 Homer, II. xx. POPE. 5 Minerva in like manner, during 
 
 3 This verse is an improvement on the battle of Ulysses with the suitors 
 
 the original, .Eneid. viii. 246 : ^ t h e Odyssey, perches on a beam of 
 
 trebidentque immisso lumine manes. the roof to behold it. POPE. 
 
 And the ghosts tremble at intruding light. Like the heroes in Homer when 
 
 WAKEFIELD. fa e y are S p ec t a tors of a combat. 
 
 The concluding line of the para- WAETON. 
 
 graph is from Addison's translation ' This idea is borrowed from a 
 
 of a passage in Silius Italicus : couplet in the Duke of Buckingham's 
 
 Who pale with fear the rending earth ' Essa J on Poetry, where he ridicules 
 
 survey the poetical dialogues of the dramatis 
 
 And startle at the sudden flash of day. personce in the reign of Charles II. 
 
 There is more of bathos than of hu- Or else like bells, eternally they chime 
 
 mour from ver. 43 to ver. 52. The Tne J r si s h "* simile . ^d die in rhyme, 
 
 exaggeration is carried so far that 8 Wakefield quotes passages from 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. N
 
 178 KAPE OF THE LOCK, 
 
 A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast, 
 
 " Those eyes are made so killing " ' was his last. 
 
 Thus on Meeander's flow'ry margin lies 2 es 
 
 Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies. 
 
 When bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down, 
 Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown ; 
 She smiled to see the doughty hero slain, 
 But, at her smile, the beau revived again. TO 
 
 Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air,* 
 Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair ; 
 The doubtful beam long nods from side to side ; 
 At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside. 
 
 See fierce Belinda on the baron flies, 75 
 
 With more than usual lightning in her eyes : 
 Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try, 
 Who sought no more than on his foe to die. 
 But this bold lord with manly strength endued, 
 She with one finger and a thumb subdued ; so 
 
 Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, 
 A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ; 
 The gnomes direct, to ev'ry atom just, 
 The pungent grains of titillating dust." 
 Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 85 
 
 And the high dome re-echoes to his nose. 
 
 " Now meet thy fate," incensed Belinda cried, 
 And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, Drummond, and * Sicubifatavocant,udisabjectusinherbis, 
 Milton, in which the phrase "living Ad vada Maandrf concinit albus olor. 
 
 , ,, ' Ov. Ep. POPE. 
 death occurs. 
 
 1 The words of a song in the Opera s Vid. Homer, II. viii. and Virg. 
 
 of Camilla. POPE. JEn. xii. POPE. 
 
 "Here," said Dennis, speaking of The passage in Homer to which the 
 
 the death of the beau and witling, poet refers is where Jupiter, before 
 
 "we have a real combat, and a meta- the conflict between Hector and 
 
 phorical dying," and he did the Achilles, weighs the issue in a pair of 
 
 lines no injustice when he added scales. 
 
 that they were but a " miserable 4 These two lines added for the 
 
 pleasantry." above reason. POPE.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK, 179 
 
 (The same, his ancient personage to deck, 1 
 
 Her great great grandsire wore about his neck, o 
 
 In three seal-rings ; which after, melted down, 
 
 Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown : 
 
 Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, 
 
 The bell she jingled, and the whistle blew ; 
 
 Then in a bodkin 2 graced her mother's hairs, 95 
 
 "Which long she wore, and now Belinda wears.) 
 
 " Boast not my fall," he cried, " insulting foe ! 
 
 Thou by some other shalt be laid as low : 
 
 Nor think, to die dejects my lofty mind ; 
 
 All that I dread is leaving you behind ! oo 
 
 Rather than so, ah let me still survive, 
 
 And burn in Cupid's flames but burn alive." * 
 
 ^ " Restore the Lock ! " she cries ; and all around 
 
 " Restore the Lock ! " the vaulted roofs rebound." 
 
 Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain 105 
 
 Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain. 
 
 But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed, 
 
 And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost ! 
 
 The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain, 
 
 In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain : no 
 
 With such a prize no mortal must be blessed, 
 
 So heav'n decrees ! with heav'n who can contest ? 
 
 Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere, 
 
 Since all things lost on earth are treasured there. 5 
 
 1 In imitation of the progress of For every stone, as well as she, 
 Agamemnon's sceptre in Homer, II. Can boast an ancient pedigree. 
 
 ii. POPE. 3 "Who," asked Dennis, "ever 
 
 2 Pins to adorn the hair were then heard of a dead man that burnt in 
 called bodkins, and Sir George Ethe- Cupid's flames ?" Pope had originally 
 rege, in Tonson's Second Miscellany, written, 
 
 traces the genealogy of some jewels And stUl burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive, 
 through the successive stages of the 
 
 ornament of a cap, the handle of a * Dr y den s Alexander s Feast : 
 
 fan, and ear-rings, till they became, A present deity ! they shout around : 
 
 like the gold seal rings, in the Rape A P^entdeity ! the vaulted roofs rebound. 
 
 " STEEVBNS. 
 of the Lock, 
 
 A diamond bodkin in each tress, * Yide Ariosto > Canto 
 
 The badges of her nobleness, POPE. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 
 
 JRAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases,' m 
 
 And beans' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. 
 
 There broken vows, and death-bed alms * are found, 
 
 And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound, 
 
 The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs, 
 
 The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, 3 120 
 
 Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, 
 
 Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry. 
 
 But trust the muse she saw it upward rise, 
 Though marked by none but quick, poetic eyes : 4 
 (So Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew, 125 
 
 To Proculus alone confessed in view) 
 A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, 
 And drew behind a radiant trail of hair. 5 
 Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, 
 The heav'ns bespangling with dishevelled light. 130 
 
 The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies, 
 And pleased pursue its progress through the skies. 6 
 
 From the catalogue which follows 
 it appears that, by "all things lost 
 on earth," Pope meant only such 
 things as, in his opinion, were hypo- 
 critical, foolish, and frivolous. These 
 mounted to the lunar sphere when 
 they had finished their course here 
 below, a career very short in in- 
 stances like the " tears of heirs," and, 
 perhaps, very long in instances like 
 the butterflies preserved in the cabi- 
 nets of collectors. 
 
 1 Apparently Pope had the erro- 
 neous idea that distinguished soldiers 
 were men of dull and ponderous 
 minds. 
 
 2 The alms would not be "lost on 
 earth," however unprofitable they 
 might be to the alms-givers, from 
 whom they had been extorted by 
 fear instead of proceeding from a 
 benevolent disposition. 
 
 3 Dryden's (Edipus, act 2 : 
 
 The smiles of courtier*, and the harlot's 
 tears, 
 
 The tradesman's oaths, and mourning of 
 
 an heir, 
 
 Are truths, to what priests tell. 
 HOLT WHITE. 
 
 4 Denham, in Cooper's Hill, gave 
 
 him a hint : 
 
 their airy shape 
 
 All but a quick poetic sight escape. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 Flammiferumque trahens spatioso limite 
 
 crinem 
 Stella micat. Ovid. POPE. 
 
 Dryden, .<Eneis, v. 1092 : 
 
 Descends, and draws behind a trail of light. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 These two lines added, for the 
 same reason, to keep in view the 
 machinery of the poem. POPB. 
 
 Dryden's .fineis, v. 691 : 
 
 And as it flew 
 A train of following flames ascending 
 
 drew ; 
 Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny 
 
 way 
 Across the skies, as falling meteors play.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 181 
 
 This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey, 
 And hail with music its propitious ray ; ' 
 This the bless'd lover shall for Venus take, 
 And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake ; a 
 This Partridge s soon shall view in cloudless skies, 
 When next he looks through Galileo's eyes ; 4 
 And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom 
 The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome. 
 
 Then cease, bright nymph ! to mourn thy ravished hair, 
 Which adds new glory to the shining sphere ! 
 Not all the tresses that fair head can boast, 
 Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost. 
 For after all the murders of your eye, 5 i- 
 
 When, after millions slain, 6 yourself shall die ; 
 When those fair suns shall set, as set they must, 
 And all those tresses shall be laid in dust, 
 This lock the muse shall consecrate to fame, 
 And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name. 7 
 
 135 
 
 uo 
 
 1 The promenades in the Mall lasted 
 till the middle of the reign of George 
 III., and it would appear from this 
 line that they were enlivened by 
 music. CEOKER. 
 
 2 Rosamond's lake was a small ob- 
 long piece of water near the Pimlico 
 Gate of St. James's Park. When it 
 was done away with, about the middle 
 of the last century, the public, unwil- 
 ling to lose the romantic name, trans- 
 ferred it to the dirty pond in the 
 Green Park, which has, in its turn, 
 been filled up. CHOKER. 
 
 3 John Partridge was a ridiculous 
 stargazer, who in his almanacks every 
 year never failed to predict the down- 
 fall of the Pope, and the King of 
 France, then at war with the English. 
 POPE. 
 
 He had been made the subject of 
 ridicule by Swift, Steele, Addison 
 and others. CHOKER. 
 
 4 Milton, Par. Lost, v. ver. 261, 
 
 150 
 
 calls the telescope "the glass of 
 Galileo," who first employed it to 
 observe the heavens. 
 
 5 Phebe in As You Like It, Act 
 iii. Sc, 5, says to her despised and 
 despairing lover, 
 
 Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye. 
 
 6 The compliment was meant to be 
 serious, but is marred by its extrava- 
 gance. "Millions" is too hyper- 
 bolical. 
 
 7 Spenser in his 75th Sonnet : 
 
 Not so, quoth I : let baser things devise 
 To die in dust, but you shall live by 
 
 fame : 
 
 My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, 
 And in the heavens write your glorious 
 name. 
 
 And Cowley, in his imitation 
 Horace, Ode iv. 2 : 
 
 He bids him live and grow in fame 
 Among the stars he sticks his name, 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 THE 
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violate capillos 
 
 Sed jurat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis. MA&T. 
 
 First Edition.
 
 THE 
 
 EAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 CANTO I. 
 
 WHAT dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 
 
 What mighty quarrels rise from trivial things, 
 
 I sing This verse to C 1, Muse ! is due : 
 
 This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view : 
 
 Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 6 
 
 If she inspire, and he approve my lays. 
 
 Say what strange motive, goddess ! could compel - 
 A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle ? 
 O say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, 
 
 Could make a gentle belle reject a lord ? 10 
 
 And dwells such rage in softest bosoms then, 
 And lodge such daring souls in little men ? 
 
 Sol through white curtains did his beams display, 
 And ope'd those eyes which brighter shine than they, 
 Shock just had giv'n himself the rousing shake, 15 
 
 And nymphs prepared their chocolate to take ; 
 Thrice the wrought slipper knocked against the ground, 
 And striking watches the tenth hour resound.^ 
 Belinda rose, 'and midst attending dames, 
 Launched on the bosm of the silver Thames : 20 
 
 A train of well-dressed youths around her shone, 
 And ev'ry eye was fixed on her aloiie : 
 On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore 
 Which Jews might kiss and infidels adore. 
 
 Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 25 
 
 Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those : 
 Favours to none, to all she smiles extends ; 
 Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
 
 186 KAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, 
 
 And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. so 
 
 Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, 
 
 Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide : 
 
 If to her share some female errors fall, 
 
 Look on her face, and you'll forgive 'em all. 
 
 This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, ss 
 
 Nourished two locks, which graceful hung behind 
 In equal curls, and well conspired to deck 
 With shining ringlets her smooth iv'ry neck. 
 Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains, 
 
 And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. 40 
 
 With hairy springes we the birds betray, 
 Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey, 
 Fair trasses man's imperial race iusnare, 
 And beauty draws us with a single hair. 
 
 Th' adventurous baron the bright locks admired ; 45 
 
 He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. 
 Resolved to win, he meditates the way, 
 By force to ravish, or by fraud betray ; 
 For when success a lover's toil attends, 
 Few ask if fraud or force attained his ends. 50 
 
 For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implored 
 Propitious heav'n, and every pow'r adored, 
 But chiefly Love to Love an altar built, 
 Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
 There lay the sword-knot Sylvia's hands had sewn si 
 
 With Flavia's busk that oft had wrapped his own : 
 A fan, a garter, half a pair of gloves, 
 And all the trophies of his former loves. 
 With tender billeta-doux he lights the pire, 
 And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire. 60 
 
 Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes 
 Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize : 
 The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r, 
 The rest the winds dispersed in empty air. 
 
 Close by those meads, for ever crowned with flow'rs, 65 
 
 Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, 
 There stands a structure of majestic frame, 
 Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name.
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 187 
 
 Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 
 
 Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home ; 70 
 
 Here thou, great Anna ! whom three realms obey, 
 
 Dost sometimes counsel take and sometimes tea. 
 
 Hither our nymphs and heroes did resort, 
 To taste awhile the pleasures of a court ; 
 
 In various talk the cheerful hours they passed, 76 
 
 Of who was bit, or who capotted last ; 
 This speaks the glory of the British queen, 
 And that describes a charming Indian screen ; 
 A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes ; 
 At ev'ry word a reputation dies. 80 
 
 Snuff", or the fan, supply each pause of chat, 
 With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that. 
 
 Now when, declining from the noon of day, 
 The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray ; 
 
 When hungry judges soon the sentence sign, 85 
 
 And wretches hang that jurymen may dine ; 
 When merchants from th' Exchange return in peace, 
 And the long labours of the toilet cease, 
 The board's with cups and spoons, alternate, crowned, 
 The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; 90 
 
 On shining altars of japan they raise 
 The silver lamp, and fiery spirits blaze : 
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
 While China's earth receives the smoking tide. 
 At once they gratify their smell and taste, 95 
 
 While frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
 Coffee (which makes the politician wise, 
 And see through all things with his half-shut eyes) 
 Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain 
 
 New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain. ino 
 
 Ah cease, rash youth ! desist ere 'tis too late, 
 Fear the just gods, and think of Scylla's fate ! 
 Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, 
 She dearly pays for Nisus' injured hair ! 
 
 But when to mischief mortals bend their mind, \ 10* 
 
 How soon fit instruments of ill they find ! 
 Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace 
 A two-edged weapon from her shining case :
 
 188 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 So ladies, in romance, assist their knight, 
 
 Present the spear, and arm him for the fight ; no 
 
 He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends 
 
 The little engine on his fingers' ends ; 
 
 This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 
 
 As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head. 
 
 He first expands the glitt'ring forfex wide 116 
 
 T' enclose the lock ; then joins it, to divide ; 
 
 One fatal stroke the sacred hair does sever 
 
 From the fair head, for ever, and for ever ! 
 
 The living fires come flashing from her eyes, 
 And screams of horror rend th' affrighted skies. lao 
 
 Not louder shrieks by dames to heav'n are cast, 
 When husbands die, or lapdogs breathe their last ; 
 Or when rich china vessels, fall'n from high, 
 In glitt'ring dust and painted fragments lie ! 
 
 " Let wreaths of triumph now my temples twine,'' 125 
 
 The victor cried, " the glorious prize is mine ! 
 While fish in streams, or birds delight in air, 
 Or in a coach and six the British fair, 
 As long as Atalantis shall be read, 
 
 Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed, ISO 
 
 While visits shall be paid on solemn days, 
 When num'rous wax-lights in bright order blaze, 
 While nymphs take treats, or assignations give, 
 So long my honour, name, and praise shall live ! " 
 
 What time would spare, from steel receives its date, l5 
 
 And monuments, like men, submit to fate ! 
 Steel did the labour of the gods destroy, 
 And strike to dust th' aspiring tow'rs of Troy ; 
 Steel could the works of mortal pride confound, 
 And hew triumphal arches to the ground. 140 
 
 What wonder then, fair nymph ! thy hairs should feel 
 The conqu'ring force of unresisted steel ?
 
 RAPE OF THF. LOCK. 
 
 CANTO II. 
 
 BUT anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed, 
 
 And secret passions laboured in her breast. 
 
 Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, 
 
 Not scornful virgins who their charms survive, 
 
 Not ardent lover robbed of all his bliss, 6 
 
 Not ancient lady when refused a kiss, 
 
 Not tyrants fierce that unrepenting die, 
 
 Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned awry, 
 
 E'er felt such rage, resentment, and despair, 
 
 As thou, sad virgin ! for thy ravished hair. 10 
 
 While her racked soul repose and peace requires, 
 The fierce Thalestris fans the rising fires. 
 " wretched maid ! " she spread her hands, and cried, 
 (And Hampton's echoes, " Wretched maid ! " replied) 
 " Was it for this you took such constant care 16 
 
 Combs, bodkins, leads, pomatums to prepare ? 
 For this your locks in paper durance bound ? 
 For this with tort'ring irons wreathed around ? 
 Oh had the youth been but content to seize 
 Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these ! 30 
 
 Gods ! shall the ravisher display this hair, 
 While the fops envy, and the ladies stare ! 
 Honour forbid ! at whose unrivalled shrine 
 Ease, pleasure, virtue, all, our sex resign. 
 
 Methinks already I your tears survey, 25 
 
 Already hear the horrid things they say, 
 Already see you a degraded toast, 
 And all your honour in a whisper lost ! 
 How shall I, then, your helpless fame defend ? 
 'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend ! so 
 
 And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize, 
 Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes, 
 And heightened by the diamond's circling rays, 
 On that rapacious hand for ever blaze ? 
 
 Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus grow, M 
 
 And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow ;
 
 190 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall, 
 Men, monkeys, lapdogs, parrots, perish all ! " 
 
 Sne said ; then raging to Sir Plume repairs, 
 And bids her beau demand the precious hairs : 40 
 
 Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain, 
 And the nice conduct of a clouded cane, 
 With earnest eyes, and round unthinking face, 
 He first the snuff-box opened, then the case, 
 And thus broke out " My lord, why, what the devil ! 45 
 
 Zounds ! damn the lock ! 'fore Gad, you must be civil ! 
 Plague on't ! *ti> past a jest nay, prithee, pox ! 
 Give her the hair." He spoke, and rapped his box. 
 
 " It grieves me much," replied the peer again, 
 " Who speaks so well should ever speak in vain : so 
 
 But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear, 
 (Which never more shall join its parted hair ; 
 Which never more its honours shall renew, 
 Clipped from the lovely head where once it grew) 
 That, while my nostrils draw the vital air, 55 
 
 This hand, which won it, shall for ever wear." 
 He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph spread 
 The long-contended honours of her head. 
 
 But see ! the nymph in sorrow's pomp appears, 
 Her eyes half-languishing, half drowned in tears ; 60 
 
 Now livid pale her cheeks, now glowing red, 
 On her heaved bosom hung her drooping head, 
 Which with a sigh she raised, and thus she said : 
 " For ever cursed be this detested day, 
 
 Which snatched my best, my fav'rite curl away ; 65 
 
 Happy ! ah ten times happy had I been, 
 If Hampton Court these eyes had never seen ! 
 Yet am not I the first mistaken maid, 
 By love of courts to num'rous ills betrayed. 
 had I rather unadmired remained 70 
 
 In some lone isle, or distant northern land, 
 Where the gilt chariot never marked the way, 
 Where none learn ombre, none e'er taste bohea ! 
 There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye, 
 Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die. 75 
 
 What moved my mind with youthful lords to roam ? 
 O had I stayed, and said my pray'rs at home !
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 131 
 
 'Twas this the morning omens did foretell, 
 
 Thrice from my trembling hand the patchbox fell ; 
 
 The tott'ring china shook without a wind, so 
 
 Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most unkind ! 
 
 See the poor remnants of this slighted hair ! 
 
 My hands shall rend what ev'n thy own did spare : 
 
 This in two sable ringlets taught to break, 
 
 Once gave new beauties to the snowy neck ; 85 
 
 The sister-lock now sits uncouth, alone, 
 
 And in its fellow's fate foresees its own ; 
 
 Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears demands, 
 
 And tempts once more thy sacrilegious hands." 
 
 She said : the pitying audience melt in tears ; 90 
 
 But fate and Jove had stopped the baron's ears. 
 In vain Thalestris with reproach assails, 
 For who can move when fair Belinda fails ? 
 Not half so fixed the Trojan could remain, 
 
 While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain. 95 
 
 " To arms, to arms ! " the bold Thalestris cries, 
 And swift as lightning to the combat flies. 
 All side in parties, and begin th' attack ; 
 Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whalebones crack ; 
 Heroes' and heroines' shouts confus'dly rise, 100 
 
 And bass and treble voices strike the skies ; 
 No common weapons in their hands are found, 
 Like gods they fight, nor dread a mortal wound. 
 
 So when bold Homer makes the gods engage, 
 And heav'nly breasts with human passions rage, 105 
 
 'Gainst Pallas, Mars ; Latona, Hermes arms, 
 And all Olympus rings with loud alarms j 
 Jove's thunder roars, heav'n trembles all around, 
 Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps resound : 
 Earth shakes her nodding tow'rs, the ground gives way, 110 
 
 And the pale ghosts start at the flash of day ! 
 
 While through the press enraged Thalestris flies, 
 And scatters death around from both her eyes, 
 A beau and witling perished in the throng, 
 
 One died in metaphor, and one in song. 115 
 
 " O cruel nymph ; a living death I bear," 
 Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair.
 
 192 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 
 
 A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards cast, 
 
 " Those eyes are made so killing " was his last. 
 
 Thus on Mseander's flow'ry margin lies HO 
 
 Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies. 
 
 As bold Sir Plume had drawn Clarissa down, 
 Chloe stepped in, and killed him with a frown : 
 She smiled to see the doughty hero slain, 
 But at her smile the beau revived again. 135 
 
 Now Jove suspends his golden scales in air, 
 Weighs the men's wits against the lady's hair ; 
 The doubtful beam long nods from side to side ; 
 At length the wits mount up, the hairs subside. 
 
 See fierce Belinda on the baron flies, 130 
 
 With more than usual lightning in her eyes : 
 NOT feared the chief th' unequal fight to try, 
 Who sought no more than on his foe to die. 
 But this bold lord, with manly strength endued, 
 She with one finger and a thumb subdued : 154 
 
 Just where the breath of life his nostrils drew, 
 A charge of snuff the wily virgin threw ; 
 Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'erflows, 
 And the high dome re-echoes to his nose. 
 
 " Now meet thy fate," th' incensed virago cried, HO 
 
 And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 
 
 " Boast not my fall," he said, " insulting foe ! 
 Thou by some other shalt be laid as low ; 
 Nor think to die dejects my lofty mind ; 
 
 All that I dread is leaving you behind ! 146 
 
 Rather than so, ah let me still survive, 
 And still burn on, in Cupid's flames, alive." 
 
 " Restore the lock ! " she cries ; and all around 
 " Restore the lock ! " the vaulted roofs rebound. 
 Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain 150 
 
 Roared for the handkerchief that caused his pain. 
 But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed, 
 And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost ! 
 The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with pain, 
 In ev'ry place is sought, but sought in vain : 155 
 
 With such a prize no mortal must be blessed, 
 So heav'n decrees ! with heav'n who can contest ?
 
 RAPE OF THE LOCK. 193 
 
 Some thought it mounted to the lunar sphere, 
 
 Since all that man e'er lost is treasured there. 
 
 There heroes' wits are kept in pond'rous vases, 160 
 
 And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases. 
 
 There broken vows, and death-bed alms are found, 
 
 And lovers' hearts with ends of ribbon bound, 
 
 The courtier's promises, and sick man's pray'rs, 
 
 The smiles of harlots, and the tears of heirs, 165 
 
 Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a flea, 
 
 Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry. 
 
 But trust the muse she saw it upward rise, 
 Though marked by none but quick poetic eyes : 
 (Thus Rome's great founder to the heav'ns withdrew, 170 
 
 To Proculus alone confessed in view) 
 A sudden star, it shot through liquid air, 
 And drew behind a radiant trail of hair. 
 Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, 
 
 The skies bespangling with dishevelled light. 175 
 
 This the beau monde shall from the Mall survey, "\ 
 
 As through the moonlight shade they nightly stray, 
 And hail with music its propitious ray ; ) 
 
 This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless skies, 
 When next he looks through Galileo's eyes ; 180 
 
 And hence th' egregious wizard shall foredoom 
 The fate of Louis, and the fall of Rome. 
 
 Then cease, bright nymph ! to mourn thy ravished hair, 
 Which adds new glory to the shining sphere ! 
 Not all the tresses that fair head can boast, 18$ 
 
 Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost. 
 For after all the murders of your eye, 
 When, after millions slain, yourself shall die ; 
 When those fair suns shall set, as set they must, 
 And all those tresses shall be laid in dust, 190 
 
 This lock the muse shall consecrate to fame, 
 And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's name. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY.
 
 ELEGY 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OP 
 
 AN UNFORTUNATE LADY.
 
 SEE the Duke of Buckingham's verses to a Lady designing to retire 
 into a Monastery compared with Mr. Pope's Letters to several 
 Ladies, p. 206 [86], quarto edition. She seems to be the same 
 person whose unfortunate death is the subject of this poem. 1 POPE. ft .J. 
 
 i The unfortunate lady seems to have been a particular favourite of) '^^o* 
 ( our poefc TV net her he himself was the person she was removed 
 trom I am not able to say, but whoever reads his verses to her 
 memory will find she had a very great share in him. This young 
 lady who was of quality, had a very large fortune, and was in 
 the eye of our discerning poet a great beauty, was left under the 
 guardianship of an uncle, who gave her an education suitable to her 
 title ; for Mr. Pope declares she had titles, and she was thought a 
 fit match for the greatest peer. But very young she contracted an 
 acquaintance, and afterwards some degree of intimacy, with a young 
 gentleman vrho is only imagined, and, having settled her affections 
 there, refused a match proposed to her by her uncle. Spies being 
 set upon her, it was not long before her correspondence with her 
 lover of lower degree was discovered, which, when taxed with by her 
 uncle, she had too much truth and honour to deny. The uncle 
 finding that she could not, nor would strive to withdraw her regard 
 from him, after a little time forced her abroad, where she was 
 received with all due respect to her quality, but kept up from the 
 sight or speech of anybody but the creatures of this severe guardian, 
 so that it was impossible for her lover even to deliver a letter that 
 might ever come to her hand. Several were received from him with 
 promises to get them privately delivered to her, but those were all 
 sent to England, and only served to make them more cautious who 
 had her in care. She languished here a considerable time, went 
 through a great deal of sickness and sorrow, wept and sighed con- 
 tinually. At last wearied out, and despairing quite, the unfortunate 
 lady, as Mr. Pope justly calls her, put an end to her own life. 
 Having bribed a woman servant to procure her a sword, she was 
 found dead upon the ground, but warm. The severity of the laws 
 
 1 Wakefield says "there is an affectation and ambiguity in this accoimt which 
 he does not comprehend." The uncertainty with which Pope speaks, refers to his 
 doubt of the identity of the lady celebrated by the duke. Enough of "ambiguity 
 and affectation" remains, which would have been no mystery to Wakefield if he 
 had been aware that Pope's object was to deceive.
 
 198 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 of the place where she was in denied her Christian burial, and she 
 was buried without solemnity, or even any to wait on her to her 
 grave except some young people of the neighbourhood, who saw her put 
 into common ground, and strewed her grave with flowers, which gave 
 some offence to the priesthood, who would have buried her in the 
 highway, but it seems their power there did not extend so far. 
 AYRE. 
 
 From this account, given with the evident intention to raise the 
 lady's character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise, 
 nor much to compassion. She seems to have been impatient, violent 
 and ungovernable. Her uncle's power could not have lasted long ; the 
 hour of liberty and choice would have come in time. But hei 
 desiies were too hot for delay, and she liked self-murder better than 
 suspense. Nor is it discovered that the uncle, whoever he was, ia 
 with much justice delivered to posterity as "a false guardian." He 
 seems to have done only that for which a guardian is appointed ; he 
 endeavoured to direct his niece till she should be able to direct 
 herself. Poetry has not often been worse employed than in dignifying 
 the amorous fury of a raving girL The verses have drawn much atten- 
 tion by the illaudable singularity of treating suicide with respect ; 
 and they must be allowed to be written in some parts with vigorous 
 animation, and in others with gentle tenderness ; nor has Pope pro- 
 duced any poem in which the sense predominates more over the 
 diction. But the tale is not skilfully told ; it is not easy to discover 
 the character of either the lady or her guardian. Pope praises her 
 for the dignity of ambition, and yet condemns the uncle to detestation 
 for his pride. The ambitious love of a niece may be opposed by the 
 interest, malice, or envy of an uncle, but never by his pride. On 
 such an occasion a poet may be allowed to be obscure, but incon- 
 sistency never can be right. JOHNSON. 
 
 I have in my possession a letter to Dr. Johnson, containing the 
 name of the lady, and a reference to a gentleman well known in the 
 literary world for her history. Him I have seen, and from a memo- 
 randum of some particulars to the purpose, communicated to him by 
 a Luly of quality, he informs me that the unfortunate lady's name 
 was Withinbury, corruptly pronounced Winbury ; that she was in 
 love with Pope, and would have married him ; that her guardian, 
 though she was deformed in her person, looking upon such a match 
 as beneath her, sent her to a convent, and that a noose, and not a 
 sword, put an end to her life. SIR JOHN HAWXINS. 
 
 The Elegy to the Memory of an unfortunate lady, as it came 
 from the heart, is very tender and pathetic more so, I think, than any 
 other copy of verses of our author. The true cause of the excellence 
 of this elegy is, that the occasion of it was real, so true is the maxim 
 that nature is more powerful than fancy, and that we can always feel
 
 OP AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. . ' 199 
 
 more than we can imagine ; and that the most artful fiction must 
 give way to truth, for this lady was beloved by Pope. After many 
 and wide enquiries I have been informed that her name was Wains- 
 bury, and that which is a singular circumstance she was as ill- 
 shaped and deformed as our author. Her death was not by a sword, 
 but, what would less bear to be told poetically, she hanged herself. 
 Johnson has too severely censured this elegy when he says, " that it 
 has drawn much attention by the illaudable singularity of treating 
 suicide with respect." She seems to have been driven to this despe- 
 rate act by the violence and cruelty of her uncle and guardian, who 
 forced her to a convent abroad, and to which circumstance Pope alludes 
 in one of his letters. WARTOK. 
 
 The real history of the lady distinguished by the epithet " unfor- 
 tunate" in Pope's exquisite elegy, is still involved in mysterious uncer- 
 tainty. One thing is plain, that he wished little should be known. 
 It is remarkable that Caryll asks the question in two letters, but Pope 
 returns no answer. It is in vain, after the fruitless enquiry of 
 Johnson and Warton, perhaps, to attempt further elucidation ; but I 
 should think it unpardonable not to mention what I have myself 
 heard, though I cannot vouch for its truth. The story which was 
 told to Condorcet by Voltaire, and by Condorcet to a gentleman of 
 high birth and character, from whom I received it, is this : that her 
 attachment was not to Pope, or to any Englishman of inferior degree, 
 but to a young French prince of the blood royal, Charles Emmanuel, 
 Duke of Berry, whom, in early youth, she had met at the court of 
 France. The verses certainly seem unintelligible, unless they allude 
 to some connection to which her highest hopes, though nobly con- 
 nected herself, could not aspire. What other sense can be given to 
 these words : 
 
 Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs, her soul aspire 
 
 Above the vulgar flight of low desire ? 
 
 Ambition first sprung from your bless'd abodes, 
 
 The glorious fault of angels and of gods ! 
 
 She was herself of a noblg^ family, cj there can be no meaning in the 
 
 UaivT~ 
 
 That once h?.rl beauty, titles^ wealth and fame. 
 
 Under the idea here suggested, a greater propriety is given to the 
 verse, which otherwise appears so tame and common-place, 
 
 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be. 
 
 It sufficiently appears from Pope's letter that she was of a wild and 
 romantic disposition. She left her friends and country, and com- 
 menced a sentimental pursuit after the object in which her ambition 
 and enthusiastic caprice had centered. Having alienated her re]a-
 
 200 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 tions by her wayward conduct, and being disappointed in the hopes 
 she had formed, she retired voluntarily to a convent. Warton asserts 
 that she was " forced" into a nunnery. This is expressly contrary to 
 what Pope himself says in a letter to her : "If you are resolved in 
 revenge to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I 
 believe your design to be in vain ; for, in a monastery, your devotions 
 cannot carry you so far towards the next world, as to make this lose 
 sight of you." It is most probable that incipient lunacy was the cause 
 of her perverted feelings, and untimely end. Johnson says, " poetry 
 has been seldom worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury 
 of a raving girl." This seems severe, contemptuous, and unfeeling. 
 Johnson, however, chiefly adverted, I imagine, to the false reasoning 
 and absurd attempt in the lines " Is there no bright," <fec., to make 
 suicide the natural consequence of more elevated feelings. Johnson 
 spoke as a severe moralist, and a rigid philosopher, against such con- 
 temptible reasoning as Pope employs upon this subject from the fifth 
 to the twenty-second verse. Having been, as might naturally be 
 expected from his superior understanding, disgusted with the reason- 
 ing part of the poem, the gentler touches of fancy and tenderness 
 were lost, if I may say so, on him. He would turn with disdain from 
 such images as 
 
 There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow ; 
 
 or perhaps exclaim, as upon another occasion, Incredulus odi. Not- 
 withstanding, however, his severity, the animated passages of this 
 poem, "But thou, false guardian," <fec., and the lines of tenderness 
 and poetic fancy interspersed, cannot be read without sympathy. 
 The verses "Yet shall thy grave," <Src., are possibly too common- 
 place, but they are surely beautiful. If any expression might be 
 objected to, perhaps it would be "silver" for "white" wings of an 
 angel. BOWLES. 
 
 The Elegy, although produced at an early age, is not exceeded in 
 pathos and true poetry by any production of its author. But whilst 
 we admit the extraordinary powers displayed by the poet, we cannot 
 but perceive that they are apparently employed to give a sanction to 
 an act of criminality, and to inculcate principles 1 w!"'rh ** ari not be top 
 cautiously guarded against. It must, however, be observed, that this 
 pice is not to be judged of by the common rules of criticism, ^jb is. 
 in fact, a spontaneous burst of indignation against the authors of the 
 calamity which it records. Throughout the whole poem, the author 
 jipoaks as if he were under a delusion, and utters^sentimentsjvlnch 
 would be wholly unpardonable at^>ther_tjnies. It is only in this. 
 figtit that we can excuse the violence of many of the expressions, 
 which "border on the very verge of (Tm piety.) The first line of^Jhe
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 201 
 
 poem demonstrates that he is no longer under the control of reason. 
 He sees the gnosL Of tilt! peraon whom ne so highly admired and 
 loved. The " visionary sword " gleams before his eyes, and in the 
 excess of his grief he perceives nothing but what is great and noble 
 in the act that terminated her life. This impassioned strain _fe nnn- 
 tinued till his anger is turned against the authorof h^r 
 
 when it is_j)oured out in one of the most terrific passages which 
 poetry, either ancient or modern, can exhibit, a passage in which 
 
 indignation and revenge seem to absorb every other feeling, and to 
 involve not only the offender, but all whojtre connected with him, in 
 indiscriminate destruction. Xor is this sufficient their destruction 
 must be the cause of exultation to others^ and they are to become 
 tne objects of insult and abhorrence 
 
 There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, &c. 
 
 Compassion at length succeeds to resentment, and pity to terror. 
 The poet in some degree assumes his own character, and his feelings 
 nrg^fiYpjgssed in language of the deepest affection and tenderness, 
 which impresses itself indelibly on the memory of the reader. The 
 concluding lines, whilst they display the ardour of real passion, de- 
 
 monstrate Tinat-pT^iTy l.1u. Aiil.lim .m -dAa^d fr fl.n art. TIA pro- 
 
 fessed j_ that, and his affection for the object of his grief, could only 
 expire together j 
 
 The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more. ROSCOB. 
 
 This poem first appeared in the quarto of 1717, where it bore the 
 title of "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady." In the 
 edition of 1736, "Elegy" was substituted for "Verses." The 
 earliest historical account of the heroine was given by William Ayre, 
 Esq., in a miserable compilation called Memoirs of Pope, which is 
 full of extravagant fictions and blunders. * This wretched book-maker 
 has merely turned the incidents of the poem into prose, and amplified 
 them in the process. His narrative would be unworthy of notice if 
 it had not been adopted by Ruffhead, who borrowed, without acknow- 
 ledgment, the statements, and, in the main, the very language of 
 Ayre. The authority of Ruffhead's work is entirely due to the fact, 
 that it was in part drawn up from manuscripts supplied by War- 
 burton, and was subsequently revised by him. The copy corrected 
 by the bishop contains no note on the pages which record the fate of 
 
 1 The Memoirs by Ayre appeared in 1745, without the name of the publisher. 
 In a pamphlet which was printed the same year, under the title of Remarks oil 
 Squire Ayre's Memoirs, it is stated that the work was put together, and published 
 by Curl], who being notorious for the manufacture of vapid, lying biographies, 
 euppressed a name which would have been fatal to the sale of his trash.
 
 202 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 the unfortunate lady. It does not follow that he knew the particu- 
 lars to be true because he has not declared them to be false. He 
 was probably ignorant on the subject, and unable either to confirm 
 or confute the story. Dr. Johnson was in the same position. " The 
 lady's name and adventures," he says, in his Life of Pope, " I have 
 sought with fruitless inquiry. I can, therefore, tell no more than I 
 have learned from Mr. Ruffhead, who writes with the confidence of 
 one who could trust his information." The trust was fallacious. 
 Ruffhead, an uncritical transcriber, a blind man led by the blind, was 
 deceived by a transparent impostor who, in default of facts, embellished 
 the hints in Pope's verse. His style of invention is emblazoned in 
 the last sentence of his narrative when he says, that " the priesthood 
 would have buried the lady in the highway, but it seems their power 
 there did not extend so far." The law of England till the reign 
 of George IV. ordained that a suicide, unless irresponsible from 
 insanity, should be interred in the highway, and a stake driven 
 through, the body. Pope, in his poem, only spoke of " unpaid 
 rites," whence Ayre, alias Curll, concluded that the law of the place 
 did not sanction road-burial. Familiar, however, with the English 
 notion he transfers it to the priests of a locality where the usage, by 
 his own confession, did not exist. 
 
 Nearly half a century after the death of the poet, Hawkins and 
 Warton, who evidently derived their statements from a common/ 
 source, produced a legend, which instead of being drawn from the. 
 elegy is directly opposed to it. Pope says that the unfortunate lady 
 destroyed herself with a sword, Warton that she put an end to her 
 life with a rope ; Pope says that she had beauty, Warton that she 
 was 4efarme4 : Pope says that she had titles, Warton that she was 
 simply one Wainsbury ; Pope says that she had fame, and Warton 
 has quoted a name so obscure that nobody has been able to discover 
 her lineage, her connections, her residence, or that she was ever 
 known to a single human being of the time. The Warton form of 
 the romance has been jotted down by the Duchess of Portland in her 
 note book, from which it appears that the narrators did not agree 
 among themselves ; for Warton declares that the lady was beloved by 
 Pope ; the duchess that Pope was beloved by the lady, and that he 
 did not return her affection. In his Essay on the Genius of Pope, 
 Warton states that her first suitor was the Duke of Buckingham, that 
 on his deserting her she retired into a convent in France, and that 
 her retreat into a nunnery prompted the poet, " who had conceived a 
 violent passion for her," to express his feelings in the Epistle of Eloisa 
 to Abelard. 2 The Duke of Buckingham, on March 16, 1705, married 
 his third wife, who survived him. The tone and details of the Elegy 
 
 2 Warton's Essay, 5th cd. vol. i. p. 329.
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 203 
 
 forbid the notion that it could have been -written on a cast-off mistress 
 of the duke, and the incidents must, therefore, have occurred before 
 March 16, 1705, when Pope was barely sixteen years and ten months 
 old. The fable thus requires us to suppose that the Epistle of Eloisa 
 to Abelard was the production of a lad of seventeen, that it was com- 
 posed several years before the translation of the letters existed from 
 which he has borrowed a considerable part of the phraseology as well 
 as the ideas, and that his virulent denunciation of the " false guar- 
 dian," was for not allowing a ward " with beauty, titles, wealth, and 
 fame," to wed the son of a linen-draper, a mere boy without money, 
 reputation, or prospects, and who was deformed and stunted in an 
 extreme degree. 
 
 In 1806, Bowles promulgated a tradition which contradicts the 
 representations both of Ayre and Warton. The hero of Warton is 
 Pope himself ; the hero of Bowles is the Duke of Berry. The heroine 
 of Warton in one version, for he is not consistent, was forced into a 
 convent ; and the heroine of Bowles withdrew there of her own 
 accord. The unfortunate lady of Ayre and Ruffhead is driven abroad 
 by her uncle, that she may be weaned from an English attachment ; 
 the unfortunate lady of Bowles falls in love with a foreigner on the 
 continent ; the lady of Ayre and Ruffhead is thwarted in her matri- 
 monial schemes because she has fixed her heart upon a person 
 beneath her ; and the lady of Bowles is reduced to despair because 
 she aspires to the hand of a person above her. Bowles maintains 
 that the latter view must be received or the Elegy is unintelligible. 
 Johnson has shown that the Elegy is contradictory, and if the verses 
 which represent the lady's fate to have been the consequence of her 
 ambition favours the theory that she was enamoured of some superior 
 in rank, the passage which represents the uncle as steeling his heart 
 against his niece out of pride equally favours the rival hypothesis that 
 she was devoted to an inferior. 
 
 At variance in nearly every particular, the conflicting histories of 
 the unfortunate lady have the common quality, that they are unsup- 
 ported by a single circumstance which could warrant the smallest 
 measure of belief. Bowles heard his version, for which he declined 
 to vouch, from an unnamed gentleman, who heard it from Condorcet, 
 who heard it from Voltaire, who heard it nobody knows where. 
 Ayre and the rest cite no witnesses whatever, for the obvious reason 
 that they had none of any value to cite. The only accounts which 
 give the lady's name report it differently, and not one of the investi- 
 gators of her story, not even Warton after his " many and wide 
 enquiries," can tell us where she was born or died, or where she 
 lived, or to whom she was related or known. The veriest phantom 
 that ever flitted in darkness before the eye of credulous superstition 
 could not be more illusive and impalpable.
 
 204 ELEGY TO THE MEMOKY 
 
 The biographers and editors who went about enquiring after the 
 unfortunate lady had no suspicion that she might be altogether a 
 poetical invention, nor could tLey have shown that here was the solution 
 of the mystery unless they had been in possession of the Caryll corre- 
 spondence. Pope, in a posthumous note, which was published by 
 Warburton, directs us to the letters to several ladies at p. 206 of the 
 quarto edition, for the indications that the unfortunate lady of the 
 Elegy was also the heroine of the Duke of Buckingham's Verses to 
 a Lady designing to retire into a Monastery. There are no letters to 
 ladies at p. 206 of the quarto, but some are inserted from p. 86 
 to p. 95, and 206 is a palpable misprint for 86, where, in conformity 
 with the title of the duke's poem, we have a letter to a lady who was 
 meditating a retreat to a convent. The preceding letter is addressed 
 to Mr. Caryll, and, in the table of coutento, is said to be " Concern- 
 ing an unfortunate lady." The letter which relates to the monastic 
 project is said, in the table of contents, to be "To the same lady," 
 and thence it appears that the lady who thought of withdrawing to a 
 nunnery was the same unfortunate lady who was the subject of the 
 letter to CarylL From the Caryll correspondence we discover that 
 she was the wife of John Weston, Esq., of Sutton, in the county of 
 Surrey ; but, instead of dying by her cwn hand in a foreign country, 
 she died a natural death in her native land on the 18th of October, 
 1724, several years after the poet had commemorated the suicide of 
 the unfortunate lady. : It follows that he has falsely represented the 
 unfortunate lady of his letters to have been the same individual with 
 the unfortunate lady of the Elegy, and since he was driven to conjure 
 up a fictitious victim we may be sure that there was no real victim in 
 the case. This explains Pope's omission to answer Caryll's inquiry 
 who the unfortunate lady was ;" this explains why the tragical death 
 of a woman " with beauty, titles, wealth, and fame," was unknown 
 to her contemporaries ; this explains why the histories of her differ 
 from each other, and why in every one of them she remains a shadowy 
 being whose very existence cannot be traced ; this explains why, as 
 Johnson observes, it is not easy to make out from the poem the cha- 
 racter of either the heroine or her guardian : and this accounts for the 
 contradictions which have crept into the Elegy. Pope adopted the 
 
 1 Pope's Correspondence, ed. Elwin, vol. i., pp. 144, 158 160, 162. 
 
 9 "Pray in your next," writes Caryll to Pope, July 16, 1717, "tell me who 
 was the unfortunate Jady you address a copy of verses to. I think you ouce gave 
 me her history, but it is now quite out of my head." Pope, in his reply, 
 does not allude to the subject, and Caryll says to him on Aug. 18, " You answer 
 not my question who the unfortunate lady was that you inscribe a copy of verses 
 to in your book. I long to be re-told her story, for I believe you already told me 
 formerly ; but I shall refer that, and a thousand other things more, to chat over 
 at our next meeting, which I hope draws near." This letter was answered by 
 Pope on Aug. 22, but there is still not a word on the unfortunate lady.
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 205 
 
 common incident of a miserable girl having recourse to self-destruction, 
 and he wished to have it believed that he had a personal interest in 
 her fate. His disposition to talk of himself in his poetry has been 
 noticed by Johnson. Windsor Forest, the Essay on Criticism, the 
 Temple of Fame, the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, and the Rape of 
 the Lock, all ended egotistically. The Elegy was an inviting occasion 
 for the indulgence of his propensity. He had got, as he thought, a 
 romantic heroine, and yielding to the temptation to blend his name 
 with her story, he wound up his verses with the celebration of his 
 devoted attachment to her. He laid the scene of her death abroad 
 to account for English ignorance of the tragedy, and he endeavoured 
 to authenticate the fable fbr posterity by a posthumous note which 
 involved the assumption that the unfortunate lady of his letters was 
 the same lady commemorated in his poem. The note which was de- 
 signed to accredit the tale has answered the opposite purpose, and 
 convicted him of a puerile deception, not the mere impulse of youth- 
 ful vanity, but renewed on the brink of the grave, with a final sense 
 of satisfaction in propping up and perpetuating the petty fraud. 
 
 The supposition that the story was true has seduced Warton, 
 Wakefield, and Roscoe into some weak critical fancies. Warton 
 thinks the Elegy the most pathetic of Pope's writings, and 
 " that tEe f.a.flRft of i+.a AYCp.ngnca ia that the occasion of it was real 
 Wakefield remarks that the text of the latest edition does not differ 
 from the earliest, and conjectures that "the author's interest in 
 the subject rendered the poem too affecting for his own perusal." 
 Roscoe, to excuse the principles inculcated in the piece, alleges that 
 it was " a spontaneous burst of indignation," and that " the first line 
 demonstrates that Pope was no longer under the control of reason." 
 Similar causes have dissimilar effects. Unfortunate ladies who are 
 " no longer under the control of reason " are prone to stab or hang 
 themselves 5 . When Pope is " no longer under the control of reason" 
 he sits down and writes an elegy which Roscoe says " is not exceeded 
 in pathos and true poetry by any production of its author." Had 
 the grief been as genuine as it was imaginary the apology is mani- 
 festly futile ; for the man whose mind is sufficiently calm to permit 
 him to sing his woes in polished verse, must have passed beyond the 
 stage when he is incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. The 
 plea might have justified the sentiments in a drama where the speaker 
 was represented as pouring out his feelings while the calamity was 
 fresh, but in an elegy the poet embodies his own opinions at the time 
 of composition, and the bad morality becomes deliberate doctrine. 
 
 Vague and sounding verse could not lend a momentary specious- 
 ness to the sophistries of the Elegy. That the transgression of the 
 angels was ambition is a common, though an unauthorised idea. 
 That their sin was " glorious" is a notice peculiar to Pope, This 
 
 mm* 
 
 gays I 
 gal." I 
 Liffer /
 
 206 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 " glorious fault" they infused into the unfortunate lady and " bade 
 her soul aspire." The particular aspiration they suggested to her was 
 to marry out of her sphere ; her lofty ambition was an inordinate 
 ^desire to make a pood worldjy_inatch. Thwarted in the inagSaniuioua 
 
 of Tinr lifrt, pha had the second great merit of an heroic 
 
 jJeath ; for to commit suicide wag ? in .fope's opinion^ ** to think 
 greatly," ''to die bravely," " to act a Roman's part." Thfi_xalted. 
 
 representation will not stand before the annuls of suicide. Thej_bear 
 gaily witness that self-destruction ia the refuge of diseased f weak, 
 pusillanimous, conscience-stricken minds. 1 The want of fortitude ia 
 proportioned to the slightness of the disaster which prompts the deed. 
 What is remediable may be more readily endured than what cannot 
 be cured, and there could be no stronger mark of a childish, self- 
 indulgent, unhealthy character, without force or dignity, the slave of 
 impulse, than that a woman should be guilty of suicide because her 
 guardian refused his consent to an unequal marriage. There might 
 be much room for pity ; there could be none for admiration. The 
 strength of affection which could be the only redeeming element is 
 eliminated by the poet who, in this part of the Elegy, resolves the 
 lady's love into the ignoble craving to marry into a higher station 
 than her own. Herworldiy disposition is the evidence to^ Pope 
 that she had " a purer spirit" than such " kindred dregs" as had 
 not sufficient grandeur of mind to worship rank. Out of compassion 
 for her superiority " fate snalclle'd her early a\vay " tlxat she might 
 nbt be doomed to associate with the " dull souls" who love their 
 gquals, and bear thgir trials_wjth resignation.. 
 
 The opening lines of the Elegy have some of the indefiniteness 
 which Johnson censured in the portrayal of the lady and her guardian. 
 A female ghost with a gored and bleeding bosom, and bearing a 
 visionary sword, beckons the poet to go with her into a glade. For 
 what purpose does she beckon him ? The apparition may be sup- 
 
 1 Dr. Morell, in his notes to Seneca's Epistles, says, " I remember when I was a 
 boy at Eton that an old almswoman, Mrs. Pain, having been cut down alive, gave 
 this reason for hanging herself, that she was afraid of dying." To rush into death 
 from the fear of death is not uncommon, and shows how far suicide is from being 
 an evidence of superior courage. Acute philosophers have not always reasoned 
 better than Pope. M. Lerminier, a French writer of repute, eulogises, in his 
 Philosophic du Droit, the suicide of Cato for "a pure and majestic act." " In the 
 Memoirs of the Emperor's Valet," he says in the next sentence, "we learn that 
 Napoleon tried to destroy himself at Fontainebleau in 1814. He took poison; 
 remedies were applied, and he recovered. He was not to die thus. Would yon 
 wish that Napoleon's end should have been that of an amorous sub-lieutenant, or a 
 ruined banker ?" l^ut this was the veritable end of Cato. He died the death o 
 "amorous sub-lieutenants and ruined bankers." The question of M. Lerminier 
 revealed his consciousness that suicide was not heroism, or, in justification of the 
 attempt of the Emperor, he would have asked, " Would you not have wished that 
 Napoleon's end should have been the pure and majestic end of Cato ?"
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 207 
 
 posed to be the creature of a heated imagination, but there should be 
 some significance in the act ascribed to her. The ghost of the King 
 of Denmark did not beckon Horatio or the sentinels. It passed by 
 them with "a slow and stately march," and made no sign, till Hamlet 
 was present at its fourth appearance, and then 
 
 It beckoned him to go away with it 
 As if it some impartment did desire 
 To him alone. 
 
 The ghost of the unfortunate lady imparted no information to Pope, 
 for he avows his ignorance of everything relating to her ghostly con- 
 dition. A passage in Milton's Comus, separated from the context, 
 might seem to countenance the indiscriminate use of the epithet 
 " beckoning," as if it were a general characteristic of spectres. 
 
 A thousand fantasies 
 Begin to throng into my memory, 
 Of calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire, 
 And airy tongues that syllable men's names 
 On sands, and shores, and desert wildernesses. 1 
 
 A superstition attached to " desert wildernesses," where the wanderer 
 who lost sight of his associates could seldom strike into their track 
 on the pathless waste, was made known to Milton by the travels of 
 Marco Polo. " If," says the old Venetian, in his account of the 
 great Asiatic desert, Lop or Gobi, " any one at night stays behind, or 
 diverges from his company, he hears, when he wishes to rejoin it, 
 spirits speaking in the air, who seem to be his comrades, and some- 
 times call him by his name, beguiling him out of the right road, so 
 that many continue to go astray and perish." 2 The lady in Comus 
 was in a like situation. She was benighted, she had lost her way, she 
 heard " the tumult of loud mirth," and when she reached the spot from 
 whence the merriment proceeded she found " nought but darkness." 
 Then the " calling shapes, and beck'ning shadows dire," that lure poor 
 wanderers to destruction, rushed into her thoughts, and she conceived 
 she might be the dupe of malignant phantoms. 3 Pope's beckoning 
 ghost was not of this class of "dire" counterfeit "shadows." She 
 
 1 Comus, ver. 205. 
 
 2 I Yiaggi di Marco Polo, ed. Pasini, 1847, p. 45. 
 
 3 A belief akin to that which grew up in deserts prevailed in England. Hamlet 
 doubts whether his father's ghost is a "spirit of health or goblin damned," and 
 Horatio attempts to dissuade Hamlet from following it lest it should prove to be an 
 impostor. A "goblin damned" may have put on the "fair and warlike form" 
 of the King of Denmark, may "tempt" Hamlet to the " dreadful summit of the 
 cliff," may "there assume some other horrible form which might draw him into 
 madness," and impel him to commit suicide. The radical idea is the same in 
 Shakespeare and Marco Polo. Fiends personate the relations or friends of an in- 
 tended victim that they may decoy him to his death.
 
 208 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 is represented as an honest, sympathising spirit, who could never 
 have designed to entica her lover or friend into the glade with a 
 murderous intent. Warton quotes the commencement of Ben Jon- 
 son's Epitaph on Lady Winchester, which Pope must have had in his 
 mind when he wrote his Elegy. The ghost beckoned Jonson to pluck 
 a garland from the yew tree. 1 A spirit could not have revisited the 
 world, for a more frivolous purpose, but at least the poet felt that he 
 must assign a cause for the beckoning. The omission in Pope arose 
 from a frequent source of misapplied language. Isolated lines and 
 phrases, which had the sanction of classic authors, lingered in his 
 memory, and he forgot the accompaniments to which they owed their 
 fitness. 
 
 The spectacle of the bleeding ghost of the lady haunting the glade 
 by moonlight suggests to the poet that she may be doing penance for 
 her self-inflicted death. He reasons himself into the conviction that 
 her violence was meritorious, and he concludes that she has been 
 " snatched to the pitying sky." Atver. 47 comes a couplet in which 
 the Christian idea of a spirit in heaven is superseded_by_the_pagan 
 notion of an"ever" injured shade " to whom nothing can compensate for 
 the loss of the customary funereal rites. Out of his ambition to imi- 
 taie classic poets Pope jumbled discordant creeds together, arid intra- 
 'duced tms remnant of anextinct mythology, absurd in itself .and 
 offensive in a modern elegy. fftThe passage which follows, fromjEfit 
 61 to ver. 68, i the 1 must pltfeing part ofthe pQenythough the ten 
 lines from ver. 59 have been severely r ~cnticised by Lord Kames. 
 Fictitious topics of consolation were not, he said, " the language of 
 the heart, but of imagination indulging its flights at ease," and were 
 incompatible with "the deeply serious and pathetic." 2 Warburton 
 criticised the criticism. He said it " smelled furiously of old John 
 Dennis," and Bowles allowed that it was "absurd." The tone of 
 Lord Kames is, perhaps, too contemptuous, for the lines have a cer- 
 tain sweetness of sentiment. Yet he was right when he maintained 
 that they were not in harmony with the professions of grief and in- 
 dignation which follow or go before. All ages and nations have 
 shared the conviction that the omnipotence behind the phenomena of 
 nature deputes them on special occasions to speak in exceptional ways 
 to the affections, hopes, and fears of man. In the rear of these 
 beliefs are numerous cases in which appearances are accepted for a 
 symbolical language, not with an absolute faith, but with a fond 
 acquiescence because they are the just reflection of our thoughts. 
 Wordsworth's exquisite Hart-leap Well, perfect in its descriptive 
 
 1 And beck'ning woos me, from the fatal tree 
 To pluck a garland for herself or me. 
 
 2 Elements of Criticism, 6th ed., vol. i. p. 477.
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 209 
 
 power, its easy flow of beautiful English, and its mingled strains of 
 animation and pathos culminates iu the creed that the bleakness of 
 the once luxuriant enclosure in which the stag fell dead, is the protest 
 of nature against the palace and bowers erected there by the knight in 
 exultant commemoration of his cruel cha^e. Wide is the range in 
 this domain of poetry, from sublimity down to prettiuesses, from 
 prettinesses to poor conceits. What is legitimate in it-elf may be 
 wrongly placed, and here is the fault of Pope's lines. Amid the 
 tempest of sorrow and anger he derives consolation from the notion 
 that the first roses of the year wiil blow on the grave of the unfortu- 
 nate lady, that the earliest dew-drops of the morning will weep har 
 loss, that the turf will lie light on her insensate corpse, and that 
 angels will overshadow in perpetuity the spot of earth which conceals 
 it. The reveries of fancy may gratify the tranquil mind. They 
 would be mockery to a man absorbed by terrible realities, to a man 
 distracted by the suicide of the woman he adored. 
 
 The paragraph, " So peaceful rests." was much admired by the 
 stone-cutters, and with tasteless ignorance they engraved it, slightly 
 modified, upon hundreds of tombstones. No one in a churchyard 
 requires to be reminded that its buried population is <{ a. heap pf 
 dust." Amid the visible signs of mortality m ntr unicntaj3hould soothe 
 and lift up the mind by^pfta^iig " f *-h"+. w hj?-a.ja. not corruptibly of 
 that which was best in the acts, disposition, endurance, and belief 
 of the dead, or of the contrast between the earthly life that w^s and 
 the life that is, between th,e transitory and tho pimottal. Improper 
 for an epitaph, the lines were not unsuited to an elegy, if the final 
 paragraph had opened up a brighter vista instead of dropping into 
 the lowest style of heathenism. The affection of +.IIP elegy- wr.it.Ar was 
 to cease with the "idlebusiness" of life^jind the dearest object ofjii^ 
 heart would be " beloved by him no more." He had talked of "pale 
 gEosts," and "Jirfcht reversions in the skies," but by the time he 
 got to the concln-ion of his poetical exercise, skies, and ghosts had 
 faded from his thoughts, and his language would leave the impres- 
 sion that the " last gasp " was the end of all things. In compositionK 
 the Elegy is terse and powerful ; thftifjftaa are erroneous, inconsistent,; 
 or inadequate. Pagan and Christian notions clash together ; the 
 story is represented under contradictory phases ; the dreary close j?f 
 fixe poein sets aside the, faith which consoles survivors ; the senti- 
 ments aTthe begiimig-are-fabe--imd 1!^^. *md th midd1 T 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY.
 
 ELEGY 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OP 
 
 AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 
 
 WHAT beck'ning ghost, 1 along the moon-light shade 
 
 Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade ? 
 
 'Tis she ! but why that bleeding bosom gored? 2 
 
 Why dimly gleams the visionary sword ? 
 
 Oh ever beauteous, ever friendly ! tell, 
 
 Is it, in heav'n, a crime to love too well ? 3 
 
 To bear too tender, or too firm a heart, 
 
 To act a lover's or a Roman's part ? 
 
 Is there no bright reversion in the sky, 
 
 For those who greatly think, or bravely die ? 
 
 Why bade ye else, ye pow'rs ! her soul aspire 
 Above the vulgar flight of low desire ? 
 Ambition first sprung from your bless'd abodes ; 
 The glorious fault of angels 4 and of gods : 
 
 10 
 
 1 Ben Jonson's Elegy on the Mar- 
 chioness of Winchester : 
 
 What gentle ghost besprent with April dew, 
 Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew ? 
 And beck'ning woos me ? WARTON. 
 
 2 Johnson gives two meanings for 
 " to gore," "to stab," "to pierce ;" 
 and "to pierce with a horn." The 
 second, or special signification, has 
 since superseded the general sense in 
 popular usage, thoiigh, as with many 
 other words, a sense which has be- 
 come obsolete in conversation is occa- 
 sionally revived in books. Formerly, 
 the general sense of "to pierce," 
 without reference to the mode of 
 
 piercing, was the predominant mean- 
 ing, and Milton, Par. Lost, vi. 386, 
 employed the word to denote the gaps 
 made in the ranks of a defeated 
 army : 
 
 the battle swerved 
 With many an inroad gored. 
 
 3 The third Elegy of Crashaw : 
 
 And I, what is my crime, I cannot tell, 
 Unless it be a crime t" have loved too well 
 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 4 Shakespeare, Henry VIII. Act iii. 
 Sc. 2: 
 
 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling awa." 
 
 ambition ; 
 By that sin fell the angels. 
 
 P 2
 
 212 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 Thence to their images on earth it flows, ifl 
 
 And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows. 
 
 Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age, 
 
 Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage : ' 
 
 Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years 
 
 Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres ; so 
 
 Like Eastern kings a lazy state they keep, 
 
 And, close confined to their own palace, sleep. 1 
 
 From these perhaps (ere nature bade her die) 
 Fate snatched her early to the pitying sky. 
 As into air the purer spirits flow, ss 
 
 And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below ; 
 So flew the soul to its congenial place, 
 Nor left one virtue to redeem her race. 3 
 
 But thou, false guardian of a charge too good, 4 
 Thou mean deserter of thy brother's blood ! M 
 
 See on these ruby lips the trembling breath, 
 These cheeks now fading at the blast of death ; 
 Cold is that breast which warmed the world before, 1 
 And those love-darting eyes ' must roll no more/ 
 Thus, if eternal justice rules the ball, w 
 
 Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall : 
 On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, 
 And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates ; 
 
 1 Dryden, To the Duchess of Or- 4 Eryden, Ovid's Amor. ii. 19 : 
 mond . But thou dull husband of a wife too fair. 
 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 And where imprisoned in so sweet a cage 5 Lord Kames objects to the false 
 
 A soul might well be pleased to pass an age. antithesis bet ween cold flesh and 
 
 2 Cowley has a couplet not unlike mental warmth. 
 
 his, Davideis, i. 80 : 6 Milton, Comus, ver. 753 : 
 
 Love-darting eyes or tresses like the morn. 
 Where their vast court the mother-waters WAKEFIELD 
 
 An^disturbed bymoons In silence sleep. ? RoUin g c y cs are C0ntrar y to tlle 
 
 WAKEFIELD. English idea of feminine refinement. 
 
 Pope admired them. He had pre- 
 
 3 Duke's translation of Juvenal, viously said in the Rape of the Lock, 
 B* iv - : Cant. v. 33, 
 
 Without one virtue to redeem his fame. Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may 
 
 WAKEFIELD. rulL
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 
 
 213 
 
 There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, 
 
 (While the long fun'rals blacken all the way) 
 
 " Lo ! these were they, whose souls the furies steeled, 
 
 " And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield." ' 
 
 Thus unlamented pass the proud away, 
 
 The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day ! 
 
 So perish all, whose breast ne'er learned to glow 
 
 For others' good, or melt at others' woe.* 
 
 What can atone, oh ever-injured shade ! 
 Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid ? 
 No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear 
 Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 
 By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,* 
 By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, 4 
 
 10 
 
 "Wakefield mentions that the 
 phrase "unknowing how to yield" is 
 used by Dryden, ./Eneis, xi. 472, and 
 that the entire couplet is almost iden- 
 tical with two passages in Pope's own 
 translation of the Iliad. The first is 
 at Book ix. 749. The second is at 
 Book xxii. 447, and runs thus : 
 
 The furies that relentless breast have 
 
 steeled 
 And cursed thee with a heart that cannot 
 
 yield. 
 
 2 From a fragment of Sir Edward 
 Hungerford, according to a writer in 
 the Gentleman's Magazine for 1764 : 
 
 The soul by pure religion taught to glow 
 At others' good, or melt at others' woe. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Dryden, Jfoeis, ix. 647, where 
 the mother of Euryalus laments her 
 son, whose body remains with the 
 enemy : 
 
 Nor was I near to close his dying eyes, 
 To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The cruelties of the lady's relations, 
 the desolation of the family, the being 
 deprived of the rights of sepulture, 
 the circumstance of dying in a country 
 
 remote from her relations, are all 
 touched with great tenderness and 
 pathos, particularly the four lines 
 from the 51st, " By foreign hands," 
 &c. WARTON. 
 
 4 The anonymous translator of 
 Ariadne to Theseus : 
 
 Poor Ariadne ! thou must perish here, 
 Breathe out thy soul in strange and hated 
 
 air, 
 
 Nor see thy pitying mother she(? /me tear ; 
 Want a kind hand, which thy fixed eyes 
 
 may close, 
 A>nd thy stiff limbs may decently compose. 
 
 So Gay in his Dione, Act ii. Sc. 1 : 
 
 What pious care my ghastful lid shall 
 close ? 
 
 What decent hand my frozen limbs com- 
 pose. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 De Quincey assumes that the term 
 "decent limbs" refers to the lady's 
 shape, and he remarks that the 
 language "does not imply much en- 
 thusiasm of praise." Pope had per- 
 haps the same idea in his mind as 
 the translator he imitated, and ' ' thy 
 decent limbs were composed " may bo 
 put inaccurately for " thy limbs were 
 composed decently.''
 
 214 
 
 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY 
 
 By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, 
 By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned .' 
 What though no friends in sable weeds appear, 
 Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn ' a year, 
 And bear about the mockery of woe 
 To midnight dances, and the public show ? 
 What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace, 
 Nor polished marble emulate thy face ? 
 What though no sacred earth allow thee room, 
 Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb ? 
 Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be dressed, 
 And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast : * 
 There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, 
 There the first roses of the year shall blow ; 
 While angels with their silver wings 3 o'ershade 
 The ground, now sacred 4 by thy reliques made. 5 
 
 M 
 
 1 The poet in the previous couplet 
 has employed the word "mourn" to 
 signify genuine regret. In this verse 
 it is put for the act of wearing mourn- 
 ing, the appealing in the "sable 
 weeds, "which are "the mockery of 
 woe" when the sorrow is not real. 
 
 2 Dryden, Virg. Eel. x. 51 : 
 
 How light would lie the turf upon my 
 breast 
 
 A. Philips in his third Pastoral : 
 The flow'ry turf lie light upon thy breast. 
 
 This thought was common with the 
 ancients. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Tasso's description of an angel in 
 the translation of Fairfax, i. 14 : 
 
 Of silver wings he took a shining pair 
 Fringed with gold. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 The expression has reference to 
 ver. 61. "No sacred earth allowed 
 her room," but her remains have 
 "made sacred" the common earth in 
 which she was buried. 
 
 8 Such a poem as Pope's Elegy, 
 deeply serious and pathetic, rejects 
 with disdain all fiction. Upon that 
 
 account the passage from ver. 59 to 
 ver. 68 deserves no quarter ; for it is 
 not the language of the heart, but of 
 the imagination indulging its nights 
 at ease, and by that means is emi- 
 nently discordant with the subject. 
 It would be a still more severe cen- 
 sure if it should be ascribed to imi- 
 tation, copying indiscreetly what has 
 been said by others. LORD KAMES. 
 
 The ghost of the injured person 
 appears to excite the poet to revenge 
 her wrongs. He describes her cha- 
 racter, execrates the author of her mis- 
 fortunes, expatiates on the severity 
 of her fate, the rites of sepulture de- 
 nied her in a foreign land. Then 
 follows, "What though no weep- 
 ing," &c. Can anything be more 
 naturally pathetic? Yet the critic 
 tells us he can give no quarter to this 
 part of the poem. "Well might our 
 poet's last wish be to commit his 
 writings to the candour of a sensible 
 and reflecting judge, rather than to 
 the malice of every short-sighted and 
 malevolent critic. "WAEBUBTOX.
 
 OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY. 215 
 
 So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name, 
 What once had heauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 70 
 
 How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not, 
 To whom related, or by whom hegot ; 
 A heap of dust alone remains of thee ; 
 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be ! ' 
 
 Poets themselves must fall like those they sung, 75 
 
 Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.* 
 Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays, 
 Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays ; 
 Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part, 
 And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart, so 
 
 Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er, 
 The muse forgot, and thou beloved no more i 
 
 1 When Pope describes the retribu- The persecutors who have hunted you 
 
 tion which is to fall upon the impe- into the grave, shall one day share 
 
 rious relatives of the unfortunate lady, your fate. 
 
 he says, 3 R. Herrick, in a Meditation for 
 
 Thus unlamented pass the proud away ; "^ s Distress : 
 
 and it is to these same relations, whose * ou * re the I 8 ? ^ flow ^ 3 amo , n ^' 
 
 But die you must, fair maid, ere long, 
 
 pride was their vice, that he reverts m As he> the maker of this song, 
 the line, WAKEFIKLD. 
 
 'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAED.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Written by Mr. POPE. 
 The second edition, 8vo. 
 
 London : Printed for BERNARD LINTOT, at the Cross-keys between the 
 Temple Gates in Fleet Street. 1720. 
 
 The Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard first appeared in the quarto of 1717. 
 The second edition was accompanied by other poems on kindred subjects 
 " Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady ; Florelio, a Pastoral, 
 lamenting the Death of the late Marquis of Blandford, by Mr. Fenton ; Upon 
 the Death of her Husband, by Mrs. Elizabeth Singer ; A Ballad, by Mr. 
 Gay, ' 'Twas when the Seas were roaring ; ' and Richy and Sandy, a Pastoral 
 on the Death of Mr. Joseph Addison, by Allan Ramsay." The Epistlo 
 was reprinted in Lintot's Miscellany in 1720, 1722, 1727, and 1732. In 
 the Miscellany of 1727 there was added for the first time a motto from Prior's 
 Alma : 
 
 O Abelard ill-fated youth I 
 
 Thy fate will justify this truth ; 
 
 But well I weet, thy cruel wrong 
 
 Adorns a nobler poet's song : 
 
 Dan Pope, for thy misfortune grieved, 
 
 With kind concern and skill has weaved 
 
 A silken web, and ne'er shall fade 
 
 Its colours ; gently has he laid 
 
 The mantle o'er thy sad distress, 
 
 And Venus shall the texture bless. 
 
 He o'er the weeping nun has drawn 
 
 Such artful folds of sacred lawn, 
 
 That Love, with equal grief and pride, 
 
 Shall see the crime he strives to hide, 
 
 And softly drawing back the veil, 
 
 The god shall to his vot'ries tell 
 
 Each conscious tear, each blushing grace 
 
 That decked dear Eloisa's face. 
 
 Lord Batlmrst told Warton that Pope was not pleased with these lines, in 
 which the poet is accused of palliating Eloisa's guilt, and complimented for 
 the skill with which he did it ; but we learn from a letter of Pope to Christo- 
 pher Pitt that he himself corrected the sheets of his own pieces in the Mis- 
 cellany of 1727, and if the passage from Prior had been distasteful to him, ho 
 would not have prefixed it to the Epistle. The motto was repeated in the 
 Miscellany of 1732, and was omitted by him in the later editions of his 
 works.
 
 OF the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard I do not know the date. 
 Pope's first inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind 
 arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's Nut-brown 
 Maid. How much he has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary 
 to mention, when perhaps it may be said with justice that he has 
 excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious 
 hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed 
 love which images merely natural cannot bestow. The gloom of a 
 convent strikes the imagination with far greater force than the solitude 
 of a grove. This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his 
 latter years, though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it. 
 The Epistle is one of the most happy productions of human wit. 
 The subject is so judiciously chosen that it would be difficult, in 
 turning over the annals of the world, to find another which so many 
 circumstances concur to recommend. We regularly interest ourselves 
 most in the fortunes of those who most deserve our notice ; Abelard 
 and Eloisa were conspicuous in their days for eminence of merit. 
 The heart naturally loves truth ; the adventures and misfortunes of 
 this illustrious pair are known from undisputed history. Their fate 
 does not leave the mind in hopeless dejection, for they both found 
 quiet and consolation in retirement and piety. So new and so 
 affecting is their story that it supersedes invention, and imagination 
 ranges at full liberty without straggling into scenes of fable. The 
 story thus skilfully adopted, has been diligently improved. Pope has 
 left nothing behind him which seems more the effect of studious 
 perseverance and laborious revisal. Here is particularly observable 
 the curiosa fdicitas, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is 
 no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language. JOHNSON. 
 
 Of all stories, ancient or modern, there is not, perhaps, a more 
 proper one to furnish out an elegiac epistle than that of Eloisa and 
 Abelard. Their distresses were of a most singular and peculiar kind, 
 and their names sufficiently known, but not grown trite or common 
 by too frequent usage. Pope was a most excellent improver, if no 
 great original inventor, and we see how finely he has worked up the 
 hints of distress that are scattered up and down in Abelard and 
 Eloisa's letters, and in a little French history of their lives and mis- 
 fortunes. Abelard was reputed the most handsome, as well as the 
 most learned man, of his time, according to the kind of learning then 
 in vogue. An old chronicle, quoted by Andrew du Chesne, informs 
 us, that scholars flocked to his lectures from all quarters of the Latin
 
 220 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 world ; and his contemporary, St. Bernard, relates, that he numbered 
 among his disciples many principal ecclesiastics and cardinals at the 
 court of Rome. Abelard himself boasts, that when he retired into 
 the country, he was followed by such immense crowds of scholars 
 that they could get neither lodgings nor provisions sufficient for them. 
 He met with the fate of many learned men, to be embroiled in con- 
 troversy, and accused of heresy ; for St. Bernard, whose influence 
 and authority were very great, got his opinion of the Trinity con- 
 demned at a council held at Sens, 1140. But the talents of Abelard 
 were not confined to theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and the 
 thorny paths of scholasticism. He gave proofs of a lively genius by 
 many poetical performances, insomuch that he was reputed to be the 
 author of the famous Romance of the Rose, which, however, was 
 indisputably written by John of Meun, a little city on the banks of 
 the Loire, about four miles from Orleans. It was he who continued 
 and finished the Romance of the Rose, which William de Lorris had 
 left imperfect forty years before. There is undoubted evidence that 
 [the earliest portion] was written an hundred years after Abelard 
 flourished, and if chronology did not absolutely contradict the notion 
 of his being the author of this very celebrated piece, yet are there 
 internal arguments sufficient to confute it. There are many severe 
 and satirical strokes on the character of Eloisa which the pen of 
 Abelard never would have given. In one passage she is introduced 
 speaking with indecency and obscenity ; in another all the vices and 
 bad qualities of women are represented as assembled together in her 
 alone : 
 
 Qui les niiieurs feminins savoit 
 Car tres-tous en soi les avoit. 
 
 In a very old epistle dedicatory, addressed to Philip IV. of France by 
 this same John of Meun, and prefixed to a French translation of 
 Boetius, it appears that he also translated the epistles of Abelard to 
 Heloisa, which were in high vogue at the court. It is to be regretted 
 that we have no exact picture of the person and beauty of Eloisa. 
 Abelard himself says that she was " facie nou infima." ' Her 
 extraordinary learning many circumstances concur to confirm ; par- 
 ticularly one, which is, that the nuns of the Paraclete are wont to 
 have the office of ^Yhitsunday read to them in Greek, to perpetuate 
 the memory of her understanding that language. A lady learned as 
 was Eloisa in that age, who indisputably understood the Latin, Greek, 
 
 1 Dean Milinan, in his History of Latin Christianity, snys that Heloisa '' was 
 distinguished for her surpassing beauty." There is no authority for this assertion, 
 which is one of the embellishments of later romancers.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 221 
 
 and Hebrew tongues, was a kind of prodigy. 1 Her literature, says 
 Abelard, " in toto regno nominatissimam fecerat," and we may be 
 sure more thoroughly attached him to her. Bussy Rabutin speaks in 
 high terms of commendation of the purity of Eloisa's latinity, a 
 judgment worthy a French count. There is a force but not an 
 elegance in her style, which is blemished, as might be expected, by 
 many phrases unknown to the pure ages of the Roman language, and 
 by many Hebraisms borrowed from the translation of the Bible. 
 
 However happy and judicious the subject of Pope's Epistle may be 
 thought to be, as displaying the various conflicts and tumults between 
 duty and pleasure, between penitence and passion, that agitated the 
 mind of Eloisa, yet we must candidly own that the principal circum- 
 stance of distress is of so indelicate a nature, that it is with difficulty 
 disguised by the exquisite art and address of the poet. The capital 
 and unrivalled beauties of the poem arise from the striking images and 
 descriptions of the convent, and from the sentiments drawn from the 
 mystical books of devotion, particularly Madame Guion, and the 
 Archbishop of Cambray. 2 The Epistle is on the whole, one of the 
 most highly finished, and certainly the most interesting of the pieces 
 of our author ; and, together with the Elegy to the Memory of an 
 Unfortunate Lady, is the only instance of the pathetic Pope has 
 given us. I think one may venture to remark that the repxitation of 
 Pope as a poet among posterity will be principally owing to his 
 Windsor Forest, his Rape of the Lock, and his Eloisa to Abelard, 
 whilst the facts and characters alluded to and exposed in his later 
 writings, will be forgotten and unknown, and their poignancy and 
 propriety little relished. For wit and satire are transitory and 
 perishable, but nature and passion are eternal. WABTON. 
 
 Pope must be judged according to the rank in which he stands, 
 among those of the French school, not the Italian ; among those whose 
 delineations are taken more from manners than from nature. When 
 I say that this is his predominant character, I must be insensible to 
 everything exquisite in poetry if I did not except the Epistle to 
 Eloisa ; but this can only be considered according to its class, and if 
 I say that it seems to me superior to any other of the kind to which 
 it might fairly be compared, such as the Epistles of Ovid, Propertius, 
 
 1 "She knew Latin," says M. Remusat, "and wrote it with facility and 
 talent. As to Greek and Hebrew I can hardly believe that she was acquainted 
 with more than the alphabet, and a few words which were quoted habitually in 
 theology or in philosophy." The treatises of Abelard prove that he could read 
 neither Greek iior Hebrew, and it is not likely that Heloisa was more learned 
 than her master. Latin was the literary language of the day. 
 
 2 The sentiments which Warton imagined to be borrowed from Madame Guion 
 and Fenelon were taken from the English translation of the Letters of Heloisa 
 and Abelard. Kindred thoughts may be found in the works of almost any 
 devotional writer.
 
 222 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Tibullus (I will not mention Drayton, and Pope's numerous subse- 
 quent Imitations) but when this transcendent poem is compared with 
 those which will bear the comparison, I shall not be deemed as giving 
 reluctant praise, when I declare my conviction of its being infinitely 
 superior to everything of the kind, ancient or modern. In this poem, 
 therefore, Pope appears on the high ground of the poet of nature, but 
 this certainly is not his general character. In the particular instance 
 of this poem how distinguished and superior does he stand. It is 
 sufficient that nothing of the kind has ever been produced equal to it 
 for pathos, painting, and melody. The mellifluence and solemn 
 cadence of the verse, the dramatic transitions, the judicious contrasts, 
 the language of genuine passion, uttered in the sweetest flow of 
 music, and the pervading solemnity and grandeur of the picturesque 
 ecenery, give the Epistle a wonderful charm, and exemplify Pope's 
 observation in his Essay on Criticism, " there is a liappiiwss as well as 
 care." The inherent indelicacy of the subject is one objection to it, 
 . and who but must lament its immoral effect, for of its beauty there 
 can be but one sentiment. It may be said of it with truth in the 
 language of its author : 
 
 It lives, it breathes, it speaks what love inspires, 
 Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires ; 
 
 and as long as the English language remains, it will 
 Call down tears through every age. 
 
 Pope I have no doubt wrote the Epistle to Sappho, and this of Eloisa, 
 under the impression of strong personal feelings. It is supposed the 
 subject was suggested by the unfortunate young lady going into a 
 convent, whose untimely death occasioned the beautiful Elegy, 
 " What beck'ning ghost j " but I cannot help thinking the real 
 circumstance that occasioned these touching effusions was his early 
 attachment to Lady Mary W. Montagu. The concluding lines allude 
 to her, as I think is evident from his letter. Speaking of a volume 
 he had sent her when abroad, he adds, " Among the rest you have 
 all I am worth, that is, my works. There are few things in them 
 but what you have already seen, except the Epistle of Eloisa to 
 Abelard, in which you will find one passage that I cannot tell whether 
 to wish you should understand or not." The lines could not be 
 meant for the unfortunate lady, for she was dead and forgotten 
 could not relate to Martha Blount, for he was not "condemned 
 whole years in absence to deplore," and therefore they could be 
 addressed only to Lady Mary ; and " he best shall paint them who 
 shall feel them most," was a direct allusion to his own ardent but 
 hopeless passion. BOWLES.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 223 
 
 Mr. Bowles has represented the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard as 
 being of an immoral tendency. It must however be observed, that if 
 thia construction be put upon the poem, it is what the a\ithor never 
 intended. On the contrary, his object is to show the fatal conse- 
 quences of an ungovernable passion ; and if he has done this in 
 natural and even glowing language, it must be remembered that such 
 are not his own sentiments, but those of the person he has undertaken 
 to represent, and are in general given in nearly her own words. That 
 many expressions and passages may be pointed out which are incon- 
 sistent with the established order and regulations of society, may be 
 fully admitted. Such, for instance, as the lines 
 
 How oft, when pressed to marriage, Lave I said, 
 Curse on all laws but those which love has made ! 
 
 But surely it is not likely that such sentiments can impose upon the 
 weakest and most inexperienced minds. It is indeed highly probable 
 that Pope has in some few instances intentionally exaggerated the 
 sentiments and expressions of Eloisa in order to render it impossible 
 for any person of common capacity to be misled by such statements. 
 ROSCOE. 
 
 In 1693 there appeared at the Hague a French translation of the 
 Latin letters of Abelard and Heloisa. The work was several times 
 reprinted, and a later editor, M. Du Bois, informs the reader that 
 the translator had taken the liberty to omit, to add, and to transpose 
 at his pleasure. " Some of the thoughts and expressions which are 
 ascribed to Heloisa," continues M. Du Bois, "are so well imagined 
 that if we are disappointed at not finding them in the original, and 
 at her not having said the things she has been made to say, we are 
 agreeably forced to acknowledge that they might have been said by 
 her, and it is impossible not to be grateful to the paraphrast for his 
 boldness." The original correspondence contains some interesting 
 facts, much spurious rhetoric, and many dull pedantic quotations. 
 The work in its integrity was not adapted for popular reading, but as 
 the whole value of the letters depended on their genuineness, they 
 were nearly worthless in their altered form. In 1714 Hughes, the 
 author of the Siege of Damascus, translated the adulterate French 
 concoction, and from the phraseology and substance of Pope's Epistle, 
 it is manifest that he followed the English version of Hughes. Wake- 
 field and Warton have only looked for parallel passages in the Latin, 
 where they will often be sought in vain. 
 
 The authenticity of the Latin letters has usually been taken for 
 granted, but I have a strong belief that they are a forgery. The 
 first letter is addressed by Abelard to a friend in misfortune, for the 
 purpose of consoling him with a tale of greater woes. The sequel is
 
 224 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 not in keeping with the ostensible object. The autobiographical 
 epistle is full of vain-glorious, irrelevant matter, which no one would 
 have recorded whose intention was merely to soothe a sorrow-stricken 
 man. The particulars relative to Abelard's intercourse with Heloisa 
 are worse than gratuitous ; they are abominable. The intrigue 
 might be public ; he might avow and deplore it ; but some reserve 
 was due to decency and his paramour. She was not an anonymous 
 phantom who could not be reached by his revelations. He told her 
 name, and her connections which, according to his narrative, were 
 notorious already, and he was, therefore, forbidden by such honour 
 as even exists among profligates to expose the secret details of her 
 shame. But honour was unknown to him. The veil which rakes 
 who gloated over past misdeeds would have scorned to draw aside 
 was torn away by this pious penitent with treacherous baseness. 1 
 The disguise is thinly worn. The Abelard of the letter is not the 
 contrite, sorrowing philosopher who is speaking of a gifted woman he 
 had enthusiastically loved, and against whom he had deeply sinned. 
 He is an unimpassioued author who founds a fiction upon a true 
 story, and realising imperfectly the sentiments proper to the situation, 
 relates what he thinks was likely to have happened without perceiving 
 that the confessions would have been infamy in Abelard. 
 
 His letter in some unexplained manner got round to Heloisa. She 
 might be expected to be filled with rage and humiliation, and she sends 
 a glowing response to the degrading recital. She outstripped Abelard 
 in shameless frankness. Madame Guizot asserts that " she expresses 
 much more in saying much less, that she recalls, but does not 
 specify," 2 the truth being that some particulars in her second letter 
 are grosser and more precise than anything which proceeded from the 
 pen of Abelard. The plea that her confessions were made to a 
 husband is no extenuation, since she left his previous revelations 
 unrebuked, and the approval of his disclosures was a licence to show 
 about hers. What is more, her champions discover ample evidence in 
 her letters that they were intended for publication. " Heloisa," 
 says Madame Guizot, " supplies details with the exactness of a dra- 
 matic personage obliged to give an account of certain facts to the 
 
 1 M. Remusat, who accepts the letters without misgiving, acknowledges that 
 the form of the ffisloria Calamitatum "appears to be an artificial frame to the 
 picture." He assumes that the avowed purpose is a pretext, and that the 
 repentant philosopher commences his narrative with a misstatement. The fiction 
 which M. Remusat is obliged to admit, does not ward off the strongest objection 
 to the genuineness of the letters, and is the hypothesis least favourable to the 
 reputation of Abelard ; for his treachery to Heloisa is immensely aggravated by 
 the admission that his narrative was meant for the public, and not for the eye 
 alone of a friend. 
 
 3 Essai Historique sur Abaihvd et Heloisc, ed. 1861, p. xxvi.
 
 EL01SA TO ABELARD. 225 
 
 audience. There are few letters of the period which have not the 
 stamp of a literary composition destined to a public sufficiently large 
 to render it necessary to put them in possession of the circumstances. 
 If any persons are surprised that Heloisa could design the revelations 
 in her first and especially in her second letter, for any eye but that of 
 Abelard, let them read the incidents she could see recounted without 
 offence in the Historia Calamitatum, and they will be convinced of 
 the existence of a state of manners in which elevated and even 
 delicate sentiments in a distinguished and naturally modest woman 
 might be allied to the strangest forms of language." 1 The case is 
 put inaccurately. The " sentiments" are not "delicate ;" they are 
 coarser than the language. The reasoning of Madame Giu'zot is 
 equally defective. An immodest act is declared to be modest because 
 Heloisa had committed a previous act of immodesty. Her toleration 
 of Abelard's grossness is the evidence of her purity in imitating his 
 freedoms. The appeal should have been to independent works of the 
 time, and these are opposed to the theory of Madame Guizot. 
 Language was often plainer than at present, but only creatures of the 
 disgusting type of the Wife of Bath proclaimed the hidden details of 
 their own sexual licentiousness. The reputable classes had risen 
 high above the point at which elemental decency and self-respect 
 become extinct. Heloisa must, indeed, have been a woman of 
 an " unbashful forehead," to use the expression of Shakespeare, if 
 she deliberately placed herself before the public as she appears in the 
 letters. It is far more likely that they are the fabrication of ail 
 unconcerned romancer, who speaks in the name of others with a 
 latitude which people, not entirely degraded, would never adopt towards 
 themselves. The suspicion is strengthened when the second party to 
 the correspondence, the chief philosopher of his generation, exhibits 
 the same exceptional depravity of taste. The improbability is great 
 that both should have courted a disgraceful notoriety. The corre- 
 spondence was coined in one mint ; the impress it bears is male, and 
 not female ; and we may apply to Heloisa the words of Rosalind, 
 
 I say she never did invent these letters, 
 This is a man's invention, and his hand. 2 
 
 No portion of them, if they are genuine, can do honour to her me- 
 mory. The coarse particulars she divulged to the public would 
 prove that she was debased, and any sentiments which might have 
 been creditable in an artless effusion addressed to Abelard lose their 
 value when they are a studied rhetorical manifesto, got up to produce 
 an impression on the world. 
 
 1 Essai Historiqne, p. Ixiii. 
 
 3 As You Like It, Act iv. sc. 3. 
 
 TOL. TI. POETRY. Q
 
 22^ ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 According to the Historic!, Cdlamitatum Abelard was the eldest son 
 of a soldier in Brittany. His father, who had a tincture of learning, 
 imbued him with a passion for study. He renounced the weapons 
 of war for those of logic, resigned his paternal inheritance to his 
 brothers, and traversed the kingdom that he might engage in scho- 
 lastic tournaments at the towns on his road. He arrived at Paris 
 about the year 1100, when he was twenty-one. There he frequented 
 the lectures of William of Champeaux, the most famous dialectician 
 of the day. Soon the pupil questioned the doctrines of his master, 
 and was often victorious in their public disputations. He established 
 a rival school, and the credit of all other teachers was lost in his 
 renown. William of Champeaux, devoured with envy, struggled for 
 years to drive his antagonist from the field. The invincible Abelard 
 never failed to defeat him, and finally reigned without a competitor. 
 
 When hia supremacy was recognised in the domain of metaphysical 
 logic, he turned his attention to theology, and proceeding to Laon 
 he sat under Anselm, who was esteemed the foremost divine in the 
 church. The author of the letter affirms that his instruction consisted 
 of fine words without matter, smoke without flame, leaves without 
 fruit. Abelard soon relaxed in his attendance, and expressed his 
 surprise to his fellow-students that any aid should be used beyond 
 the text and the gloss in interpreting the Bible. With a derisive 
 laugh they enquired if he would be bold enough, on these terms, 
 to become the expositor. He accepted the challenge, and they 
 thought to baffle him by allotting him the book of Ezekiel. He 
 replied by inviting them to hear his commentary the following 
 morning. They recommended him to take time, and he answered 
 that his habit was to prevail by force of mind, and not by labour. 
 His audience was small the next day, for it was considered ridiculous 
 that a young man, who had hardly looked into the Bible, should 
 extemporise an explanation of its obscurest prophecies. The few 
 who went were fascinated, and their praises caused his lecture-room 
 to be thronged. The old story was re-enacted. The pupil who had 
 vanquished the most celebrated metaphysician of his generation, 
 now at the first onset eclipsed the greatest theologian in Europe. 
 Anselm, like William of Champeaux, was filled with jealousy, and 
 forbade him to continue his disquisitions at Laon. 
 
 He returned to Paris, and taught dialectics and divinity with equal 
 distinction. He had money and glory, he says, in profusion ; he 
 imagined that he was the only philosopher on earth ; and in the 
 words of the letter which bears his name, he was consumed by the 
 fever of pride and luxury. In this state of worldly prosperity he 
 reached his thirty-sixth year, when he formed his connection with 
 Heloisa, who was barely eighteen. His qualifications for amorous 
 intrigue are related by him with just the same boastful assurance
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAED. 227 
 
 with which he describes his dictatorship in the schools. He declares 
 that his youth, his fame, and his handsome person gave him such a 
 superiority over all other men, that no woman could resist him. 
 Whoever she might be she would have thought herself honoured by 
 his love ; and the context shows that the love he meant was illicit. 
 The learning of Heloisa obtained her the preference, and he delibe- 
 rately formed a plan to seduce her. She resided with her uncle 
 Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral at Paris, who doated on money and 
 his niece. Abelard appealed to the double passion. Professing to 
 desire a release from household cares, he offered to board and lodge 
 with the canon on any terms he chose to ask, and to devote his leisure 
 hours to the instruction of Heloisa. Fulbert was delighted. He 
 confided, to use the language of the letter, the tender lamb to the 
 ravenous wolf, and enjoined the tutor to administer corporal punish- 
 ment when his pupil neglected her studies. The comment of Abelard, 
 or his representative, is extraordinary. He marvels at the simpli- 
 city of the canon in entrusting him with an authority which would 
 enable him, if Heloisa resisted his fondness, to subdue her by blows. 
 He thinks Fulbert childishly credulous for not divining that the 
 grand luminary of philosophy and divinity was a wretch of fiendish 
 depravity a demon who would adopt the brutal expedient of 
 beating an innocent girl into submission to his wicked designs. In 
 his third letter he acknowledges that he had put the method in 
 practice when the temporary scruples of his victim prevailed. 
 
 During the frenzy of his passion Abelard was indifferent to literary 
 glory. His lectures were a burthen to him, and he only cared to com- 
 pose amatory songs, which he informs his friend are still popular in 
 numerous countries. Heloisa says in her reply that, as the greater 
 part of these poems celebrated their love, her name became famous, 
 and the jealousy of the women was roused. This is one of the many 
 improbabilities of the story. At the exact period that Abelard, by 
 his own acknowledgment, was anxious to conceal his passion from 
 Fulbert, he published it in popular ballads to the world. The incon- 
 sistency is too glaring. A second statement is more consonant with 
 human nature. The nerveless lectures, and preoccupied air of Abe- 
 lard betrayed his infatuation to his disciples. They divined the 
 truth ; the intrigue was noised abroad, and the rumour at last got 
 round to Fulbert. Abelard asserts that he and his concubine were 
 overwhelmed with anguish and shame on their detection ; Heloisa 
 that her amour was the envy of princesses and queens. The 
 apocryphal writer, after the manner of his tribe, overlooked these 
 discrepancies. 
 
 When the first shock of disgrace was past, the lovers disregarded 
 appearances, and carried on their intercourse without disguise. The 
 poor canon was nearly mad between grief and rage, and Abelard 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 to appease him led Heloisa to the altar, on the understanding 
 that their union should be kepb a secret ; but the relations of the 
 bride broke their promise, and proclaimed that she was married. 
 She protested it was false, and Fulbert, exasperated by her denial, 
 treated her harshly. Her husband removed her to the abbey of 
 Argenteuil, near Paris, that she might be safe from persecution. 
 Her friends conjectured that his object was to get rid of her, and in 
 revenge for his former treachery and present heartlessness, Fulbert 
 bribed some miscreants to mutilate him when he was asleep. Over- 
 whelmed with mortification, he resolved to hide his head in a convent, 
 and selected St. Denis. His jealousy would not suffer him to leave 
 Heloisa free, and before he bound himself by an irrevocable vow he 
 obliged her to take the veil. 
 
 The monks in Abelard's new retreat led the dissolute life in which he 
 himself had indulged up to the moment of his disaster. He provoked 
 their hostility by his remonstrances, and to get rid of him they joined in 
 the entreaties of his disciples that he would leave his cell, and resume 
 his lectures. The concourse of hearers was so great that the district 
 where he set up his chair could not afford them food and lodging. 
 The popularity of his teaching is attested by independent evidence, 
 although his extant treatises are bald in style, prolix and cloudy in 
 exposition, abstruse and barren in substance. But manuscripts were 
 scarce ; the multitude were chiefly dependent upon oral instruction ; 
 literature was almost unknown, and the subtleties of a meagre meta- 
 physical system applied to theology, had a charm for active intellects 
 when theology, logic, and metaphysics had undivided possession of the 
 schools. Controversy lent its powerful aid, animating the dry bones 
 with the fiery life of human passion. The superiority of Abelard in 
 the verbal strife was due to the comparative feebleness of his adver- 
 saries, and not to the absolute greatness of his acute, but narrow and 
 uuprolific mind. " How is it," said a nobleman to Lely, " that you 
 are so celebrated, when you know, as well as I do, that you are no 
 painter ?" " True," replied Lely, " but I am the best you have." 
 
 The revival of Abelard's popularity was attended by the old 
 results. Rival schools were deserted, envy, malice, and hatred were 
 inflamed. Applying his metaphysical logic to the doctrines of the 
 Bible he produced a treatise on the Trinity, which he asserts solved 
 every difficulty ; and the more transcendent was the mystery, the 
 greater, he says, was the admiration at the acuteness of his solution. 
 But it was by altering the dogma that he brought it down to the level 
 of human reason, and a council at Soissons accused him of heresy. 
 If the letter is to be credited, his antagonists paid him the compliment 
 of refusing to hear his defence, on the plea that his arguments would 
 confound the united world. The assembly voted him guilty, and the 
 troubles which grew out of his condemnation ended in his withdrawing
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 229 
 
 to an uninhabited district on the banks of the river Ardusson, where 
 he constructed an oratory of reeds and mud. Admiring crowds 
 pursued him into his desolate retreat. Sleeping in rude huts, and 
 subsisting on bread and herbs, they abjured the physical luxuries of 
 existence for the mental feast of listening to the arid speculations in 
 vogue. His auditors replaced his oratory by a larger building of 
 wood and stone, which might serve for a lecture-room, and he 
 named it the Paraclete, or the Comforter, because Providence had 
 sent him consolation to the spot whither he had fled in despair. 
 He, or his personator on his behalf, cannot suppress the usual 
 vaunts. His body, he says, was concealed by his seclusion, but 
 he filled the universe by his word and his renown. His enemies 
 were enraged, and groaned inwardly, " Behold the world is gone 
 after him, and our persecution has increased his glory." He 
 admits that the sentiment did not fall from their lips, and it is 
 merely the form in which his vanity embodied their feelings. The 
 celebrated St. Bernard entered the lists against him, and Abelard 
 began to be deserted by his adherents. He completely lost heart, and 
 when the monks of a remote abbey on the coast of Brittany appointed 
 him their head, he was glad to embrace a banishment which removed 
 him from the midst of his increasing foes. New enmities awaited 
 him. As at St. Denis, he soon became odious to his brethren by 
 reproving their laxity. Their vindictive rage knew no bounds. 
 They poisoned his food, but he forbore to taste it. They poisoned 
 the chalice at the altar, but he did not drink of it. They 
 suborned a servant to poison his victuals when he was on a visit 
 to his brother, and again he happened not to eat of the dish, while 
 a monk who partook of it died on the spot. Wherever he went they 
 posted hired assassins on the road, and for some untold reason he 
 always escaped. He procured the expulsion of the most desperate 
 of his bloodthirsty children, and when the remainder were about to 
 stab him he eluded their daggers. The sword, when he wrote, was 
 still hanging over his head, and he passed his days in almost 
 breathless fear. The early novelist who composed the apocryphal 
 correspondence had the art to leave him in this critical situation. 
 But the Abelard of the autobiography is a repulsive hero of romance, 
 since even the penitent is boastful, coarse, and callous. 
 
 The abbey of Argenteuil, where Heloisa was prioress, was a de- 
 pendency of the abbey of St. Denis. The parent monastery reclaimed 
 the building and turned out Heloisa and the nuns. Abelard invited 
 them to meet him at the Paraclete, and he established them in the 
 oratory and its appurtenances, which had remained unoccupied since 
 he settled in Brittany. He took frequent journeys from his abbey 
 to instruct and console them, till finding that his visits gave rise to 
 scandal, he went no more. Heloisa had not seen him or heard from
 
 230 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 him for a considerable period, when his letter to the unknown friend 
 fell by accident into her hands, and she immediately replied to it. 
 Her character, whether drawn by herself or some fabricator who wrote 
 in her name, comes out clearly in the correspondence. Abelard 
 states that she laboured to dissuade him from marriage when he 
 informed her of his promise to Fulbert after the detection of the 
 intrigue. She said that it would be dishonourable for a philosopher, 
 whom nature had created for the world, to be enslaved to a woman, 
 and submitted to the ignominious yoke of matrimony. She said that 
 his renown would be diminished, that his future career would be 
 checked, that the church would be injured, and that she could 
 have no pride in a union which would degrade both of them by 
 tarnishing his glory. In her answer she confirms his representa- 
 tions ; and adds, that if the name of wife was holier, she held that 
 of mistress, concubine, or harlot, to be sweeter, not only for the 
 reasons which Abelard had recapitulated, but because she hoped 
 that the less she m^do herself the more she would rise in his favour. 
 Dean Milman is in error when he asserts that she " resisted the mar- 
 riage in an absolute, unrivalled spirit of devotion, so wonderful that 
 we forget to reprove." 1 She did not overlook her personal interests, 
 but believed that the concubine would enjoy more love and considera- 
 tion than the wife. The theory of her willingness to be sacrificed 
 that her admirer might be elevated has arisen from the inference, 
 contradicted by her language, that she felt the disgrace of her illicit 
 connection. Nothing could be more remote from her thoughts. 
 She was proud of the distinction. 
 
 At the date of her letters Heloisa had been leading for years a 
 monastic life, which she embraced against her will at the command 
 of her husband. She had not been refined by misfortune, time, 
 and religion. She continued to bewail her sensual deprivations, and 
 the picture she draws of her subjection to her voluptuous imagination, 
 exceeds anything which could have been expected from the most 
 dissolute libertine. But none of these things repel the partisans of 
 historic romance, and the frail unhappy woman seduced by Abelard 
 is held up as a signal example of feminine excellence. " This noble 
 creature," says M. Cousin, " loved as Saint Theresa, and sometimes 
 wrote as Seneca." 2 "Her contemporaries," say's M. Re'musat, 
 " placed her above all women, and I do not know that posterity has 
 belied her contemporaries.'' 3 "France," says M. Henri Martin, 
 " has always felt the grandeur of Heloisa, and the just instinct of the 
 public has numbered the mistress of Abelard among our national 
 
 1 History of Latin Christianity, vol. iii. p. 363. 
 
 2 Philosophic du Moyen Age, ed. 1856, p. 3. 
 
 3 Vie d' Abelard, Tome 1. p. 262.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 231 
 
 glories." 1 Her admirers would be puzzled to explain in what her 
 pre-eminence consists. Her devotion to her lover is a quality which 
 she shares with myriads of women, bad as well as good, and her dis- 
 tinctive moral traits are those in which she differs from the majority 
 of her sex by being vastly worse instead of better. A modern Heloisa 
 who pursued the same conduct and avowed the same principles and 
 passions would be branded with infamy. 
 
 The Epistle of Pope purports to be Heloisa's reply to Abelard's letter 
 to his friend ; but the poet has blended in his composition whatever 
 topics were suited to his purpose, and ascribed sentiments to the wife 
 which he had copied from the husband. There is nothing in the 
 work to indicate that the author had read the Latin text, since he 
 always adheres to the English rendering of the corrupted French 
 version. Bishop Home held that the original prose was finer than 
 Pope's verse. 2 I cannot assent to this judgment. The poem has the 
 superiority in every particular in the beauty of the language, in the 
 picturesqueness of the descriptions, in the fervour of the contrasted 
 passions, in the animation of the transitions, in the solemnity of the 
 accompaniments, and above all, in the pathos. The singularity of 
 Home's estimate may be explained by his imperfect recollection of the 
 productions he criticised. To the allegation of Sir John Hawkins, 
 that matrimony was depreciated and concubinage justified in the 
 poetical epistle, he replies, that the censure "is founded on a false 
 fact, because Abelard was married." The observation is a proof that 
 Home had forgotten the argument in favour of concubinage which 
 occurs alike in the English verse and the Latin prose. Hallam 
 accuses Pope of having " done great injustice to Eloisa by putting 
 the sentiments of a coarse and abandoned woman into her mouth." 
 But the licentious doctrines which Pope utters in her name are in the 
 original Latin, except that when she asserts that love is inconsistent 
 with marriage, she speaks of her individual case, and does not avow- 
 edly lay down a general maxim. Nor can Pope be charged with 
 misrepresentation because the language in which he expresses her 
 sensual cravings is not always borrowed from her pretended confes- 
 sions. As he has not exaggerated the dominion of her appetite, 
 nor the plainness with which she avows it, he cannot be said to have 
 degraded the copy below the model by an occasional variation in 
 the forms of speech. In fact the increased fervour he has imparted 
 to her religious aspirations renders his portrait the more elevated of the 
 two. The censure to which he lies open is not for deviating from 
 his text but for following it too faithfully. 
 
 1 Hist, de France, torn. iii. 317. 2 Home's Works, vol. i. p. 248. 
 
 3 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 5th ed. vol. i. p. 33. Fox, the 
 statesman, was one of those who thought "Eloisa much greater in her letters than 
 Pope had made her."
 
 232 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 "The Epistle of Heloisa," says Wordsworth, "may be considered 
 as a species of monodrama," and he classes it under the head of 
 dramatic poetry. The painter of an ideal countenance omits the 
 subordinate details which do not contribute to the special expression 
 he desires to convey. By isolating he intensifies it. The holy calm of 
 Raphael's Madonnas would be marred by the introduction of all those 
 minutiae in the living face which are not concerned in the dominant 
 sentiment. A monodramatic poem which turns upon a single conflict 
 of feeling possesses a kindred advantage. The one absorbing struggle 
 has undivided sway, and there is nothing to distract attention from 
 the pervading emotion. This unity of purpose was present to Pope's 
 mind with absolute distinctness, and he has executed his conception 
 with wonderful force. The combat between Heloisa's earthly inclina- 
 tions and heavenly convictions, the impetuosity with which she 
 passes from one to the other, the tempest in her soul whichever mood 
 prevails, deep alternately calling to deep, are depicted with concen- 
 trated energy, and continuous pathos. Her glowing thoughts are 
 vehement without exaggeration, and the natural outbursts are un- 
 tainted by spurious artifice. 
 
 " Mr. Pope's Eloisa to Abelard is," says Mason, "such a chef-d'oeuvre 
 that nothing of the kind can be relished after it. Yet it is not the 
 story itself, nor the sympathy it excites in us, as Dr. Johnson 
 would have us think, that constitutes the principal merit in that in- 
 comparable poem. It is the happy use he has made of the monastic 
 gloom of the Paraclete, and of what I will call papistical machinery, 
 which gives it its capital charm, so that I am almost inclined to 
 wonder (if I could wonder at any of that writer's criticisms) that he 
 did not take notice of this beauty, as his own superstitious turn cer- 
 tainly must have given him more than a sufficient relish for it." 1 
 The buildings and scenery, solemn and sombre, undoubtedly heighten 
 the effect. There is an impressive harmony between the over-cast 
 mind of Heloisa, and the objects around her, which deepens the sad- 
 ness. But the comment of Mason is unfounded. Johnson did 
 "notice" the "beauty" derived from the gloom of the convent, 
 while the assertion that this is the "principal merit" of the poem is 
 an extravagant subordination of the human interest, which is tha main 
 subject of the Epistle, to the comparatively brief though exquisite 
 description of the local accompaniments. Mason disliked and dreaded 
 Johnson, and avenged himself when Johnson was dead, by feeble 
 expressions of contempt. 
 
 The Rape of the Lock and the Epistle to Eloisa stand alone in 
 Pope's works. He produced nothing else which resembled them. 
 They have the merit of being master-pieces in opposite styles. The 
 
 1 Mason's Life of Whitehead, p. 35.
 
 EL01SA TO ABELARD. 233 
 
 first is remarkable for its delicious fancy and sportive satire ; the 
 second for its fervid passion and tender melancholy. Two poems of 
 such rare and such different excellence would alone entitle Pope to 
 his fame. Like most great authors he published not a little which is 
 mediocre, but he is to be estimated by the qualities in which he soared 
 above the herd, and not by the lower range of mind he possessed in 
 common with inferior men. The Rape of the Lock is a higher effort 
 of genius than the Epistle. Pope's adaptation of his aery, refulgent 
 sylphs to the ephemeral trivialities of fashionable life, the ad mirable 
 art with which he fitted his fairy machinery to the follies and com- 
 mon-places of a giddy London day, the poetic grace which he threw 
 around his sarcastic narrative, and which unites with it as naturally 
 as does the rose with its thorny stem, are all unborrowed beauties, 
 and consummate iu their kind. The story and sentiments of Heloisa 
 were prepared to his hand, and the power is limited to the strength 
 and sweetness of his language and versification, and to the vigour 
 with which he appropriated an>l expanded a single leading idea. His 
 imagination was not prolific, and his thoughts seldom sprung from 
 within. Sir William Napier said to Moore, " You are a poet by 
 force of will ; Byron by force of nature," which Moore acknowledged 
 to be true. Pope, like Moore, was a poet because from his child- 
 hood he had assiduously cultivated poetry. The bulk of his works 
 are either direct translations, or freer renderings under the name of 
 imitations, and putting aside the Rape of the Lock, and parts of his 
 satires, the materials of his original pieces, such as the Essay on 
 Criticism, and Essay on Man, are mostly taken from other authors. 
 The thoughts in the Epistle of Eloisa are not more his own than his 
 critical rules, and ethical philosophy, but the passionate emotions are 
 more poetical, and the execution more finished . Of Pope's better 
 qualities the chief appears to have been a certain tenderness of heart, 
 and this enabled him to enter into the feelings of Heloisa. He em- 
 ployed all the resources of his choicest verse to perfect the picture, 
 and though the details he transferred from the letters deprived him 
 of the credit of invention, the supposed historic truth of the repre- 
 sentation increased the effect. The difference between legitimate 
 and worthless imitation could not be more forcibly illustrated than 
 by comparing the tame landscape, and affected love-babble of his 
 Pastorals with the local descriptions and impassioned strains in his 
 Epistle of Eloisa.
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 ABELARD and Eloisa flourished in the twelfth century. 
 They were two of the most distinguished persons of their age 
 in learning and heauty, hut for nothing more famous than for 
 their unfortunate passion. After a long course of calamities, 
 they retired each to a several convent, and consecrated the 
 remainder of their days to religion. It was many years after 
 this separation, that a letter of Ahelard's to a friend, which 
 contained the history of his misfortune, fell into the hands of 
 Eloisa. This, awakening all her tenderness, occasioned those 
 celehrated letters (out of which the following is partly 
 extracted) which give so lively a picture of the struggles of 
 grace and nature, virtue and passion.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAKD. 
 
 IN these deep solitudes and awful cells, 
 
 Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells, 
 
 And ever-musing melancholy reigns, 
 
 What me'ans this tu'mult in a vestal's ve^ns ? 
 
 Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat ? 5 
 
 Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat ? 
 
 Yet, yet I love ! From Abelard it came, 1 
 
 And Eloisa yet must kiss the name." 
 
 Dear fatal name ! rest ever unrevealed, 
 
 Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed : 10 
 
 Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, 
 Where, mixed with God's, his loved idea 1 lies : 
 write it not, my hand the name appears 
 Already written 4 wash it out, my tears ! s 
 In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, i 
 
 Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys. 
 
 1 The letter which Abelard ad- 4 Claudian, De Nupt. Honor, et 
 dressed to his friend, and which had Mar. ver. 9 : 
 
 fallen into the hands of Eloisa. 
 
 9 T\ j -rv a i. ^ Nomenque beatum 
 
 2 Dryden s Don Sebastian : Injugggs scripsere manua ._ WAKEFIELD . 
 
 And when I say Sebastian, dear Sebastian ! 
 
 I kiss the name I speak. STEEVENS. 5 Drayton's Heroical Epistle of 
 
 3 That is, a lively representation of Rosamond to Henry : 
 
 his person was retained in her mind. 
 
 , , My hapless name with Henry's name I 
 bo JDrayton where he speaks of his found- 
 departed love : Then do I strive to wash it out with 
 Clear Ankor, on whose silver-sanded shore ars> 
 
 My soul-shrined saint, my fair idea lies.- But tben tte same more evident appears.- 
 
 WAKEFIELD HOLT WlUTB -
 
 238 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Relentless walls ! whose darksome round contains 1 
 Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains : 
 Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn ; 
 Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn ! * 
 Shrines ! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep, 3 
 And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep ! * 
 Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown, 
 I have not yet forgot myself to stone. 5 
 All is not heaven's while Abelard has part ;' 
 Still rebel nature holds out half my heart ; 
 Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain, 
 Nor tears, for ages taught to flow in vain. 
 
 Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose, 
 That well-known name awakens all my woes. 7 
 Oh name for ever sad ! for ever dear ! 8 
 Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.' 
 
 20 
 
 25 
 
 30 
 
 1 Some of these circumstances have 
 perhaps a little impropriety when in- 
 troduced into a place so lately founded 
 as was the Paraclete ; but are so well 
 imagined and so highly painted, that 
 they demand excuse. WARTON. 
 
 2 This is borrowed from Milton's 
 Comus, ver. 428 : 
 
 By grots and caverns snagged with horrid 
 shades. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 s A suspected poem of the Duke of 
 Wharton on the Fear of Death : 
 
 Where feeble tapers shed a gloomy ray 
 
 And statues pity feign ; 
 Where pale-eyed griefs their wasting vigils 
 keep. WAXEFIELD. 
 
 4 A puerile conceit from the dew 
 which runs down stone and metals in 
 damp weather. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 A writer in the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine for October, 1836, quotes a paral- 
 lel couplet from a poem by the Duke 
 of Wharton : 
 
 Where kneeling statues constant vigils 
 
 keep, 
 And round the tombs the marble cherubs 
 
 weep. 
 
 4 He followed Milton in the Pen- 
 seroso : 
 Forget thyself to marble. WAKEWELD. 
 
 Heloisa to Abelard : " TOWS ! 
 convent ! I have not lost my hu- 
 manity under your inexorable dis- 
 cipline. You have not made me 
 marble by changing my habit. " "With 
 the exception of a passage or two 
 quoted by "Wakefield, all the extracts 
 in the notes are from Pope's chief 
 text -book, the English work of 
 Hughes, which is very unfaithful to 
 the Latin original. 
 
 6 In every edition till that of 
 "Warburton the reading was, 
 
 HeaVn claims me all in vain while he has 
 part. 
 
 7 Heloisa to Abelard: "By that 
 melancholy relation to your friend 
 you have awakened all my sorrows. " 
 
 8 Dryden's ^Eneis, v. 64 : 
 
 A day for ever sad, for ever dear. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 J Heloisa to Abelard : " Shall my 
 Abelard be never mentioned without
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 239 
 
 I tremble too, where'er my own I find, 
 
 Some dire misfortune follows close behind. 
 
 Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow, 
 
 Led through a sad variety of woe : * 
 
 Now warm in love, now withering in my bloom,* 
 
 Lost in a convent's solitary gloom ! 
 
 There stern religion quenched th' unwilling flame, 
 
 There died the best of passions, love and fame. 4 
 
 Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join 
 Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine. 5 
 Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away ; 6 
 And is my Abelard less kind than they ? 
 Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare ; 
 Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r ; 7 
 No happier task these faded eyes pursue ; 
 To read and weep is all they now can do. 8 
 
 tears ? Shall the dear name be never 
 spoken but with sighs ? " 
 
 1 Heloisa to Abelard : "I met with 
 my name a hundred times. I never 
 saw it without fear ; some heavy 
 calamity always followed it. I saw 
 yours too equally unhappy." 
 
 2 Pomfret in his Vision : 
 
 For sure that flame is kindled from below 
 Which breeds such sad variety of woe. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Steevens quotes from Dryden's State 
 of Innocence the expression " sad 
 variety of hell," and the writer in 
 the Gentleman's Magazine quotes 
 from Yalden's Force of Jealousy 
 the expression ' ' a large variety of 
 woe. " 
 
 3 Dryden, Palamon and Arcite : 
 
 Now warm in love, now with'ring in the 
 grave. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Fame is not a passion. WARTON. 
 Ambition is the passion, and fame 
 
 is the object of the passion. 
 
 5 Heloisa to Abelard: "Let me 
 have a faithful account of all that 
 concerns you. I would know every- 
 thing, be it ever so unfortunate. Per- 
 haps by mingling my sighs with yours 
 I may make your sorrows less." 
 
 6 Heloisa to Abelard : "We may 
 write to each other. Let us not lose 
 through negligence the only happi- 
 ness which is left us, and the only 
 one perhaps which the malice of 
 our enemies can never ravish from 
 us." 
 
 7 Heloisa to Abelard: "Tell me 
 not by way of excuse you will spare 
 our tears ; the tears of women shut 
 up in a melancholy place, and de- 
 voted to penitence, are not to be 
 spared." 
 
 8 Denham of Prudence : 
 
 To live and die is all we have to do. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Prior's Celia to Damon : 
 
 And these poor eyes 
 No longer shall their little lustre keep, 
 And only be of use to read and weep.
 
 240 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief ; 
 Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief. 1 
 Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid, 4 
 Some hanished lover, or some captive maid ; 
 They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires, 
 "Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires, 
 The virgin's wish without her fears impart, 
 Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,' 
 Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul, 
 And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole/ 
 
 Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame," 
 When love approached me under friendship's name ; 6 
 My fancy formed thee of angelic kind, 
 Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind. 7 
 Those smiling eyes, attempting ev'ry ray, 
 Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day ;" 
 
 30 
 
 1 Heloisa to Abelard : "Be not 
 then unkind, nor deny me that little 
 relief. All sorrows divided are made 
 lighter." 
 
 2 Heloisa to Abelard: "Letters 
 were first invented for comforting such 
 solitary wretches as myself." 
 
 3 Heloisa to Abelard : " What can- 
 not letters inspire ? They have souls ; 
 they can speak ; they have in them 
 all that force which expresses the 
 transports of the heart ; they have 
 all the fire of our passions ; they can 
 raise them as much as if the persons 
 themselves were present ; they have 
 all the softness and delicacy of speech, 
 and sometimes a boldness of expression 
 even beyond it." 
 
 4 Otway's translation of Phaedra to 
 Hippolytus : 
 
 Thus secrets safe to farthest shores may 
 
 move: 
 
 By letters foes converse, and learn to love. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 This is the most exquisite 
 
 description of the first commence- 
 ment of passion that our language, 
 or perhaps any other, affords. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 6 Prior's Celia to Damon : 
 
 In vain I strove to check my growing 
 
 flame, 
 Or shelter passion under friendship's 
 
 name. 
 
 7 The Divinity himself Dryden, 
 in his 12th Elegy : 
 
 So faultless was the frame, as if the 
 
 whole 
 
 Had been an emanation of the soul. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 Heloisa to Abelard : "That life 
 in your eyes which so admirably 
 expressed the vivacity of your 
 mind ; your conversation, which 
 gave everything you spoke such 
 an agreeable and insinuating turn ; 
 in short, everything spoke for 
 you."
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Guiltless I gazed ; heav'n listened while you sung ;' 
 And truths divine came mended from that tongue." 
 From lips like those, what precept failed to move ? 
 Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love : 
 Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran, 3 
 Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man. 4 
 Dim and remote the joys of saints I see : 
 Nor envy them that heav'n I lose for thee. 
 
 How oft, when pressed to marriage, have I said, 
 Curse on all laws but those which love has made ! * 
 Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, 
 Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies. 8 
 Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame, 
 August her deed, and sacred be her fame ; 7 
 
 70 
 
 75 
 
 1 She says herself, "You had, I 
 confess, two qualities in great perfec- 
 tion with which you could instantly 
 captivate the heart of any woman, 
 a graceful manner of reading and 
 singing." She mentions in another 
 place also the excellence of his sing- 
 ing. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 He was her preceptor in philo- 
 sophy and divinity. POPE. 
 
 Dryden, Epistle, 14 : 
 
 The fair themselves go mended from thy 
 hand. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Dryden's CEdipus, end of Act iii. : 
 And backward trod the paths I sought to 
 
 shun. 
 
 4 Thy holy precepts and the sanctity 
 of thy character had made me conceive 
 of thee as of a being more venerable 
 than man, and approaching the nature 
 of superior existences. But thy per- 
 sonal allurements soon inspired those 
 tender feelings which gradually con- 
 ducted me from a veneration of the 
 angel to a less pure and dignified sen- 
 sation love for the man. WAKE- 
 FIELD. 
 
 6 Dryden, Ovid's Met. x. : 
 
 And own no laws but those which love 
 ordains. WAKFFIELB. 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 Heloisa to Abelard : " The bonds 
 of matrimony, however honourable, 
 still bear with them a necessary en- 
 gagement, and I was very unwilling 
 to be necessitated to love always a 
 man who perhaps would not always 
 love me." 
 
 6 Love will not be confined by maisterie : 
 When maisterie comes, the lord of Love 
 
 anon 
 Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he 
 
 gone. Chaucer. POPE. 
 
 Hudibras, Part iii. Cant. i. 553 : 
 
 Love that's too generous to abide 
 To be against its nature tied, 
 Disdains against its will to stay, 
 But struggles out and flies away. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Dryden's Aurengezebe : 
 
 'Tis true of marriage bands I'm weary grown, 
 Love scorns all ties but those that are his 
 own. STEEVENS. 
 
 The passage cited by Pope from 
 Chaucer is in the Franklin's Tale. 
 Spenser copied and altered the lines, 
 which led "Wakefield to imagine that 
 Pope had committed the double error 
 of falsely imputing them to Chaucer, 
 and quoting them incorrectly. 
 
 ' Heloisa to Abelard : "It is not 
 love but the desire of riches and
 
 242 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Before true passion all those views remove ; 
 
 Fame, wealth, and honour ! what are you to love ? 
 
 The jealous god, when we profane his fires, 
 
 Those restless passions in revenge inspires, 
 
 And bids them make mistaken mortals groan, 
 
 Who seek in love for aught but love alone. 1 
 
 'Should at my feet the world's great master fall, 
 
 Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all ; 
 
 Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove ;* 
 
 No, make me mistress to the man I love ; 
 
 If there be yet another name more free, 8 
 
 More fond than mistress/ make me that to thce. 
 
 Oh ! happy state ! when souls each other draw, 
 
 When love is liberty, and nature, law : * 
 
 All then is full, possessing and possessed, 
 
 No craving void left aching in the breast : ' 
 
 Ev*n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part, 
 
 And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart. 
 
 8.5 
 
 90 
 
 honour which makes women run into 
 the embraces of an indolent husband : 
 ambition, not affection, forms such 
 marriages. I believe indeed they may 
 be followed with some honours and 
 advantages, but I can never think 
 that this is the way to enjoy the 
 pleasures of an affectionate union. " 
 
 1 Heloisa to Abelard : " This rest- 
 less tormenting passion" ambition 
 "punishes them for aiming at other 
 advantages by love than love it- 
 self." 
 
 2 Heloisa to Abelard : " How often 
 I have made protestations that it was 
 infinitely preferable to me to live with 
 Abelard as his mistress than with any 
 other as empress of the world, and 
 that I was more happy in obeying you 
 than I should have been in lawfully 
 captivating the lord of the uni- 
 verse. " 
 
 3 Heloisa to Abelard : " Though I 
 knew that the name of wife was 
 
 honourable in the world, and holy in 
 religion, yet the name of your mis- 
 tress had greater charms because it 
 was more free. I despised the name 
 of wife that I might live happy with 
 that of mistress. " 
 
 4 Heloisa to Abelard: ""We are 
 called your sisters, and if it were pos- 
 sible to think of any expressions which 
 would signify a dearer relation we 
 would use them." 
 
 8 Denham, Cooper's Hill : 
 
 Happy when both to the same centre 
 
 move, 
 When kings give liberty, and subjects 
 
 love. CUNNINGHAM. 
 
 6 Heloisa to Abelard : " If there is 
 anything which may properly be called 
 happiness here below, I am persuaded 
 it is in the union of two persons who 
 love each other with perfect liberty, 
 who are united by a secret inclination, 
 and satisfied with each other'. 1 merit
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 243 
 
 This sure is bliss, if bliss on earth there be, 
 And once the lot of Abelard and me. 1 
 
 Alas, how changed ! what sudden horrors rise ! 
 A naked lover bound and bleeding lies I* 
 Where, where was Eloise ? her voice, her hand, 
 Her poniard, had opposed the dire command. 3 
 Barbarian, stay ! that bloody stroke" restrain ; 
 The crime was common, common be the pain. 5 
 I can no more ; by shame, by rage suppressed,' 
 Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest. 7 
 
 Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day, 
 When victims at yon 8 altar's foot we lay ? 
 Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell, 
 When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell ? ' 
 
 100 
 
 105 
 
 110 
 
 Their hearts are full, and leave no 
 vacancy for any other passion." 
 
 1 Heloisa to Abelard : " If I could 
 believe you as truly persuaded of my 
 merit as I am of yours, I might say 
 there has been a time when we were 
 such a pair." 
 
 2 Mrs. Howe in her Elegy : 
 
 A dying lover pale and gasping lies. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Heloisa to Abelard : " Where 
 was I ? where was your Heloise then ? 
 What joy should I have had in de- 
 fending my lover. I would have 
 guarded you from violence, though at 
 the expense of my life ; my cries and 
 shrieks alone would have stopped the 
 hand." 
 
 4 For "stroke" Pope, in all editions 
 till that of 1736, read "hand," the 
 word in the translation. He had 
 used "hand" in the rhyme of the 
 previous couplet, and it was probably 
 to avoid the repetition that he made 
 the alteration. 
 
 8 Careless readers may misappre- 
 hend the sense. " Pain " here means 
 punishment, pcena. HOLT WHITE. 
 
 Like a verse of Druminond's : 
 
 The grief was common, common were the 
 cries. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Heloisa to Abelard: "You alone 
 expiated the crime common to us 
 bcth. You only were punished 
 though both of us were guilty." 
 
 6 H eloisa to Abelard : "Oh whither 
 does the excess of passion hurry me ! 
 Here love is shocked, and modesty 
 joined with despair deprive me of 
 speech." 
 
 ' A writer in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine quotes Settle's Empress of 
 Morocco : 
 
 Midy Harriet. Speak. 
 
 Empress. Let my tears and blushes speak 
 the rest. 
 
 8 The altar of Paraclete, says 
 Mr. Berrington, did not then exist. 
 They were not professed at the same 
 time or place ; one was at Argen- 
 teuil, the other at St. Denys. 
 WARTON. 
 
 9 Abelard to Heloisa: "I accom- 
 panied you with terror to the foot of 
 the altar, and while you stretched out 
 your hand to touch the sacred cloth, 
 I heard you pronounce distinctly those 
 fatal words which for ever separated 
 you from all men." 
 
 R 2
 
 244 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAKD. 
 
 with cold lips I kissed the sacred veil, 1 
 The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale :* 
 Heav'n scarce believed the conquest it surveyed, 
 And saints with wonder heard the vows I made. 
 
 g'et then, to those dread altars as I drew, 
 ot on the cross my eyes were fixed, but you ; 
 Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call, 
 And if I lose thy love, I lose my all. 
 Come ! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe ; * 
 Those still at least are left thee to bestow. 5 
 Still on that breast enamoured let me lie, 
 Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,* 
 Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be pressed ; 
 Give all thou canst and let me dream the rest. 
 Ah no ! instruct me other joys to prize, 
 With other beauties charm my partial eyes, 
 
 115 
 
 130 
 
 125 
 
 1 Her kissing the veil with " cold 
 lips " strongly marks her want of that 
 fervent zeal and devotion which should 
 influence those votaries who renounce 
 the world. The presages, likewise, 
 which attended the rites are finely 
 imagined, the tremhling of the 
 shrines, and the pallid hue of the 
 lamps as if they were conscious of the 
 reluctant sacrifice she was making. 
 RUFFHEAD. 
 
 2 Prior, in Henry and Emma, has a 
 verse of similar pauses, and similar 
 phraseology : 
 
 Thy lips all trembling, and thy cheeks all 
 pale. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Abelard to Heloisa : "I saw your 
 eyes when you spoke your last fare- 
 well fixed upon the cross." Heloisa 
 to Abelard : "It was your command 
 only, and not a sincere vocation, as is 
 imagined, that shut me up in these 
 cloisters." The two passages com- 
 bined suggested the line in the text. 
 
 4 Heloisa to Abelard : ' ' You may 
 
 see me, hear my sighs, and be a wit- 
 ness of all my sorrows, without in- 
 curring any danger, since you can 
 only relieve me with tears and 
 words." 
 
 5 Roscoe remarks that the lines 
 which follow cannot be justified by 
 anything in the letters of Eloisa. 
 Sentiments equally gross are however 
 expressed both in the original Latin 
 and in the adulterated translation 
 which was Pope's authority. 
 
 6 Concannen's Match at Football, 
 Canto iii. : 
 
 And drank in poison from her lovely eye. 
 
 Creech, at the beginning of his 
 Lucretius : 
 
 VThere on thy bosom he supinely lies, 
 And greedily drinks love at both his eyes. - 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Smith's Phaedra and Hippolytus, 
 Act i. : 
 
 Drank gorging ill the dear delicious poison. 
 
 STEEVEXS.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 245 
 
 Full in my view set all the bright abode, 
 And make my soul quit Abelard for God. 
 
 Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,' 
 Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r ; 
 From the false world in early youth they fled, 
 By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.* 
 You raised these hallowed walls ; s the desert smiled, 
 And Paradise was opened in the wild." 
 No weeping orphan saw his father's stores 
 Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors : s 
 No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n, 
 Here bribed the rage of ill-requited heav'n : 
 But such plain roofs as piety could raise, 6 
 And only vocal with the Maker's praise/ 
 In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound), 
 These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned, 
 
 130 
 
 135 
 
 140 
 
 1 "If thou canst forget me, think 
 at least upon thy flock," says "Wake- 
 field, in explanation of the train of 
 thought ; and he adds a passage from 
 a letter of Eloisa in which she terms 
 the monastery Abelard' s "new plan- 
 tation," and assures him that frequent 
 watering is essential to the tender 
 plants. 
 
 2 Heloisa to Ahelard : "The inno- 
 cent sheep, tender as they are, would 
 yet follow you through deserts and 
 mountains. " 
 
 3 He founded the monastery. 
 POPE. 
 
 Heloisa to Ahelard: "You only 
 are the founder of this house. You 
 by inhabiting here have given fame 
 and sanctity to a place known before 
 only for robbers and murderers." 
 
 4 So Dryden says of Absalom, 
 And Paradise was opened in his face. 
 
 The original of the image in the 
 text is in Isaiah li. 3 : 
 
 He will make her wilderness like Eden, 
 And her desert like the garden of Jehovah. 
 
 Whence Milton derived it, Par. Eeg. 
 i. 7: 
 
 And Eden raised in the waste wilderness. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 The writer in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine quotes Boileau, Le Moine : 
 
 La les salons sont peints, les meubles sont 
 
 dore"s 
 Des larmes et du sang des pauvres de- 
 
 vores. 
 
 6 Heloisa to Abelard : " These 
 cloisters owe nothing to public chari- 
 ties ; our walls were not raised by 
 the usury of publicans, nor their 
 foundations laid on base extortion. 
 The God whom we serve sees nothing 
 but innocent riches, and harmless 
 votaries whom you have placed 
 here. " 
 
 7 There were no benefactors v/hose 
 praises were celebrated in the services, 
 but the building was vocal only with 
 the praise of the Deity.
 
 246 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAED. 
 
 Where awful arches make a noon-day night, 
 
 And the dim windows shed a solemn light, 1 
 
 Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,* 
 
 And gleams of glory hrightened all the day.' 
 
 But now no face divine contentment wears, 
 
 "Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears. 
 
 See how the force of others' pray'rs I try, 4 
 
 O pious fraud of am'rous charity ! 
 
 But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?* 
 
 Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend ! 
 
 Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move, 6 
 
 And all those tender names in one, thy love ! 7 
 
 The darksome pines that, o'er yon rocks reclined," 
 
 Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind, 9 
 
 The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills," 
 
 The grots that echo to the tinkling rills," 
 
 145 
 
 150 
 
 155 
 
 1 Our author imitates Milton : 
 
 And storied windows richly dight 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 s Dryden had said of his Good 
 Parson : 
 
 His eyes diffused a venerable grace. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Mrs. Rowe on the Creation : 
 And kindling glories brighten all the skies. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 By pretending that she desires 
 Abelard to visit the Paraclete in obe- 
 dience to the call of her sister nuns. 
 
 * Heloisa to Abelard : " But why 
 should I entreat you in the name of 
 your children ? Is it possible I should 
 fear obtaining anything of you when 
 I ask in my own name I And must I 
 use any other prayers than my own to 
 prevail upon you ? " 
 
 8 From the superscription of He- 
 loisa's letter to Abelard: "To her 
 lord, her father, her husband, her 
 brother ; his servant, his child, 
 his wife, his sister, and to express 
 all that is humble, respectful, and 
 
 loving to her Abelard, Heloisa writes 
 this." 
 
 7 Our poet is indebted to a transla- 
 tion of the Virgilian cento of Auso- 
 nius in Dryden' s Miscellanies, vi. p. 
 
 143: 
 
 My love, my life, 
 
 And every tender name in one, my wife. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 Mr. Mills, a clergyman, who 
 visited the Paraclete about the year 
 1765, says, " Mr. Pope's description 
 is ideal. I saw neither rocks, nor 
 pines, nor was it a kind of ground 
 which ever seemed to encourage such 
 objects." 
 
 Addison's translation of book iii. 
 of the jEneis : 
 The hollow murmurs of the winds that blow. 
 
 10 The little river Ardusson glit- 
 tered along the valley of the Para- 
 clete. MILLS. 
 
 11 Philips, in his fourth Pastoral : 
 
 Nor dropping waters which from rocks 
 
 distil, 
 
 And welly grots with tinkling echoes fill. 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 247 
 
 The dying gales that pant upon the trees, 1 
 The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze ; * 
 No more these scenes my meditation aid, 
 Or lull to rest the visionary maid. 3 
 But o'er the twilight groves* and dusky caves, 
 Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves, 
 Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws 
 A death-like silence, and a dread repose :* 
 Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, 
 Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green, 6 
 Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, 
 And breathes a browner horror on the woods.* 
 
 Yet here for ever, ever must I stay ; 
 Sad proof how well a lover can obey ! 8 
 Death, only death, can break the lasting chain ; 
 And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain ;' 
 
 ico 
 
 165 
 
 170 
 
 1 Hilton's Penseroso : 
 
 When the gust hath blown his fill 
 Ending on the rustling leaves. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Dryden, Virg. Geo. iv. 432 : 
 When western winds on curling waters play. 
 
 3 Dryden, Virg. Mn. iii. 575 : 
 
 Most upbraid 
 
 The madness of the visionary maid. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Milton's Penseroso : 
 
 To arched walks of twilight groves. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 Waller's version of jEneid iv. : 
 A death-like quiet, and deep silence fell. 
 
 Dryden's Astrsea Redux : 
 A dreadful quiet felt. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Charles Bainbrigg on the death of 
 Edward King : 
 
 Abyssum 
 
 Terribilis requies et vasta silentia cingant. 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 6 Fenton in his version of Sappho 
 to Phaon : 
 
 With him the caves were cool, the grove 
 
 was green, 
 
 But now his absence withers all the scene. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 7 Dryden's Theodore and Honoria : 
 With deeper brown the grove was over- 
 spread. STEEVENS. 
 
 Dryden, Mn. vii. 40 : 
 The Trojan from the main beheld a wood, 
 Which thick with shades and a brown 
 
 horror stood. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 In allusion to this sacrifice of her- 
 self at his will she says in her first 
 letter : "You are of all mankind most 
 abundantly indebted to me ; and par- 
 ticularly for that proof of absolute 
 submission to your commands in thus 
 destroying myself at your injunction." 
 "WAKEFIELD. 
 
 9 Heloisa to Abelard : "Death only 
 can make me leave the place where 
 you have fixed me, and then too my 
 ashes shall rest there, and wait for 
 yours."
 
 248 ELOISA TO ABELAKD. 
 
 Here all its frailties, all its flames resign, n& 
 
 And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine. 1 
 
 Ah wretch ! believed the spouse of God in vain, 
 Confessed within the slave of love and man. 
 Assist me, heav'n ! but whence arose that pray'r ? 
 Sprung it from piety, or from despair ?* iso 
 
 Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires, 
 Love finds an altar for forbidden fires. 3 
 I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought ; 
 I mourn the lover, not lament the fault ; 4 
 I view my crime, but kindle at the view, iss 
 
 Repent old pleasures, and solicit new ; 5 
 Now turned to heav'n, I weep my past offence, 
 Now think of thee, and curse my innocence. 
 Of all affliction taught a lover yet, 
 
 'Tis sure the hardest science to forget ! 6 190 
 
 How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, 
 And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence ? 7 
 
 1 Abelard to Heloisa : "I hope ing for her sins, weeps only for her 
 you will be contented when you have lover ; far from abhorring her crimes 
 finished this mortal life to be buried endeavours only to add to them, and 
 near me. Your cold ashes need then who pleases herself continually with 
 fear nothing. " the remembrance of past actions 
 
 2 Heloisa to Abelard: "Among when it is impossible to renew them." 
 those who are wedded to God I serve And again: "I, who have expe- 
 a man. What a prodigy am 1 ! En- rienced so many pleasures in loving 
 lighten me, Lord ! Does thy grace you feel, in spite of myself, that I 
 or my despair draw these words from cannot repent of them, nor forbear 
 me ? " enjoying them over again as much as 
 
 3 Heloisa to Abelard: "lam sen- is possible by recollecting them in 
 sible I am in 'the temple of chastity my memory." Abelard, in the trans- 
 covered only with the ashes of that lation of the letters, expresses the 
 fire which has consumed us." same sentiment: "Love still pre- 
 
 4 This couplet, and its wretched serves its dominion in my fancy, and 
 rhymes, seem derived from an elegy entertains itself with past pleasures." 
 of Walsh in Dryden's Miscellanies : 6 Abelard to Heloisa: "To forget 
 
 in the case of love is the most neces- 
 
 I know I ought to hate vou for the fault : , 1,1 j-m ii)> 
 
 R,,+ r,T,iTo 4-1 T * sary penitence, and the most difficult. 
 
 But oh I I cannot do the thing I ought J *, ' 
 
 WAKEFIELD. Dryden's Cymon and Iphigenia : 
 
 c TT , . Then impotent of mind, with altered sense 
 
 Heloisa to Abelard : "I am here She hugged th , offenderj and forgave th , 
 
 a sinner, but one, who far from weep- offence. WAKEFIELD.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELABD. 249 
 
 How the dear object from the crime remove, 
 
 Or how distinguish penitence from love ? ' 
 
 Unequal task ! a passion to resign, 195 
 
 For hearts so touched, so pierced, so lost as mine. 
 
 Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state, 
 
 How often must it love, how often hate ! * 
 
 How often hope, despair, resent, regret, 
 
 Conceal, disdain, do all things hut forget. 200 
 
 But let heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fired ; 
 
 Not touched, but rapt; not wakened, but inspired i 8 
 
 Oh come ! oh teach me nature to subdue, 
 
 Eenounce my love, my life, myself and you. 4 
 
 Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he 205 
 
 Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.* 
 
 How happy is the blameless vestal's lot ! 
 The world forgetting, by the world forgot : e 
 Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind ! 
 
 Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resigned ; 210 
 
 Labour and rest, that equal periods keep ; 
 " Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep ; " r 
 
 1 Abelard to Heloisa : "How can desires, herself, and, if it be possible, 
 I separate from the person I love the even to renounce you." 
 
 passion I must detest ? "Will the tears 6 Heloisa to Abelard : "When I 
 
 I shed be sufficient to render it odious shall have told you what rival hath 
 
 to me ? It is difficult in our sorrow ravished my heart from you, you will 
 
 to distinguish penitence from love." praise my inconstancy, and will pray 
 
 2 Heloisa to Abelard: "A heart this rival to fix it. By this you may 
 which has been so sensibly affected as judge that it is God alone that takes 
 mine cannot soon be indifferent. We Heloise from you. What other rival 
 fluctuate long between love and hatred could take me from you ? Could you 
 before we can arrive at a happy tran- think me guilty of sacrificing the 
 quillity." Abelard to Heloisa : "In virtuous and learned Abelard to any 
 such different disquietudes I contradict other but God ? " 
 
 myself ; I hate you ; I love you." 6 Horace, Epist. Lib. i. xi. 9 : 
 
 3 Heloisa to Abelard : ' ' God has a Oblitusque meorum, oblmscendus et illis. 
 peculiar right over the hearts of great My friends forgetting, by my friends for- 
 men. When he pleases to touch them got. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 he ravishes them, and lets them not 7 Taken from Crashaw. POPE. 
 
 speak nor breathe but for his glory." Wakefield gives the complete cou- 
 
 4 Heloisa to Abelard : "Yes, Abe- p i et from Crashaw's Description of a 
 lard, I conjure you teach me the religious House 
 
 maxims of divine love. Oh ! for pity's A h sty portion of prescribed sleep . 
 sake help a wretch to renounce her Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep.
 
 250 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Desires composed, affections ever even ; 
 
 Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to heav'n. 
 
 Grace shines around her, with serenest beams, 215 
 
 And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams. 
 
 For her, th' unfading rose of Eden blooms, 
 
 And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes, 
 
 For her the spouse prepares the bridal ring, 
 
 For her white virgins hymeneals sing, 220 
 
 To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away, 1 
 
 And melts in visions of eternal day.* 
 
 Far other dreams my erring soul employ, 
 Far other raptures, of unholy joy : 
 
 "When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day, 225 
 
 Fancy restores what vengeance snatched away, 
 Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free, 
 All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee. 
 Oh cursed, dear horrors of all-conscious night ! 
 How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight ! 3 230 
 
 Provoking demons all restraint remove, 
 And stir within me ev'ry source of love. 
 I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms, 
 And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms. 
 I wake : no more I hear, no more I view, 235 
 
 The phantom flies me, as unkind as you. 
 I call aloud ; it hears not what I say : 
 I stretch my empty arms ; it glides away. 
 
 1 The idea of the "wings of se- Of charming notes we heard the last ro- 
 
 raphs shedding perfumes " is from bounds, 
 
 ,,:,, ,, T r>oo V. And music dying in remoter sounds. 
 Milton, Par. Lost, v. 286, where 
 
 Raphael "shakes heavenly fragrance" 
 
 ,.,,,., ,, a TV j Adapted from Dryden s Britannia 
 
 from "his plumes, and Dryden in . * 
 
 his Tyrannic Lore, Act v., mentions 
 
 the perfumes, the spousals^ and the M star . light is di sgolv ed away 
 
 celestial music as accompaniments of And melts into the brightness of the 
 the death of St. Catherine : day. 
 
 ^Ethereal music did her death prepare, TI_J t j * T 
 
 Likejoyfulsoundsofspousalsintnean-; " Aden's Cmyras and Myrrlia, 
 
 A radiant light did her crowned temple gild, translarted from Ovid : 
 And all the place with fragrant scents was 
 
 filled ; For guilty pleasure gives a double gust.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 251 
 
 To dream once more I close my willing eyes ; 
 
 Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise ; l 240 
 
 Alas, no more ! methinks we wand'ring go 
 
 Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,* 
 
 Where round some mould'ring tow'r pale ivy creeps, 
 
 And low-browed rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps. 
 
 Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies ; 245 
 
 Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise. 
 
 I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find, 
 
 And wake to all the griefs I left behind. 
 
 For thee the fates, severely kind, 3 ordain 
 A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain ; 250 
 
 Thy life a long dead calm of fixed repose ; 
 No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows ; 
 Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow, 
 Or moving spirit bade the waters flow ; 5 
 
 1 Heloisa to Abelard : "I will own 
 to you what makes the greatest plea- 
 sure I have in my retirement. After 
 having passed the day in thinking of 
 you, full of the dear idea I give my- 
 self up at night to sleep. Then it is 
 that Heloise, who dares not without 
 trembling think of you by day, resigns 
 herself entirely to the pleasure of 
 hearing you, and speaking to you. I 
 t- see you Abelard, and glut my eyes 
 
 -' 
 
 with the sight. Sometimes forgetting 
 the perpetual obstacles to our desires, 
 you press me to make you happy, 
 and I easily yield to your transports. 
 Sleep gives me what your enemies' 
 rage has deprived you of, and our 
 souls, animated with the same pas- 
 sion, are sensible of the same pleasure. 
 But, oh, you delightful illusions, soft 
 errors, how soon do you vanish away ! 
 At my awaking I open my eyes, and 
 see no Abelard ; I stretch out my 
 arms to take hold of him, but he is 
 not there ; I call upon him, he hears 
 me not." 
 2 Dryden, ^Eneis, iv. 677, supplied 
 
 the idea : 
 
 She seems, alone, 
 
 To wander in her sleep through ways un- 
 known, 
 
 Guideless and dark ; or in a desert plain 
 To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain. 
 
 3 The writer in the Gentleman's 
 Magazine quotes the same expression 
 from Steele's Miscellanies : 
 
 No more severely kind affect to put 
 That lovely auger on. 
 
 4 Heloisa to Abelard: "You are 
 happy, Abelard, and your misfortunes 
 have been the occasion of your finding 
 rest. The punishment of your body 
 has cured the deadly wounds of your 
 soul. I am a thousand times more 
 to be lamented than you ; I must 
 resist those fires which love kindles 
 in a young heart." 
 
 5 Dryden's Ovid, Met. i. : 
 
 Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to 
 
 blow, 
 
 And bade the congregated waters flow. 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 252 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 I/*- 
 
 Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n, 
 
 255 
 
 And mild as op'ning gleams of promised heav'n. 1 
 iQtOThe torch of Venus burns not for the dead. 
 
 -\ --r 
 
 
 Come, Abelard ! for what hast thou to dread ? 
 
 Nature stands checked ; religion disapproves ; 
 Ev'n thou art cold yet Eloisa loves. 
 Ah hopeless, lasting flames ! like those that burn 
 To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn. 3 
 
 What scenes appear where'er I turn my view ? 
 The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue, 
 Rise in the grove, before the altar rise, 4 
 Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes. 
 I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee, 
 Thy image steals between my God and me," 
 Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear, 
 With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear. 6 
 When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll, 
 And swelling organs lift the rising soul, 
 One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight, 
 Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight ; 7 
 
 260 
 
 265 
 
 270 
 
 1 Sir William Davenant's Address 
 to the Queen : 
 
 Smooth as the face of waters first appeared, 
 Ere tides began to strive, or winds were 
 
 heard ; 
 
 Kind as the willing saints, and calmer far 
 Than in their sleeps forgiven hermits are. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Heloisa to Abelard : "When we 
 love pleasures we love the living and 
 not the dead." In all editions till 
 that of 1736 this couplet followed : 
 
 Cut from the root my perished joys I see, 
 And love's warm tide for ever stopped in 
 thee. 
 
 3 Hudibras, Part ii. Canto i. 309 : 
 
 Love in your heart as idly burns 
 As fire in antique Roman urns 
 To warm the dead, and vainly light 
 Those only that see nothing by 't. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Heloisa to Abelard: "Whatever 
 endeavours I use, on whatever side I 
 
 turn me, the sweet idea still pursues 
 me, and every object brings to my 
 mind what I ought to forget. Even 
 into holy places before the altar, I 
 carry with me the memory of our 
 guilty loves. They are my whole 
 business." 
 
 6 Abelard to Heloisa : "In spite of 
 severe fasts your image appears to me, 
 and confounds all my resolutions." 
 
 6 Sedley's verses on Don Alonzo : 
 
 The gentle nymph, 
 Drops tears with every bead. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The force of the line is, however, 
 in the phrase "too soft " which Pope 
 has added. " With every bead I 
 drop a tear of tender love instead of 
 a tear of bitter repentance. " 
 
 " Smith's Phasdra and Hippolytus, 
 
 Act i. : 
 
 All the idle pomp, 
 
 Priests, altars, victims swam before my 
 sight. STEEVENS.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 253 
 
 In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned, 275 
 
 While altars blaze, and angels tremble round. 1 
 
 While prostrate here in humble grief I tie, 
 Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye, 
 While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll, 
 And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul : sso 
 
 Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art ! 
 Oppose thyself to heav'n ; dispute my heart : 
 Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes 
 Blot out each bright idea of the skies ; 
 Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears ; 
 Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs ; ^ 
 Snatch me, just mounting, from the bless'd abode ; 
 Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God ! ,!_/' 
 
 No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole ; 3 
 Rise alps between us ! and whole oceans roll ! 4 290 
 
 Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me, 
 Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee. 
 Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign ; 5 
 Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine. 
 Fair eyes, and tempting looks, (which yet I view !) 295 
 
 Long loved, adored ideas, all adieu ! 
 
 1 How finely does this glowing strument of their malice ! But rather 
 imagery introduce the transition, withdraw yourself and contribute to 
 
 While prostrate here, &c. BOWLES. m y salvation." 
 
 3 Abelard to Heloisa : "Let me 
 
 2 The whole of this paragraph is remoye far from yoU; and obey the 
 
 from Abelard's letter to Heloisa: apost le who hath said, fly." 
 
 "I am a miserable sinner prostrate 4 Wakefield quotes the lineg of 
 
 before my judge, and with my face Hopkins to a lad where> spea kin g 
 
 pressed to the earth I mix my tears of her beautieS; he entreats that sho 
 
 and sighs in the dust when the beams jjj 
 
 of grace and reason enlighten me. 
 
 Come, see me in this posture and so- Drive 'em somewhere, as far as pole from 
 
 licit me to love you ! Come, if you pole ' 
 
 .,.,,,, , . , , % .. Let winds between us rage, and waters 
 
 think nt, and in your holy habit roll 
 
 thrust yourself between God and me, 
 
 and be a wall of separation ! Come and 5 Abelard to Heloisa: "It will 
 
 force from me those sighs, thoughts, always be the highest love to show 
 
 and vows which I owe to him only ! none : I here release you of all your 
 
 Assist the evil spirits and be the in- oaths and engagements to me."
 
 254 
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 Oil grace serene ! oil virtue heav'nly fair ! 
 Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care ! * 
 Fresh-blooming nope, gay daughter of the sky ! 
 And faith, our early immortality ! 3 
 Enter, each mild, each amicable guest : 
 Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest. 
 
 See in her cell sad Eloisa spread, 
 Propped on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead. 4 
 In each low wind methinks a spirit calls, 
 And more than echoes talk along the walls. 8 
 Here, as I watched the dying lamps around, 
 From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound. 
 " Come, sister, come ! (it said, or seemed to say) ' 
 " Thy place is here, sad sister, come away ; 7 
 
 300 
 
 305 
 
 310 
 
 1 The combination heavenly-fair " 
 is also found in Sandys, Congreve, and 
 TickelL WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 " Low-thonghted care" is from 
 Milton's Comus. WARTON. 
 
 3 This resembles a passage in Cra- 
 shaw: 
 
 Fair hope 1 our earlier heaven. 
 WAKKFIELD. 
 
 4 " It should," says Mr. Mills, "be 
 near her cell. The doors of all 
 cells open into the common cloister. 
 In that cloister are often tombs." 
 Steevens adds the frivolous objec- 
 tion that the "Paraclete had been 
 too recently founded for monuments 
 of the dead to be expected there." 
 Heloisa had been five years abbess 
 when she wrote her first letter to 
 Abelard, and it is certainly not an 
 extravagant supposition that a death 
 might have occurred among the nuns 
 in that space of time. 
 
 8 Dryden's Palamon and Arcite : 
 
 And issuing uighs that smoked along tho 
 wall WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Addison's translation of a passage 
 from Claudian : 
 
 Oft in the winds is heard a plaintive 
 
 sound 
 Of melancholy ghosts that hover round. 
 
 6 Fenton's translation of Sappho to 
 Phaon : 
 
 Here, while by sorrow lulled to sleep I 
 
 lay. 
 Thus said the guardian nymph, or seemed 
 
 to say. WAKEFIKLD 
 
 Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, 
 Act iv. Sc. 4 : 
 
 Hark! you are called: some say, the 
 
 Genius so 
 Cries, " Come ! " to him that instantly 
 
 must die. 
 
 7 Pope owes much throughout this 
 poem to the character of Dido as 
 drawn by Virgil, and this passage 
 seems directly formed upon one in 
 Dryden, Mn. iv. 667 : 
 
 Oft when she visited this lonely dome 
 Strange voices issued from her husband's 
 
 tomb: 
 She thought she heard him summon her 
 
 away, 
 Invite her to his grave, and chide her 
 
 stay. 
 
 The imitation of the passage in 
 Ovid, Epist. vii. 101, similar to this 
 from Virgil, is still more palpable : 
 
 Hinc ego me sensi noto quater ore citari : 
 Ipse sono teuui dixit, " Elissa, veni 1 " 
 Nulla mora est; venio: venio, tibi debita 
 conjux. WAJCEFIELD.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELAKD. 
 
 255 
 
 " Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed, 
 
 " Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid : ' 
 
 " But all is calm in this eternal sleep ; 2 
 
 " Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep, 
 
 " Ev'n superstition loses every fear : 
 
 " For God, not man, absolves our frailties here." 
 
 I come, I come ! 3 prepare your roseate bow'rs, 
 
 Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs ; 
 
 Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go, 
 
 Where flames refined in breasts seraphic glow : 
 
 Thou, Abelard ! the last sad office pay, 4 
 
 And smooth my passage to the realms of day : 5 
 
 See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll, 
 
 Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul ! 6 
 
 Ah no in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, 
 
 The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand, 
 
 Present the cross before my lifted eye, 
 
 Teach me at once, and learn of me to die. 7 
 
 Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see ! 
 
 It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 
 
 820 
 
 325 
 
 330 
 
 1 It is well contrived that this in- 
 visible speaker should be a person 
 that had been under the very same 
 kind of misfortunes with Eloisa. 
 WAIITON. 
 
 2 Dryden's version of the latter part 
 of the third book of Lucretius : 
 
 But all is there serene in that eternal sleep. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 In the first edition : 
 
 I come ye ghosts. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Ogilby, Virg. JEn. xi. : 
 
 And to the dead our last sad duties pay. 
 Dryden, Mn. xi. 322 : ' 
 
 Perform the last sad office to the slain. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 Dryden's Aurengezebe at the com- 
 mencement of Act iv. : 
 
 I thought before you drew your latest 
 
 breath, 
 To sooth your passage, and to soften death. 
 
 6 Oldham's translation of Bion on 
 the death of Adonis : 
 
 Kiss, while I watch thy swimming eye-balls 
 roll, 
 
 Watch thy last gasp, and catch thy spring- 
 ing souL 
 
 Dryden's Virg. Mn. iv. 984 : 
 While I in death 
 
 Lay close my lips to hers, and catch the 
 flying breath. 
 
 And in his Cleomenes, the end of Act 
 iv. : 
 
 sucking in each other's latest breath. 
 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 7 Eowe's ode to Delia : 
 
 Whon e'er it comes, may'st thou be by, 
 Support my sinking frame, and teach rue 
 how to die. WAKEFIELD.
 
 256 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 See from my cheek the transient roses fly ! l 
 
 See the last sparkle languish in my eye ! 
 
 'Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath he o'er ; 
 
 And ev'n my Ahelard he loved no more. 
 
 Oh death all-eloquent ! you only prove 535 
 
 What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.* 
 
 Then too, when fate shall thy fair fame destroy, 
 (That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy) 8 
 In trance ecstatic may thy pangs he drowned, 
 Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round, zvi 
 
 From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine, 
 And saints embrace thee with a love like mine. 
 
 May one kind grave unite each hapless name/ 
 And graft my love immortal on thy fame ! 
 Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er, sw 
 
 When this rebellious heart shall beat no more ; 
 If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings 
 To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs, 
 O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads, 
 And drink the falling tears each other sheds ; * ssi 
 
 Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved, 
 " Oh may we never love as these have loved ! " 
 
 1 Dryden n., zi. 1194 : they died. They were buried in the 
 
 And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies. same cr >T>t, but it was not till 1630, 
 
 or near five hundred years after the 
 
 * Abelard to Heloisa : "You shall death of Heloisa> that their remaing 
 
 see me to strengthen your piety by were consigned to the same grave< 
 
 the horror of this carcase, and my Then tfleir bones are reported ^ 
 
 death, then more eloquent than I can haye been t into a double coffin> 
 
 be, will tell you what you love when diyided by a partition of lead- They 
 
 you love a man." subsequently underwent various dis*- 
 
 * Spenser, Faerie Queen, i. 4, 45 : interments and removals, till in 
 Cause of my new grief, cause of new joy. 1817 the alleged relics were trans- 
 WAKEFIELD. ferred to the cemetery of Pere- 
 
 4 Abelard and Eloisa were interred Lachaise, at Paris, and have not 
 
 in the same grave, or in monuments since been disturbed, 
 
 adjoining, in the monastery of the 5 Dryden, in his translation of 
 
 Paraclete. He died in the year 1142, Canace to Macareus : 
 
 she in 1163 [4]. POPE. 
 
 1 -> I restrained my cnes 
 
 Abelard and Heloisa are said to And drunk the tears that trickled from my 
 have been both sixty-three when eyes. WAKEFIELP.
 
 ELOISA TO ABELARD. 
 
 257 
 
 From the full choir ' when loud hosannas rise, 
 And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,* 
 Amid that scene if some relenting eye 
 Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie, 
 Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heav'n, 
 One human tear shall drop, and be forgiv'n. 
 And sure if fate some future bard shall join 
 In sad similitude of griefs to mine, 
 Condemned whole years in absence to deplore, 
 And image charms he must behold no more ; 
 Such if there be, who loves so long, so well ; 
 Let him our sad, our tender story tell ; 
 The well-sung woes will sooth my pensive ghost ; 3 
 He best can paint them who shall feel them most/ 
 
 355 
 
 360 
 
 365 
 
 1 Milton, II Penseroso : 
 
 There let the pealing organ blow 
 To the full- voiced choir below. 
 
 2 " Dreadful sacrifice" is the ritual 
 term. So in the History of Loretto, 
 1608, ch. 20, p. 278, " The priest, 
 as the use is, assisted the cardinal in 
 the time of the dreadful sacrifice." 
 STEEVENS. 
 
 3 "Warton says that the eight con- 
 cluding lines of the Epistle "are 
 rather flat and languid." It is in- 
 deed an absurd supposition that a 
 woman who had been speaking the 
 fervid language of Christianity should 
 imagine that her state in the world 
 beyond the grave would be that of a 
 "pensive ghost," and that her con- 
 solation would consist in having her 
 woes " well-sung " on earth. And it 
 is in the tremendous conflict between 
 piety and passion, while divine and 
 
 human love are contending fiercely 
 for the mastery, that she finds relief 
 in this unsubstantial idea that some 
 future lover would make her the sub- 
 ject of a poem. 
 
 4 The last line is imitated from 
 Addison's Campaign. 
 
 Marlb'rough's exploits appear 'divinely 
 
 bright- 
 Raised of themselves their genuine charms 
 
 they boast, 
 And those who paint them truest, praise 
 
 them most. 
 
 This Pope had in his thoughts ; but 
 not knowing how to use what was 
 not his own, he spoiled the thought 
 when he had borrowed it. Martial 
 exploits may be painted ; perhaps 
 woes may be painted ; but they are 
 surely not painted by being well 
 sung : it is not easy to paint in song, 
 or to sing in colours. JOHNSON. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY.
 
 AN 
 
 ESSAY ON MAN, 
 
 IN FOUR EPISTLES 
 
 TO 
 
 HENEY ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. 
 
 WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1732.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. ADDRESSED TO A FRIEND. Part I. 
 
 London : Printed for J. WILFORD, at the Three Flower-de-luces, behind the 
 Chapter-house, St. Paul's. Price one shilling. Folio. 
 
 This is the first edition of Epistle I. of the Essay on Man, which was pub- 
 lished anonymously, and without any date on the title-page, Feb. 1733. It 
 was also printed in quarto and octavo. The octavo has not the prefatory 
 address "To the Reader." The right to print each epistle of the Essay on 
 Man for one year was bought by Gilliver for 501. an Epistle. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. IN EPISTLES TO A FRIEND. Epistle I. 
 Corrected by the Author. London, etc. Folio. 
 
 The rest of the title-page is the same as in the first edition. This second 
 edition has a table of Contents to the first three Epistles, which were originally 
 published without the table. The fourth Epistle had the table prefixed from 
 the outset. "With the exception of the first Epistle, I am not aware that there 
 was a second edition of any part of the Essay on Man till the whole was incor- 
 porated in the works of the poet. An octavo edition, published by WILFORD 
 in 1736, is called the seventh ; but he may have counted in the three sizes of the 
 first edition, together with the editions which had appeared in Pope's works. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. IN EPJSTLES TO A FRIEND. Epistle II. 
 
 London : Printed for J. WILFORD, at the Three Flower-de-luces, behind the 
 Chapter-house, St. Paul's. Price one shilling. Folio. 
 
 The second Epistle appeared about April, 1733. 
 
 The title of the third and fourth Epistle is the same as that of the second. 
 At the end of the third Epistle is this notice : " N. B. The rest of the work 
 will be published the next winter," and the promise was kept by the publica- 
 tion of the fourth Epistle about the middle of January, 1734. x The last three 
 Epistles were printed like their precursor, in quarto and octavo, as well as 
 folio. The octavo edition of all four Epistles differs from the rest in having 
 the year on the title-page, the first three, 1733, the fourth Epistle, 1734. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN : BEING THE FIRST BOOK OF ETHIC EPISTLES. 
 
 To H. ST. JOHN L. BOLINGBROKE. With the Commentary and Notes of W. 
 WARBURTON, A.M. 
 
 London : Printed by W. BOWYEK for M. COOPER, at the Globe, in Pater- 
 noster-Row, 1743. 4to. 
 
 This is the first edition with Warburtou's Commentary, and the last which 
 appeared during the life-time of Pope. The Essay on Criticism is in the same 
 volume, which was kept back for some months after it was printed, and- wa:i 
 not published till 1744.
 
 "WAKBURION and Hurd have introduced a new kind of criticism, in 
 which they discover views and purposes the authors never had, and 
 they themselves never believed they had, but consider them as the 
 refinements of their own delicate conceptions, only taking hints from 
 those authors, to show how much higher they themselves would have 
 carried the same ideas. Warburton's discovering " the regularity " 
 of Pope's Essay on Criticism, and " the whole scheme " of his Essay 
 on Man, I happen to know to be mere absurd refinement in creating 
 conformities, and that from Pope himself, though he thought fit to 
 adopt them afterwards. By this method of overlooking the plain 
 and simple meaning which presents itself at first sight (as that of 
 good authors always does, only that there is no credit to be gained 
 in discovering what any one else could discover) it might clearly bo 
 shown that Pope's Art of Criticism is, indeed, an Essay on Man, and 
 his Essay on Man was really designed by the deep author for an Art 
 of Criticism. I know that these would not be more false than the 
 assertion and sophistry in proving "the regularity" of his Art of 
 Criticism, since he, when often speaking of it, before he so much as 
 knew Warburton, spoke of it always, as an " irregular collection of 
 thoughts thrown together as they offered themselves, as Horace's 
 Art of Poetry was, and written in imitation of that irregularity," 
 which he even admired, and said was beautiful. As for his Essay 
 on Man, as I was witness to the whole conduct of it in writing, and 
 actually have his original MS3. for it from the first scratches of 
 the four books, to the several finished copies, all which, with the MS. 
 of his Essay on Criticism, and several of his other works, he gave 
 me himself for the pains I took in collating the whole with the 
 printed editions, at his request, on my having proposed to him the 
 " making an edition of his works in the manner of Boileau's," as 
 to this noblest of his works, I know that he never dreamed of the 
 scheme he afterwards adopted, perhaps for good reasons, for he had 
 taken terror about the clergy, and Warburton himself, at the general 
 alarm of its fatalism, and deistical tendency, of which however we 
 talked with him (my father and I) frequently at Twickenham, with- 
 out his appearing to understand it otherwise, or ever thinking to 
 alter those passages, which we suggested as what might seem the 
 most exceptionable. 1 BICHARDSON. 
 
 1 Koscoe supposes Richardson to have asserted that there was an " entire dis- 
 crepancy between the Essay on Man as published, and the original maun scripts," 
 and to have implied that the change was from "infidelity" to its opposite. This 
 is not the statement of Richardson. He says, on the contrary, that when the 
 "exceptionable passages" were pointed out Pope "did not think of altering 
 them," and "never dreamed of adopting" a more orthodox "scheme" for his
 
 262 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The Essay on Man was at first given, as Mr. Pope told me, to 
 Dr. Young, to Dr. Desagriliers, 1 to Lord Bolingbroke, to Lord Paget, 2 
 and in short to everybody but to him who was capable of writing it. 
 While several of his acquaintances read the Essay on Man as the 
 work of an unknown author, they fairly owned they did not under- 
 stand it, 3 but when the reputation of the poem became secured by 
 the knowledge of the writer, it soon grew so clear and intelligible, 
 that, on the appearance of the Comment on it, they told him they 
 wondered the editor should think a large and minute interpretation 
 necessary. WARBUBTON. 
 
 [In 1733] Pope published the first part of what he persuaded 
 
 Essay till after "its fatalism and deistical tendency'' bad excited that "general 
 alarm " which could not precede the publication of the poem, and which only, in 
 fact, commenced some three years later. Richardson is enforcing his charge 
 against Wvbortoo of inventing forced meanings, and the instance would contra- 
 dict the accusation if Pope had altered his language from deism to orthodoxy 
 before he printed the work. The commentary would then have expressed the 
 natural sense of the text. The change of which Richardson speaks was not in the 
 Essay itself, but in the interpretation Pope put upon it. While he was com- 
 posing the poem he accepted the deistical construction of the Richardsons ; and 
 when he was terrified at the " general alarm " he endorsed the Christian con- 
 struction of Warbnrton. 
 
 1 Dr. Desaguliers, the son of a French refugee, was born at Rochelle in 1683, 
 and died, Feb. 29, 1744, at the Bedford Coffee-house, Covent Garden. He was 
 a clergyman of the church of England, a great lover of science, and a friend of 
 Newton. He delivered lectures for many years on Experimental Philosophy, and 
 published an excellent work on the subject in 2 vols. 4to. He does not appear 
 to have shown any turn for poetry, and those who ascribed to him the Essay on 
 Man may have had no better ground for their opinion than that the poem treated 
 of one kind of philosophy, and Desaguliers was learned in another. 
 
 2 Thomas Catesby, Lord Paget, son of the Earl of Uxbridge, died before his 
 father in Jan. 1742. He published in 1734, a poem called An Essay on Human 
 Life; and in 1737 An Epistle to Mr. Pope, in Anti-heroics. "The former," 
 says Horace Walpole, "is written in imitation of Pope's ethic epistles, and has 
 good lines, but not much poetry." 
 
 * In the Life of Pope by the pretended Squire Ayre, it is said that "a certain 
 gentleman," meaning Mallet, was at Pope's house shortly after the first Epistle 
 was published, and in answer to the question " What new pieces were brought to 
 light ?" replied, " That there was a thing come out called an Essay on Man, and 
 it was a most abominable piece of stuff; shocking poetry, insufferable philosophy, 
 no coherence, no connection at all." Pope confessed he was the author, which, 
 fays Ayre, "was like a clap of thunder to the mistaken bard ; with a blush and 
 a bow he took his leave of Pope, and never ventured to show his unlucky face 
 there again." The final statement is contradicted by the letters of Pope and 
 Mallet, wiiich prove that they carried on a cordial intercourse to the last. The 
 rest of the story is improbable, for it is not likely that Pope, who v.-as bent at 
 this early period upon keeping the authorship a secret, would have unmasked 
 himself in a manner to preclude confidence, and provoke Mallet to divulge the 
 truth to the world. Ayre's authority is good for nothing, and Ruffhead only 
 copied Ayre, but his repetition of the anecdote gave it currency, and it has ever 
 since passed unquestioned from writer to writer.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 263 
 
 himself to think a system of ethics, under the title of an Essay on 
 Man, which, if his letter to Swift of September 14, 1725, be rightly 
 explained by the commentator, 1 had been eight years under his con- 
 sideration, and of which he seems to have desired the success with 
 great solicitude. He had now many open and doubtless many secret 
 enemies. The dunces were yet smarting with the war ; and the 
 superiority which he publicly arrogated disposed the world to wish 
 his humiliation. All this he knew, and against all this he provided. 
 His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is inscribed, 2 
 were in the first editions carefully suppressed, and the poem, being 
 of a new kind, was ascribed to one or another, as favour determined 
 or conjecture wandered : it was given, says "Warburton, to every man 
 except him only who could write it. Those who like only when they 
 like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name, con- 
 demned it, and those admired it who are willing to scatter praise 
 at random, which while it is unappropriated excites no envy. Those 
 friends of Pope that were trusted with the secret went about lavishing 
 honours on the new-born* poet, and hinting that Pope was never so 
 much in danger from any former rival. To those authors whom he 
 had personally offended, and to those whose opinion the world con- 
 sidered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy or malevolence, 
 he sent his Essay as a present before publication, that they might 
 defeat their own enmity by praises which they could not afterwards 
 decently retract. With these precautions, in 1732[3] was published 
 the first part of the Essay on Man. There had been for some time a 
 report that Pope was busy upon a system of morality; but this 
 design was not discovered in the new poem, which had a form and a 
 title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception was 
 not uniform; some thought it a very imperfect piece, though not 
 without good lines. While the author was unknown, some, as will 
 always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and some censured 
 him as an intruder, but all thought him above neglect : the sale in- 
 creased, and editions were multiplied. The second and third Epistles 
 were published, and Pope was, I believe, more and more suspected 
 of writing them. At last, in 1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed 
 the honour of a moral poet. 
 
 In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged that the doctrine 
 of the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to 
 have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, aa 
 
 1 Warburton. "Your Travels I hear much of," says Pope in the letter to 
 Swift ; "my own I promise you shall never more be in a strange land, but a 
 diligent, I hope, useful investigation of my own territories. I mean no more 
 translations, but something domestic, fit for my own country, and my own time." 
 The allusion is obscure, and it may be doubted whether Pope referred to his ethical 
 scheme, which he did not commence till four years later. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke.
 
 264 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive 
 the consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to 
 his own. That those communications had been consolidated into a 
 scheme regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it re- 
 turned only transformed from prose to verse, has been reported, but 
 hardly can be true. 1 The Essay plainly appears the fabric of a poet : 
 what Bolingbroke supplied could be only the first principles ; the 
 order, illustration, and embellishments must all be Pope's. These 
 principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity, dogmatism, 
 or falsehood ; but they were not immediately examined : philosophy 
 and poetry have not often the same readers, and the Essay abounded 
 in splendid amplifications and sparkling sentences, which were read 
 and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose ; its 
 flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage con- 
 cealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal appro- 
 bation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence 
 is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety. 
 
 Its reputation soon invited a translator.^ It was first turned into 
 French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse. Both transla- 
 tions fell into the hands of Grousaz, who first, when he had the 
 version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted 
 Eesnel's version with particular remarks upon every paragraph. 2 
 Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of 
 Logic, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme, and, however little known 
 or regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of 
 those in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was 
 accustomed to argument and disquisition, and was perhaps grown 
 too desirous of detecting faults ; but his intentions were always right, 
 his opinions were solid, and his religion pure. His incessant vigi- 
 lance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look with distrust 
 upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue 
 
 1 The authority w&s Lord Bathursfc. Dr. Hugh Blair dined with him in 1763, 
 and says in a letter to Boswell, that " the conversation turning on Mr. Pope, 
 Lord Bathurst told us that the Essay on Man was originally composed by Lord 
 Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse : 
 that he had read Lord Bolingbroke' s manuscript in his own handwriting, and 
 remembered well that he was at a loss whether mcst to admire the elegance of 
 Lord Bolingbroke's pros?, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse." Boswell read the 
 account to Johnson, who replied, "Depend upon it, sir, this is too strongly stated. 
 Pope may have had from Bolingbroke the philosophic stamina of his Essay, and 
 admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify. But the 
 thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine ; we are sure that 
 the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the poem, was Pope's own." 
 
 8 The first treatise of Crousaz was translated by Miss Carter, and published in 
 1738, under the title of An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man. The 
 second treatise was translated by Johnson himself, and published in 1742, with 
 the title, A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 265 
 
 and happiness purely rational ; and therefore it was not long "before 
 he was persuaded that the positions of Pope, as they terminated for 
 the most part in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind 
 away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things as 
 a necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality ; and it is unde- 
 niable that, in many passages, a religious eye may easily discover 
 expressions not very favourable to morals or liberty. 
 
 About this time "Warburton began to make his appearance in the 
 first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind 
 fervid and vehement, supplied, by incessant and unlimited inquiry, 
 with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet had not 
 oppressed his imagination nor clouded his perspicacity. To every 
 work he brought a memory full fraught, together with a fancy fertile 
 of original combinations, and at once exerted the powers of the 
 scholar, the reasoner, and the wit. But his knowledge was too 
 multifarious to be always exact, and his pursuits too eager to be 
 always cautious. His abilities gave him a haughty confidence, 
 which he disdained to conceal or mollify ; and his impatience of oppo- 
 sition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous 
 superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited 
 against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause. He 
 seems to have adopted the Roman emperor's determination, "oderint 
 dum metuant ; " he used no allurements of gentle language, but 
 wished to compel rather than persuade. His style is copious without 
 selection, and forcible without neatness ; he took the words that pre- 
 sented themselves ; his diction is coarse and impure, and his sentences 
 are unmeasured. He had in the early part of his life pleased him- 
 self with the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded with the 
 enemies of Pope. A letter was produced when he had perhaps himself 
 forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, " Dryden, I observe, bor- 
 rows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius ; Milton out of 
 pride, and Addison out of modesty." And when Theobald published 
 Shakespeare, in opposition to Pope, the best notes were supplied by 
 Warburton. 1 But the time was now come when Warburton was to 
 change his opinion, and Pope was to find a defender in him who had 
 contributed so much to the exaltation of his rival. The arrogance 
 of Warburton excited against him every artifice of offence, and there- 
 fore it may be supposed that his union with Pope was censured as 
 hypocritical inconstancy ; but eurely to think differently at different 
 times of poetical merit may be easily allowed. Such opinions are 
 often admitted and dismissed without nice examination. Who is 
 there that has not found reason for changing his opinion about ques- 
 tions of greater importance ? Warburton, whatever was his motive, 
 
 1 Theobald's Shakespeare was published in 1733, the same year with the first 
 three epistles of the Essay on Man.
 
 266 AN ESSAY ON MAN 
 
 undertook, without solicitation, to rescue Pope from the talons of 
 Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality or 
 .rejecting revelation ; and from month to month continued a vindica- 
 tion of the Essay on Man in the literary journal of that time, called 
 The Republic of Letters. 1 Pope, who probably began to doubt the 
 tendency of his own work, was glad that the positions, of which he 
 perceived himself not to know the full meaning, could by any mode 
 of interpretation be made to mean well. How much he was pleased 
 with his gratuitous defender the following letter evidently shows : 
 
 "APRIL 11, 1739. 
 
 " SIR, I have just received from Mr. R[obinson] ! two more of your letters. 
 It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write this ; but I cannot help thank- 
 ing you in particular for your third letter, which is so extremely clear, short, and 
 full, that I think Mr. Crousaz ought never to have another answer, and deserved 
 not so good an one. I can only say you do him too much honour, and me too 
 much right, so odd as the expression seems ; for you have made my system as 
 clear as I ought to have done, and could not. It is indeed the same system as 
 mine, but illustrated with a ray of your own, as they say our natural body is the 
 same still when it is glorified. I am sure I like it better than I did before, and 
 so will every man else. I know I meant just what you explain ; but I did not 
 explain my own meaning so well as you. You understand me as well as I do 
 myself; but you express me better than I could express myself. Pray accept the 
 sincerest acknowledgments. I cannot but wish these letters were put together in 
 one book, 3 and intend, with your leave, to procure a translation of part, at least, 
 or of all of them into French ; but I shall not proceed a step without your consent 
 and opinion, etc." 
 
 By this fond and eager acceptance of an exculpatory comment, 
 Pope testified that whatever might be the seeming or real import of 
 the principles which he had received from Bolingbroke, he had not 
 intentionally attacked religion ; and Bolingbroke, if he meant to 
 make him, without his own consent, an instrument of mischief, found 
 him now engaged, with his eyes open, on the side of truth. It is 
 known that Bolingbroke concealed from Pope his real opinions. He 
 once discovered them to Mr. Hooke, who related them again to Pope, 
 and was told by him that he must have mistaken the meaning of 
 what he heard; and Bolingbroke, when Pope's uneasiness incited 
 him to desire an explanation, declared that Hooke had misunder- 
 stood him. Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his 
 pupil from him ; and a little before Pope's death they had a dispute 
 
 1 Warburton's first letter in vindication of Pope appeared in The Works of the 
 Learned, December 1738. The journal called The Present State of the Republic 
 of Letters, had come to an end in 1736. 
 
 2 Jacob Robinson, a bookseller in Fleet-street, was the publisher of The Works 
 of.the Learned, to which Warbnrton sent his five letters in reply to Crousaz. 
 
 3 This was done in 1740, when the five letters were expanded into six. A 
 seventh letter was added in a subsequent edition, and the whole was re-arranged 
 in four letters in the edition of 1742.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 267 
 
 from which they parted with mutual aversion. 1 From this time Pope 
 lived in the closest intimacy with his commentator, and amply 
 rewarded his kindness and his zeal ; for he introduced him to Mr. 
 Murray, by whose interest he became preacher at Lincoln's Inn, 
 and to Mr. Allen, who gave him his niece and his estate, and by 
 consequence a bishopric. When he died, he left him the property of 
 his works, a legacy which may be reasonably estimated at four 
 thousand pounds. 
 
 Pope's fondness for the Essay on Man appeared by his desire of its 
 propagation. Dobson, who had gained reputation by his version of 
 Prior's Solomon, was employed by him to translate it into Latin 
 verse, and was for that purpose some time at Twickenham ; but he 
 left his work, whatever was the reason, unfinished, 2 and, by Benson's 
 invitation, undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then 
 desired his friend 3 to find a scholar who should turn his Essay into 
 Latin prose, but no such performance has ever appeared. 
 
 The Essay on Man was a work of great labour and long con- 
 sideration, but certainly not the happiest of Pope's perfomances. 
 The subject is perhaps not very proper for poetry, and the poet was 
 not sufficiently master of his subject ; metaphysical morality was 
 to him a new study, he was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing 
 himself master of great secrets, was in haste to teach what he 
 had not learned. Thus he tells us, in the first epistle, that from 
 the nature of the Supreme Being may be deduced an order of beings 
 such as mankind, because infinite excellence can do only what 
 is best. He finds out that these beings must be " somewhere," and 
 that " all the question is whether man be in a wrong place." Surely 
 if, according to the poet's Leibnitzian reasoning, we may infer that 
 man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his place 
 is the right place because he has it. Supreme Wisdom is not less 
 infallible in disposing than in creating. But what is meant by 
 " somewhere," and "place," and "wrong place," it had been vain 
 to ask Pope, who probably had never asked himself. 
 
 Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much 
 that every man knows, and much that he does not know himself : 
 
 1 Ruffhead's Life of Pope, p. 219. 
 
 - Warton states that Dobson relinquished the undertaking from the impos- 
 sibility of preserving in Latin verse the conciseness of the English. He appears 
 to have accomplished half his task ; for when Christopher Smart subsequently 
 volunteered his services, Pope said in his reply, Nov. 18, 1740, "The two first 
 epistles are already well done." A specimen from Dobson's translation of each 
 of these epistles was among the papers of Spence, and is printed in the appendix 
 to Mr. Singer's edition of the Anecdotes. A version of the Essay in Latin hexa- 
 meters appeared at Wirteuuberg. This, Pope tells Smart, was "very faithful but 
 inelegant," and he adds that his reason for desiring a more adequate rendering 
 was that either the sense or the poetry was lost in all the foreign translations. 
 
 3 By "his friend," Johnson means Wai'lmrton, not Dobsnii.
 
 268 AN ESSAY "ON MAN. 
 
 wo see but little, and that the order of the universe is beyond 
 our comprehension an opinion not very uncommon ; and that there 
 is a chain of subordinate beings "from infinite to nothing," of 
 which himself and his readers are equally ignorant. But he gives 
 us one comfort which, without his help, he supposes unattainable, in 
 the position " that though we are fools, yet God is wise." 
 
 This Essay affords an egregious instance of the predominance of 
 genius, the dazzling splendour of imagery, and the seductive powers 
 of eloquence. Never was penury of knowledge, and vulgarity of 
 sentiment, so happily disguised. The reader feels his mind full, 
 though he learns nothing, and when ho meets it in its new array, no 
 longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse. When these 
 wonder-working sounds siuk into sense, and the doctrine of the Essay, 
 disrobed of its ornaments, is left to the powers of its naked excellence, 
 what shall we discover ? That we are, in comparison with our Creator, 
 very weak and ignorant, that we do not uphold the chain of exist-- 
 ence and that we could not make one another with more skill than we 
 are made. We may learn yet more, that the arts of human life were 
 copied from the instinctive operations of other animals, that if the 
 \S world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for geese. 1 
 To these profound principles of natural knowledge are added some 
 moral instructions equally new, that self interest, well understood, 
 will produce social concord that men are mutual gainers by mutual 
 benefits that evil is sometimes balanced by good that human 
 advantages are unstable and fallacious, of uncertain duration and 
 doubtful effect that our true honour is not to have a great part, 
 but to act it well that virtue only is our own and that happiness is 
 always in our power. Surely a man of no very comprehensive search 
 may venture to say that he has heard all this before ; but it was 
 never till now recommended by such a blaze of embellishments, 
 or such sweetness of melody. The vigorous contraction of some 
 thoughts, the luxuriant amplification of others, the incidental illus- 
 trations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the softness of the 
 verse, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism, and oppress judgment 
 
 1 This sort of burlesque abstract, which may be so easily but so unjustly made 
 of any composition whatever, is exactly similar to the imperfect and unfair repre- 
 sentation which the same critic has given of the beautiful imagery in II Pcnseroso 
 of Milton. WARTON. 
 
 Johnson's criticism of a poem like this, cannot be compared with his futile 
 declamation against, the imagery of the Penseroso. For in speaking of the Pense- 
 roso, Johnson spoke of what I do not hesitate to say he did not understand. He 
 had no congenial feelings properly to appreciate the character of such poetry ; but 
 the case is different where he brings his great mind to try, by the test of truth, 
 arguments and doctrines which appeal to the understanding. Johnson was not 
 an inadequate judge of Pope's philosophy, though he was certainly so of Milton's 
 poetry. But no composition could possibly stand before his contemptuous decla- 
 mation. BOWLES.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 269 
 
 by overpowering pleasure. This is true of many paragraphs, yet if I 
 had undertaken to exemplify Pope's felicity of composition before a 
 rigid critic, I should not select the Essay on Man ; for it contains 
 more lines unsuccessfully laboured, more harshness of diction, more 
 thoughts imperfectly expressed, more levity without elegance, and 
 more heaviness without strength, than will easily be found in all hia 
 other works. JOHNSON. 
 
 Pope has not wandered into any useless digressions ; has employed 
 no fictions, no tale or story, and has relied chiefly on the poetry of 
 his style for the purpose of interesting his readers. His style is 
 concise and figurative, forcible and elegant. He has many metaphors 
 and images, artfully interspersed in the driest passages, which stood 
 most in need of such ornaments. Nevertheless there are too many 
 lines, in this performance, plain and prosaic. If any beauty be 
 uncommonly transcendent and peculiar, it is brevity of diction, 
 which, in a few instances, and those perhaps pardonable, has occa- 
 sioned obscurity. It is hardly to be imagined how much sense, how 
 much thinking, how much observation on human life, is condensed 
 together in a small compass. 
 
 The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly assured me that he had read 
 the whole scheme of the Essay on Man, in the handwriting of 
 Bolingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propositions, which Pope 
 was to amplify, versify, and illustrate. It has been alleged that Pope 
 did not fully comprehend the drift of the system communicated to 
 him by Bolingbroke, but the remarkable words of his intimate 
 friend, Mr. Jonathan Eichardson, a man of known integrity and 
 honour, clearly evince that he did. To the testimony of Eichardson, 
 which is decisive, I will now add that Lord Lyttelton, with his 
 usual frankness and ingenuity, assured me that he had frequently 
 talked with Pope on the subject, whose opinions were at that time 
 conformable to his own, when he and his friends were too much 
 inclined to deism. Mr. Harte more than once assured me, that he 
 had seen the pressing letter Dr. Young wrote to Pope, urging him 
 to write something on the side of revelation, to which he alluded in 
 the first Night Thought : 
 
 ! had he pressed his theme, pursued the track 
 Which opens out of darkness into day 1 
 ! had he mounted on his wing of fire, 
 Soared when I sink, and sung immortal man. 
 
 And when Harte frequently made the same request, he used to 
 answer, " No, no ! You have already done it," alluding to Harte's 
 Essay on Eeason, which Harte thought a lame apology, and hardly 
 serious. WARTON. 
 
 The ground of the Essay on Man is philosophy, not poetry. The 
 poetry is only the colouring, if I may say so, and to the colouring
 
 270 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 the eye is chiefly attentive. We hardly think of the philosophy 
 whether it is good or bad ; whether it is profound or specious ; 
 whether it evinces deep thinking, or exhibits only in new and pompous 
 array the " babble of the nurse." Scarcely any one, till a contro- 
 versy was raised, thought of the doctrines, but a thousand must 
 have been warmed by the pictures, the addresses, the sublime in- 
 terspersions of description, and the nice and harmonious precision of 
 every word, and of almost every line. Whether, as a system of 
 philosophy, it inculcated fate or not, no one paused to inquire ; l 
 but every eye read a thousand times, and every lip, perhaps, re- 
 peated, "Lo, the poor Indian," "The lamb thy riot," "Oh, hap- 
 /piness," and many other passages. All these illustrative and secon- 
 dary images are painted from the source of genuine poetry ; from 
 : nature, not from art. They therefore, independent of powers dis- 
 played in the versification, raise the Essay on Man, considered in 
 the abstract, into genuine poetry, although the poetical part is sub- 
 x vgrvient to the philosophical. 
 
 It must be confessed, unfair as Johnson's criticism is, it is not 
 entirely destitute of truth. Many of Pope's conclusions in this 
 Essay, after a vast deal of fine verbiage and apparent argument, are 
 such as required very little proof, " though man's a fool, yet God 
 is wise," and many other axioms equally true. But can we say 
 the whole exhibits only a train of tritenesses ? " Materiam superabat 
 opus," it is acknowledged ; and possibly, had it been more recondite, 
 it could not have been made the vehicle of so many acknowledged 
 beauties of expression, of imagery, and of poetic illustration. The 
 more it is read the more it will be relished, and the more will the 
 nice precision of every word, and the general beauty of its structure, 
 be acknowledged. Though the treasures of knowledge within be 
 not, perhaps, either very rich or rare, yet, to say it contains no 
 striking sentiments, no truths placed in a more advanced as well 
 as a more pleasing light, would be a manifest and palpable injustice. 
 After all, poetry is not a good vehicle for philosophy, but as a philo- 
 sophical poem, take it altogether, it would not be very easy, with 
 the exception of Lucretius, to find its equal. BOWLES. 
 
 Bolingbroke amused his unwelcome leisure during his exile in 
 studying the infidel philosophy which prevailed in Prance. The 
 vices of his nature are conspicuous in his metaphysical writings. 
 He pretends to abstruse learning, and it is apparent that he has 
 done little more than pick up fragments of systems at second-hand. 
 
 1 Bowles himself had a low opinion of the "system of philosophy " embodied 
 in the Essay on Man. After stating that Pope was the pupil of Bolingbroke, he 
 adds, "But this poem will continue to charm from the music of its verse, the 
 splendour of its diction, end the beauty of its illustrations, when the philosophy 
 khat gave rise to it, like the coarse manure that fed the flowers, is perceived and 
 remembered no more."
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 271 
 
 He assumes a commanding superiority over his illustrious prede- 
 cessors, of whom he commonly speaks with insane contempt, and he 
 has not enunciated a single new doctrine, or put one old doctrine in 
 a novel light. He affects to soar above sinister motives and pre- 
 judices, and writes with the rancour of a bitter partisan who is the 
 creature of passion. He denounces the dishonesty of Christian 
 apologists, and perpetually misrepresents them ; he inveighs against 
 their inconsistencies, and falls himself into repeated contradictions. 
 The characteristics of the old political debater are preserved intact 
 in the philosopher. He kept his parliamentary style with the rest, 
 the diffuse rhetoric, the constant repetitions, the lengthy prepara- 
 tion for ideas not worth the prelude. The mind droops over the 
 pretentious verbiage, and the magnificent promise of results which 
 never come. "Who," said Burke, " now reads Bolingbroke ? Who 
 ever read him through ? " l The cheat once detected, no one wearies 
 himself in the pursuit of a flying phantom. 
 
 In 1723 Bolingbroke was permitted to return to England. After 
 a short visit he went back to France, and did not settle here till 
 October, 1724. He soon contracted an intimacy with Pope, and 
 imparted to him his irreligious metaphysics. Bolingbroke's know- 
 ledge of philosophy, though not profound, was respectable, and with 
 the uninformed he could disguise his want of depth by a flux of 
 specious language. Pope, ignorant of mental, moral, and theological 
 science, mistook his oracular arrogance for real supremacy, his dis- 
 cordant sophisms for demonstrations, his hackneyed plagiarisms for 
 originality. He thought him by much the greatest man he had ever 
 known, and of all his titles to fame the chief he imagined was as a 
 " writer and philosopher." 2 He ranked him among the metaphysical 
 luminaries of the world, and never suspected that the moment his 
 disquisitions were communicated to the public they would be tossed 
 aside with disdain, and consigned to lasting neglect. 
 
 Bolingbroke persuaded Pope to versify portions of the philosophy 
 he admired so extravagantly. 3 A large scheme was drawn up, the 
 outline of which Pope repeated to Spence. ' ' The first book, you 
 know, of my ethic work is on the Nature of Man. The second 
 would have been on knowledge and its limits. Here would have 
 come in an essay on education, part of which I have inserted in the 
 Dunciad. The third was to have treated of government, both eccle- 
 siastical and civil. The fourth would have been on morality in eight 
 or nine of the most concerning branches of it, four of which would 
 
 1 Burke's Works, ed. 1808, vol. v. p. 172. 
 
 2 Spence, p. 108, 127. 
 
 3 Essay on Man, Epist. iv. ver. 391. Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 40. 
 4 You have begun at my request the work which I have wished long that you 
 would undertake."
 
 272 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 have been the two extremes to each of the cardinal virtues." 1 These 
 four cardinal virtues, justice, temperance, prudence, and fortitude 
 would alone have required twelve epistles, since every virtue was 
 to be treated on the Aristotelian plan, and divided into rational 
 medium, deficiency, and excess. The cardinal virtues were either 
 to be again subdivided, or else supplemented by subordinate virtues, 
 and all were to be presented under the triple form. " Each class," 
 said Pope, speaking of the " eight or nine most concerning branches " 
 of morality, "may take up three epistles: one, for instance, against 
 Avarice ; another against Prodigality : and the third on the moderate 
 use of Eiches, and so of the rest." 2 A short trial convinced Pope 
 that the scheme was too vast for a slow composer. When the first 
 book, which forms the Essay on Man, was completed, he told Spence 
 that " he had drawn in the plan much narrower than it was at first," 
 and he attached to some copies of the Essay, which he circulated 
 among his particular friends, a table of this diminished frame-work. 
 
 " INDEX TO THE ETHIC EPISTLES. 
 BOOK I. OF THE NATURE AND STATE OP MAN. 
 
 Epistle 1. With respect to the Universe. 
 ,, 2. As an Individual. 
 ,, 3. With respect to Society. 
 ,, 4. With respect to Happiness. 
 
 BOOK II. OP THE USE OP THINGS. 
 
 Of the Limits of Human Reason. 
 
 Of the Use of Learning. 
 
 Of the Use of Wit. 
 
 Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men. 
 
 Of the Particular Characters of Women. 
 
 Of the Principles aud Use o* Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 
 Of the Use of Education. 
 
 A View of the Equality of Happiness in the several Conditions of Men. 
 
 Of the Use of lliches." 3 
 
 The cardinal virtues, with nearly all " the most concerning branches 
 of morality," were omitted from the abbreviated plan, which was 
 still too large for Pope's patience, and he left much of the work 
 unexecuted. 
 
 He commenced with some of the topics enumerated in the second 
 book of his "index." "Bid Pope talk to you of the work he is about," 
 wrote Bolingbroke to Swift, Nov. 19, 1729. " It is a fine one. and 
 will be, in his hands, an original. His sole complaint is that he 
 finds it too easy in the execution. This flatters his laziness. It 
 flatters my judgment who always thought that, universal as his 
 
 1 Spence, p. 238. s Spence, p. 36. 
 
 3 Spence, p. 103.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 273 
 
 talents are, this is eminently and peculiarly his above all the -writers 
 I know, living or dead. I do not except Horace." " The work," 
 adds Pope, " which Lord Bolingbroke speaks of with such abundant 
 partiality is a system of ethics in the Horatian way." Bolingbroke's 
 comparison of the work to Horace, and Pope's phrase " the Horatian 
 way," show that they spoke of the Moral Essays, which, with the 
 Essay on Man, were at first included under the general title of Ethic 
 Epistles. The resemblance to Horace would not apply to the Essay 
 on Man in substance or style, not in style, for Pope says himself 
 that the Essay was modelled on " the grave march of Lucretius " in 
 contradistinction to the familiar " gaieties of Horace," ' ; not in sub- 
 stance, for Horace did not write a philosophical poem on natural 
 religion, nor could he have been placed by Bolingbroke at the head 
 of a class of philosophical poets to which he in no way belonged. 
 Neither could Bolingbroke have said of Pope that ' ' the talent 
 eminently and peculiarly his, above all writers living or dead," was 
 the power of sounding the depths of philosophy. The praise was 
 intended for the satiric sketches of men and manners which make up 
 the Moral Essays. These are truly in the " Horatian way," and in 
 a vein characteristic of the bent of Pope's mind. 
 
 Bolingbroke furnished little or nothing to the Horatian epistles. 
 His services commenced with the Essay on Man. Pope was re- 
 volving this part of the scheme in May, 1730, when he said to 
 Spence, ' ' The first epistle is to be to the whole work what a scale is 
 to a book of maps ; and in this, I reckon, lies my greatest difficulty : 
 not only in settling and ranging the parts of it aright, but in 
 making them agreeable enough to be read with pleasure." 2 A few 
 months later Bolingbroke writes to Lord Bathurst, Oct. 8, 1730, 
 that he and Pope "are at present deep in metaphysics." The 
 matter intended for the first epistle was expanded into four epistles 
 as the work proceeded, and in August, 1731, Bolingbroke announced 
 to Swift that three of them were completed, and that the fourth was 
 in hand. Eighteen months more elapsed before any portion of the 
 poem was published ; and Pope doubtless spent the interval in 
 repeated revisions. It was not his habit to go straight forward in 
 regular order, and leave no gaps or flaws as he went along. When 
 he told Caryll in December, 1730, that he was "writing on life and 
 manners, not exclusive of religious regards," he adds, " I have many 
 fragments which I am beginning to put together, but nothing 
 perfect or finished, nor in any condition to be shown, except to a 
 friend at a fire-side." This system of composing disjointed frag- 
 ments, and methodising them afterwards, was unfavourable to con- 
 tinuity and comprehension of thought, and did not help to diminish 
 
 1 Pope to Swift, Sept. 15, 1734. 
 
 2 Spence, p. 12. 
 
 VOL. II. POKTRy.
 
 274 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 the want of connection in his arguments, and of consistency in his 
 opinions. 
 
 The project of the Essay on Man was kept a secret from all but 
 a few of Pope's friends. To others he only spoke of his ethic 
 epistles in the " Horatian way." Caryll, on hearing from him that 
 he had taken to religion and morals, recommended Pascal's 
 Thoughts, and Pope answered, Feb. 6, 1731, " I have been before- 
 hand with you in it, but he will be of little use to my design, which 
 is rather to ridicule ill men than to preach to them. I fear our 
 age is past all other correction." The Essay on Man was then in 
 full progress, and Pope sent a false report that the style and tenor 
 of the work might not betray him when it was published. The first 
 epistle appeared anonymously in February, 1733, and to divert 
 suspicion, the poet put forth in January, with his name, his Epistle 
 on the Use of Eiches, and a week or two afterwards one of his 
 Imitations of Horace. He had a subtler contrivance for misleading 
 the public. He made "lane" rhyme to "name" in his second 
 epistle, and told Harte the bad rhyme was a disguise to escape detec- 
 tion. " Harte remembered," says Warton, " to have often heard 
 it urged in enquiries about the author, whilst he was unknown, 
 that it was impossible it could be Pope's on account of this very 
 passage." 1 Along with "lane" and " name," the first and second 
 epistles contained the rhymes which follow: "here, refer pierce, 
 universe, above, Jove plain, man fault, ought food, blood 
 home, come abodes, gods appears, bears alone, none race, grass 
 flood, wood want, elephant join, line alone, one mourns, 
 burns sphere, bear rest, beast sphere, fair boast, frost road, 
 God preferred, guard tossed, coast joined, mind caprice, vice." 
 There must have been some strange peculiarity in the ears of a 
 generation which could be revolted by "lane" and "name," and 
 welcome such rhymes as these. The anecdote cannot be correct. A 
 liberal admixture of faulty rhymes is a common characteristic of 
 Pope, and the disguise would have been greater if all the rhymes 
 had been good. 2 
 
 Johnson has told Pope's motive for publishing the Essay anony- 
 
 1 Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, 5th ed. vol. ii. p. 149. 
 
 2 " It may safely," says Lord Kames, "be pronounced a capital defect in the 
 composition of a verse, to put a low word, incapable of an accent, in the place 
 where this accent should be," and he instances the last syllable of "dependen- 
 cies," in Pope's Essay on Man, Epist. i. ver. 30 : 
 
 But of this frame, the bearings and the ties, 
 The strong connections, nice dependencies, 
 Gradations just, &c. 
 
 What appeared a defect to Lord Kames will seem to many persons an advantage. 
 The want of accent softens the rhyme, and relieves the monotonous, cloying effect 
 of a full concord of sound. In most of Pope's imperfect rhymes the similarity ol 
 sound is too slight, and the ear is disappointed.
 
 AN ESSAY OX MAN. 275 
 
 mously, and the manoeuvres he practised to secure commendation. 
 He had previously, when speaking to Swift of the Essay, professed 
 his usual indifference to praise. "I agree with you," ho said, 
 Dec. 1, 1731, "in my contempt of most popularity, fame, &c. 
 Even as a writer I am cool in it, and whenever you see what I am 
 now writing, you will be convinced I would please but a few, and, if I 
 could, make mankind less admirers and greater reasoners." After 
 the little plot had been played out, he still kept up the false pretence 
 in a letter to Buncombe, Oct. 20, 1734. "Truly, I had not the 
 least thought of stealing applause by suppressing my name to that 
 Essay. I wanted only to hear truth, and was more afraid of my 
 partial friends than enemies." 1 He lifted up the mask with Swift, 
 and avowed that his object was to get his philosophy approved. " The 
 design of concealing myself was good," he said, Sept. 15, 1734, "and 
 had its full effect ; I was thought a divine, a philosopher, and what 
 not, and my doctrine had a sanction I could not have given to it." 
 He knew that friend and foe were aware that philosophy and divinity 
 were not his strength, and he wished to obtain a fictitious authority 
 for his work. He said to Caryll, March 8, 1733, " It is attributed, 
 I think with reason, to a divine," and the poet had probably cir- 
 culated the report he affected to believe. "I perceive the divines 
 have no objection to it," he wrote again on March 20, " though now 
 it is agreed not to be written by one, Dr. Croxall, Dr. Seeker, and 
 some others having solemnly denied it." The first reports decided the 
 popular judgment. The orthodoxy of the poem was taken upon 
 trust, and when Pope owned the work in 1734, no one cared to 
 commence a fresh inquisition. 
 
 An infidel who hated divines and divinity with all his heart, had 
 dictated the doctrines of the Essay on Man. " He mentioned then, 
 and at several other times," says Spence, in his record of Pope's con- 
 versation during the years 1734 36, " how much, or rather how 
 wholly he was obliged to Lord Bolingbroke for the thoughts and 
 reasonings in his moral work ; and once in particular said, that be- 
 side their frequent talking over that subject together, he had received, 
 I think, seven or eight sheets from Lord Bolingbroke in relation to 
 it (as I apprehended by way of letters), both to direct the plan in 
 general, and to supply the matter for the particular epistles." 2 Pope 
 frankly informed the world, in the Essay itself, that he echoed the 
 lessons of Bolingbroke, who was his " guide and philosopher," 
 the " master of the poet and the song." The prose sketch of the 
 " master" was seen by Lord Bathurst at the time, and he testified 
 to Warton and Blair from personal knowledge, that Pope versified 
 the arguments set down for him. by Bolingbroke. 
 
 1 Letters by Eminent Persons, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 48. 
 
 2 Spence, p. 108. 
 
 T 1
 
 276 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Warburton reversed the parts. The " seven or eight sheets," 
 which contained Bolingbroke's prose draught of the Essay on Man, 
 have not been preserved in their original form, and he did not reduce 
 his published philosophy to writing till after the poem was com- 
 menced. " If," said Warburton, in allusion to the latter circumstance, 
 11 you will take his lordship's word, or, indeed, attend to his argument, 
 you will find that Pope was so far from putting his prose into verse 
 that he has put Pope's verse into prose." ] But when Bolingbroke 
 mentioned that the Essay on Man was begun before his published 
 disquisitions were committed to paper, he added that they were 
 " nothing more than repetitions of conversations " with Pope. 2 This 
 statement Warburton was dishonest enough to suppress, and deliber- 
 ately turned a half truth into a falsehood. The ungarbled expres- 
 sions of Bolingbroke confirm the assurances of Pope and Bathurst, 
 that he was the principal author of the philosophy in the Essay on 
 Man. Warburton could not keep to his misrepresentation. When 
 it was convenient for liis purpose he changed his story, and Pope 
 became " a pupil who had to be reasoned out of Bolingbroke's hands," 
 a dupe who adopted Bolingbroke's insidious doctrines without per- 
 ceiving the infidelity, and who had to thank his deliverer that " the 
 poem was put on the side of religion." 3 
 
 Mrs. Mallet told General Grimouard that Pope, Bolingbroke, and 
 their friends, who frequented her house, were " a society of pure 
 deists." 4 Bolingbroke was more of an infidel than Pope, for though 
 he admitted that a future state could not be disproved, he laboured 
 passionately to discredit the arguments in its favour. Pope held to 
 the immortality of the soul. " He was a deist," says Lord Chester- 
 field, " believing in a future state ; this he has often owned himself to 
 me." * He frequently avowed his deism to Lyttelton, and acquiesced 
 in the deistical interpretations which the Eichardsons put on the 
 Essay on Man. Revelation he rejected entirely. Lord Chesterfield 
 relates that he once saw a bible on his table, and adds, " As I knew 
 his way of thinking upon that book, I asked him jocosely if he was 
 going to write an answer to it ? " The evidence that he had re- 
 nounced Christianity comes to us from various independent sources, 
 and some of the witnesses are above the suspicion of misunderstand- 
 ing or misrepresenting him. 
 
 One of the articles of Bolingbroke's deistical creed is said by War- 
 burton to have been concealed from Pope. " A few days before his 
 death," says Warburton, in the statement he drew up for Kuffhead, 
 
 1 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke's Works, Philadelphia, vol. iii. pp. 40, 45; vol. iv. p. 111. 
 
 3 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 336. 
 
 4 Grimouard, Essai sur Bolingbroke, quoted by Cooke, Memoirs of Bolingbroke, 
 rol. ii. p. 96. 
 
 5 Chesterfield's Works, ed. Mahon, vol. ii. p. 445.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 277 
 
 " he would be carried to London to dine with Mr. Murray in Lincoln's 
 Inn Fields, whom he loved with the fondness of a father. He was 
 solicitous that Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Warburton should be of 
 the party. Some time before Mr. Warburton being with Mr. Pope 
 at Twickenham, Mr. Hooke came in, and told us he had supped the 
 night before at Battersea with Lord Bolingbroke, when his lordship 
 in conversation advanced the strangest notions concerning the moral 
 attributes of the Deity, which amounted to an express denial of them. 
 This account gave Mr. Pope much uneasiness, and he told Mr. Hooke 
 with much peevish heat that he was sure he was mistaken. The 
 other replied as warmly that he thought he had sense enough not 
 to mistake a man who spoke plainly, and in a language he under- 
 stood. Here the matter dropped. But Mr. Pope was not etisy till 
 he had seen Lord Bolingbroke, and told him what Mr. Hooke said of 
 a late conversation. Lord Bolingbroke assured him that Mr. Hooke 
 misunderstood him. This assurance Mr. Pope with great pleasure 
 acquainted Mr. Warburton with the next time he saw him. But 
 Lord Bolingbroke and Mr. Pope were both so full of this matter that 
 at this dinner at Mr. Murray's, the conversation, amongst other 
 things, naturally turned on this subject, when, from a very sus- 
 picious remark of his lordship, Mr. Warburton took occasion to speak 
 of the clearness of our notions concerning the moral attributes. This 
 occasioned some debate, which ended in some warmth on his lord- 
 ship's side. This anecdote is not improper to be told in vindication 
 of Mr. Pope's religious sentiments, and the reflections on Mr. War- 
 burton, as if he had not attacked his lordship's impiety till after his 
 death." * Warburton had previously told the story in his View of 
 Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy, and there he related that Boling- 
 broke " denied God's moral attributes as they are commonly under- 
 stood." 2 In the narrative he wrote for Euffhead, Warburton reports 
 Hooke to have said, that Bolingbroke's " notions concerning the 
 moral attributes amounted to an express denial of them." 3 The 
 first statement Bolingbroke would have allowed to bo correct ; the 
 second he would have repudiated. The two versions are treated by 
 Warburton as one, and his charge against Bolingbroke, and his 
 " vindication of Mr. Pope's religious sentiments," are based upon 
 this presumed identity of propositions which were quite distinct to 
 Pope and Boliugbroke. 
 
 Bolingbroke's views on the moral attributes of the Deity were the 
 
 1 Ruffhead, Life of Pope, p. 219. The manuscript of this passage exists in 
 Warburton's handwriting. Kuffhead altered two or three words, which are here 
 restored from the original. 
 
 2 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 91. 
 
 3 Spence, who wrote down the anecdote from Warburton's conversation, says 
 that Hooke talked of "Lord Bolingbroke's disbelief of the moral attributes of 
 God," which agrees substantially with the language in Ruffhead.
 
 278 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 result of his mania to get rid of the arguments for a future state. 
 Virtue is frequently oppressed and suffering in this world, and vice 
 prosperous ; the wicked defraud, supplant, and persecute the upright ; 
 and in manifold ways the felicities of life are not proportioned to the 
 behaviour of men. A righteous Deity, we may be sure, would not 
 ordain a constitution of things in which the good should repeatedly 
 fare worse than the bad, often in consequence of their persistence in 
 goodness, and then perish unrewarded in the midst of their self- 
 denial. The inference is plain that they will be finally compensated 
 in a kingdom to come. The struggle between sin and rectitude in 
 good men continues all their days, and when the battle has been 
 fought out, and the victory won, they are removed from the world. 
 It is incredible that a benevolent ruler should set us to maintain a 
 painful conflict with evil, and when we are disciplined to holiness 
 should consign us to annihilation. The hope that well-doing will 
 not go unrewarded, the apprehension that wickedness will not go 
 unpunished, are sentiments engrained in the heart of man, and we 
 may be confident that the source of all truth would not direct us to 
 govern our conduct by false anticipations. The supposition that there 
 is no future life is therefore inconsistent with the moral attributes of 
 God, and to avoid this deduction Bolingbroke took up the theory of one 
 of the worst class of deists, and contended that the moral attributes of 
 the Creator were not the same as in our ideas, and could not be 
 judged by our notions. He said he " ascribed all conceivable per- 
 fections to God," and that he was as " far from denying his justice 
 and goodness as his wisdom and power," but insisted that his justice 
 and goodness differed from ours in kind as well as in degrse. 1 
 Wherever this hypothesis was brought in, the epithets "just and 
 good" either ceased to have any meaning for us, or they meant 
 exactly the reverse of "just and good." The object of the theory 
 was, indeed, to set up the maxim that conduct which would be 
 thought immoral among men might be the morality of God. Boling- 
 broke's philosophic vision was limited to a single point at a time. 
 He abounds in astounding contradictions from his inability to keep 
 his most emphatic principles before his mind, and he might be 
 answered, without a word of comment, by ranging in parallel columns 
 the passages of his writings which are mutually destructive. His 
 hypothesis on the moral attributes of the Deity shared the usual fate 
 of his dogmas. He denounced the doctrine of predestination, and 
 called it "blasphemous," "impious," "devilish," because it was 
 " scandalously repugnant to our ideas of God's moral perfections," 
 and supposed " a God such as no one could acknowledge." 2 The 
 moment he had to deal with an opinion he disliked, he thought it 
 
 1 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 320. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. pp. 23, 24 ; vol. iii. p. 430.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 279 
 
 impious to imagine that the morality of God was not in conformity 
 with our ideas, and he loudly appealed to the immutability of those 
 innate moral convictions which alike defy the corrupt morality of 
 libertines who labour to justify evil, and the artificial morality of 
 metaphysicians who strive to prop up fanciful systems. 
 
 Warburton might fairly argue, that the theory which maintained 
 that the morality of the Deity was radically different in kind from 
 the moral conceptions of men, " amounted to an express denial of 
 God's moral attributes." He was not entitled to charge upon Boling- 
 broke an inference he had vehemently disclaimed in his writings, and 
 which was so far from seeming necessary to all pious thinkers that 
 some distinguished Christian divines had held the obnoxious hypo- 
 thesis. No two of them might have been of a mind in the applica- 
 tion of a principle the limits of which they could none of them 
 pretend to define, but they would all have concurred with Boling- 
 broke that to deny the moral attributes of God, and to assert that 
 they were not the same as in our ideas, were distinct propositions. 
 The false turn which Warburton gave to his story is clear from the 
 sequel of his narrative. Pope brought him and Bolingbroke together. 
 The philosopher and his pupil, full of Hooke's accusation, introduced 
 the subject of their own accord. Bolingbroke advanced opinions on 
 the moral attributes which Warburton combated, and the debate 
 ended, as it began, in a total disagreement. The views which 
 Bolingbroke volunteered could not, for shame, be those which he had 
 just disclaimed to Pope, and they were notwithstanding quite un- 
 orthodox in the estimation of Warburton. The case is simple. 
 Bolingbroke protested to Pope, what he had protested all along, that 
 he did not deny the moral attributes of God, and he maintained 
 against Warburton in Pope's presence, what he had all along avowed, 
 that they were not the same as in our ideas. 
 
 There is more, and conclusive evidence, that Bolingbroke had not 
 concealed his hypothesis from Pope. The incidents narrated by 
 Warburton occurred a few days before the poet's death. The philo- 
 sophical papers of Bolingbroke were " all communicated to him in 
 scraps as they were occasionally written," l and the whole must 
 already have passed through his hands. In these disquisitions 
 Bolingbroke enforced his view of the divine attributes with tedious 
 diffuseness, incessant reiteration, and unmeasured warmth. No 
 opinion is brought out into stronger relief. A glance at the manu- 
 script must have revealed the hypothesis to Pope, and the Essay on 
 Man proves that he had actually adopted it. All who believed that 
 justice, goodness, and truth were immutable, thought that our 
 primary duty was to contemplate them in the Deity, and endeavour 
 to imitate his perfections. Pope followed Bolingbroke in rejecting 
 
 1 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 111.
 
 280 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 the idea. Man, he said, could "just find a God" and nothing 
 more ; consequently man was to be the only study of man. 1 Master 
 and pupil agreed that every perfection was to be ascribed to God, 
 and that he was to be loved, worshipped, and obeyed. But the 
 pupil, like the master, held that " God did not show his own nature 
 in his laws, because though they proceed from the divine intelligence 
 they are adapted to the human," 2 and the last line of the Essay on 
 Man, the emphatic summary of a leading article in Pope's creed, is 
 that " all our knowledge is ourselves to know." 
 
 In a subsequent passage Warburton extended his assertion, and 
 alleged that Bolingbroke concealed the whole purpose of his theology 
 from Pope. "The poet," says Warburton, "directs his argument 
 against atheists and libertines in support of religion ; the philosopher 
 against divines in support of naturalism. But his lordship thought 
 fit to keep this a secret from his friend as well as from the public." 3 
 The poet and the philosopher were both deists. The philosopher, 
 Warburton tells us, communicated his principles to associates ' ' who 
 gave him to understand how much they detested them." 4 The 
 poet professed deism before Chesterfield, Lyttelton, the Eichardsons 
 and the Mallets. Yet Warburton would have us believe that 
 Bolingbroke disclosed his infidelity to unsympathising friends, and 
 kept it a secret from his chief philosophical intimate, who frankly 
 avowed his own deism in the Bolingbroke circle. The statement, 
 incredible in itself, is opposed to the positive testimony of Boling- 
 broke when he says that all his written opinions were only the 
 record of his conversations with Pope, and is even contradicted by 
 the unconscious testimony of Warburton. He tells us that when 
 Pope took refuge under his shield the circumstance which most 
 exasperated Bolingbroke was that "he saw a great number of lines 
 appear which, out of complaisance, had been struck out of the MS., 
 and which, at the commentator's request, being now restored to their 
 places, no longer left the religious sentiments of the poet equivocal." 6 
 The restored lines which modified any "religious sentiment" were 
 barely half a dozen, and were confined to the single tenet of a future 
 state. When Pope allowed his belief in a future state to seem 
 "equivocal, out of complaisance" to his "guide," the infidelity of 
 Bolingbroke could not have been unknown to him. 
 
 Still the plea of Warburton remains, that Bolingbroke was for 
 deism and Pope for Christianity. Bolingbroke, says Warburton, 
 argued for natural religion in opposition to revealed; Pope for 
 
 1 Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 1 ; iv. ver. 398, and the additional couplet in 
 the note. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke's Woiks, vol. iv. pp. 175, 152. 
 ' Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335. 
 
 4 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 88. 
 * Warburton'a Works, vol. xii. p. 336.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 281 
 
 revealed religion as a necessary supplement to natural. Warburton 
 refuted his own position in the attempt to establish it. He appealed 
 to three passages in the Essay on Man. The first, which he calls the 
 chief, is Epist. ii. ver. 149 160, where Pope terms "reason a weak 
 queen," which obeys the ruling passion. "The poet," says War- 
 burton, " leaves reason unrelieved. What is this but an intimation 
 that we ought to seek for a cure in that religion, which only dares 
 profess to give it ? " * The poet, on the contrary, immediately pro- 
 ceeds to show how reason can " rectify " the ruling passion, and finally 
 concludes, ver. 197, that "reason the bias turns to good from ill." 
 He insists that there is not a virtue under heaven which " pride " or 
 "shame," rectified by reason, will not produce, ver. 193, and he 
 informs us, ver. 183, that they are the " surest virtues " known 
 to man. The second passage is Epist. iii. ver. 287, where, "speak- 
 ing," says War burton, "of the great restorers of the religion of 
 nature, the poet intimates that they could only draw God's shadow, 
 not his image : 
 
 Belumed her ancient light, not kindled new, 
 If not God's image, yet his shadow drew : 
 
 as reverencing that truth which telleth us this discovery was re- 
 served for the ' glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God.'" 2 
 Pope was careful to show in his poem that his meaning was the 
 reverse of what Warburton pretends. He conceives that God's 
 image was hidden from our view, and that man, not God, was our 
 proper study : 
 
 Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
 The proper study of mankind is man. 
 
 He did not believe that the religion of nature, in this particular, was 
 under any disadvantage, for he said, Epist. iii. ver. 148, that " the 
 state of nature was the reign of God," and to " relume the ancient 
 light " was, to his apprehension, the perfection of theology. The third 
 passage is Epist. iv. 341 344, where Pope says, that "hope 
 lengthened on to faith pours the bliss that fills up all the mind." 
 " But natural religion," says Warburton, " never lengthened hope 
 on to faith, nor did any religion, but the Christian, ever conceive that 
 faith could fill the mind with happiness." 3 Pope was of a different 
 opinion. Hope and faith, according to his creed, and that of many 
 deists, were part of the religion of nature. 4 He could not think 
 otherwise when he " was a deist believing in a future state," and he 
 was so far from supposing that the Christian's faith had any supe- 
 
 1 Warburton, Note on Epist. ii. ver. 149. 
 
 2 Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303. 
 
 3 Warburton, Note on Epist. iii. ver. 303. 
 
 4 Epist. ii. ver. 274 ; Epist. iii. ver. 286.
 
 282 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 riority over the deist's in filling the mind with bliss, that all who 
 "fought for modes of faith " were, in his estimation, "graceless 
 zealots." l The searching acumen of "Warburton, who never had his 
 equal in forcing false meanings from his text, could not discover 
 another allusion to Christianity. His interpretations, strained at 
 best, are directly opposed to the context, and this failure to detect one 
 word which could honestly support his construction, leaves no doubt 
 that the Essay on Man was intended for a system of natural religion 
 to the exclusion of revealed. 
 
 The poet and his " guide " agreed in repudiating Christianity. 
 They differed on the question of a future state, but Pope, while 
 rejecting Bolingbroke's conclusion, adopted his premises. " The 
 fourth epistle he is now intent upon," wrote Bolingbroke to Swift, 
 Aug. 2, 1731. " It is a noble subject. He pleads the cause of God, 
 I use Seneca's expression, against that famous charge which atheists 
 in all ages have brought, the supposed unequal dispensations of 
 Providence, a charge which I cannot heartily forgive your divines 
 for admitting. You admit it, indeed, for an extreme good purpose, 
 and you build on this admission the necessity of a future state of 
 rewards and punishments. But what if you should find that this 
 future state will not account, in opposition to the atheist, for God's 
 iustice in the present state which you give up ? Would it not have 
 been better to defend God's justice in this world, against these daring 
 men, by irrefragable reasons, and to have rested the proof of the 
 other point on revelation ? You will not understand by what I have 
 said that Pope will go so deep into the argument, or carry it so far 
 as I have hinted." To rest the proof of a future state on revelation, 
 was in Bolingbroke's estimation to build upon a fable. To abandon 
 the proof from reason was therefore with him to relinquish the 
 doctrine. Pope, who had accepted the theory that the justice of 
 God could not be judged by our ideas, embraced the second and 
 superfluous paradox, that the dispensations of God in this world were 
 never unequal. On either ground, said Bolingbroke, the justice of 
 God did not require a future state. The poet had rejected the 
 witness of revelation to the immortality of the soul, and, under the 
 pretext of " pleading the cause of God against atheists," his " guide " 
 had persuaded him to give up the popular proof from reason. He 
 stopped short of the inference that reason did not countenance a 
 future state, or, in Bolingbroke's phrase, "he did not go so deep 
 into the argument." His " guide " laughed at his inconsequence, 
 and " could not," says Warburton, " forbear making the poet, then 
 alive and at his devotion, the frequent topic of his ridicule amongst 
 their common acquaintance as a man who understood nothing of his 
 own principles, nor saw to what they naturally tended." 3 
 
 1 Epist. iii. ver. 305. 2 Warburton's Works, vol. xii. p. 335.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 283 
 
 Bolingbroke was not entitled to ridicule Pope. The docile pupil 
 was not more blind to the reach of the principles instilled into 
 him than was the arrogant master who imposed them. He said 
 the notion that a future world could be essential to vindicate this 
 world was not only needless, but blasphemous. He was never 
 weary of railing at the impiety of the doctrine, and he pretended 
 that the divines who held it " renounced God as much as the rankest 
 of the atheistical tribe." 1 He did not see that the alleged impiety 
 was the identical principle he adopted for the foundation of his philo- 
 sophy, when, admitting the evils on our globe, he contended that 
 they were linked to a larger scheme which would explain and justify 
 them. " The universe," he said, "is an immense aggregate of 
 systems. Atheists and divines cannot, or will not conceive, that the 
 seeming imperfection of the parts is necessary to the real perfection 
 of the whole." '' He wronged the divines. They could, and did 
 "conceive that the fitness of the particular portions of a scheme 
 must depend upon their relation to the entire plan," and it was pre- 
 cisely because they argued that the justice of God in this world 
 would be incomprehensible unless we extended our view to the world 
 to come, that Bolingbroke charged them with accusing the Deity of 
 injustice, and ranked them with atheists. The incapacity to under- 
 stand his own principles could not be carried further. 
 
 Pope did not intend to proclaim openly to the world the deism he 
 disclosed to his sceptical companions. " I know," wrote Boling- 
 broke, " your precaution enough to know that you will screen 
 yourself against any direct charge of heterodoxy." 3 His plan 
 was to put forth a scheme of natural religion without repudiating 
 Christianity in terms, that he might be able to give his poem any 
 interpretation he pleased. He soon manifested his double design. 
 Before he avowed himself the author of the Essay on Man, he was 
 anxious that Gary 11 should be convinced of its orthodoxy. " Out of 
 complaisance " to Bolingbroke, he had left undecided the question of 
 the immortality of the soul : 
 
 // to be perfect in a certain state, 
 
 What matter, here or there, or soon or late ? 
 
 He feared that this dubious language would be distasteful to Oaryll, 
 and thus wrote to him on March 8, 1733. " The town is now very 
 full of a new poem, entitled an Essay on Man. It has merit, in my 
 opinion, but not so much as they give it. At least, it is incorrect, and 
 
 1 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 436. 
 
 ~ Bolingbroke' s Works, vol. iv. pp. 333, 366. "The imperfection of the 
 parts," says Leibnitz, Opera, p. 638, "produce a greater perfection in the 
 whole." According to his custom, Bolingbroke copied Leibnitz without naming 
 him. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 41.
 
 284 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 lias some inaccuracies in the expressions, one or two of an unhappy 
 kind, for they may cause the author's sense to be turned, contrary to 
 what I think his intention, a little unorthodoxically. Nothing is so 
 plain, as that he quits his proper subject, this present world, to assert 
 his belief of a future state, and yet there is .an if instead of a since 
 that would overthrow his meaning." 1 Pope several times reprinted 
 the poem with corrections, but never altered the word which misre- 
 presented his creed on the question whether death was'auuihilation or 
 immortality. He had a public version, which he adopted " out of 
 complaisance to Bolingbroke," overborne by his showy rhetoric and 
 imperious dogmatism, and a private version for his pious friend, to 
 whom he professed that his conditional language was an "inaccuracy 
 of expression which overthrew his meaning." 
 
 Pope's private profession of his belief in a future state was his real 
 conviction. He proceeded to belie his true opinions, by standing up 
 for the Christianity of the Essay on Man. " The author," he says, 
 "uses the words 'God the soul of the world,' which, at the first 
 glance, may be taken for heathenism, while his whole paragraph 
 proves him quite Christian in bis system, from man up to seraphim." 
 Caryll was not convinced, and on October 23 Pope wrote to reassure 
 him. " I believe the author of the Essay on Man will end his poem 
 in such a manner as will satisfy your scruple. I think it impossible 
 for him, with any congruity to his confined and strictly philosophical 
 subject, to mention our Saviour directly ; but he may magnify the 
 Christian doctrine as the perfection of all moral ; nay, and even, I 
 fancy, quote the very words of the Gospel precept, that includes all 
 the law and the precepts, Thou shalt love God above all things, &c., 
 and I conclude that will remove all possible occasion of scandal." 
 He wrote again to the same effect on January 1, 1734: "To the 
 best of my judgment the author shows himself a Christian at last in 
 the assertion, that all earthly happiness, as well as future felicity, 
 depends upon the doctrine of the Gospel, love of God and man, 
 and that the whole aim of our being is to attain happiness here and 
 hereafter by the practice of universal .charity to man, and entire 
 resignation to God. More particular than this he could not be with 
 any regard to the subject, or manner in which ho treated it." From 
 the next letter of the poet, on February 28, it would appear that the 
 "scruple" of Caryll was removed, influenced, perhaps, by the dis- 
 covery that the work was Pope's own production. " Your candid 
 opinion," says Pope, " not only on the Essay on Man, but its author, 
 pleases me truly. I think verily he is as honest, and as religious a 
 man as myself, and one that will never forfeit justly your kind cha- 
 racter of him. It is not directly owned, and I do assure you never 
 was whilst you were kept in ignorance of it." 2 The explanations 
 
 1 Pope's Correspondence, ed. Klwiu, vol. i. p. 339. 
 
 2 Pope's Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 339, 345, 346, 348,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 285 
 
 which satisfied Caryll should have increased his suspicions, for 
 Pope's language was plainly evasive. He rested the whole of his 
 Christianity on the doctrines which were held by a large class of 
 deists. He neither avowed his faith in Christ, nor declared his 
 belief that the Gospels were a revelation from God. He had drawn 
 upon Wollaston's admirable work, The Eeligion of Nature De- 
 lineated, and there he had seen how inevitably a Christian, who 
 presses the arguments for natural religion, must sometimes refer to 
 the fuller evidence of Scripture, and adopt a tone which would make 
 it impossible that he could be mistaken for a deist. With this model 
 under his eyes, and with the professed desire " to show himself a 
 Christian," and "remove all possible occasion of scandal," the in- 
 genuity of the poet was insufficient to devise a single phrase which 
 the majority of English deists would not have subscribed. Even the 
 bare term " Christian," which he nourished before Caryll, did not 
 appear in the poem. He kept the word for the ear of the simple 
 country squire, and imposed upon him by the transparent artifice of 
 privately calling the doctrines of deism Christianity. The " address," 
 which he told Spence he had "written to our Saviour," would not 
 have contributed to vindicate his orthodoxy, as we may judge from, 
 his statement, that it was " imitated from Lucretius's compliment to 
 Epicurus, and omitted by the advice of Berkeley." l The application 
 to our Lord of the compliment to Epicurus must have been shocking 
 to Berkeley, and could never have entered into the mind of any one 
 who believed that Jesus Christ was " God manifest in the flesh." 
 
 A few persons, not in the secret of Pope's deism, had the discern- 
 ment to share the first impressions of Caryll. The celebrated David 
 Hartley is said, by his son, to have " regarded the Essay on Man as 
 tending to insinuate that the Divine revelation of the Christian re- 
 ligion was superfluous," and to substitute for it "the plagiarisms of 
 modern ethics from Christian doctrines." But readers in general 
 were more attentive to the poetry than the philosophy, and did not 
 detect the lurking heresies of the poem till Crousaz published his 
 Examen de VEssai de Mr. Pope in 1737, which he enforced by his 
 more elaborate Commentaire in the following year. " Mr. Pope's 
 name, and not his own, spread them," says Dr. Middleton, " into 
 everybody's hands." 2 Hitherto the poet had not been far wrong in 
 his calculation, that his deism would pass unsuspected, because not 
 directly professed, and the tenets he taught explicitly he believed to 
 be so unanswerable, that, in a suppressed passage of the fourth 
 Epistle, he raised a shout of triumph over the " scattered fools who 
 would fly trembling from the heels " of his Pegasus. The comments 
 of Crousaz, often founded upon mistranslations and misconceptions, 
 
 1 Spence, p. 107. 
 
 ' Middleton to Warburton, Jan. 7, 1740.
 
 286 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 laid bare sufficient sophistries, inconsistencies, and irreligion, to open 
 the eyes of the public. Pope's confidence immediately changed to 
 fright. " He took terror," says Richardson, " about the clergy, and 
 Warburton himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism and deistical 
 tendency." The poet had a dread of incurring the obloquy of any 
 class or profession. "I know," Bolingbroke wrote to him, "how 
 desirous you are to keep fair with orders, whatever liberties you take 
 with particular men," 1 and he confessed that this motive " was what 
 chiefly stopped his going on" with his ethical scheme. " I could 
 not have said what I would have said without provoking every 
 church on the face of the earth, and I did not care for living always 
 in boiling water." 2 He had never intended at any time to risk an 
 attack from the clergy, and when the danger came unexpectedly, it 
 was he himself that " fled trembling from the heels" of threatening 
 foes. 
 
 His special fear of Warburton was not without cause. "Warburton 
 was the friend of Pope's enemies, Concannen and Theobald, and 
 held Pope cheap both as a man and a poet. Of the poet he wrote to 
 Concannen, Jan. 2, 1727, that Pope " borrowed for want of genius." 3 
 Of the man he wrote to Hurd, Jan. 2, 1757, " Till his letters were 
 published, I had as indifferent an opinion of his morals as the 
 gentlemen of the Dunciad pretended to have. Mr. Pope knew this, 
 and had the justice to own to me that I fairly followed appearances 
 when I thought well of them, and ill of him." 4 The Essay on Man 
 was especially obnoxious to Warburton. He said that it was col- 
 lected " from the worst passages of the worst authors," 5 and that the 
 doctrines were " rank atheism." 6 He did not confine his denun- 
 ciation of the poem to conversation, but refuted its vicious principles 
 in some formal dissertations which he read at a literary club in 
 Newark. 7 The Dunciad faction, we may be certain, were careful 
 to circulate his asperities, and Pope assisted the malignity of the 
 Dunces by keeping his ears open to all the ill they reported. War- 
 burton had now shown his quality by his treatise on the Alliance 
 between Church and State, and the first books of the Divine 
 Legation. The poet, who was quailing under the assaults of 
 Crousaz, might well be alarmed lest a more formidable enemy should 
 speak to the world the criticisms he propagated in conversation, and 
 in his addresses to the Newark Club. In theology and metaphysics 
 
 1 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 262. 
 
 2 Spence, p. 238. 
 
 3 Watson's Life of War burton, p. 15. 
 
 4 Warburton 's Letters to Hurd, p. 224. 
 
 5 Tyers, Historical Rhapsody, p. 78. 
 
 6 For this we have the authority of Dr. Law, the Bishop of Carlisle, in the 
 preface to his translation of King's Origin of EviL 
 
 7 Prior's Life of Malone, p. 430. Warton's Pope, vol. i. p. xlv.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 287 
 
 he was far beyond Pope's " philosopher and guide." He was even 
 more dictatorial and abusive, more over-bearing and contemptuous, 
 more ingenious in his sophistries, and not more scrupulous in the 
 use of his weapons. His moral obliquities, which have half-ruined 
 his reputation with posterity, were of a kind to increase the appre- 
 hensions of Pope, who must have submitted in helpless silence to the 
 sweeping, haughty, scornful exposure of the Essay on Man. 
 
 When the storm had begun to burst on the defenceless head of 
 Pope, Warburton saw reason to go over to his side, and in December, 
 1738, commenced an anonymous reply to Crousazin a monthly pub- < 
 lication called the Works of the Learned. An equitable judgment 
 was not among the merits of Warburton. His dogmatic violence 
 could not brook the least concession to an opposing view, and he was 
 always in extremes. While he herded with "the gentlemen of the 
 Dunciad " he was uncompromising in his censure of Pope. He 
 suddenly transferred his advocacy to the enemy, and indulged, with 
 a daring defiance of consistency, in a wild exaggeration of Pope's 
 powers, and a hardy denial of his errors and defects. The man who 
 " borrowed for want of genius," became " the last of the poetic line 
 amongst us, on whom the large patrimony of his whole race is 
 devolved." 1 He had not only inherited the entire gifts of all poets 
 of all times, " he was the maker of a new species of the sublime, so 
 new that we have yet no name for it, though of a nature distinct 
 from every other known beauty of poetry." "The two great per- 
 fections in works of genius," Warburton goes on, " are wit and 
 sublimity. Many writers have been witty; some have been sublime; 
 and a few have even possessed both these qualities separately. But 
 none, that I know of, besides our poet, hath had the art to incorporate 
 them. This seems to be the last effort of the imagination to poetical 
 perfection." 2 A single example of Pope's witty sublime is specified by 
 Warburton, the comparison of Newton to the ape. Unfortunately, 
 this instance of the "new species of the sublime," "so new that 
 we have yet no name for it," was copied from a Latin poet of the 
 sixteenth century, and was a false conceit without a spark of 
 sublimity or wit. 
 
 With the change in his view of Pope's genius, there was a com- 
 plete revolution in Warburton' s estimate of the Essay on Man. The 
 work ceased to be made up ' ' from the worst passages of the worst 
 authors." A superlative originality took the place of ignorant 
 plagiarism, and " he uttered heavy menaces," says Bishop Law, 
 " against those who presumed to insinuate that Pope borrowed any- 
 thing from any man whatsoever." 3 The "rank atheism," in like 
 
 1 Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, ed. 1742, p. 182. 
 3 Warbnrton's Pope, Essay on Man, Epist. ii. ver. 31. 
 3 Warton's Pope, vol. iii. p. 162.
 
 288 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 manner, was converted into the purest orthodoxy, and every line 
 breathed forth piety and sound philosophy. " He follows truth," 
 said his advocate, " uniformly throughout." l The strain of sickening 
 adulation in which Warburton conveyed his newly-born admiration 
 showed that arrogance was not more congenial to his nature than 
 servility, and both were rivalled by the effrontery with which he 
 spoke of those who shared his old opinions. He and the " gentle- 
 men of the Dunciad " had agreed in thinking ill of Pope's morals, 
 but the conviction was genuine with Warburton, and " pretence " in 
 them. 2 He declaimed against the " rank atheism" of the Essay on 
 Man, but the free-thinkers who had believed that Pope was of 
 " their party " had " affectedly embraced the delusion." 3 
 
 Warburton's accusations of insincerity were the more unblushing 
 that his recantation was partly feigned. When he published his 
 defence of three epistles of the Essay on Man, he said that Pope's 
 " strong and delicate reasoning ran equally through all " the poem, 
 but that " the turn of the fourth epistle being more popular seemed 
 to need no comment." 4 His real motive for passing over the fourth 
 epistle was very different, and comes out in a letter to Dr. Birch, 
 Oct. 25, 1739. " I have been looking over, inter nos, the fourth 
 epistle of the Essay on Man ; for I have a great inclination to make 
 an analysis of that to complete the whole. I find this part of my 
 defence of Mr. Pope as difficult as a confutation of Mr. Crousaz's 
 nonsense, and a detection of the translator's blunders, are easy. I 
 do not know whether I can do it to my mind, or whether I shall do 
 it at all, so beg you would keep it secret." 5 He left the fourth 
 epistle undefended because it was almost beyond his powers of 
 sophistry to devise a defence, and professed to the world that " the 
 strong and delicate reasoning was too popular to need a comment." 
 Having undertaken the " difficult " task, he kept up the dissimula- 
 tion, justified every doctrine the epistle contained, and lauded it, in 
 common with the rest of the work, for its "exact reasoning," and 
 for " a precision, force, and closeness of connection rarely to be met 
 with, even in the most formal treatises of philosophy." 6 His want 
 of sincerity would be self-evident without the contradiction between 
 his confidential confessions, and his public praise. No one, with his 
 knowledge of philosophical divinity, could possibly have magnified 
 Pope in good faith for the qualities in which he was deplorably 
 deficient. 
 
 1 Warburton's Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, p. 121. 
 a Warburton's Letters to Hurd, p. 224. 
 
 3 Warburton to Dr. Doddridge, Feb. 12, 1739, in Nichols, Illustrations of 
 Literary History, vol. ii. p. 816. 
 
 4 Warburtoii's Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, 1740, p. 83. 
 & Nichols, Illustrations of Literary History, vol. ii. p. 113. 
 
 6 Warburton's Pope, Epist. iv. ver. 394.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 289 
 
 Dodsley, the bookseller, was present at tlie first interview between 
 Pope and Warburton, and was astonished at the compliments the 
 poet paid to his commentator. 1 There was no occasion for astonish- 
 ment. Pope's despiser had turned idolater, "the gentlemen of the 
 Dunciad " had lost their ablest ally, the thrust of Crousaz had been 
 parried, and the champion was the dreaded man who was expected 
 to be a fatal foe. The sensitive novice in philosophy, who was 
 incompetent to fight, and could not endure defeat, was relieved 
 from future as well as present fears. He would not henceforward 
 be answerable to theological and metaphysical assailants. War- 
 burton had assumed the responsibility of the poem, and his irascible, 
 pugnacious vanity was a pledge that he would defend his certificate 
 of orthodoxy with his usual violence, disdain, and ability. The 
 relief to the mind of the anxious poet was immense, and fully 
 explains his headlong gratitude. He immediately renounced his 
 deistical interpretation of the Essay, and adopted all the views of 
 his thundering advocate. " I know I meant just what you explain," 
 wrote the obsequious poet, April 11, 1739, "but I did not explain my 
 own meaning as well as you." He was too eager to live under 
 Warburton's protection to retain a particle of independence. No 
 matter how incredible might be the interpretations which his com- 
 mentator often fathered upon him, he hastened to accept every one 
 of them without reserve. The public were not deluded, and a letter 
 of Dr. Middleton to Warburton, Jan. 7, 1740, is a fair specimen, 
 expressed in friendly terms, of the common opinion. "You have 
 evinced the orthodoxy of Mr. Pope's principles, but, like the old 
 commentators on his Homer, will be thought, perhaps, in some 
 places to have provided a meaning for him that he himself never 
 dreamed of. However, if you did not find him a philosopher, you 
 will make him one, for he will be wise enough to take the benefit of 
 your reading, and make his future essays more clear and consistent." 
 Pope's moral laxity was not the only cause of the facility with 
 which he changed his creed. The shallowness of his convictions had 
 a share in the event. He had no real insight into theology, natural 
 or revealed. He rejected Christianity because his associates sneered 
 at it, and because the age was irreligious. Ignorant of the right 
 road, he was sometimes persuaded that all roads led to a common 
 goal, or he adopted the road which was pointed out to him by 
 his guides. The Essay on Man would never have been written 
 unless Bolingbroke had dictated the subject, and supplied the 
 materials, and Pope was subdued by his dogmatism rather than 
 enlightened by his arguments. The speculations the poet versified 
 had not proceeded from his own mind; he believed as he was 
 prompted ; and he had not any rooted convictions to sacrifice when 
 a second dogmatist provided him with more convenient opinions. 
 1 Wavton's Pope, vol. ix. p. 342. 
 
 VOL. II. POETET.
 
 90 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Pope would have "been glad " to dwell in ambiguities for ever." 
 In accepting the advocacy of "Wai-burton he was obliged to abandon 
 hie equivocal attitude, and disavow the deistical creed. " The infidels 
 and libertines," "Warburton wrote to Dr. Stukeley, January 1, 1740, 
 " prided themselves in thinking Mr. Pope of their party. I thought 
 it of use to religion to show so noble a genius was not ; and I can 
 have the pleasure of telling you (and have Mr. Pope's own authority 
 for it), that he is not." l His chief difficulty must have been to cast off 
 his allegiance to his " philosopher and guide, the master of the poet 
 and the song." But his reputation was at stake, and he did not 
 hesitate. His anxiety to disclaim all sympathy with the theology of 
 the teacher who had furnished the arguments of his poem was shown 
 by one of his habitual frauds. He published, in 1741, his corre- 
 spondence with Swift, and in the printed letter of December, 1725, 
 he says, " Lord B. is above trifling; when he writes of anything in 
 this world, he is more than mortal : if ever he trifles it must be when 
 he turns a divine." A copy of the letter is among the Oxford papers 
 at Longleat, and there we find that the words he really used were, 
 "Lord B. is above trifling; he is grown a great divine." Pope 
 reversed the language of the original passage that he might seem 
 to the world to have contemned the divinity of Bolingbroke long 
 before the Essay on Man appeared. The fraud had the intended 
 effect with Pope's friends. Lord Mansfield inferred from the fabri- 
 cated version that " Pope not only condemned but despised the 
 futility of Bolingbroke's reasoning against revelation ; " and "War- 
 burton quoted the sentence for an evidence of Pope's opinion " that 
 no subject but religion could have sunk his lordship so far below the 
 class of reputable authors." 2 Bolingbroke, ignorant of the trick, 
 remained upon cordial terms with Pope, and did not outwardly re- 
 sent his defection. The discarded master had a double motive for 
 his forbearance. No man was more vulnerable, and he would have 
 feared to provoke the malignity of the satirist. He was anxious in 
 his life-time to conceal his infidelity from the outer world, and he 
 could not expose the inconsistencies of the poet without revealing his 
 own unbelief. " I have been a martyr of faction in politics," he 
 once wrote to Pope, " and have no vocation to be so in philosophy."* 
 Inwardly he was deeply mortified that " the song " he had inspired 
 should be wrested to a meaning he disowned, that his admiring 
 scholar should bow down no longer to his sceptical sophistries, and 
 that the idol who supplanted him should belong to that priestly order 
 of which he never spoke without scorn. His suppressed indignation, 
 inflamed by fresh offences, broke out after Pope was dead. 
 
 1 Nichols, Illustrations of Lit. Hist., vol. ii. p. 53, 
 AYarburton's Works, vol. xii. pp. 92, 185. 
 3 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 53.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 291 
 
 When the orthodox meaning imposed on the Essay had once been 
 accepted by the poet, he was anxious to use the new interpretation 
 to silence or conciliate his opponents abroad. He immediately got 
 Warburton's reply to Crousaz translated into French, 1 and employed 
 Ramsay, a Scotchman, who had been Feaelon's secretary, to write 
 to Louis Eacine, April 28, 1742, and assure him that he was mis- 
 taken when he said in his poem La Religion, 
 
 Sans doute qu'a ces mots, des bords de la Tamise, 
 Quelque abstrait raisonneur, qui ne se plaint de rien, 
 Dans son flegme anglican repondra, "Tout est bien." 
 
 Eamsay told the French poet that Pope did not think all was " right" 
 in mankind. He believed them fallen from their primitive condition, 
 and his life-long faith was evidence of his real convictions. " He is 
 a very good catholic," says his apologist, "and has always kept to 
 the religion of his forefathers in a country where he had many 
 temptations to abandon it." A letter addressed by Pope to Eacine in 
 the following September upholds the statement that he was a " good 
 catholic," for he declares that his views are " conformable to those of 
 Pascal and Fenelon, the latter of whom," says he, " I would most 
 readily imitate in submitting all my opinions to the decision of the 
 church." 2 His sincerity may be doubted when he professed his 
 readiness to accept the decisions of the romish church for a law. 
 The Essay on Man was already completed, or far advanced, when 
 Bolingbroke wrote to him, " I do not expect from you the answer I 
 should be sure to have from persons more orthodox than I know you 
 to be in the faith of the pretended catholic church. Such persons 
 would insist on the authority of the church." 3 Pope could not, 
 indeed, be a romanist when he had not yet emerged from deism, and 
 he was not a romanist some twelvemonth after his letter to Eacine, 
 when he said to Warburton, " that he was convinced that the church 
 of Eome had all the marks of the anti-christian power predicted in 
 the New Testament." "Warburton enquired why he did not publicly 
 renounce a church he allowed to be corrupt. " There were," ho 
 
 1 Pope to Warburton, Sept. 20, 1739; Jan. 4, 1740. 
 
 2 (Euvres de Louis Racine, ed. 1808, torn. i. p. 444. "If," said Voltaire, 
 "Pope wrote this letter to Racine, God must have given him at the close of his 
 life the gift of tongues." Voltaire repeats three times over iu his works, that he 
 associated with Pope for a twelvemonth, and knew, what was publicly notorious 
 in England, that he could hardly read French, and could not speak one word or 
 write one line of the language. The objection was founded on the mistaken 
 assumption that the French translation was the original letter. In the later 
 editions of Racine's poem the letter is printed from Pope's English. Voltaire was 
 annoyed that Pope should ' ' retract " his deism, and wanted to have it believed 
 that Ramsay alone was responsible for the sentiments expressed in the letter to 
 Racine. 
 
 3 Bolingtroke's Works, vol. iii, p. 457. 
 
 IT 2
 
 2P2 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 replied, " but two reasons that kept him from it : one, that the doing 
 so would make him a great many enemies, and the other that it 
 would do nobody else any good." l Either his persuasion that an 
 unconditional submission was due to the decisions of the romish 
 church, must have been a transitory belief which commenced a short 
 time before his letter to Eacine, and ceased a short time after, or 
 else he used deceptive language in his letter that he might convince 
 Bacine of his orthodoxy. His explanations did not alter the French 
 poet's opinion on the infidel tendency of the Essay on Man. " After 
 the letter he wrote me," says Eacine, " I am far from suspecting 
 him of designing to preach deism, but I am obliged to confess that 
 we seem to detect it in the midst of all his abstract reasonings, and 
 that it even presents itself so naturally that we may attribute to it 
 the rapid spread of the poem in France." 2 
 
 Pope's letter was forwarded to Eacine by Eamsay, who accompanied 
 it with a second letter of his own, in which he again dwelt on his 
 friend's continuous and disinterested adherence to romanism. " I 
 am assured that a princess who admired his works, wished, when she 
 ruled over England, to induce him not to abandon, but to dissimulate 
 his religion. She was desirous of procuring him considerable appoint- 
 ments, and promised that the customary oaths should be dispensed 
 with. He refused these offers with immoveable firmness. Such a 
 sacrifice was not the act of a sceptic or a deist." 3 Eamsay does not 
 say that he received the anecdote from Pope, but he was writing in 
 concert with him, and on his behalf, and there is a strong presump- 
 tion that the poet had sanctioned the fable. To dispense with the 
 customary oaths would have been a breach of the act of settlement, 
 and the assertion of the power would have cost Anne her crown, and 
 Pope his office. This immense and abortive sacrifice was to have 
 been made in the interests of a man whom the queen had never seen, 
 who was politically insignificant, and whose moderate wants she 
 could have supplied from her private purse. The ludicrous inven- 
 tion, which could only pass current with a foreigner ignorant of 
 the English constitution, was a magnified version of Lord Oxford's 
 hollow talk. " He used often," said Pope, " to express his concern 
 for my continuing incapable of a place, which I could not make 
 myself capable of without giving a great deal of pain to my parents, 
 such pain, indeed, as I would not have given to either of them for 
 all the places he could have bestowed upon me." 4 Lord Oxford, 
 who trusted chiefly to duplicity and petty artifices for obtaining 
 support, was accustomed to amuse every one who came near him 
 with hopes, and evade their fulfilment by paltry excuses. His 
 
 1 Kuffhead, Life of Pope, p. 542. Spence, p. 277. 
 
 2 (Euvres de Louis Eacine, torn. i. p. 451. 
 
 3 CEuvres de Louis Racine, torn. i. p. 442. 
 
 4 Spence, p. 2bl.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 293 
 
 cheap lamentation that Pope was disqualified for an office is a sad 
 downfall from, the magnanimous offer of the Queen to provide him 
 with a place in defiance of law, and at the risk of her throne. If 
 the anecdote had been true, Eamsay's inference that Pope was an 
 orthodox romanist would have been wrong. His reason for not 
 " making himself capable of a place " was the pain his abjuration of 
 romanism would have given his parents. He did not pretend to 
 plead conscience. 
 
 The system of philosophy set forth in the poem is now to be con- 
 sidered. Few persons could have been less qualified than Boling- 
 broke and Pope to write on natural religion. The desultory super- 
 ficial investigations of Bolingbroke were under the dominion of his 
 passions, and Pope had barely thought upon the subject at all. 
 They both took for their motto a sentence from Foster, a dissenting 
 minister, " Where mystery begins religion ends," 1 and it did not 
 occur to them that no mystery could be greater than the first article 
 of their own deistical creed, the necessary existence of God. 
 Atheism magnifies the mystery, which is an inherent ingredient in 
 every system, religious or infidel. The least reflection forces this 
 fact upon the mind, and the blindness of Pope and Bolingbroke to 
 a truth which met them at the threshold of their speculations, and 
 recurred at every turn, is not an unjust measure of their general 
 incapacity for religious philosophy. 
 
 The Essay on Man was framed on the old and obvious division 
 of ethics, which treated of man in his relation to God, his fellow- 
 creatures, and himself. Pope, who thought it presumption to study 
 God, 2 passed over the first of the three heads, and substituted an 
 epistle on man in relation to the universe. The leading arguments 
 in this opening epistle were taken from the Theodicee of Leibnitz, 
 the Moralists of Shaftesbury, and the Origin of Evil, by Archbishop 
 King. The poet had read the essay of Shaftesbury, and had possibly 
 looked into King ; but of Leibnitz he was entirely ignorant. In 
 reply to the charge of having adopted the alleged fatalism of the 
 illustrious German, he wrote to Warburton, Feb. 2, 1739, " It can- 
 not be unpleasant to you to know that I never in my life read a line 
 of Leibnitz, nor understood there was such a term as pre-established 
 harmony till I found it in M. Crousaz's book." Bolingbroke had 
 instructed Pope that Leibnitz was " one of the vainest and most 
 chimerical men that ever got a name in philosophy, and that he was 
 so often unintelligible that no man ought to believe he understood 
 himself." 3 Naturally Pope had not the least suspicion that some 
 of the principal tenets instilled into him by his "guide" were 
 
 1 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 62. 
 
 2 Epist. ii. ver. i. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 52.
 
 294 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 filched without acknowledgment from this vain, chimerical, unintelli- 
 gible man. 
 
 The optimism of Leibnitz has been a thousand times misrepre- 
 sented, not because his Theodicee is obscure, but because the scoffers 
 had never read the system they decried. He was supposed to have 
 maintained that our little globe, taken separately, was the best 
 which could be conceived, and that all the trials and crimes of men 
 were in their own independent nature a good. Ypltaire was among 
 the ignorant, and to refute the doctrine that everything was goodjjio 
 concocted a licentious tale, .in which every tiling id vice, injustice, 
 and misery. His satire has a double flaw. He gives a false repre- 
 sentation of human life, and of the optimism of Leibnitz. The 
 world of Leibnitz is not our earth in its present state, but the 
 universe, unlimited in extent, and eternal in duration. The final 
 purpose of the Deity in his stupendous scheme is the best that can 
 be, and the means are the best for their end. The fitness of the 
 several parts can only be estimated in their relation to the whole, 
 and the whole is not creation at any moment of time, but the evolu- 
 tion of the universe from everlasting to everlasting. It would be 
 folly to judge the evils of the hour in their isolation, when they are 
 incidents in an illimitable plan, and have reference to the greatest 
 ultimate good. To show in detail how all the evils we experience are 
 subservient to the best conceivable scheme of the universe, would 
 require that we should know the infinite design of God, that we 
 should be able to picture the infinity of other possible worlds, and to 
 institute a comparison between theso infinite infinities. A morsel of 
 flesh, or a splinter of bone, bears an immeasurably larger proportion 
 to our frame than our existing globe to the existing universe, which 
 is itself but a link in the eternal chain, and yet a person ignorant of 
 the human structure would in vain attempt to explain the purpose 
 and fitness of some diminutive fragment of man. l 
 
 Leibnitz took for granted, in their greatest latitude, the power, 
 wisdom, and goodness of God. Upon this supposition, Hume, per- 
 sonating the character of a sceptic, allowed that there " might, 
 perhaps, be a plausible solution of the ill phenomena." But the 
 sceptic objects that " the Deity is known to us solely in his pro- 
 ductions, that the universe shows only a particular degree of wisdom 
 and goodness, and that we can never be authorised to infer a further 
 degree of these attributes, which would be adding something to 
 the attributes of the cause beyond what appears in the effects." 2 
 The objection would be sound if the whole series of effects were 
 unfolded to our view. They extend, on the contrary, indefinitely 
 beyond our capacity to follow them, and the question is, whether 
 
 1 Leibnitz, Opera Philosophica, ed. Erdmann, pp. 506, 544. 
 
 2 Hume's Essays, ed. 1809, vol. ii. pp. 146, 147, 152.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 295 
 
 the defects appertain to the attributes of God, or whether the ap- 
 pearance of imperfection is the consequence of our ignorance. The 
 answer is net doubtful. There is superabundant proof that our 
 globe is framed upon a plan in which animals and things have a 
 mutual dependence. Our globe itself, again, is a portion of a larger 
 system, and we have an irresistible conviction that the boundless 
 universe is the work of one Author, and that a definite purpose per- 
 vades the whole. With this first fact we couple a second, that the 
 appropriateness of the details in a complicated contrivance cannot be 
 understood, unless we comprehend the general principle of the con- 
 trivance, and the relation of its parts. The optimism of Leibnitz is 
 the only just inference from these facts. A speck of creation is sub- 
 mitted to our examination, and the evidences of power, wisdom, and 
 goodness are vast and overwhelming. Other parts seem defective, as 
 inevitably happens when our knowledge is miserably inadequate; 
 and, in accordance with experience, we conclude that our enormous 
 ignorance is at fault, and not that the superlative workman is in- 
 consistent. The explanation of the optimist is rational, while that of 
 the sceptic involves a gratuitous contradiction, and is wild, impro- 
 bable, and unsupported. 
 
 Hume's spokesman enforces his view by an instance which was 
 the favourite argument of Bolingbroke. "A more impartial distri- 
 bution of rewards and punishments," says the sceptic, in allusion to 
 a future state, " must proceed from a greater regard to justice and 
 equity." 1 Admit that the justice of God's government on earth is, 
 in a single instance, imperfect, and it follows that the argument for 
 the perfection of His attributes is at an end. The fallacy is in the 
 assumed fact, that a greater regard would be shown to equity, if 
 rewards in this life were exactly proportioned to merits. The chief 
 purpose of the present life is clearly not happiness but excellence. 
 The characters of good men are disciplined and purified here to fit 
 them for happiness hereafter, and the trials which best prepare them 
 for eternal felicity cannot be a deviation from equity. "Every 
 branch," says our Lord, " that beareth fruit, my father purgeth it, 
 that it may bring forth more fruit," 2 which is a stronger evidence of 
 fatherly care than an injurious distribution of rewards and punish- 
 ments on the sceptical plan. Physical evils become a blessing when 
 they are the lasting corrective of sin. 
 
 The moral evil itself can in part be explained. The mind and 
 body of human beings, and the world in which we live, have been 
 fixed for us by the Creator. The will alone is free, and it is the 
 will which really constitutes the man. Without freedom of will 
 there could be no morality, any more than a tree is moral when it 
 
 1 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 153. 
 8 John, xv. 2.
 
 06 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 flourishes, and immoral when it withers. Freedom pro-supposes a 
 power to do wrong, and without this liberty there could be no 
 individual worth. The frailty of man grows out of his supre- 
 macy. Warburton denied that there was any force in the ex- 
 planation, since if " God had only brought those creatures into being 
 who would not have abused their freedom, evil had been prevented 
 without intrenching upon free will." 1 Two principles are here 
 assumed to be indisputable, neither of which are self-evident, or 
 capable of proof. Warburton supposes it to be intuitively certain 
 that a picked race of moral agents, who must be limited in their 
 perfections because they are inferior to God, may all be gifted with 
 an infallible power of defying sin, which for aught we know may be 
 impossible. A Christian divine must admit that some of the angels 
 fell, and for anything we can tell the steadfast angels might have 
 sinned without the warning example of their apostate brethren. 
 Warburton further supposes it to be intuitively certain, that if 
 perchance there may be a hierarchy too lofty to have ever erred, the 
 non-existence of the multitudinous lesser beings would be preferable 
 to their existence with an admixture of evil, which is not the senti- 
 ment raised in human minds by the contemplation of the living 
 creatures of our globe. On the contrary, the deepest philosophers 
 and simplest peasants are alike lost in admiration at the spectacle, 
 and feel impotent to rise to a fitting height of love and praise. As 
 the latent premises of Warburton are not manifest facts, he has 
 failed to make good his position, that to all appearance God could 
 have framed a better world from which every semblance of evil might 
 have been excluded. The moral nature of man goes far to account 
 for the evil of man, and for his present probation. The comparative 
 innocence of children is lovely, but it is innocence which has not 
 been tried, and when it is tested it fails. The innocence of saiuts is 
 the innocence which has passed through the terrible experience of 
 sin, which knows the degradation of iniquity, which has fought 
 against it and triumphed, and hence it is the second and acquired 
 nnocence which endures. The innocence of Adam in Paradise may 
 have resembled the inexperience of the child, and the only road to 
 permanent victory may be through defeat. Heaven itself may be 
 a place of temptation unless an energy of conquering will has been 
 first developed, and we have grown strong by an inherent homage to 
 righteousness. In our world, at least, felicity is not the securest 
 situation for untried virtue. This is enough to justify to our under- 
 standings the state of man upon earth, though much is mysterious 
 in the details from our imperfect knowledge of the ultimate effect 
 upon aggregate humanity of the discipline of life, and our igno 
 ranee of the part which our race is to play in the eternal universe, 
 
 1 Phillimore's Life of Lord Lyttelton, vol. i. p. 304.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 207 
 
 Leibnitz divided evil into moral evil or sin, physical evil or 
 suffering, and metaphysical evil or the limitation of our endowments. 
 He addressed men who were satisfied from the evidence of their 
 internal nature and the external world that God was absolute in 
 power, wisdom, and goodness. Hence, whatever is, is right. " We 
 judge," says Leibnitz, "by the event; since God has so done it 
 would not be possible to do better." * Pope starts from the 
 premise of Leibnitz. He assumes the infinite wisdom of the Deity, 
 and concludes that this wisdom must have formed the best pos- 
 sible system. But to a great extent he differed from Leibnitz with 
 regard to the cause of the several kinds of evil, and his optimism 
 was of an adulterate, untenable kind. He did not allow that 
 moral evil was the pernicious abuse of a free will, with which 
 we are endowed because men are preferable to automatons, moral 
 agents to passive machines. He held that moral evil was in 
 itself a good, and that God was the author of it. He it is who 
 "pours fierce ambition into Caesar's mind," and nature no more 
 requires "men for ever temperate, calm, and wise," than " eternal 
 springs and cloudless skies." 2 Since the sin of men is imposed upon 
 them by God they must be machines after all, and of a debased and 
 often devilish species. An inexorable fatalism becomes the law of 
 humanity, and Borgias, Oatilines, and Csesars are destructive wheels 
 which simply obey the motion impressed upon them by the omni- 
 potent architect. God can do no wrong ; man is the puppet of God ; 
 and whatever is, is consequently right, the villanies of miscreants 
 included. The Essay swarms with contradictions, and in other 
 passages Pope treats man as an accountable being who departs from 
 the commands of his Maker. 
 
 Of physical evil, or suffering, Pope notices only "plagues, earth- 
 quakes, and tempests," which he justifies by the remark that God 
 " acts not by partial, but by general laws." 3 Bolingbroke gave the 
 same explanation. Either, he said, such visitations are " rational 
 chastisements," or they are " the mere effects, natural though con- 
 tingent, of matter and motion in a material system, put into motion 
 under certain general laws." 4 Individuals, that is, must suffer that 
 the laws of matter may not be infringed. Leibnitz rejected the 
 principle. " That which is an evil," he said, "for me would not 
 cease to be an evil because it would be good for some one else. The 
 good which pervades the universe consists, among other things, in 
 this, that the general good is the particular good of every one who 
 loves the author of all good." So, he says again, " we suffer often 
 from the misdeeds of others, but when we have no share in the crime 
 
 1 Leibnitz, Opera, p. 628. 
 
 2 Epist. i. ver. 159, 151-4. 
 
 3 Epist. i. ver. 1416. 
 
 4 Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iv. p. 336.
 
 298 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 we may hold it for certain that the sufferings procure us a greater 
 happiness." l Thesystem of Pope subordinates moral agents to 
 physical, and he finds it a sufficient vindication that the mechanical 
 law is general, and the injury to men only occasional. Whatever 
 may bo the worth of particular persons, he believes that they are 
 properly sacrificed to the regularity of material laws, which roll on 
 with undistinguishing, terrific might, crushing any thinking, sen- 
 tient, virtuous being who may happen to cross their path. He 
 supposes, nevertheless, that these unbending, undiscerning laws have 
 undergone a " change," and, what is singular, the alteration has 
 been from better to worse, whereby he accounts for a portion of the 
 prevalent physical evil. 2 Another portion he at one time ascribed to 
 " chance," which had intruded itself into the arrangements of the 
 Almighty, and overruled his designs. 3 The optimism which repre- 
 sented man to be the sport of mechanical laws, of deteriorating 
 changes in the physical system, and of blind, ungovernable chance, 
 was not an optimism to clear away difficulties, and silence objections. 
 Metaphysical evil, or the limitation of endowments, is inevitable 
 in every being below the Godhead, and Pope contends that the best 
 system must manifestly consist in an infinite series of creatures, 
 from the greatest to the least. The notion is found in Locke and 
 Leibnitz. There are beings, said the latter, above and below us, or 
 there would be a void in the order of species. 4 The idea was more 
 fully developed by Archbishop King, and is simply an extension to 
 the universe of the terrestrial system, where a gradation of beings on 
 a connected plan is the law. Pope carried the principle to extrava- 
 gance. He contends that the omission of the smallest creature would 
 break the chain, would throw the universe into confusion, and involve 
 all creation in a common ruin. 5 To keep the universe from tumbling 
 to pieces, " it is plain," according to him, that " there must be some- 
 where such a rank as man," 6 and the rule holds equally of the 
 minutest animalcule on the globe. There is a flaw in his premises. 
 It is not apparent that the extinction of the flea would upset the 
 universe, nor that the scale of beings must necessarily be the same 
 which at present prevails. The facts are against the " must be" of 
 Pope. There was a time when other creatures were, and man 
 was not, and when animated nature was able to dispense with the 
 human race. Infinite wisdom must form the best possib le system 
 and a gradation of beings, which now includes man, is an actual part 
 of the scheme. Pope's argument breaks down when, to justify 
 
 1 Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 571, 577. 
 
 2 Epist. i. ver. 147, iv. ver. 115. 
 
 3 Epist. iv. ver. 116, note. 
 
 4 Leibnitz, Opera, pp. 312, 431, 507, 603. 
 
 5 Epist. i. ver. 241258. 
 s Epist. i. ver. 47-8.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 299 
 
 the creation of man, he supposes that a chain of beings and an 
 orderly universe could not have existed unless man had been a link 
 in the series. His argument is equally weak when he maintains 
 that the infinite wisdom of God is a guarantee that there will not 
 be a gap in the endless chain of existences, but that it is a question 
 whether infinite wisdom may not have made a mistake with respect 
 to man's proper place in the series, and erred in the after sorting 
 of the gradations which it had previously conceived and created 
 on an infallible plan. 1 The poet was inconsistent to childish- 
 ness. Johnson believed that when Pope talked of man's place he 
 did not attach any meaning to the term. The words would seem, to 
 imply that it was a question whether man was placed in the circum- 
 stances which were best adapted to his moral, mental, and physical 
 nature. But if Pope had thoroughly comprehended his borrowed 
 phrases, he would not have proposed the enquiry under a form which 
 stultified his premises. 
 
 There were errors enough in Pope's doctrine without the mis- 
 interpretations of Yoltaire, who has falsified the views of the poet, 
 as he had previously misstated the profounder system of Leibnitz. 
 " Those," says Voltaire, " who exclaim that all is good are charla- 
 tans. Shaftesbury, who brought the fable into fashion, was a very 
 unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke devoured with chagrin and 
 rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put the mockery into verse, was 
 as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known, deformed in 
 body, unequal in his temper, always ill, a burthen to himself, and 
 harassed by a hundred enemies to his dying hour. Quote mo at 
 least some happy men who say that all is good. Any one who had 
 seen the beautiful Ann Boleyn, and the still more beautiful Mary 
 Stuart, in their youth, would have said that is good, but would ho 
 have said it when he saw them perish by the hand of the executioner ? 
 would he have said it when he saw the grandson of the beautiful 
 Mary die the same death in the midst of his capital ? would he have 
 said it when he saw the great-grandson more unfortunate still, since 
 he lived longer ? " Pope, in his imperfect theory, did not deny the 
 existence of sorrow, but asserted, or implied, that the sorrow was an 
 advantage either to the sufferer or others. Yoltaire looked singly at 
 the misery without heeding the gain. Mary Queen of Scots at the 
 block was superior to the radiant beauty who was starting on a 
 profligate career. Charles I., penitent for his murderous abandon- 
 ment of Strafford, and, perhaps, for his creed that duplicity is 
 a virtue when employed by kings to circumvent subjects, was a 
 vastly better man on the scaffold than on the throne. James II. waa 
 in a more advantageous position with the inducement to repentance 
 which his long exile supplied than if he had succeeded in his fraudu- 
 
 1 Epist. i. ver. 43-50. 
 
 2 Voltaire, (Euvres, torn, xlvii. p. 98.
 
 300 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 lent attempts to subvert the English church and constitution. The 
 rage of Bolingbroke, and Pope's fretful temper, were certainly inex- 
 plicable on the pretence that they were poured into the mind by the 
 Deity. They did not militate against the truer optimism which saw 
 in them self-imposed vice and pain, rendered possible by the free-will 
 which is a privilege to mankind. 
 
 Pope filled up the outline of his system with declamatory in- 
 vectives against objectors, and with reflections intended to prove 
 that the imperfections of man befitted his position in the universe. 
 There is little force in the poet's reasoning. He passes over diffi- 
 culties, and replies to cavils which no one worth answering ever 
 urged. Some of his remarks are obscure, some erroneous, some 
 common-place. Such as they are they have not been woven into a 
 consecutive argument. M. Crousaz says he knew persons who were 
 persuaded that Pope had tacked together a number of fragments 
 he had composed at different times, before he had the idea of an 
 Essay on Man, which was a contrivance to work up his collection 
 of odds and ends. He understood, in fact, little beyond the separate 
 thoughts, and was insensible to the want of coherence, consistency 
 and purpose. It would be lost labour to search, like Warburton, 
 for a strength and closeness of reasoning which were not in the 
 mind of the author. 
 
 The second epistle treats of man " with respect to himself as an 
 individual." The Bible is a revelation of God, and a perpetual 
 summons to mankind " to know and understand " him. " Thus 
 saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, but let 
 him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth 
 me." l The divinity at last descended upon earth, and lived our 
 life, acting and speaking under our circumstances, that God might 
 be clearly manifested to the world. " He that hath seen me," says 
 our Lord, "hath seen the Father." 2 The divine light appeared 
 darkness and imposture to Pope. He was even blind to the light 
 which his natural understanding would have furnished, and, taught 
 by Bolingbroke, he abjured all pretension to a knowledge of the 
 Almighty under the plea of reverencing his inscrutable grandeur. 
 Man must not venture to scan God ; his only proper study is to 
 learn to know himself. 3 This second epistle exhibits the kind of 
 self-knowledge to which Pope attained, when, renouncing the know- 
 ledge of God, he determined to limit his investigations to man. 
 
 He draws a desolate picture. Man is in doubt whether he is a 
 god or a beast ; whether he ought to prefer his body or his mind. 
 He is a confused chaos of thought and passion, he reasons only to 
 err, and is only born to die. 4 The general incapacity, we are told, 
 
 1 Jeremiah, ix. 23, 24. 3 John, xiv. 9. 
 
 * Epist. ii. ver. 1-2. 4 Epist. ii. ver. 3- 18.
 
 ^*" 
 
 ho 
 in 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 301 
 
 extended to Newton, and it might have occurred to the poet that it 
 was a useless task to study our nature when the deductions of 
 reason in its highest estate are uniformly wrong. He committed 
 the oversight from his habit of borrowing fragments he was not at 
 the pains to understand. His caricature was a partial and distorted 
 copy from Pascal, who with wonderful energy of language, amplified 
 the helplessness of fallen man that he might insist the more strongly 
 on the necessity of his restoration through the Gospel. He over- 
 charged the evil to exalt the remedy. Pope had not any remedy to 
 suggest. He leaves the "confused chaos" in its primitive impo- 
 tence, and calls upon mankind to embark in a deceptive study, with 
 the warning that they will wander from error to error. 
 
 Without tying Pope down to the rhetorical exaggerations in the 
 opening paragraph of his second epistle, we find from a passage 
 the first epistle that he reduced to insignificance the self-knowledge 
 attainable by mankind. He said that when the proud horse and 
 dull ox knew why man put them to this use or that, then would 
 proud and dull man comprehend the end and use of his being, 
 passions, sufferings, and actions. 1 The amount of knowledge pos- 
 sessed by the horse and ox is not discoverable by us. The only nature 
 adequately known to man is his own, and his nature reveals his end. 
 The ideas which ought to govern him proceed from his Maker. They 
 are the voice of God speaking to him, and telling him the purpose 
 for which he lives. He learns, above all, that he is the servant of 
 the Almighty, that his passions are to be ruled by his conscience, 
 that duty is supreme, that his sufferings are the discipline to perfect 
 his character, that earth is the school for a higher existence. He 
 may be negligent and perverse ; he may refuse to look into his 
 nature, and may, in part, defy it ; may thence arrive at false con- 
 clusions, and adopt a false course of conduct, which are the abuses 
 of a free-will that can sink or soar, but the grand outlines of his 
 nature are plain to every honest and earnest enquirer, and blank 
 ignorance on the end of his being, passions, sufferings, and actions 
 is not the inevitable condition of man. 
 
 The conviction that we are ignorant of the use of our being and 
 actions did not keep Pope from acknowledging that "good" is the 
 end to which we aspire. 2 The nature of this good, and the means of 
 obtaining it, is the main subject of the second epistle, " which con- 
 tains," says "War burton, " the truest, clearest, shortest, and conse- 
 quently the best system of ethics that is anywhere to be met with." 3 
 The system which Warburton thought " true and clear " appears to 
 be eminently false and contradictory. 
 
 Man has certain implanted tendencies, physical, intellectual, and 
 
 1 Epist. i. 61-8. 
 
 8 Epist. ii. ver. 53-8. 
 
 8 Warburton's Commentary, Epist. ii, ver. 53.
 
 302 AN ESSA7 ON MAN. 
 
 sympathetic, the craving for food, for knowledge, for society, etc. 
 None of our primitive endowments can be termed moral, since they 
 are bestowed upon us independently of our will, and it is not till 
 will interposes that morality begins, but in their purity they are all 
 advantageous, and many of them are directed to the identical end 
 which morality prescribes. They are part of the stock-in-trade with 
 which man starts in his career, and he is charged with the wise 
 administration of them. A brief experience teaches him that an 
 instinctive tendency may be carried to excess. His craving for food 
 and drink may turn to gluttony and drunkenness ; his passion for 
 knowledge may convert him into a solitary student without any care 
 for his kind ; his love of society and affection may unfit him for the 
 business and drudgery of life. Or he may yield to a propensity till 
 satiety succeeds, and he is left listless and jaded. Or he may 
 indulge a lawful propensity by lawless methods. Or he may be 
 hurried away by successive impulses, and be too unstable to put his 
 gifts to a profitable use. In any of these ways his proper nature 
 becomes mutilated and degraded. His reason informs him that to 
 enjoy the full advantage of his tendencies he must not consent to be 
 drifted along by the current which is strongest for the moment. He 
 must curb the lower propensities, and foster the higher ; he must 
 regulate the several unities in a manner to derive the greatest 
 benefit from the whole ; he must substitute for the reign of im- 
 pulse what moralists call his interest well understood. He does not 
 stop at self-interest. He rises above his personal good into the 
 impersonal sphere of good in itself. He perceives that there is a 
 law superior to his individual interests, a law of universal obligation, 
 and which is immutable and eternal. 
 
 Of these three motives, the instinctive, the prudential, and the 
 law of independent morality, Pope rejects the last. He believes that 
 self is the single spring of action in men, and ho seriously adopts 
 the old sarcastic saying, " Every man for himself, and God for us 
 all." ' He divides this selfish nature into two parts, self-love, 
 which designates the impulsive propensities, and reason, which go- 
 verns them on the behalf of interest well-understood. 2 Already 
 there is an inconsistency in his phraseology when he puts self-love 
 in direct opposition to reason. Reason in his theory is simply the 
 selfishness of calculation ; self-love the selfishness of impulse. Self- 
 love is absolute in both, and is not the less self-love because we 
 deliberate upon the means which are best adapted to secure the 
 selfish end. 
 
 The erroneous phraseology signifies little. The important point is 
 the radical falsity of the system. The three grand duties of man, 
 his duty to God, his neighbour, and himself, are resolved by Pope 
 
 1 Epiat. ii. ver. 235-8. * Epist. ii. ver 53.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 803 
 
 into the single dutyofjnan to himself. In the first epistle the poet 
 rebuked the pride which supposed the heavens and the earth to be 
 created for its use. 1 In his second epistle he teaches us that they 
 are totally indifferent to us under any other aspect. Ho -will tell us 
 that the way to promote our personal interest is to love God and our 
 neighbour, but the end and motive of the love must on his system be 
 our individual interest still. The gospel precepts must be set aside ; 
 for in place of loving our neighbour equally with ourselves we are to 
 love him simply for the sake of ourselves ; and in place of loving God 
 with all our hearts, and minds, and souls, we are to love him solely as 
 a tributary who ministers to our absorbing love of self. When we 
 practically think and act as though we were the centre of the uni- 
 verse ; when, horrible to say, we view the Deity merely as an instru- 
 ment to promote our selfishness ; when we discover nothing in the 
 Creator to adore, nothing in his creation to admire, apart from their 
 fitness to advance the interests of one puny mortal, we invert the 
 actual constitution of things, we base our morality upon a lie, and 
 we only cheat ourselves with delusive terms when we talk of our duty 
 to God and our neighbour. 
 
 The test of the system is in the phenomena of consciousness which 
 are open to universal observation. When our moral principle is an 
 unalloyed selfishness we seek our private good alone, and there can 
 be no obligation to consult the interests of our neighbours. I pay a 
 debt because it is to my advantage, and not from any sense of what 
 is due to my debtor. I forbear to kill, and maim, and torture, not in 
 the least because I am bound to consider the rights and feelings of 
 my fellow-creatures, but because it would be present or future pain 
 to myself. Owning no law, except the law of selfishness, I should bo 
 dishonest and cruel if I could believe that the balance of personal 
 pleasure was on the side of inhumanity and roguery. When I blame 
 murderers and thieves, I inconsiderately distinguish between the guilt 
 and folly of the crime, which is a vulgar mistake. The selfishness 
 which respects nothing beyond the requirements of self is the law of 
 our race, and the miscalled criminal has obeyed the governing prin- 
 ciple of mankind. He owed no duty to others, and his sole fault was 
 not to have judged wisely for his interests. I talk of patriotism and 
 public spirit, of sacrifice and disinterestedness, but they are words 
 which convey a false impression. Sacrifice and disinterestedness do 
 not exist, and the apparent devotion to country and public is at bot- 
 tom a complete devotion to self. 
 
 Common experience is too powerful for bad philosophy, and it is 
 plain that this is not a true description of the moral man. Pope 
 puts a part for the whole. The Creator has endowed us with a 
 desire for happiness, which is inseparable from our being. The 
 
 1 Epist. i. ver. 131.
 
 304 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 individual is a portion of the universe, and though he is only an 
 atom, his interests are cared for in common with the rest. But he 
 has a consciousness that the good of others must be cared for like- 
 wise, that Providence has enjoined him to contribute to the result, 
 and that his refusal to recognise the duty he owes to his neighbour 
 would be guilt. He has a conviction that the great source of all 
 being and all good is to be adored for his infinite perfections, and 
 that to love him solely for the sake of the blessings he communicates 
 to ourselves is a maimed, derogatory, and impious idea. Man has 
 been constructed to perceive things as they are, and to act in con- 
 formity with his knowledge. He is the creature of his Maker, a 
 unit in a multitude, and could not be permitted to consider Maker 
 and multitude subordinate to the creature and unit, without a 
 complete perversion of the facts. With the desire for our own 
 good there has been instilled into us that law of good in itself 
 which embraces the universe, a law which, while it includes 
 our individual concerns, extends infinitely beyond them, and to 
 which we do homage under its aspect of good in itself, as well as 
 under its aspect that it is good for me. Our personal pleasure is not 
 therefore, as Pope asserts, " the whole employ of body and mind." * 
 Happiness in the long run is dependent upon well-doing, and we 
 consult our interest when we adhere to duty. But our rule of duty 
 must not be bounded by our self-interest, which, reducing our 
 motives to a petty egotism, corrupts the nature of man, and contami- 
 nates duty at its source. 
 
 The prevalent habit of abandoning duty for personal pleasure 
 begets the mistaken idea that where there is pleasure there is abso- 
 lute selfishness. The degree of selfishness must be determined by 
 our motives, and not by the feelings which accompany our acts. 
 Whatever is done for self-gratification is selfish ; and everything in 
 which our end is external to ourselves is disinterested, in so far as 
 the accompanying gratification is not the motive to the deed. Although 
 the benevolent man has a satisfaction in reflecting that the sufferings 
 of the needy are removed, his predominant motive to benevolence is 
 the relief of the wretched, and not his own personal pleasure. His 
 intention terminates in the objects of his charity, with little return 
 upon himself, and unless his sympathy with them was real the grati- 
 fication would not be felt. Happiness is the proper effect of pure 
 goodness, and if the junction of perfect happiness and perfect good- 
 ness was incompatible with disinterestedness, the celestial spirits 
 would be more selfish than men. Men, in turn, would grow selfish 
 in the same proportion that perseverance in well-doing rendered 
 duty delightful. " I find a pleasure in serving my friends," said 
 Schiller in refutation of the doctrine; " it is agreeable to me to 
 
 1 Kpist. u. ver. 126.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 305 
 
 fulfil my duties. This troubles me, for then I am no longer 
 virtuous." * The love which is capable of the utmost sacrifice 
 is not less generous because no sacrifice may chance to be required, 
 any more than a man who is proof against all temptations to steal, 
 is less honest because he is not exposed to temptation. From 
 our proneness to self-deceit we are accustomed to estimate dis- 
 interestedness by actual sacrifices, which both test our motives, 
 and inure us to self-denying love, but disinterestedness is the 
 cause of self-denial and must precede it, and the disposition re- 
 mains when the call for self-denial may have ceased. Qualities are 
 what they are, whatever may happen to be the surrounding circum- 
 stances. Grant that a man can love his neighbour and himself with 
 an equal love, and the same proportion will be preserved whether his 
 love procures him unadulterated pleasure, or entails on him a vast 
 amount of pain. Happiness and disinterestedness are not in their 
 essence mutually destructive ; they co-exist and coalesce. 
 
 A close scrutiny into the motives of moral men will satisfy us that 
 the love of our neighbour is not wholly or chiefly a disguised love of 
 self; that we love God for what he is, transcendent in goodness and 
 wisdom, as well as for what he is to us ; that we do not bow down to 
 duty solely because it is our interest well understood, but much more 
 because it has an illimitable authority independent of our individual 
 interests, and binds the conscience by its right to supreme dominion. 
 God, man, duty are external objects which, over and above the con- 
 sideration of self-interest, are served by morality as an end. Bishop 
 Butler even maintained that all our instinctive impulses " are parti- 
 cular movements towards particular external objects," and cannot be 
 ascribed to self-love. He instances the desire produced by hunger, 
 of which " the object and end," he says, " is merely food." 2 But there 
 is a further object for which alone the food is desired, the removal of 
 painful sensations, or the gratification of the palate, or the prolonga- 
 tion of life. All these objects are often purely selfish, and always in their 
 ordinary unreflecting state. 3 The uneasy sensation of hunger begins 
 and ends with the individual ; the single purpose for which he covets 
 the food is to allay his particular physical craving ; outside self there 
 is no object left to attract the mind, no over-plus to which our 
 thoughts can be directed. There is not, as in the case of God, man, 
 and law, an object which has a claim upon our hearts and under- 
 standings distinct from the special benefit to ourselves. The desire 
 
 1 Madame de Stael, De 1'Allemagne, Part iii., Chap. 16. 
 
 Butler's Sermons, Oxford, 1835, pp. xx., 8, 161. 
 
 3 A man may eat from principle, which often happens with the sick when they 
 are wishing to die, and appetite is extinct. For the same reason they may eat 
 delicacies when the stomach rebels against common fare. This was the case with 
 Pascal in his illness, and, from a mistaken asceticism, he endeavoured to swallow 
 the choice food without tasting it. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. X
 
 306 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 for food is a selfish, but not an evil instinct, for self-love is part of 
 the duty and constitution of man. Pope's error was in putting a 
 fragment for the whole, and merging duty in selfishness. 
 
 There is a second part to Pope's system. He has told us that the 
 function of reason is to " advise and check" the instinctive impulses; 
 that she "mixes the passions with art, and confines them to due 
 bounds ; " that she " compounds and subjects, tempers and employs 
 them;" and that her "well-accorded" combination of jarring ele- 
 ments " gives all the strength and colour to our life." 1 The instant 
 after he lays down a directly opposite theory. He says that every 
 man brings into the world a " ruling passion," which is " cast and 
 mingled with his very frame;" that this master passion "grows 
 with our growth," and " swallows up " all the other passions ; that 
 whatever " warms the heart or fills the head " goes to feed the one 
 despotic desire. When we fancy we curb a passion we are deceived ; 
 we have only resigned a lesser passion in favour of a greater. 2 
 Eeason, which lately mixed the passions in their proper proportions, 
 and confined them to due bounds, is suddenly stripped of her pre- 
 rogative, and becomes the slave of the master passion. 
 
 The ruling passion, be it what it will, 
 The ruling passion conquers reason still. 
 
 Eeason in this new theory is worse than helpless ; she deserts to the 
 side of her enemy, gives the monster propensity "edge and power," 
 and exerts herself to exasperate the "mind's disease." 3 Such con- 
 tradictions were the natural consequence of the perfunctory manner 
 in which Pope had picked up his scraps of philosophy. 
 
 The slightest acquaintance with the world is fatal to the hypothesis 
 that an exclusive ruling passion is the universal characteristic of 
 mankind. Each person has various appetites, desires, and affections, 
 and it is rare to see a man in whom " one master passion has 
 swallowed up the rest." Propensities intermingle and take their 
 turn. Characters are notoriously complex, and every individual is 
 not the incarnation of a single unattended passion. A desire for 
 power may be joined with sensuality, a love of fame with covetous- 
 ness, an eagerness for knowledge with affection. In the play of 
 passions one may preponderate, but all the rest are not reduced to 
 nullity. Allow the existence of the ruling passion, and Pope's 
 account of its origin could not be correct. A passion which is cast 
 in our frame from our birth, and continues thenceforward to grow 
 with our growth, must be permanent and unalterable. The in- 
 dividual must be governed by the same passion in childhood and 
 age, in the season of thoughtlessness and of wisdom, in dissoluteness 
 and virtue, in all the possible changes of condition. This is not the 
 
 1 Epist. ii. ver. 70, 113, 116, 119-22. 2 Epist. ii. ver. 131-148, 157. 
 
 3 Epist. ii. ver. 138, 147.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 307 
 
 scene which life presents. " Every observer," says Johnson, "has 
 remarked, that in many men the love of pleasure is the ruling 
 passion of their youth, and the love of money that of their advanced 
 years." 1 
 
 With an inherited ruling passion, and reason helpless to restrain it, 
 we should be altogether the creatures of fate on Pope's hypothesis, 
 if he had not furnished reason with a last resource, which, as is 
 evident from several parallel passages, was chiefly suggested to him 
 by the works of his contemporary, Mandeville. This shallow thinker 
 put forth a system of morality and political economy in his Fable of 
 the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits. The book, which was 
 philosophically weak, attracted much notice at the time from the 
 liveliness of his coarse illustrations, the vigorous ease of his inaccu- 
 rate style, and the cynical parade of his licentious doctrines. He 
 had the folly to imagine that commerce could only flourish when the 
 wealth of a nation was consumed by the idle, the sensual, the 
 luxurious. Hence, he argued that their wasteful vices were a national 
 gain. This was his political economy. His morality consisted in 
 denying the reality of virtue. He held that every apparent virtue 
 was prompted by an underlying frailty, and that all ostensible good- 
 ness was the false mask worn over inward weaknesses. The indigna- 
 tion his system provoked induced him subsequently to throw in 
 some qualifying phrases, but his faint, and always equivocal conces- 
 sions, are forms of speech, and did not prevent his repeated avowal 
 that genuine virtue had no existence on earth. " 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." 2 
 
 Pope, like Mandeville, founds virtue upon vice. The ruling pas- 
 sion is evil, but reason gives it a bias towards good. 3 " Spleen, 
 obstinacy, hate, and fear," each produce " crops of wit and honesty;" 
 "anger" is the parent of "zeal and fortitude;" "avarice" of 
 "prudence;" "sloth" of "philosophy;" and every virtue under 
 heaven may issue from "pride or shame." 4 The ruling passion 
 having engulphed the whole family of affections and desires, this 
 individual is a personification of anger, that individual of hate ; a 
 third of fear ; a fourth of sloth ; a fifth of pride. The sole moving 
 principle of man is his giant passion. 5 The function of reason is 
 only to foster it, 6 and select the means for its gratification. What- 
 ever these means may be, the motive of the incarnate monster lust, 
 
 1 Crousaz's Commentary on Pope's Essay, translated by Johnson, p. 109. 
 
 2 Fable of the Bees, ninth edition, vol. i. p. 137. 
 
 3 Epist. ii. ver. 175, 197. 
 
 4 Epist. ii. ver. 185-194. 
 
 5 Epist. ii. ver. 59, 67. 
 
 6 Epist. ii. ver. 147. 
 
 x 2
 
 SOS AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 is to feed sensuality ; of the monster sloth, to secure ease ; of the 
 monster pride to inflate self-importance. " The same ambition," 
 says Pope, "may make a patriot, as it makes a knave." l But the 
 incarnation of an all-pervading ambition can be only a patriot in 
 appearance, and uses patriotism to serve the ends of ambition. Let 
 the two diverge, and by the law of his nature he must fling the 
 patriotism to the winds. " Either," says our Lord, " make the tree 
 good, and his fruit good ; or else, make the tree corrupt and his 
 fruit corrupt." 2 On Pope's theory, to make the tree good is im- 
 possible. Man has no escape from the ruling passion he brings into 
 the world. He must be angry, avaricious, or slothful, according to 
 the seed which was sown in him at his birth, and the tree must 
 remain corrupt to the last. 
 
 The fruit would inevitably betray the taint of its origin, and Pope 
 was mistaken in supposing that a vitiated motive could keep steady 
 to outward virtue. " Hate," to which Pope ascribes the singular 
 power of producing " crops of wit and honesty," must repudiate love, 
 or whatever else did not subserve the one unamiable passion ; and a 
 man all hate, a frantic enemy to every kind and tender emotion, 
 would be hateful, however honest and witty. " Anger" would renounce 
 the meek and charitable, " pride " the humble virtues, together with 
 any other virtue which did not minister to inordinate anger and 
 pride. Neither passion would assume a moral aspect. " I observe," 
 Bays Baxter, "that almost all men, good and bad, do loathe the 
 proud, and love the humble." " Zeal " is the prerogative ascribed 
 to " anger," and the zealot who was urged on by fierce unflagging 
 anger would be a terror and a scourge. Pope himself has drawn 
 a horrible picture of the miseries inflicted upon humanity when 
 "zeal, not charity, became the guide" of the teachers of religion. 3 
 " Sloth " supplies us with " philosophy," or the apathetic submission 
 to evils we are too lazy to correct, which is the virtue that induces 
 thousands to live in dirt and ignorance, because cleanliness and 
 knowledge are not to be had without industry. "Avarice" is 
 credited with the faculty of" supplying prudence," which is as true as 
 to say that a burning fever supplies a moderate, healthy temperature. 
 The moral system which confines man to the counterfeit " virtue 
 nearest allied to his vice," or ruling passion, is an extravagant libel 
 upon the virtuous, and outrageous flattery of the vicious. 4 
 
 Mandeville took his morality from La Eochefoucauld, and Pope 
 took hints from both. The principle common to the three is the 
 motto which La Eochefoucauld placed at the head of his Maxims, 
 " Our virtues are usually vices in disguise." The doctrine, when 
 expressed in La Rochefoucauld's language, was condemned by Pope. 
 
 1 Epist. ii. ver. 201. 2 Matthew, xii. 33. 
 
 3 Epist. iii. ver. 261. 4 Epist. ii. ver. 185194, 196.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 309 
 
 " As L'Esprit," he said, " La Rochefoucauld, and that sort of people, 
 prove that all virtues are disguised vices, I would engage to 
 prove all vices to be disguised virtues. Neither, indeed, is 
 true : but this would be a more agreeable subject ; and would over- 
 turn their whole scheme." * He repeated the criticism in a sup- 
 pressed passage of the Essay on Man, 2 with a complete unconscious- 
 ness that the ' ' scheme " he fancied he could " overturn," was the very 
 soul of his system. " Heaven," he said, " can raise virtue's ends 
 from the vanity which seeks no reward but praise," 3 and for man to be 
 virtuous solely out of vanity was exactly the virtue which La Roche- 
 foucauld called " vice in disguise." He who feeds the hungry from 
 vanity alone is not moved by sympathy for suffering. Charity is 
 merely the pretence which his vanity pleads. Each of the other 
 ruling passions acts according to its own exclusive nature, and the 
 virtue which is adopted to humour anger, hate, sloth, and avarice, 
 is by general consent called delusion or imposture. La Roche- 
 foucauld has the advantage over Pope. The succession of selfish 
 passions he discovered too uniformly in man is less odious than the 
 concentrated anger, hate, or sloth which never pauses or turns 
 aside ; and the satirist who lashes the deceptive vices of mankind is 
 to be preferred to the moralist who teaches that vice in disguise is 
 virtue. 
 
 The contradictions are not at an end. Pride, folly, " even mean 
 self-love," have all, says Pope, some good in them. 4 He forgot that 
 self-love is, with him, the principle of every virtue and vice, their 
 essence and life, their origin and end, and to call self-love meaner 
 than pride and folly is either to assert that self-love is meaner than 
 itself, or to abandon the foundation of his moral systems. He goes 
 on to ascribe an influence to self-love which is incompatible with his 
 second system, or theory of the ruling passion. " Self-love," he 
 says, " is the scale to measure others' wants by thine," or, as he 
 remarked to Spence, " self-love would be a necessary principle in 
 every one, if it were only to serve each as a scale for his love to his 
 neighbour." 5 On Pope's second system this love of each for his 
 neighbour must be extinct, unless love chanced to be the ruling 
 passion. Unmixed anger, hate, and sloth retain no trace of affec- 
 tion. When we are reduced to a single passion, and for selfish pur- 
 poses " measure others' wants by our own," anger can but have an 
 intellectual, unsympathising perception of rival passions, and will 
 only assist them in the degree which will serve its irritable instincts. 
 Sloth, anger, hate, and the rest will act according to their kind, and 
 to call upon them to love their neighbours as themselves is to enjoin 
 the deaf to hear, and the blind to see. 
 
 1 Spence, p. 9. 2 Epist. ii. ver. 216, note. 
 
 3 Epist. ii. ver. 245. 4 Epist. ii. ver. 285-292. 
 
 5 Epist. ii. ver. 291. Spence, p. 109.
 
 310 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 J An evil fatalism, therefore, remains the leading principle of Pope's 
 second system. A man must be avaricious, slothful, or angry as 
 nature appoints. He cannot select his passion, or divert, or repress it. 
 The sole power reserved to his will is a certain latitude in choosing the 
 diet upon which the passion feeds. This meagre and polluted free- 
 dom dwindles to nothing with such passions as sloth and avarice, and 
 if there was room for prayer, when our nature is fixed for us by an 
 irreversible decree, we ought to petition for the " pride and vain- 
 glory " against which we pray in the Litany, since, if Pope is right, 
 they permit more variety of specious virtue than the griping pru- 
 dence of avarice, and the corrupting philosophy of sloth. 
 
 The poet passes from his review of individual man to the designs 
 of God, and his degenerate morality sinks lower as he proceeds. 
 " The ends of Providence," he says, " and general good are answered 
 in our passions and imperfections," and he goes on to show " how 
 usefully " the Deity, acting in the interests of the "whole," 1 has 
 "distributed" imperfections to "orders of men, to individuals, and 
 to every state and age of life." 2 Pope refuses to ascribe our evil 
 passions to the abuse of that freedom of will which is inseparable 
 from the idea of a moral being. He retains the doctrine laid down 
 in his first epistle, and involved in his ruling-passion hypothesis, that 
 our evil passions are the immediate gift of God. " Heaven applies " 
 what Pope calls " happy frailties to all ranks, fear to statesmen, 
 rashness to commanders, and presumption to kings." 3 " Pride is 
 bestowed on all, a common friend," 4 which overthrows his theory 
 that the ruling is our only passion, and pride incompatible with 
 avarice, sloth, &c. The blessing he imputes to pride is that it takes 
 possession of the " vacuities of sense," and prevents self-knowledge. 5 
 " The proper study of mankind is man," but the desirable effect of 
 the study is that man should be self- deceived, that he should be 
 soothed into complacency by ignorance of his individual defects, and 
 by a conceited dream of imaginary excellence. The " bubble joy " is 
 ordained by Providence " to laugh in the cup of folly," that folly 
 may be cheered in its career, and fast as " one prospect is lost" may 
 be lured on by " another." 6 The poet had already furnished an 
 illustration of his doctrine, in the consolatory fact that " the sot " 
 fancies himself "a hero!" 7 "Pleasure," says Pope, is "our 
 greatest evil or our greatest good," and these were among his good 
 pleasures, the contrivances of a beneficent Deity for the comfort 
 and encouragement of vice and folly. Bolingbroke was better in- 
 formed. " The man," he says, " who neglects the duties of natural 
 religion, and the obligations of morality, acts against his nature, and 
 
 1 Epist. ii. ver. 238. 2 Argument of Epist. ii. 
 
 3 Epist. ii. ver. 241-4. 4 Epist. ii. ver. 272. 
 
 5 Epist. ii. ver. 286-7. 8 Epist. ii. ver. 288. 
 ^ Kpist. ii. ver. 268.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 311 
 
 lives in open defiance to the author of it. God declares for one order 
 of things, he for another. God blends together the duty and in- 
 terest of his creature; his creature separates them, despises the 
 duty, and proposes to himself another interest." l 
 
 Pope is not satisfied with applauding moral imperfections. He~ 
 degrades and ridicules religious aspirations. Every period, he says, 
 of life is provided with " some fit passion," 2 and as a " rattle, by 
 nature's kindly law," is the " plaything " of the " child," so " beads 
 and prayer-books are the toys of age." The new toy, like the old, 
 is but a " bauble," which "pleases," as the rattle had done before, 
 till " tired " of the game we " sleep, and life's poor play is over." 3 
 The whole is an idle entertainment arranged by the Deity, who has 
 "usefully distributed" the "fit" and frivolous passions which 
 amuse our hollow existence. The worst writer has never given a 
 more debased description of the moral government of God, and of 
 the nature and ends of rational man. Ignorant of our Creator, pre- 
 sumptuous when we dare to study him, involved in a whirl of end- 
 less error when we study ourselves, the victims of a pre-ordained 
 and irresistible passion, prayer is but a beguiling " toy," and not 
 the reasonable, elevated language of belief, trust, and repentance. 
 The goal of morality is the discovery that " life is a poor play," a 
 paltry mimic scene, which leaves us only this barren consolation 
 that though we, the actors, are " fools," " God," who has cast our 
 empty part for us, " is wise." 4 The wisdom is not apparent in 
 Pope's deplorable travestie of man's moral nature. Happily, true 
 morality teaches that life is a grand school in which, knowing the 
 adorable perfections of God, we learn to imitate his goodness. The 
 moral man is occupied with noble realities, and not with mimic 
 shows. He fights against destroying passions, struggles to conform 
 to immutable verities, and finds, amid many bitter failures, that 
 human weakness and littleness can continuously approximate to the 
 divine exemplar. The life, which seemed to Pope a " poor play," is 
 to the moral and religious man a mighty privilege, an awful respon- 
 sibility, a sublime preparation, the prelude to a holy and happy 
 eternity. 
 
 The third epistle treats " of the nature and state of man with 
 respect to society." The details of our duty to our neighbour were 
 kept for the portion of the Essay which was never written. In the 
 present epistle Pope discusses the general relation of man to man, or 
 the foundation of society and government. A third of his disserta- 
 tion is a renewal of the argument in the previous epistles that all 
 things have a mutual dependence, that every creature is made both 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 154. 
 
 8 Epist. ii. ver. 273. 
 
 3 Epist. ii. ver. 275-282. 
 
 * Epist ii. ver. 293-4.
 
 812 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 for others and for itself. This desultory introduction is succeeded 
 by the remark that " self-love and social love began with the state 
 of nature," l which is an allusion to the argument of Hobbes, much 
 canvassed in Pope's day, that " the state of nature was a state of 
 war." Pope and Hobbes agreed that human motives were entirely 
 selfish. They differed in their opinion of the direction which the 
 selfishness took. Hobbes contended that each would desire all things 
 for himself, and would endeavour to despoil his neighbour ; Pope, 
 that self-love would seek its gratification in social love. But the 
 poet says and unsays, and is soon involved in a labyrinth of incon- 
 sistencies. He tells us that in the patriarchal period, " before the 
 name of king was known," 2 " man, like his Maker, saw that all was 
 right; " "trod to virtue in the paths of pleasure; " and recognised 
 no " allegiance " or " policy " except " love." 3 A few lines earlier 
 he asserted that in the same patriarchal period, before monarchy was 
 known, and when all was love and virtue, some states were com- 
 pelled to join others through " fear ; " and " foes," tempted by trees 
 laden with fruit, went forth " to ravish " the orchards of their neigh- 
 bours. And when the robbers desisted from their intended spolia- 
 tion, it was not out of love or compassion, but only because they 
 were persuaded by the proprietors that " commerce " would prove as 
 profitable as " war." 4 
 
 Both these clashing theories are espoused by Pope with equal con- 
 fidence, but the greatest prominence is given to the theory that social 
 love was perfect in the patriarchal times. The whole of the sentient 
 world was included in the happy brotherhood. The human race were 
 the companions of the beasts, and walked, fed, and slept with them. 
 The disastrous circumstance which broke up the reign of universal 
 love was the craving of man for animal food. He yielded to the 
 temptation to eat flesh, and from a meek, was changed into a pug- 
 nacious, sanguinary creature. The inflammatory diet generated the 
 " fury passions," till then unknown, and "turned man on man." 5 
 "Force" was now employed to make "conquests," and war and 
 rapine were introduced. 6 Pope once more lapses into his habitual 
 contradictions. He represents the patriarchs as teaching their 
 families to " draw monsters from the abyss," and " fetch the 
 eagle to the ground" during the innocent era when the lives 
 of beasts were held sacred. 7 He has thus adopted two opposite 
 versions of the patriarchal treatment of the animal creation, and 
 the later version, which teaches that the slaughter of animals was 
 prevalent under the reign of love and virtue, is inconsistent with hia 
 
 1 Epist. iii. ver. 149. 2 Epist. iii. ver. 209. 
 
 3 Epist. iii. ver. 232-40. * Epist. iii. ver. 201-6. 
 
 s Epist. iii. ver. 149-168. Epist. iii. ver. 245. 
 7 Ettist. iii. ver. 221.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 313 
 
 genealogy of the " fury passions." lie has likewise two opposite 
 opinions on the destruction of brutes, the one, that to take their 
 lives was murder ; the other, that the art of killing them was among 
 the laudable discoveries which entitled the patriarchs to be esteemed 
 " a second Providence" by their children. 1 Pope has not done with 
 his contradictions. " It might, perhaps," he says in his first epistle, 
 " appear better for us that all were harmony and virtue, and that 
 never passion discomposed the mind." " But all," he replies, "sub- 
 sists by elemental strife, and passions are the elements of life," which 
 he urges to show the necessity for the " fierce ambition" of Caesar, 
 and the misdeeds of Borgia and Catiline. 2 In the third epistle we 
 are told that "the virtue and harmony" actually lasted for many 
 generations, that the strife of bad passions was not in the slightest 
 degree requisite for sustaining the system established on earth, and 
 that the aggressive vices of Cfesars, Catilines, and Borgias were only 
 the pernici ;us consequence of eating meat. 
 
 The hypothesis is puerile, that force, conquest, and rapine ori- 
 ginated in a meat diet. Equally puerile is the theory that the arts 
 of government, navigation, agriculture, and manufactures were 
 copied from animals. 3 Man is specially distinguished by his inven- 
 tive capacity. Through this gift the arts and sciences are con- 
 tinuously progressive, and there is no plausibility in the supposition 
 that his characteristic power was originally in abeyance. The gra- 
 tuitous fancy that the arts of human civilisation were acquired from 
 the brutes, could not be supported by less appropriate examples. 
 Mankind are said by Pope to have been pre-eminently social, and he 
 would have us believe that neither sociality nor convenience could 
 teach them to construct their dwellings in proximity, till "reason 
 late " suggested to them the reflection, that some birds, such as 
 rooks, built their nests in clusters. 4 He acknowledges that a com- 
 munity of families perceived it would be for their interest to have a 
 single ruler ; but the principle that the subjects under a monarchy 
 should retain their right to their houses and property, was discovered 
 by observing that every bee in a hive had its separate cell, and sepa- 
 rate honey, 6 which was a fiction of some unobservant naturalist, who 
 credited bees with our usages. From the silk-worm we learn to 
 " weave," and from the mole to " plough," notwithstanding that the 
 silk-worm only spins silk, and never weaves it, and that the sub- 
 terranean scratchings of the mole have no resemblance to our con- 
 trivance, the plough. The remaining instances cited by Pope are just 
 as absurd. He strung together fragments of ancient fables, which, 
 in a modern copy, are neither poetry nor philosophy. 
 
 Epist. iii. ver. 154, 217. a Epist. i. ver. 165-170. 
 
 3 Epist. iii. ver. 169-198. * Epist. iii. ver. 179-182. 
 
 5 Epist. iii. ver. 153-188, 210.
 
 3H AN ESSAY ON MAN, 
 
 When families spread, patriarchal government is said by Pope to 
 have boon invariably merged in monarchical. He makes no mention 
 of another elementary system which prevailed among the ancient 
 Germans, and which was too natural to have been unfrequent. The 
 tribe was composed of contiguous families, or clans, each of which 
 had its separate territory. The head of every clan was ruler within 
 his own domain, and the affairs which concerned the entire tribe 
 were managed by a general assembly of the heads of clans. Under 
 this arrangement the representative of the clan preserved his patri- 
 archal power, and had an equal voice with his brother chiefs in regu- 
 lating the common interests of the tribe. Pope completed his single 
 genealogical principle of government by a rapid summary of the tran- 
 sitions through which monarchy passed. Conquest led to tyranny. An 
 ambitious priesthood first threatened the despot with spiritual terrors, 
 then went shares with him, and the double yoke of secular and eccle- 
 siastical tyranny was fastened on the necks of mankind. The op- 
 pressed subjects at last rebelled against their rulers, kings were 
 " forced into virtue by self-defence," and the world returned to tho 
 dominant principle of the state of nature, that " self-love and social 
 are the same." These meagre doctrines were derived from Boling- 
 broko, whose political philosophy was hardly more profound than his 
 moral and metaphysical ; but Pope shows, here and there, that ho 
 had read Locke's treatise on Civil Government, and the passages from 
 Hooker which Locke quoted, and with such masters to guide him the 
 flimsiness of his views is without excuse. 
 
 The investigations of Pope conducted him to the final conclusion 
 that " the true end of all government " is unity among mankind, 
 and he prescribes the methods by which harmony is to be preserved 
 both in politics and religion. The panacea which was to cure politi- 
 cal divisions is contained in the couplet, 
 
 For forms of government let fools contest, 
 Whate'er is best administered is best. 1 
 
 Good government, that is, depends on good administration ; the form 
 of government is immaterial, and those who battle for one form 
 in preference to another, are fools. The accusation of folly was 
 thrown back upon the poet, who grew ashamed of his maxim, and in 
 1740 he gave an interpretation to his verses which they cannot be 
 made to bear. " The author of these lines," he said, " was far from 
 meaning that no one form of government is, in itself, better than 
 another (as that mixed or limited monarchy, for example, is not pre- 
 ferable to absolute), but that no form of government, however excel- 
 lent or preferable in itself, can be sufficient to make a people happy 
 unless it be administered with integrity. On tho contrary, the best 
 
 1 Epist. iii. ver. 303.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 315 
 
 sort of government, when the form of it is preserved, and the ad- 
 ministration corrupt, is most dangerous." The concord which was 
 to have been produced by indifference to forms of government, 
 vanishes with the admission that the form is important. The quali- 
 fying remark, that forms are insufficient when their spirit is violated, 
 was a truism denied by no one. A corrupt legislature, a corrupt 
 executive, and corrupt tribunals, would neutralise the benefit of any 
 constitution with which they could subsist. 
 
 Pope retracted his maxim under the pretence of explaining it. 
 His new version showed that he did not yet understand the value of 
 forms of government, or he would not have said that when the ad- 
 ministration is corrupt the best form of government is the most detri- 
 mental to the public. A slight reflection on the History of England, 
 and the nature of man, must have convinced him that a chief virtue 
 of good forms of government is the security they afford for the pre- 
 vention, limitation, and cure of corruption, for the subordination of 
 private selfishness to the common weal. His own epistle would have 
 informed him that when governors have absolute dominion they 
 "drive through just and unjust " to gratify their " ambition, lust, 
 and lucre ; " and when the power is with the governed, they will not 
 suffer their rights to be extensively invaded, but will oblige kings 
 and ministers to " learn justice." 1 There was a stage of feudalism 
 when the territorial, legislative, and judicial functions were centered 
 in the lord of the fief. He taxed and punished his serfs and vassals 
 at pleasure. His covetousness, his cruelty, his passionate caprices, 
 all developed by uncontrolled habit and the spirit of the age, could 
 only be resisted by rebellion, and rebellions he quenched in blood. 
 The sufferings of his people were atrocious. Pope lived under a 
 vastly superior constitution, which he believed was corruptly ad- 
 ministered, and the detriment to the public should have been greater, 
 on his principle, than the despotism of feudal times. The fact was 
 signally the other way. The mediaeval enormities were no longer 
 possible ; person and property were safe, and loyal citizens lived in 
 peace and security. Laws were not always just, religious and civil 
 liberty was incomplete, purity in ministers and legislators was often 
 defective. But there was a limit to corruption, or ministers and 
 legislators would have been indignantly discarded. They were com- 
 pelled in the main to consult the supposed interests of the country, 
 that they might preserve the power to gratify their private aims. 
 Many of the evils which existed kept their ground through remaining 
 imperfections in the constitution. The popular element was too 
 restricted, and the abuses were diminished when the form of govern- 
 ment was improved. 
 
 Pope's receipt for putting an end to political rancour was that 
 
 1 Epist. iii. ver. 269, 279.
 
 316 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 the public should accept his assurance that only fools troubled their 
 heads about forms of government. His remedy for religious discord 
 was that the world should receive his dictum that only bad men 
 could attach importance to religious beliefs : 
 
 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 1 
 
 Since no one, he says, can have a wrong faith whose life is in the 
 right, all who fight for modes of faith must be graceless zealots. 
 Two conclusions are involved in his principle, the first, that religious 
 belief and worship are not any necessary part of a life in the right ; 
 the second, that the mode of faith has not the faintest influence upon 
 moral practice. Without stopping to consider the first point, we 
 have only to glance at the history of Christianity for a decisive refu- 
 tation of the second. Thousands upon thousands of " graceless 
 zealots " contended, at the cost of their lives, for a mode of faith 
 which changed the face of the world. Pope must have argued that 
 the effect would have been equal, nay, superior, if Christian ethics 
 had been divorced from Christian theology. Apostles and martyrs, 
 then martyrs no more, should have said to pagans, " Accept our 
 moral precepts, and it matters not whether you believe that there is 
 one god, or many gods, or no god. It does not signify whether you 
 believe that the divine nature, and divine mission of Jesus Christ, 
 was a truth or a pretence, his resurrection a fact or a fable. It does 
 not even signify whether you believe that there is any resurrection 
 at all, whether you are convinced that there is an everlasting reward 
 for the righteous, or are persuaded that wicked and righteous will 
 both be annihilated. These are only ' modes of faith ' which do not 
 affect morality, and we should be ' graceless zealots ' to insist upon 
 them." Pope produces an additional reason in support of his prin- 
 ciple. " The world," he says, " will disagree in their religious hopes 
 and faith, but charity is the concern of everybody. Everything 
 which thwarts this charity must be false, and all things must be of 
 God which bless or mend mankind." 2 Consequently, Pope's idea of 
 charity was never to struggle for a doctrine which would provoke 
 disagreement ; and whoever roused opposition by warring against 
 ignorance and error, proclaimed himself a false teacher by his very 
 zeal to disseminate the truth. The Christian who exposed polytheism 
 could not be a minister of God, nor could any doctrine " bless and 
 mend " heathens which did not leave their idolatrous superstitions 
 undisturbed. The principle cannot be limited to religion. The 
 world disagree in their conceptions of a "life in the right;" the 
 charity which is "all mankind's concern," would be violated by 
 
 1 Epist, iii. ver. 305. * Epist. Hi. ver. 307310.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 317 
 
 questioning the lax ideas which, abound ; and the moralists who 
 " fight " for a pure system of ethics, must be classed, in turn, with 
 " graceless zealots." The triumph of Pope's system would be the 
 destruction of morality, religion, and charity ; for religion and mo- 
 rality must be dead already when it is acknowledged that zeal for 
 their purity and propagation is a sin, and the check of religion and 
 morality being withdrawn, the charity which remained would be that 
 of the savage and felon. 
 
 Pope set at nought his own maxims. In the name of charity he 
 demanded that men should not contend for their faith, and he de- 
 clined to exercise the charity he enjoined. Everyone with him was 
 a " graceless zealot " who ventured to dissent from his private decree. 
 This decree, which was to bind the rest of the world, was not to bind 
 Bolingbroke and himself. They were both privileged to "fight for 
 modes of faith." Bolingbroke, a scurrilous deist, whose writings are 
 stuffed with frenzied invectives against the religious ' ' faith and 
 hope " of the vast majority of the English people, and who was the 
 true type, in the worst sense, of a " graceless zealot," is lauded by 
 Pope to the skies for his philosophic wisdom. Pope, on his own part, 
 maintained in the Essay a controversial discussion on the origin of 
 evil, and other mysterious topics, which most of the " zealots " he 
 upbraided were content to leave undetermined. He laid down the 
 law with dictatorial self- sufficiency, treated the difficulties of humbler 
 inquirers with scorn, and denounced, in taunting, contumelious lan- 
 guage, the impugners of the government of God. He offered no 
 reason for excepting the deistical "mode of faith" from his law, 
 unless we suppose him to have tacitly relied on his assertion that 
 those who shared his deism were " slaves to no sect, took no private 
 road, but looked through Nature up to Nature's God." 1 The plea 
 avails nothing. All who are honest in their opinions believe that 
 they hold the truth, and that they are not bigoted slaves to private 
 delusions. Few men could urge the claim with less plausibility than 
 Pope. His tenets discredited his pretensions. If he looked up to 
 Nature's God, he, nevertheless, stigmatised those who presumed to 
 study the God they adored. He believed that God infused wicked 
 passions into men, that his physical laws were deteriorated by change, 
 and overruled by chance. 2 He held that the same wicked passions 
 which God poured into the human mind were originally generated 
 by animal food; his theory of morals was licentious and contra- 
 dictory ; his opinions in general incoherent and irreconcileable. He 
 had little cause to boast that he "took no private road" when 
 there probably did not live a second person who would have sub- 
 scribed to his creed. 
 
 The fourth epistle treats of Happiness, and was a supplement 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 331. a Epist. iv. ver. 111115.
 
 318 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 imposed on the poet by Bolingbroke. The professed object was to re- 
 fute the atheist, who maintained that the condition of mankind was 
 not regulated by the rules of justice, and thence inferred that there 
 could be no superintending Providence. The real intention of the 
 " guide, philosopher, and friend" was to deprive divines of the argu- 
 ment for the immortality of the soul which they built upon the want 
 of proportion between men's conduct and happiness. Pope was 
 partly the dupe of Bolingbroke, and partly his accomplice. He may 
 not have seen the full scope of his instructor's lessons, but he knew 
 that they favoured annihilation, and, to please " the master of the 
 poet and the song," the poet forbore to assert the opposite belief. 
 Hia orthodox friends complained of the omission, and Pope was 
 driven to deny that there was any connection between the purpose of 
 his Essay and the doctrine of a future state. After mentioning to 
 Spence that he had omitted the address to our Saviour by the advice 
 of Berkeley, he added, " One of our priests, who are more narrow- 
 minded than yours, made a less sensible objection to the epistle on 
 Happiness. He was very angry that there was nothing said in it of 
 our eternal happiness hereafter, though my subject was expressly to 
 treat only of the state of man here." l He subsequently extended the 
 remark to the entire poem. " Some wonder why I did not take in 
 the fall of man in my Essay, and others how the immortality of the 
 soul came to be omitted. The reason is plain : they both lay out of 
 my subject, which was only to consider man as he is in his present 
 state, not in his past or future." 2 When Pope told Spence that he 
 could not discuss the fall of man in his Essay, because the " past 
 state " of man was foreign to his subject, he had forgotten the con- 
 tents of his third epistle, which treats of primitive man, the age of 
 innocence, and the depravation of mankind through eating meat. 
 When he said that a future state " lay out of his subject," he did not 
 perceive the true bearings of his promise to " vindicate the ways of 
 God to man," 3 nor the force of his own admission that to pronounce 
 upon the fitness of man's nature, to judge " the perfection or imper- 
 fection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what 
 relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its 
 being." 4 This is the language of common sense. Man's condition 
 on earth is adapted to his destiny, which can alone explain and 
 justify his position in the world. The justice and goodness of the 
 Deity wear a totally different aspect according as we discover evidence 
 that life is a discipline for immortality, or a sorrowful transit to 
 annihilation. The first epistle, again, is on the " nature and state 
 of man with respect to the universe ; " and in this relation of man to 
 the universe, the one inquiry which gives importance to the rest, is 
 
 1 Spence, p. 107. 2 Spence, p. 206. 
 
 3 Epist. i. ver. 16. 4 The Design, post, p. 343.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 319 
 
 whether we are to have a share in the eternal system of things, or 
 whether, as the poet says of vegetables, we are mere ' ' bubbles which 
 rise from the sea of matter, break, and return to it." 1 The destiny 
 of man was at the root of Pope's subject, and he could not have 
 thought otherwise unless he had been bent upon accommodating his 
 philosophy to the infidelity of Bolingbroke. 
 
 The weak attempt to use language which would fit both infidelity 
 and belief, led to sorry conclusions. Pope allowed that it was God 
 who instilled into man a hope of immortality, with the object of 
 soothing him during his earthly career ; but the poet was careful to 
 employ expressions which implied that the hope might be a delusion. 2 
 He thus vindicated the ways of God by acknowledging that the 
 Creator of the universe might be a deceiver. As the hope, which he 
 confessed to be a promise engraved on the heart of man by the finger 
 of God, might be false, the fears of future punishment imprinted on 
 the conscience could not be more trustworthy. The Christian who 
 died, exulting, at the stake, in the flower of his age, a martyr to 
 conscience, and the miscreant, who went terrified to execution, op- 
 pressed by the sense of his crimes, might both be mocked by the lying 
 voice which spoke through the nature bestowed on them by their 
 Maker. The poet could see no objection to the supposition that the 
 Governor of the world might rule by promises he never intended to 
 keep, and by threats he never intended to enforce. 
 
 The more we look into the nature which the Deity has conferred 
 upon man, the more untenable Pope's alternative appears. All our 
 best aims, the efforts after holiness, love, knowledge, and rational 
 happiness, are a progressive work in which the mind is increasingly 
 fitted for the enjoyment of its aspirations, without once attaining to 
 a satisfactory realisation of its desires. Especially the Deity is 
 hidden from our sight ; and devout souls would be baulked of the 
 primary purpose of their existence unless they were to behold him at 
 last. The legitimate deduction is strengthened when we consider the 
 afflictive methods by which we advance towards the appointed ends 
 of our being. The toils of virtuous men, their pangs of body, their 
 anguish of mind, their sacrifices to duty, their heroic martyrdoms, 
 are irreconcileable with the wisdom and goodness of the Deity if 
 total extinction is the meed of victory to the suffering soldier. The 
 painful education of the soul, which is unintelligible as an abortive 
 preliminary to annihilation, becomes plain as a preparation to a 
 higher state, in which the purified spirit enters upon the enjoyment 
 of its regenerated faculties. Pope disregarded the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of his Essay. The burthen of his argument in his first epistle 
 is that the evils of the world are explained by the hypothesis that 
 
 1 Epist. iii. ver. 19. 
 
 8 Epist. 5. ver. 73, 93-4.
 
 320 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 they have an ulterior end. The moral life of man is the sphere in 
 which we can best perceive the necessity for the principle, and follow 
 its wise operation ; and it was just this instance of a clear exempli- 
 fication of his law which Pope was willing to reject. He admitted 
 that the life of the saint upon earth might require no sequel, that his 
 brief and self-denying history might properly begin and end with his 
 passage from the cradle to the grave, that his implanted hopes and 
 fears might be a deception, the objects proposed to his faculties a vain 
 enticement, his sufferings a fruitless discipline, his conquest over sin 
 a barren triumph, his growth in holiness the signal for resolving him 
 into dust. 
 
 These considerations are not affected by the question of the distri- 
 bution of happiness. Rewards and punishments might be meted out 
 with an even hand, and this life singly would still be quite incompe- 
 tent to fulfil the conditions of man's nature. But the pretext of 
 Bolingbroke is itself unfounded, and he yielded to the exigencies of 
 his infidelity when he maintained that the world had never furnished 
 examples of unequal happiness which could call for future redress. 
 Pope's efforts to prove the paradox are a continuous series of contra- 
 dictions, sophistries, and misstatements. "Virtue alone," he says, 
 "is happiness below," and "God intends happiness to be equal." 1 
 It follows, from these premises, that Pope did not mean that all the 
 world were equally happy. Happiness he holds to be proportioned 
 to virtue ; the best men are the richest in earthly felicity. The 
 supposition is repugnant to innumerable appearances, and Pope 
 endeavoured to evade them by contending that happiness is not 
 placed in " externals." 2 " Virtue's prize," he says, " is the soul's 
 calm sunshine which nothing can destroy ; " and he justly calls men 
 " weak and foolish" who imagine that a better reward would be " a 
 crown, a coach-and-six, a conqueror's sword," or the gown which is 
 the badge of official dignity. 3 The fallacy is upon the surface. " The 
 soul's calm sunshine" may mean peace of conscience or complete 
 felicity. In the first sense it cannot be "destroyed" by physical 
 torture; in the second sense, physical torture overclouds the " sun- 
 shine " and disturbs the " calm." It is vain to pretend that a 
 virtuous man upon the rack has the same amount of mental ease as 
 when he is in bodily comfort. "Externals" are one element in 
 human happiness, or the worst persecutions which have desolated the 
 world could not have occasioned the smallest exceptional sufferings 
 to the good. " If pain," says Mackintosh, " were not an evil, cruelty 
 would not be a vice." 4 Pope, in his luxurious retirement at Twick- 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 310. Argument to Epist. iv. 
 
 2 Epist. iv. ver. 66. 
 
 3 Epist. iv. ver. 167172. 
 
 4 Mackintosh, Miscellaneous ^Vorks, ed. 1851, p. 13.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 321 
 
 enham, might exclaim, " Condition, circumstance, is not the thing." 1 
 Ho would have thought differently if he had been the sJave of a 
 brutal master, or had been immured in one of the dungeons called 
 " little-ease," where a prisoner of stout frame and sturdy principles 
 was sometimes maimed in the process of squeezing him into a space 
 too small for his coffin. 
 
 Pope's reason for his opinion is weaker than the opinion itself. 
 "Present ill," he says, "is not a curse, nor present joy a good," 
 since joy and misery depend on our " future views of better or worse," 
 and "the balance of happiness" is kept even while the seemingly 
 fortunate are "placed in fear," and the unfortunate in "hope." 2 
 "Pope's sylphs," remarked Fox to Eogers, " are the prettiest inven- 
 tion in the world. He failed most, I think, in sense ; he seldom 
 knew what he meant to say." 3 Here we have an instance of the 
 failing. His proposition is that present happiness is independent of 
 " externals," and his argument asserts that it is not. If " fortune's 
 gifts " invariably fill the virtuous with " fear," and unfortunate cir- 
 cumstances buoy them up with " hope," if happiness depends exclu- 
 sively on " future views of better," and misery on apprehensions of 
 "worse," it follows that virtue imprisoned and persecuted is " in 
 joy," and when free and prosperous is distressed. " Externals " are 
 not, as Pope pretends, indifferent; he has merely transferred the 
 preponderating weight to the opposite scale. Adversity is a more 
 exhilarating state than prosperity ; the inmate of " little-ease " was 
 happier than his brethren of kindred virtue who were at large. 
 Eewards and punishments should be interchanged. Criminals should 
 be condemned to a life of luxury, and public benefactors should be 
 sent to jail. The feelings Pope ascribed to the human mind are 
 fictitious. Fear of reverses which do not appear to be impending, 
 has little influence in marring enjoyment, and hope alleviates tor- 
 ments without depriving them of their sting. 
 
 The poet proceeds to unfold more particularly " what the happi- 
 ness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution 
 of this world." 4 All the good that God meant for mankind, 
 " all the joys of sense, all the pleasures of reason, lie in three 
 words, health, peace, and competence." 5 The passage was versified 
 from Bolingbroke, who for "health" has "health of body," for 
 "peace" has "tranquillity of mind," and for "competence" has 
 "competency of wealth." 6 Social intercourse and liberty must be 
 added to the list, or "all the joys of sense," and all " the pleasures 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 57. 
 
 2 Epist. iv. ver. 6972. 
 
 3 Recollections by Samuel Rogers, pp. 31, 35. 
 
 4 Argument to Epist. iv. 
 
 5 Epist. iv. ver. 7780. 
 
 6 Bolingbroke's \Yorks, Vol. iv., p. 378. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. Tf
 
 322 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 of reason" are compatible with, solitary confinement. Pope flingb 
 aside his previous doctrines. Four lines earlier every individual who 
 had the misfortune to possess " all the joys of sense" was the slave 
 of fear. Now these accompaniments are pronounced essential to 
 happiness. Lately happiness was independent of externals, and now 
 health of body and competency of wealth are declared to be indis- 
 pensable. Pope's change of front did not strengthen his position. 
 As health, peace, and competence are necessary to happiness they 
 must be constant attendants on worth, or his paradox that happiness 
 is proportioned to virtue falls to the ground. He accordingly affirmed, 
 in a suppressed couplet, that " the blessings were only denied to error, 
 pride, or vice," and the language in the text, to have any pertinency, 
 must bear the same construction. But will virtue secure health ? 
 Yes, replies Pope, for " health consists with, temperance alone," 
 which, for the purpose of his argument, must mean that all the 
 temperate are healthy. Safe from casualties, infection, and every 
 other disorder, they bear about with them a charmed life, and die at 
 last in a good old age. The poet passes over " competence," and 
 in a subsequent part of his epistle allows that "virtue sometimes 
 starves." l 
 
 He had no sooner resolved happiness into " health, peace, and 
 competence," and claimed them for virtue, than he admits that vice 
 maybe "blessed" and virtue "cursed," or afflicted. A fresh as- 
 sumption is introduced to restore the balance. " Contempt," he 
 says, dogs " vice ;" "compassion" attends upon "virtue." 2 The 
 new powers are not more competent to the task assigned them than 
 the hope and fear he had invoked before. Men who are not truly 
 virtuous, and yet not infamous for vice, have frequently troops of 
 friends, and meet with none of the contempt which is to bring down 
 their happiness to the standard of their worth. Virtue, on the other 
 hand, instead of rousing the compassion of those who could protect it, 
 has, in numberless instances, provoked persecution, bonds, and death. 
 Where the virtue is not the cause of the misery the sufferers are 
 often not in contact with the compassion, or the sympathy is far 
 from being an equivalent for the sorrow. Heaping fallacy upon 
 fallacy Pope falls back upon the plea that " virtue disdains the ad- 
 vantages of prosperous vice." s Disdains the vicious means but con- 
 stantly longs for the prosperous end. The martyr to conscience 
 when shut up in " little-ease " was not indifferent to liberty. Hia 
 compressed body, his cramped limbs, the deprivation of light, fresh 
 air, books, and friends were horrible torture. There could be no 
 stronger proof that happiness was not proportioned to virtue than 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 149. 3 Epist. iv. ver. 8T. 
 
 * Epiat. iv. ver. 89.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 323 
 
 that his " disdain of vice " should have compelled him to accept the 
 alternative of a dungeon. 
 
 Hitherto Pope has argued that our virtue is the measure of our 
 happiness. He next descends to the subsidiary proposition that " no 
 man is unhappy through virtue," which means that the disasters of 
 the virtuous are never the consequences of their virtue ; they are the 
 " ills and accidents that chance to all." l The proposition contains 
 two assertions, the first that virtue never brings upon us " ills and 
 accidents," the second that it cannot protect us from them. Under 
 the first head Pope points to the heroes who perished fighting for 
 their country, and tells us that they did not meet their fate from 
 " virtue," but from " contempt of life." 2 The martyrs to conscience 
 may be reckoned by hundreds of thousands, and Pope would have us 
 understand that none of them braved death in obedience to duty ; 
 they were simply weary of existence. He would deprive humanity 
 of its noblest triumphs that virtue may be absolved from its mani- 
 fest effects. He glides lightly over the absurd pretence that virtue 
 has never entailed suffering, and dwells upon the second half of his 
 proposition, his admission that virtuous and wicked are equally 
 exposed to " ills and accidents." Good and bad men, he says, are 
 alike subjected to the laws of nature, and God will not "reverse 
 these laws for his favourites." A falling wall crushes passengers 
 without regard to virtue or vice ; 3 blind forces take no cognisance 
 of morality. The doctrine is inadmissible ; the laws of nature can- 
 not supersede the providence of God. Man's welfare and very exist- 
 ence are at the mercy of many human and material agencies which 
 man is unable to anticipate or control. The Almighty preserves a 
 glorious order in his physical laws, and it is incredible that he should 
 permit a chaos in the highest department of our globe. He would 
 not guard against irregularities in the action of insensate matter, 
 and allow good men to be the sport of the endless hazards of life. 
 The conclusions of reason are confirmed by revelation. "Are not 
 two sparrows," says our Lord, " sold for a farthing, and one of them 
 shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very 
 hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are 
 of more value than many sparrows." 4 He who sees from the begin- 
 ning the entire chain of causes and effects, can devise laws which 
 will provide for particular cases without any subsequent interference. 
 Or a man may be protected from a falling wall by a sudden impulse 
 to his mind whereby he may forget to go, or have a motive to 
 loiter, or to hasten forward, or to take another road. 5 Or there 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 98. 
 
 2 Epist. iv. ver. 99102. 
 
 3 Epist. iv. ver. 98, 121130. 
 * Matt, x. 2931. 
 
 5 Wollaeton, Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed., p. 192. 
 
 T 2
 
 824 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 may be a temporary interference with mechanical laws ; or the Al- 
 mighty may use methods inconceivable by us. Not that his super- 
 intendence implies that his servants are safe from any of the ordinary 
 operations of natural laws. Habitually to exempt the good would 
 be to abolish prudence in their dealings with physical forces, and to 
 engender presumption in the region of morals. The insecurity which 
 keeps virtue vigilant and faithful, the hardy discipline which draws 
 out ennobling energies, and corrects baser properties, would be turned 
 to carelessness and corruption. The interests of the virtuous will 
 not permit that they should be constant and conspicuous exceptions 
 to the common lot. But the "ills and accidents " never strike at 
 random. The human race is not with the Deity an abstract con- 
 ception. He beholds every creature in its individuality, and shields 
 and chastens each by the rules of a wisdom which can never be 
 s\ispended. The idea we frame of his attributes negatives the hypo- 
 thesis of Pope. God cannot fail to establish a harmony between phy- 
 sical laws, and the dispensation which befits each particular man. 
 
 In admitting that calamities befall mankind without reference to 
 virtue and vice, Pope was drawn into statements which completely 
 upset his principle that happiness is always proportioned to 
 desert. He asks if virtue " made Digby, the son, expire, 
 why his father lives full of days and honour ? " l He might be 
 asked in turn, why, if good men in this life have an equal share 
 of happiness, the father should have lived fifty years longer than 
 the son ? For happiness to be equal there must be an equality of 
 duration as well as of degree. He grants that " virtue sometimes 
 starves," and thinks it enough to answer, in the face of historical 
 facts, that virtue does not occasion the destitution. "Bread," he 
 says, " is the price of toil, not of virtue, and the good man may be 
 weak, be indolent." 2 Indolence is a vice, and irrelevant to the 
 discussion. The weakness may be a misfortune, and Lazarus is not 
 less deserving because he is covered with sores. Or the " good 
 man" may be neither " indolent" nor "weak," and yet be starved, 
 which happened to thousands of protestants who were driven from 
 their homos and employments by the callous bigotry of Louis XIV. 
 Whatever the cause of the starvation, the balance of happiness is 
 disturbed, and Pope, to mask the flaw in his argument, added that 
 the " claim" of starving virtue was not " to plenty, but content." 3 
 Now contentment is of two kinds. There is a contentment of happi- 
 ness which is incompatible with excessive suffering, and a content- 
 ment of resignation which acquiesces in the severest dispensations 
 of Providence. St. Paul said in the latter sense, " I have learned 
 in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content," 4 which does not 
 
 1 Kpist. iv. ver. 105. a Epist. iv. ver. 149 155. 
 
 3 Epist. iv. ver. 15d. 4 Philipp. \v. 11.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 325 
 
 prevent his speaking repeatedly of the afflictions lie endured, or keep 
 him from asserting that "no chastening for the present seemeth to 
 be joyous, but grievous." 1 Of this type is the contentment of 
 starving virtue, a patient submission to trial, and not the content- 
 ment which is required to produce equality of happiness. Human 
 nature has been denied the capacity for neutralising all degrees of 
 anguish. Pope straightway slides off into the subterfuge that the 
 craving for bread is "a demand for riches." He inveighs against 
 the rapacious desire, and insists that nothing will satisfy man. 2 
 He undertook to prove that happiness is proportioned to virtue, and 
 finding his text too hard for him he substitutes an invective against 
 insane discontent. 
 
 A few undoubted truths are appended to the main argument of 
 Pope. He says that only a fool will think a man with health, and 
 a clear conscience, hated by Grod because he lacks a thousand a 
 year. 3 He tells us that genuine honour and shame are dependent 
 on conduct, and not on high or low station, 4 and that titles, power, 
 fame, etc., are insufficient to make bad men happy. 8 He comes to 
 the instance of " superior parts," and the inconsistency recommences. 
 He supposes the great intellect to be combined with learning, wisdom, 
 and patriotic virtue. 6 Out of compliment to his " guide, philosopher, 
 and friend," Pope takes Bolingbroke for the typical example of this 
 imposing union of lofty qualities. In him we are to behold the 
 universal fate of generous, philanthropic wisdom. He " is con- 
 demned to drudge in business or in arts " without any one to 
 "second" him, or "judge" him rightly. He aspires "to teach 
 truths, and save a sinking land ; few understand, all fear, and none 
 aid him." When he "drudged in arts" the world received coldly 
 his wordy rhetoric. When he " drudged in business " the country 
 only saw in him an intriguer for power. Novel ideas in politics, 
 signal originality in literature, often work their way slowly. Genius 
 and patriotism have faith in their conceptions, and are not daunted 
 by opposition. The public spirit which has to battle at all can 
 seldom be placed under softer conditions than Bolingbroke enjoyed. 
 He had every luxury of a civilised age ; he had health and energy ; 
 he had unbroken leisure ; he had books at will ; he had freedom to 
 eay and write what he pleased ; he was safe from every inj ury to 
 person and property. Virtuous patriotism, sitting at ease in a de- 
 lightful library, and surrounded by blessings, might bo expected to 
 exert itself with cheerful hope to enlighten a tasteless and misguided 
 nation. Quite the reverse. "Painful pre-eminence!" exclaims 
 Pope, and he declares that Bolingbroke by being " above life's 
 
 1 Heb. xii. 11. 5 Epist. iv. ver. 157166. 
 
 8 Epist. iv. ver. 189192. 4 Epist. iv. ver. 193204. 
 
 8 Epist. iv. ver. 205258. 6 Epist, iv. ver. 259268.
 
 326 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 weakness" is above "its comforts too." The moral is that wisdom 
 is not to be desired; the pain exceeds the benefit. Happiness is 
 proportioned to virtue under the worst conditions of brutal persecu- 
 tion, and yet wise and virtuous patriots, in the midst of the comforts 
 of life, are deprived of every comfort in life by the lamentable cir- 
 cumstance that they are " above life's weakness." 
 
 There are many more contradictions in Pope's epistle, which is a 
 tissue of inconsistency and incoherence. He might have maintained 
 a less absolute doctrine with complete success. He might have 
 shown that the inequalities are less than they appear on a superficial 
 view. He might have pointed out that ultimate happiness can only 
 arise from the conduct which puts us at peace with ourselves and 
 with God. He might have dwelt on the satisfaction which lifts up 
 the mind when conscience asserts its majesty, and refuses to make 
 the least concession to suffering. The remaining disproportion be- 
 tween happiness and virtue is vindicated by the moral blessing of 
 affliction, which by fitting man for happiness prepares the way for 
 perfect harmony between happiness and virtue in a blessed immor- 
 tality. Trials, in the magnificent phrase of Shakespeare, are " our 
 outward consciences." l The pains of the last sickness which pre- 
 cedes death are the consistent termination to the scheme. Good men 
 die as they have lived, in more or less suffering, that the work of life 
 may be completed, that their better qualities may be developed and 
 strengthened, the remains of evil laid bare and extinguished. And 
 though all men are not submitted to the same tests either in their 
 lives or their deaths, the endless variety in their dispositions accounts 
 for the diversity in their circumstances. The Almighty Being who 
 alone knows the secrets of the heart adapts the "outward con- 
 science " to the inward. 
 
 There is a weightier question than the distribution of happiness. 
 Of the innumerable discussions on the theory of morals by far the 
 most important is whether the end we propose to ourselves should be 
 self-interest or virtue. Pope adopted the selfish system without 
 eserve. The two principles, he says, which govern man, " self- 
 love and reason, aspire to one end, pleasure," and since their end is 
 the same, he accused the schoolmen of being " at war about a name " 
 when they refused to confound them. 2 He apparently had not a 
 suspicion that schoolmen, or any one else, had ever imagined that 
 reason could reveal another end to man than interest well under- 
 stood. He reverts to his selfish system in the epistle on Happiness, 
 and proclaims in the first line that " happiness is our being's end and 
 aim." Virtue, the love of God and man, are only means to promote 
 our individual happiness, and selfishness is, and ought to be, the 
 supreme end of every creature. The doctrine, as we have seen, 
 
 1 Henry V., Act iv., Sc. 1. 2 Epist. ii. ver. 85.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 827 
 
 when discussing Pope's second epistle, contradicts the universal 
 human conscience. The theoretical falsehood is fruitful in disastrous 
 results. The moral law, the law of good in itself, is greater than the 
 individual, and he bows down before its inviolable sanctity, its abso- 
 lute right to dominion. He is raised above personal consequences. 
 He knows that the universal law of good embraces his good, and the 
 reflection helps to sustain him in his trials, but his main end is to 
 fulfil a law which is superior to his individual happiness, and which 
 binds him by its intrinsic sacredness, and independent authority. 
 He dares not overrule it by his passing inclinations, and endures all 
 things rather than be guilty of a sacrilegious encroachment on its 
 integrity. The man, on the contrary, whose one end is happiness, 
 and who considers virtue to be simply the means for compassing the 
 end, has nothing outside himself which is of the least importance to 
 him, except in so far as it can be made subservient to his personal 
 felicity. Creator and creation are only viewed as ministers to his 
 unmitigated selfishness. Governed by this single self-indulgent 
 idea, and deriving no strength from the separate supremacy of the 
 moral law, he is ill prepared for a life of sacrifice. He cannot forego 
 in the present the happiness which he conceives to be the sole end ot 
 his being, and he prefers immediate ease to interest well-understood. 
 The system of Pope was the doctrine of Epicurus. He, too, taught 
 that pleasure was " the end and aim" of man, and virtue the only 
 effectual means. His followers soon disregarded the means in their 
 impatience to reach the end, and epicureanism became synonymous 
 with grovelling sensuality. In vain we oppose the selfishness of a 
 long-sighted prudence to the selfishness of the hour. " Prudence." 
 as Kant says, only " counsels," and the steady ascendency over 
 temptation is reserved for the virtue which " commands." Common 
 language proclaims the intuitive principle of the mind. No man, 
 not lost to shame, could venture to say, " I must tell truth because 
 it is prudent ; " he says, " I must be truthful because it is 
 right." 
 
 Pope had not the remotest idea that he was an epicurean. He 
 believed that his system of ethics, with happiness for an end and 
 virtue for the means, was new to philosophy, and he did not hesitate 
 to state that all " the learned" who preceded him had been " blind." 1 
 He exemplified his assertion by the instance of the epicureans and 
 stoics. The stoics reversed the terms of the epicurean formula ; 
 virtue alone was their end, and happiness, the spontaneous, unsought 
 consequence. The real characteristics of these great rival schools were 
 unknown to Pope. He described them by false contrasts, and igno- 
 rantly charged them with the folly of defining " happiness to be 
 happiness." Greatest wonder of all, he alleged against the epicurean 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 19.
 
 328 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 doctrine, which, was his own, that it "sunk men to beasts." ' He 
 would naturally expound the systems he understood the best, and 
 hence we may estimate the extent of his qualifications for dismissing 
 every previous ethical theory with compendious contempt. A sen- 
 tence from Boliugbroke bears witness to the scanty knowledge of 
 Pope, and discloses the source of his scorn. " I think," writes Boling- 
 broke, " you are not extremely conversant in the works of Plato, and 
 you may suspect therefore that I aggravate the impertinence of his 
 doctrines." The impertinent doctrines were a portion of the divine 
 platonic ethics, and Pope, uninstructed in the most famous systems 
 of the ancients, did but reiterate the superficial contempt of his 
 master. 
 
 In place of the " mad opinions " of learned moralists, Pope enjoins 
 us to " take nature's path," 3 little dreaming that he was repeating 
 the maxim of the sects he despised. " The perfection of man," says 
 Diogenes Laertius, quoting Zeno, the founder of the stoic school, " is 
 to follow nature, and that is to live virtuously, for nature leads us to 
 that." All the moralists accepted nature for their oracle ; but the 
 scholars gave different versions of her responses. Pope in his second 
 epistle insisted that man was too weak to interpret them. A Newton, 
 he said, who could "climb from art to art" would inevitably be 
 baffled in morals, for whatever " reason wove, passion would undo." 4 
 In the fourth epistle the difficulty has vanished ; ' ' all states can 
 reach, all heads conceive " happiness, and its parent morality ; 
 "there needs but thinking right, and meaning well." 6 To think 
 rightly and do rightly, which was before impossible for even the 
 lords of human kind, is declared to be within easy reach of all the 
 world. Nature spoke with two voices to Pope, and what one voice 
 affirmed the other denied. 
 
 Able writers have sometimes ridiculed the precept, ' ' Follow na- 
 ture," which means the laws of human nature, not perceiving that 
 they were the necessary foundation of morals. " The way to be 
 happy," says the philosopher in Easselas, " is to live according to 
 nature, in obedience to that universal, and unalterable law, with 
 which every heart is originally impressed." " Sir," answers the 
 prince, " I doubt not the truth of a position which a man so learned 
 has so confidently advanced. Let me only know what it is to live 
 according to nature." The philosopher replies in unintelligible 
 iargon, and Johnson adds, " The prince soon found that this was 
 one of the sages whom he should understand less as he heard him 
 longer." ' The unreflecting disdain shows poorly by the side of 
 Butler's comment on the maxim. " The ancient moralists," he 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 23, 28. s Bolingbroke's Works, vol. iii. p. 286. 
 
 * Epist. iv. ver. 29. 4 Epist. ii. ver. 3542. 
 
 * Epist. iv. ver. 2934. 6 Basselas, chap. xxii.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 329 
 
 ?:ad, " had some inward feeling or other, which they chose to express 
 iu. this manner, that man is born to virtue, that it consists in follow- 
 ing nature, and that vice is more contrary to this nature than tor- 
 tures or death. They had a perception that injustice was contrary 
 to their nature, and that pain was so also. They observed these 
 two perceptions totally different, not in degree, but in kind, and the 
 reflecting upon each of them, as they thus stood in their nature, 
 wrought a full intuitive conviction that more was due, and of right 
 belonged to one of these inward perceptions than to the other ; that 
 it demanded in all cases to govern such a creature as man." l Apart 
 from revelation we can have no other knowledge of morality than 
 nature affords. Honestly interrogated nature does not put us off 
 with unmeaning ambiguities. As we learn through our appetites 
 that wo are intended to eat and drink, so a higher faculty informs us 
 that we are to govern our appetites, and the whole of our being, by 
 the supreme principles we call duty. Every time we have a con- 
 sciousness that our conduct is right or wrong, every time we condemn 
 or applaud the vice and virtue of our fellow men, every time the law 
 enforces justice and punishes injustice, we confess that duty is in 
 accordance with nature. The precept, "follow nature," is the 
 rational injunction to contemplate virtue in its inner source that 
 we may see it in its purity, and recognise its right to supremacy. 
 If Pope had kept to the precept, and remembered that for parents 
 intentionally to train up children in iniquity is the height of infamy, 
 he would hardly have imagined that " the Deity poured fierce ambi- 
 tion into Caesar's mind." If he had reflected that we condemn follies 
 and vanities, he would not have supposed that they were a provision 
 of the Deity for our comfort. If he had consulted conscience, and 
 noticed that it instructs us to love good in itself as well as our own 
 good, to love God and our neighbour as an end as well as a means, 
 he would not have taught that the motive to virtue was unmingled 
 selfishness. If he had been at the trouble to remark that duty 
 takes in the whole circle of existence, and imposes immutable laws, 
 ho would not have embraced the doctrine that moral government was 
 carried ou by ruling passions which set up different principles of 
 action in different individuals, and in every instance narrow life to 
 an exclusive, and usually vicious propensity. The observation of 
 nature would have saved Pope from these, and many other errors, 
 which were the consequence of his piecing together bits of theories 
 from books without submitting them to the test he recommended to 
 his readers. 
 
 The deepest ethical thinkers have seldom, in all things, *>een faith- 
 ful interpreters of nature. Their errors, often momentous, had a 
 different origin from those of Pope. Few persons trace back moral 
 
 1 Butler, Sermons, Preface, pp. vii., xi.
 
 330 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 impressions to the principles from which they flow. They act on the 
 intuitive conceptions which precede philosophy, and which, not being 
 pared and twisted to fit a theory, are as comprehensive as nature. 
 The philosopher classifies the implanted propensities and convictions, 
 describes them with precision, and brings them into stronger relief. 
 But what he gains in distinctness he is apt to lose in breadth ; he 
 curtails while he elucidates. His ambition is to discover simplicity 
 in complexity, unity in variety, and he dismembers nature that he 
 may reduce the phenomena within the limits of a general law. Zeno 
 and Epicurus are examples of the tendency. They agreed that man 
 had properly only a single end to which his whole being should be 
 directed. The epicureans said that this end, or chief good, was 
 pleasure, which depends on personal feeling; the stoic said it was 
 virtue, the submission to the universal rule of right, which is above 
 personal preferences. An ordinary mortal who does not philosophise, 
 and has no care to force nature into the mould of an hypothesis, 
 never questions that he is constituted for the double end of happiness 
 and virtue. The two often clash, and he is not perplexed by the 
 impossibility of satisfying both. When one must yield he knows 
 that virtue is paramount, and he usually believes that the present 
 sacrifice of happiness to virtue will be succeeded by a kingdom in 
 which they will be finally reconciled. The partial doctrine set up by 
 the stoic kept virtue on her high, heroic throne ; the doctrine of the 
 epicurean degraded her into the slave of pleasure : the first school 
 ennobled, the second debased human nature, but both mutilated it. 
 Each system came into contact with facts which compelled its ad- 
 herents to be inconsistent or absurd, and enlightened disciples pre- 
 ferred inconsistency to absurdity. This passion for general laws at 
 the expense of truth is conspicuous throughout the whole history of 
 philosophy. The profoundest investigators have been prone to select 
 single aspects of many-sided nature, and make the part the law for 
 the whole. The false generalisation impels the theorist to suppress 
 and distort refractory phenomena, or he endeavours to hide under 
 transparent evasions his deviations from his hypothesis, or he lapses 
 into contradictions from which he turns away his eyes, not wishing 
 to perceive them. The spurious unity, which is the infirmity of 
 philosophers, was not the vice of Pope. He adopted, on the con- 
 trary, a chaos of principles which were mutually destructive. He 
 accepted contributions from any school, because he understood none. 
 He was so unversed in philosophy that in the account which he drew 
 up of his " Design," he asserted that the science of human nature 
 was reduced to " a few clear points," and that the " disputes" were 
 all on the details. His "design" was to keep to the "few clear 
 points " which alone, in his opinion, were of much importance to 
 mankind. They were principally the origin of evil, the theory of 
 morals, the origin of government and society. The " clear points "
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 331 
 
 had produced whole libraries of controversy, the "disputes" had 
 descended in full vigour to Pope's day, and they have continued 
 undiminished on to ours. His own solutions of the problems were 
 contradictory, and he was hopelessly at war with himself on the very 
 topics for which he claimed universal peace. He did not depart in 
 his " Design " from his habit of self-contradiction, and the moment 
 he had stated that there were no disputes on the general principles, 
 he took credit for ' ' steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seem- 
 ingly opposite." He at the same time arrogated for his " system of 
 ethics" the special "merit" that it was "not inconsistent." He 
 had just enough knowledge to seduce him into an unconscious 
 exposure of his ignorance. His delusions are intelligible when we 
 learn the nature of his philosophical training. " I write to you, and 
 for you," says Bolingbroke, "and you would think yourself little 
 obliged to me if I took the pains of explaining in prose what you 
 would not think it necessary to explain in verse, and in the character 
 of a poetical philosopher who may dwell in generalities." * Boling- 
 broke wrote to instruct Pope, and Pope only cared to learn the 
 " generalities " he was to put into verse. He never acquired the 
 elements of philosophy ; he had merely been furnished with materials 
 for a philosophical poem. The few ideas he gleaned at random from 
 other sources served no better end than to increase the confusion. 
 He said "he chose verse" because it was more concise and impres- 
 sive than prose. 2 The alleged choice was necessity. His meagre 
 knowledge would have been ludicrous in a formal treatise. The 
 ceremonious robe of verse was essential to conceal the deformed and 
 diminutive body. 
 
 De Quincey thought that the " formal exposure of Pope's hollow- 
 heartedness" would be most profitably accomplished by laying open 
 thoroughly the ethical argument of the Essay on Man. He declined 
 the task as too long and polemical for an article in a journal, but he 
 stated his views in general terms. He said that the poem " sinned 
 chiefly by want of central principle, and by want therefore of all 
 coherency amongst the separate thoughts." He objects that the 
 sense will vary with the nature of the connecting links we supply, 
 and he ascribes the opposite interpretations of Crousaz and "War- 
 burton to the ambiguity which leaves readers the choice of " a loyal 
 or treasonable meaning." 3 He imputes the fault to the impossibility 
 of completing the argument without spoiling the poetry, and to the 
 superficial nature of Pope's studies, " if study we can call a style of 
 reading so desultory as his." This vagrant habit of mind he attri- 
 butes to " luxurious indolence." " The poet," he says, " fastidiously 
 retreated from all that threatened labour. He fluttered among the 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iv. p. 430. 
 
 2 The Design. See post, p. 344. 
 
 3 De Quincey, Works, ed. 1863, vol. viii. pp. 21, 51 ; xii. pp. 25, 33.
 
 332 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 flower-beds of literature or philosophy far more in the character of a 
 libertine butterfly for casual enjoyment, than of a hard-working bee 
 pursuing a premeditated purpose." J Indolence cannot justly be 
 charged upon Pope. He plodded at his art with the steadiness of a 
 man who follows a regular calling. 2 Hia ignorance of philosophy, 
 his want of due preparation for his Essay, arose from defects of 
 understanding, and not from a moral infirmity of will. He was 
 self-educated, and had never penetrated in his youth by regular and 
 sustained approaches to the heart of any difficult science. He 
 skimmed literature to pick up sentiments which could be versified, 
 and to learn attractive forms of composition. His mind took the set 
 of his early habits, and he appears in manhood to have had no con- 
 ception of philosophical thought, no glimmer of the combination of 
 philosophical details into an integral design. Hia works abound in 
 isolated ideas which are marked by sound sense, and side by side 
 with them are many idle or extravagant notions, and glaring con- 
 tradictions. The pieces were not struck off at a heat. They were 
 built up slowly, composed patiently, and corrected repeatedly. He 
 never spared pains, and the want of reflection his works discover was 
 the fault of an intellect unconscious of its weaknesses. To him the 
 disjointed bits of philosophy presented no gaps. He says in his 
 "Design" that the system "was short yet not imperfect." He 
 believed that the conciseness added to " the force as well as grace of 
 his arguments," and that he had nowhere " sacrificed perspicuity 
 to ornament, wandered from precision, or broken the chain of the 
 reasoning." His love of fame would have prevented his sending 
 forth knowingly a weak and fragmentary poem. His moral apathy 
 did not therefore consist in the self-indulgent negligence which 
 refuses to put itself to a strain. The moral offence was in another 
 direction, in the ambiguities which were intended to pass off the 
 Essay for anti-christian with infidels, and for Christian with believers, 
 and which resulted in Pope's adoption of the first interpretation 
 under Bolingbroke, and of the second under "Warburton. The de- 
 reliction of principle was worse than De Quincey supposed. He 
 has equally underrated the blots in the philosophy when he ima- 
 gined that Pope erred only by omissions. The "chasms" in his 
 ethics are trifling compared to the radical vice of his doctrines, and 
 the repealed conflict of jarring systems. The " audacious dogmatism 
 and insolent quibbles " 3 of Warburton would not have been needed 
 in expanding an abbreviated argument. He had to distort the ob- 
 vious meaning of Pope in order to produce a semblance of con- 
 sistency, and he has still oftener left the language of the text without 
 
 1 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 44. 
 
 3 Johnson, Lives of the Poets, voL iii. p. 105. 
 
 3 De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. p. 32.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 833 
 
 comment because it was beyond the power of shameless misinterpre- 
 tation to effect an ostensible harmony. 
 
 The judgments on the Essay on Man have been very various. 
 " It appears to me," says Voltaire, " the most beautiful, the most 
 useful, the most sublime didactic poem that has ever been written in 
 any language." He said on another occasion that Pope "carried 
 the torch into the abyss of being, and that the art of poetry, some- 
 times frivolous, and sometimes divine, was in him useful to the 
 human race." l Voltaire had a twofold reason for his admiration. 
 As a hater of Christianity he hailed in the Essay the championship of \f 
 natural religion against revealed, and as an author he delighted in 
 the rhymed philosophy which was the staple of his own prosaic 
 Terse. Marmontel joined in the praise of the poet, but formed a 
 juster estimate of the moralist. " Pope has shown," he said, "how 
 high poetry could soar on the wings of philosophy. But he had 
 adopted a system which presented terrible difficulties, and in reply to 
 the complaints of man on the misery of his condition he usually 
 offers images for proofs, and abuse for reasons." 2 The censure is 
 just. Pope loves to silence objections by vilifying mankind, and 
 calling his adversaries impious, proud, and fools. Dugald Stewart 
 agreed with Voltaire. "The Essay on Man," he says, "is the 
 noblest specimen of philosophical poetry which our language affords ; 
 and, with the exception of a very few passages, contains a valuable 
 summary of all that human reason has been able hitherto to advance 
 in justification of the moral government of God." 3 The " few faulty 
 passages " were subsequently specified by Stewart, and such is the 
 power of sound to withdraw the mind from the sense that this able 
 metaphysician overlooked the fundamental errors of the poem, albeit 
 they contradicted his own ethical views. Hazlitfc differs as much 
 from Stewart as Marmontel did from Voltaire. " The Essay on 
 Man," he tells us, " is not Pope's best work. All that he says, ' the 
 very words and to the self- same tune,' would prove just as well that 
 whatever is is wrong, as that whatever is is right." 4 The remark 
 is but a slight exaggeration of the truth. The logic of assertion, and 
 often of vituperative assertion, in which Pope abounded, is available 
 for every system, and his admission that God is the instigator of 
 evil was a fit foundation for a pessimist philosophy. De Quincey's 
 opinion is the most unfavourable of all. " If the question," he says, 
 "were asked, What ought to have been the best among Pope's 
 poems ? most people would answer, the Essay on Man. If the 
 question were asked, "What is the worst ? all people of judgment 
 would say, the Essay on Man. Whilst yet in its rudiments this 
 
 1 Voltaire, (Euvres, torn. xii. p. 156; xxxvii. p. 260. 
 
 2 Marmontel, Elements de Litterature, Art. Epitre. 
 
 3 Dugald Stewart, Works, ed. Hamilton, vol. vii. p. 133. 
 
 4 Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, ed. 1841, p. 147.
 
 334 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 poem claimed the first place by the promise of its subject ; when 
 finished, by the utter failure of its execution, it fell into the last." 1 
 " Execution " is used by De Quincey in its widest sense, and includes 
 the philosophy of the Essay. This we have endeavoured to estimate, 
 and have now to speak of the poetry. 
 
 " In my mind," says Lord Byron, writing of Pope, " the highest 
 of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects 
 must be moral truth," and he adds that " ethical or didactic poetry 
 requires more mind, more wisdom, more power" than all the " de- 
 scriptions" of natural scenery that were ever penned, " and all the 
 epics that ever were founded upon fields of battle." : To the asser- 
 tion that ethical poets transcended all other poets in genius, Hazlitt 
 answered, that the "mind, wisdom, and power" is displayed in the 
 " philosophic invention," and as this " rests with the first author of 
 a moral truth," or moral theory, a copyist is not great because he 
 gives a metrical form to an ethical common-place. " The decalogue," 
 he says, "as a practical prose composition, or as a body of moral laws 
 and precepts, is of sufficient weight and authority, but we should not 
 regard the putting of this into heroic verse as an effort of the highest 
 poetry." 8 To the assertion that ethical poetry must take precedence 
 of all other poetry, "because moral truth and moral conduct are 
 of such vast and paramount concernment in human life," Hazlitt 
 answered, that " it did not follow that they were the better for being 
 put into rhyme." " This reasoning," he continues, " reminds us of 
 the critic who said that the only poetry he knew of, good for any- 
 thing, was the four lines beginning ' Thirty days hath September,' 
 for that these were really of some use in finding out the number 
 of days in the different months of the year. The rules of arith- 
 metic are important in many respects, but we do not know that they 
 are the fittest subjects of poetry." 4 The reply of Hazlitt is con- 
 clusive. Lord Byron had confounded the importance of facts with 
 their fitness for poetry, the repetition of a truth with the genius 
 which discovers it. He was " in a great passion," says De Quincey , 
 " and wrote up Pope by way of writing down others," the others 
 being Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. 5 He had taken a false 
 measure of his men. They were too strong in their own poetical 
 convictions to be mortified by the absurdities of an intemperate rival. 
 
 The error of Byron was akin to the misconception of the office of 
 didactic poems, which De Quincey exposed in his criticism on Pope's 
 Essay on Man. "As a term of convenience," he says, "didactic 
 may serve to discriminate one class of poetry, but didactic it cannot 
 
 1 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 42. 
 
 2 Life of Byron by Moore, 1 vol. ed. p. 696. 
 
 3 Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, pp. 375, 3778. 
 
 4 Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 374. 
 6 De Quincey, Works, vol. xii. pp. 21, 22.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 335 
 
 be in philosophic rigour without ceasing to be poetry." If the 
 object of Armstrong had been to teach Medicine, of Dyer to pro- 
 duce a manual for shepherds and cloth manufacturers, of Philips 
 to write a treatise for gardeners and makers of cider, he maintains 
 that it would have been idiotcy to begin by putting on the fetters 
 of metre. He remarks that a worse restriction is the necessity 
 of omitting a vast variety of details, and capital sections of 
 the subject, and that in the constant need to forego either 
 poetry or instruction the poet never hesitates to abandon the 
 instruction. The true object, he conceives, of a didactic poem is 
 to bring out the " circumstances of beautiful form, feeling, inci- 
 dent, or any other interest " which lurk in didactic topics. The 
 sentiment which the tutor neglects the poet evolves, and he intro- 
 duces utilitarian knowledge for the sole purpose of eliciting an ele- 
 ment distinct from its bare, prosaic utility. 1 This is the rational 
 theory. In Pope's generation, and for some years afterwards, a 
 different idea was widely prevalent. " The end of the didactic 
 poem," says Marmontel, " is to instruct. It were to be wished that 
 the principles of the most important arts should all be reduced to 
 verse. It is thus that at the birth of letters all useful truths were 
 consigned to memory. To bring back the didactic poem to its primi- 
 tive utility ought to be the object of emulation to the poets of an age 
 of light." 2 The system which Marmontel recommended for an age 
 of light was only fitted for an age of darkness. The utility of 
 a didactic work depends on its lucidity, its precision, and its fullness. 
 The use is defeated if the instruction is fragmentary, incoherent, 
 circuitous, and cumbrous. When men emerge from ignorance, and 
 when knowledge begins to grow systematic and exact, the employ- 
 ment of verse for expounding arts, sciences, philosophy, and history 
 becomes puerile and impotent. The moment they are brought under 
 the dominion of the enlightened understanding the freedom of prose 
 is essential to unfold them with clearness, completeness, and accuracy. 
 The suggestion of Marmontel for restoring didactic poetry to its 
 primitive use was the way to reduce it to imbecility. The events of 
 English history are of greater moment than the cutting off Miss 
 Fermor's curl, and an English history in verse would be " higher 
 poetry" according to Byron, more "useful poetry" according to 
 Marmontel, than the Eape of the Lock. In reality it would not be 
 high or useful, poetry or history, but simply a folly. The didactic 
 poets who had a truer comprehension of the nature of poetry, and 
 who endeavoured to render the rules of an art or science subservient 
 to poetic effect, have seldom succeeded. The inherent, prosaic ele- 
 ment preponderated, and the Arts of Poetry, Criticism, Translating 
 
 1 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. pp. 45 50 ; xii. 297 303. 
 
 2 Marmontel, filSmenta de Literature, Art. Didactique.
 
 336 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Verse, etc. are for the most part dreary compositions which afford as 
 little delight as instruction. 
 
 Bolingbroke had right conceptions of the characteristics of didactic 
 poetry, and he imparted his views to Pope. " Should the poet," he 
 says, " make syllogisms in verse, or pursue a long process of reason- 
 ing in the didactic style, he would he sure to tire his reader on the 
 whole, like Lucretius, though he reasoned hetter than the Roman, 
 and put into some parts of his work the same poetical fire. He 
 must contract, he may shadow, he has a right to omit whatever will 
 not be cast in the poetic mould, and when he cannot instruct he may 
 hope to please. In short, it seems to me, that the business of the 
 philosopher is to dilate, to press, to prove, to convince, and that of 
 the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, 
 to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart." 1 Bolingbroke's 
 theory of poetry was superior to his practical taste. He said that 
 all Pope's writings were pre-eminent for " the happy association of 
 great coolness of judgment with great heat of imagination." " Pope's 
 Essay on Criticism," he says again, " was the work of his childhood 
 almost ; but is such a monument of good sense and poetry as no 
 other, that I know, has raised in his riper years." 2 The man who 
 could discover transcendent poetry in the Essay on Criticism, and 
 great heat of imagination in all Pope's writings, could have had but 
 a faint, diluted perception of the imaginative and poetic. His belief 
 that the ethical philosophy of the Essay on Man could be brought 
 under his law of didactic poetry was a fresh instance of his want of 
 insight into the demands both of poetry and philosophy. A system 
 of philosophy cannot be conveyed in elegant extracts. " Every 
 part," says de Quincey, "depends upon every other part: in such 
 a nexus of truths, to insulate is to annihilate. Severed from each, 
 other the parts lose their support, their coherence, their very mean- 
 ing ; you have no liberty to reject or choose." It was not enough 
 for Pope to detail his system. He had to vindicate, and establish 
 it. " In his theme," continues De Quincey, " everything is polemic ; 
 you move only through dispute, you prosper only by argument and 
 never-ending controversy. There is not positively one capital pro- 
 position or doctrine about man, about his origin, his nature, his 
 relations to God, or his prospects, but must be fought for with 
 energy, watched at every turn with vigilance, and followed into 
 endless mazes, not under the choice of the writer, but under the 
 inexorable dictation of the argument. Here lay the impracticable 
 dilemma for Pope's Essay on Man. To satisfy the demands of the 
 subject was to defeat the objects of poetry. To evade the demands 
 in the way that Pope has done, is to offer us a ruin for a palace." 2 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. iii. p. 44. 
 
 8 Bolingbroke, Works, vol. ii. p. 220 ; iii. p. 128. 
 
 8 De Quincey, Works, TO!, viii. p. 50.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 337 
 
 The poetry could not escape without injury. The philosophic pre- 
 tensions Pope advanced at the outset compelled him to embark in 
 prosaic arguments ; the philosophy and the poetry were mutually 
 destructive. Left to himself he would have kept to his " ethics in 
 the Horatian way," to the sketches of character, and reflections 
 upon human conduct, which constitute his Moral Essays. His 
 " guide " dictated to him a more ambitious philosophy, not the 
 " divine philosophy which is musical as Apollo's lute," 1 which 
 touches tender feelings, and appeals to the intuitive moral emotions, 
 but a hybrid philosophy too scholastic to move the heart, and too 
 meagre and perplexed to satisfy the understanding. 
 L The false scheme of embodying scientific philosophy in verse de- 
 termined in advance the failure of the Essay on its poetic side. 
 There might be passages of good poetry, but not a good poein. 
 "The episodes in the Essay on Man," says Hazlitt, "the descrip- 
 tion of the poor Indian, and the lamb doomed to death, are all the 
 unsophisticated reader ever remembers of that much talked of pro- 
 duction." 2 The remark which Hazlitt employed to condemn the 
 Essay, was used by Bowles in its favour, j The ethics, in his eyes, 
 were only the groundwork for poetical embroidery. " We hardly," 
 he said, "think of the philosophy, whether it is good or bad," and 
 he represented the reader hurried away by the finished and touching 
 pictures of the Indian and the lamb, which are exceptions to the 
 didactic tenor of the poem, and speak to the sympathies of mankind. 
 Hazlitt' s application of the criticism was correct, and the eulogy, or 
 apology, put forward by Bowles, was really censure. The happy / 
 episodes are but a fragment of the four epistles. The rest is designed 
 for philosophical reasoning, and if we hardly think of the philosophy, ^ 
 there is little left except sound. The philosophy is not dimmed by 
 the blaze of poetry.*- There is no splendour of imagery, no brilliancy N 
 of idea to overshadow the argument,}and the sole reason the philo- 
 sophy fails to take hold of the mind is because it is vague and dis- 
 connected, because the whole, as De Quincey says, " is the reali- 
 sation of anarchy." 3 The want of philosophic unity might have 
 been largely compensated by the personal unity of strong conviction ;' 
 the earnest faith and feelings of the man might have stood in the 
 place of the scientific completeness of the subject. In nothing was 
 Pope more deficient. For personal convictions he substituted any 
 discordant notion which he fancied would look well in verse, and the 
 Essay is no more bound together by the pervading spirit of indivi- 
 dual sentiment than by logical connection. The languid inattention \ 
 which the poem invites is seen in the statement of Bowles that there 
 
 1 MiltoD, Comus, ver. 476. 
 
 * Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, p. 378. 
 
 3 De Quincey, Works, vol. viii. p. 51. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. Z
 
 888 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 is "a nice precision in every -word." No one could attempt to 
 get at Pope's meaning without being frequently tormented by the 
 difficulty, and sometimes the impossibility, of interpreting his lax, 
 indeterminate language. " Hardly thinking of the philosophy," 
 
 T~ Bowles did not observe that there was often a lamentable want of 
 precision in Pope's conceptions, and when these are misty and con - 
 fused, the expression of them cannot be rigorous and definite. Loose 
 and ambiguous phraseology was not the only fault of style. The 
 use of inversions, and of unlicensed, elliptical modes of speech, was a 
 cardinal blemish in Pope's poetry. The failing reached its height in 
 
 jjkhe Essay on Man. Many of the contortions are barbarous, and 
 were enough of themselves to dispel the delusion that Pope was 
 distinguished by correctness of composition. Hi a grammatical faults, 
 when not deliberate to force a rhyme, are comparatively venial. 
 Such oversights are found in all authors, and proceed from inad- 
 vertence ; they are little more than clerical errors. The deformities 
 of vicious construction are of a different order. They arose from 
 defect of literary power, from the incapacity to reconcile the require- 
 ments of verse with the rules of English. The maimed and distorted 
 language obscures the sense, destroys or debases the poetry, and 
 lessens the general impression of his genius. The Essay was alto- 
 gether a mistake. A slip from a neighbour's tree was planted in an 
 uncongenial soil, and the cultivation bestowed upon it produced little 
 more than feeble rootlets, and sickly shoots. 
 
 M. Taine asserts that from the [Restoration to the French Eevo- 
 lution, from Waller to Johnson, from Hobbes and Temple to Bobert- 
 son and Hume, all our literature, both prose and verse, bears the 
 impress of classic art. The mode, he says, culminated in the reign 
 of Queen Anne, and Pope, he considers, was the extreme example of 
 it. The characteristics which M. Taine ascribes to the classic era 
 are, in the matter, common-place truths, and, in the manner, a style 
 finished and artificial, noble language, oratorical pomp, and studied 
 correctness. Poetry ceased to be inventive ; the very composition is 
 uniform, and the obvious or borrowed thoughts are all cast in one 
 mould. Verse is nothing more than cold, rational prose, a species 
 of superior conversation measured off into lengths, and fringed with 
 rhyme ; the form predominates over the matter ; the ostentatious 
 exterior is the mask to impoverished, colourless ideas. ' The habit 
 of M. Taine is to generalise a partial truth into extravagance. Many 
 of the most eminent authors who flourished between the English 
 Restoration and the French Revolution wrote in a style far removed 
 from that which M. Taine calls classical, in an inelegant, uncon- 
 densed style as Locke, in a crude, clumsy style as Bishop Butler, 
 
 1 Taine, Histoire de la Literature Anglaise, 2nd ed. torn. iii. p. 91 ; iv. pp. 
 172-176, 203.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 339 
 
 in a vigorous, colloquial style as Bentley, in a homely, straightforward 
 style as Swift, in an unpretentious, narrative style as De Foe, in 
 a loose, familiar style as Burnet. The verse differs like the prose, 
 though in a less degree, and is not "of a uniform make as if 
 fabricated by a machine." l The witty and grotesque Hudibras of 
 Butler, the tales, and many short poems of Prior, the humour- 
 ous, satiric verses of Swift, the Songs and Fables of Gay, the Seasons 
 of Thomson, the heroics of Pope, are all in dissimilar styles. Neither 
 is the substance of the prose and verse, from the Restoration to the 
 French Eevolution, an invariable common-sense mediocrity. There 
 is a great display of genius in political philosophy and political 
 economy, in moral, metaphysical, and natural science, in manifold 
 species of satire and fiction, and, omitting Milton, who was formed 
 under earlier influences, in various kinds of poetry, short of the 
 highest. M. Taine was partly conscious of the facts, as may be seen 
 in his individual criticisms, which are a refutation of his general 
 theory. There is this much truth in his view, that there was a 
 growing tendency to cultivate style, and in some writers the art 
 degenerated into the artificial. Among the numerous varieties of 
 the defect one is a monotonous structure of verse and sentence, 
 another the attempt to disguise the commonness of the thoughts by 
 the elaboration of the workmanship. These are frequent faults in 
 the poetry of Pope, and the mannerism remains when the execution 
 is a failure. His style is admirable in parts, but he falls far below 
 Dryden in the general elasticity of his composition, in the wealth of 
 his language, and in the subtle intricacies of metrical harmony. His 
 thoughts are often gems rendered lustrous by the skill of the cutter, 
 but intermingling with them are counterfeit stones which impose by 
 their glitter on the superficial observer, and when examined are found 
 worthless. 
 
 1 Taine, torn. iv. p. 175. 
 
 B 2
 
 TO THE HEADER 1 
 
 As the epistolary way of writing hath prevailed much of 
 late, we have ventured to publish this piece composed some 
 time since, and whose* author chose this manner, notwithstand- 
 ing his subject was high and of dignity, because of its being 
 mixed with argument, which of its nature approacheth to 
 prose. This, which we first give the reader, treats of the 
 nature and state of man with respect to the universal system. 
 The rest will treat of him with respect to his own system, as 
 an individual, and as a member of society, under one or other 
 of which heads all ethics are included. 
 
 As he imitates no man, so he would be thought to vie with 
 no man in these epistles, particularly with the noted author of 
 two lately published ; 3 but this he may most surely say, that 
 the matter of them is such as is of importance to all in general, 
 and of offence to none in particular. 4 
 
 1 This prefatory notice only ap- 4 The second Epistle of the Essay 
 peered in the first edition of the first on Man had the brief preface which 
 epistle. follows : " The author has been in- 
 
 2 "Whose" is by some authors duced to publish these Epistles sepa- 
 made the possessive case of "which," rately for two reasons, the one that 
 and applied to things as well as per- he might not impose upon the public 
 sons. LOWTH. too much at once of what he thinks 
 
 3 Two " Epistles to Mr. Pope con- incorrect; the other, that by this 
 cerning the Authors of the Age," by method he might profit of its judg- 
 the poet Young. They were pub- ment on the parts, in order to make 
 lished in 1730. the whole less unworthy of it."
 
 THE DESIGN. 1 
 
 HAVING proposed to write some pieces on human life and 
 manners, such as, to use my Lord Bacon's expression, come 
 home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satis- 
 factory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his 
 nature and his state ; since to prove any moral duty, to 
 enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or 
 imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to 
 know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is 
 the proper end and purpose of its being. 
 
 The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, 
 reduced to a few clear points. There are not many certain 
 truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the 
 mind as in that of the body, more good will accrue to man- 
 kind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, 
 than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the 
 conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our ob- 
 servation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will 
 venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the 
 hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the 
 practice, more than advanced the theory of morality. If I 
 could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in 
 steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, 
 in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a a 
 temperate, yet not inconsistent, and a short, yet not imperfect, 
 system of ethics. 
 
 1 "The Design" was prefixed in 1735, when Pope inserted the four Epistles of 
 the Essay on Man in his works. / 
 
 2 The early editions have "forming out of all."
 
 344 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 This I might have done in prose ; but I chose verse, and 
 even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious ; 
 that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the 
 reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by 
 him afterwards. The other may seem odd, but is true. I 
 found I could express them more shortly this way than in 
 prose itself ; and nothing is more certain, than that much of 
 the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends 
 on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my 
 subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious ; or 
 more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, 
 without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain 
 of reasoning. If any man can unite all these, without dimi- 
 nution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a 
 thing above my capacity. 
 
 What is now published, is only to be considered as a 
 general map of man, marking out no more than the greater 
 parts, their extent, their limits, and their connexion, but 
 leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the 
 charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles, in 
 their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any pro- 
 gress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical orna- 
 ment. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing 
 the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their 
 course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more 
 agreeable.
 
 ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I. 
 
 OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO 
 THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 OF man in the abstract I. That we can judge only with regard to our own 
 system, being ignorant of the relation of systems and things, ver. 17, &c. 
 II. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to Ms place 
 and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and con- 
 formable to ends and relations to him unknown, ver. 35, &c. III. That it is 
 partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a 
 future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, ver. 77, &c. 
 IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more per- 
 fection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself 
 in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or im- 
 perfection, justice or injustice, of His dispensations, ver. 113, &c. V. The 
 absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting 
 that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, ver. 131, &c. 
 VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the 
 one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the 
 bodily qualifications of the brutes, though, to" possess any of the sensitive 
 faculties in a higher degree, would render him miserable, ver. 173, &c. VII. 
 That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in 
 the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of 
 creature to creature, and of all creatures to man. The gradations of sense, 
 instinct, thought, reflection, reason ; that reason alone countervails all the 
 other faculties, ver. 207. VIII. How much further this order and subordina- 
 tion of living creatures may extend, above and below us ; were any part of 
 which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation, must be 
 destroyed, ver. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a 
 desire, ver. 259. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to 
 Providence, both as to our present and future state, ver. 281, &c., to the end.
 
 ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 IN FOUR EPISTLES. 
 
 EPISTLE I. 
 
 AWAKE, my St. John ! ' leave all meaner things 
 To low ambition, and the pride of kings.* 
 Let us, since life can 3 little more supply 
 Than just to look about us and to die/ 
 
 1 For ' ' St. John " the manuscript 
 has " Memmius," and the first edition 
 " Lselius." Memmius was an author 
 and orator of no great distinction to 
 whom Lucretius dedicated his De 
 Rerum Natura. Laelius was cele- 
 brated for his statesmanship, his 
 philosophical pursuits, and his friend- 
 ship, and is described by Horace as 
 delighting, on his retirement from 
 public affairs, in the society of the 
 poet Lucilius. Thus the name was 
 fitted to the functions of Bolingbroke, 
 and the relation in which he stood to 
 Pope. 
 
 2 Pope's manuscript supplies va- 
 rious readings of this line : 
 
 puzzled to flattered 
 
 puzzling to blustering 
 
 grovelling low-thoughted 
 
 To working statesmen and ambitious 
 
 kings. 
 
 In a letter to Swift, Dec. 19, 1734, 
 
 Pope says that the couplet was a 
 
 monitory, and ineffectual hint to 
 Bolingbroke, to give up politics for 
 philosophy. If the censure was direc- 
 ted against the party vices of the 
 man the reproof is inconsistent with 
 the eulogy on his patriotism, Epist. 
 iv. ver. 265, and if against his pur- 
 suit in the abstract, it is folly to say 
 that statesmanship is one of the 
 "meaner things" which should be 
 left to ' ' low ambition, " and empty 
 "pride." 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Since life, my friend, can, etc. 
 
 4 Denham, of Prudence : 
 
 Learn to live well, that thou may'st die 
 
 so too : 
 To live and die is all we have to do : 
 
 the latter of which verses our poet 
 has inserted without alteration in his 
 Prologue to the Satires, ver. 262. 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 848 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ; l 
 
 A mighty maze ! 2 but not without a plan ; s 
 
 A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot ;* 
 
 Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit. 5 
 
 Together let us beat this ample field, 
 
 Try what the open, what the covert yield ;" 
 
 The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore, 7 /y 
 
 Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar ;* s 
 
 Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, 9 
 
 And catch the manners living as they rise ; 10 
 
 10 
 
 1 This exordium relates to the 
 whole work, first in general, then in 
 particular. The 6th, 7th, and 8th 
 lines allude to the subjects of this 
 book, the general order and design 
 of Providence; the constitution of 
 the human mind, whose passions cul- 
 tivated are virtues, neglected vices; 
 the temptations of misapplied self- 
 love, and wrong pursuits of power, 
 pleasure, and false happiness. POPE. 
 
 "The whole work" was to have 
 been in four books, and the phrase 
 "this book" means the four pub- 
 lished Epistles of the Essay on Man, 
 which were to form the first book of 
 the full design. 
 
 2 In the first edition, 
 
 A mighty maze of walks without a plan. 
 
 This Pope altered because, says John- 
 son, "if there was no plan it was 
 vain to describe or to trace the maze." 
 
 3 The 6th verse alludes to the sub- 
 ject of this first Epistle the state of 
 man here and hereafter, disposed by 
 Providence, though to him unknown. 
 POPE. 
 
 * Alludes to the subject of the 
 second Epistle, the passions, their 
 good or evil. POPE. 
 
 * Alludes to the subject of the 
 fourth Epistle, of man's various pur- 
 suits of happiness or pleasure. POPE. 
 
 6 The 10th, 13th, and 14th verses 
 allude to the subject of the second 
 
 Epistle of the second book, the 
 characters of men and manners. 
 POPE. 
 
 The four published Moral Essays 
 were a portion of the projected second 
 book. 
 
 ~ The llth and 12th verses allude 
 to the subject of the first Epistle of 
 the second book, the limits of rea- 
 son, learning, and ignorance. POPE. 
 
 This Epistle was never written, but 
 some part of the matter was incorpo- 
 rated into the fourth Book of the 
 Dunciad. 
 
 8 MS.: 
 
 Of all that blindly creep the tracts explore, 
 And all the dazzled race that blindly soar. 
 
 Those who " blindly creep " are the 
 ignorant and indifferent ; those who 
 " sightless soar" are the presumptu- 
 ous, who endeavour to transcend the 
 bounds prescribed to the intellect of 
 man. 
 
 9 Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 
 Part ii. : 
 
 while he with watchful eye 
 Observes, and shoots their treasons ae 
 they fly. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Dryden, Aurengzebe, Act iii. : 
 
 Youth should watch joys and shoot 'em as 
 they fly. 
 
 10 These metaphors, drawn from the 
 field sports of setting and shooting, 
 seem much below the dignity of the 
 subject, and an unnatural mixture
 
 AN ESSAY 0!* MAN. 
 
 349 
 
 Laugh where we must, be candid ' where we can ; 
 But vindicate the ways of God to man.* 
 
 I. Say first, of God above or man below, 
 What can we reason but from what we know ? 
 Of man, what see we but his station here, 
 From which to reason, or to which refer ? 3 
 Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known, 4 
 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own. 
 He, who through vast immensity can pierce, 
 See worlds on worlds compose one universe, 5 
 Observe how system into system runs, 
 What other planets circle 8 other suns, 
 What varied being peoples ev'ry star/ 
 May tell why heav'n has made us as we are. 8 
 
 Man can 
 reason only 
 from things 
 known, and 
 judge only 
 with regard 
 20 to his own 
 system. 
 
 j of the ludicrous and serious. WAR- 
 / TON. 
 
 x' They are the more so as Pope is 
 
 , not content with barely touching the 
 
 , metaphor of shooting en passant, but 
 
 \ pursues it with so much minuteness. 
 
 .'Let us "beat this ample field," 
 
 / "<ri/what the covert yields," "eye 
 
 ^ nature's walks," "shoot folly." An 
 
 ' illustration, if not at all dignified, or 
 
 in correspondence with the theme, 
 
 should not be pursued so minutely 
 
 that the mind must perforce observe 
 
 its meanness. BOWLES. 
 
 1 ' ' Candid " here bears the unusual 
 sense of ' ' lenient and favourable in 
 our judgment. " 
 
 2 Alludes to the sxibject which runs 
 through the whole design, the jus- 
 tification of the methods of Provi- 
 dence. POPE. 
 
 Milton, Par. Lost, i. 26 : 
 
 And justify the ways of God to men. 
 WARTON. 
 
 3 The last part of the verse is bar- 
 barously elliptical. The meaning is 
 that all our reasonings respecting the 
 end of man must be drawn from his 
 station here, and to this station we 
 
 must refer all that we learn respecting 
 him. Since we can know nothing 
 but what relates to our present con- 
 dition, the doctrine of a future life is 
 excluded. 
 4 MS.: 
 
 Through endless worlds His endless works 
 
 are known, 
 But ours, etc. 
 
 6 MS.: 
 
 He who can all the flaming limits pierce, 
 Of worlds on worlds that form one uni- 
 verse. 
 
 6 " And what " was the reading of 
 all editions till that of 1743. Wol- 
 laston's Religion of Nature, ed. 1750, 
 p. 1 43 : " The fixed stars are so many 
 other suns with their several sets of 
 planets about them." 
 
 ~> MS. : 
 
 What other habitants in ev'ry star. 
 
 8 This was the reading of the first 
 edition which Pope ultimately re- 
 stored, but in the edition of 1735 the 
 line stands thus : 
 
 May tell why heav'n made all things as 
 they are.
 
 350 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Man ia not 
 therefore a 
 judge of hia 
 own perfec- 
 tion or im- 
 perfection, 
 but is cer- 
 tainly such 
 .1 being as is 
 suited to bis 
 place and 
 rank in 
 creation. 
 
 But of this frame, the bearings and the ties, 
 
 The strong connections, nice dependencies, so 
 
 Gradations 1 just, has thy pervading soul 
 
 Looked through,* or can a part contain the whole ? s 
 
 Is the great chain that draws all to agree, 4 
 And drawn supports, 4 upheld by God or thee ? 
 
 II. Presumptuous man ! the reason wouldst thou find, ss 
 Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind ? 
 First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 
 Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less? ' 
 Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 
 Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade ! 
 
 Pope's assertion in the text that it 
 is impossible for us to "tell why 
 heaven has made us as we are," un- 
 less we had a complete insight into 
 the plan of universal creation, con- 
 tradicts ver. 48, where he says that 
 "it is plain there must be some- 
 where such a rank as man." 
 
 1 First edition : "And centres." 
 
 2 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43 : "As 
 distant as are the various systems, 
 and systems of systems that compose 
 the universe, and different as we may 
 imagine them to be, the}* are all tied 
 together by relations and connections, 
 by gradations and dependencies." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Pascal's Thoughts, translated by 
 Dr. Rennet, 2nd ed., 1727, p. 288 : 
 " If a man did but begin with the 
 study of himself he would soon find 
 how incapable he was of proceeding 
 further. For what possibility is there 
 that the part should contain the 
 whole?" 
 
 4 I should have pointed out the 
 expression and great effect of this 
 line as illustrating the subject it de- 
 scribes ; but Ruff head says "it is 
 the most heavy, languid, and un- 
 poetical of all Pope ever wrote, and 
 that the expletive ' to ' before the 
 verb is unpardonable." BOWLES. 
 
 * An allusion to the golden chain 
 of Homer, which the poet represents 
 as sustained by Jove, with the whole 
 creation appended to it. WAKE- 
 FIELD. 
 
 6 "Why one reason," says Wake- 
 field, "should be harder than the 
 other I am unable to discern." The 
 passage is taken, as Warton pointed 
 out, from Voltaire's remarks on 
 Pascal's Thoughts, but Voltaire put 
 the questions on the same footing, 
 and did not pretend that the second 
 was harder to solve than the first. 
 "You are astonished," he says "that 
 God has made man so contracted, so 
 ignorant, and so unhappy. Why are 
 you not astonished that he has not 
 made him more contracted, more 
 ignorant, and more unhappy ?" 
 Neither question ought to have pre- 
 sented any difficulty to Pope, since 
 it was "plain" to him that "the 
 best possible system " required that 
 " there should be somewhere siich a 
 rank as man." All who admit the 
 attributes of the Deity must a] low 
 that every portion of the world, sen- 
 tient or insensible, is the consumma- 
 tion of wisdom with reference to its 
 place in the infinite and eternal 
 scheme. "God, "says Leibnitz, "does 
 not even neglect inanimate things ;
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Or ask of yonder argent fields 1 above 
 Why Jove's satellites* are less than Jove !* 
 
 Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed 
 That wisdom infinite 4 must form the best, 
 "Where all must full or not coherent be, 6 
 And all that rises rise in due degree, 
 Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain, 
 There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man : ' 
 
 they are unconscious, but God is con- 
 scious for them. He would reproach 
 himself with the least real defect in 
 the universe, although no one per- 
 ceived it." 
 
 1 "Wakefield quotes Milton, Par. 
 Lost, iii. 460, where the phrase "those 
 argent fields" is applied to the 
 heavens. 
 
 2 This word is commonly pro- 
 nounced in prose with the e mute in 
 the plural, as in the singular, and is 
 therefore only of three syllables ; but 
 Pope has in the plural continued the 
 Latin form and assigned it four. I 
 think, improperly. JOHNSON. 
 
 3 Pope says that we cannot tell 
 why Jupiter's satellites are less than 
 Jupiter. Any mathematician could 
 have shown him that if Jupiter was 
 less than his satellites they would 
 not revolve round him. VOLTAIRE. 
 
 "Warburton, to evade Voltaire's cri- 
 ticism, put a strained and para- 
 phrastic interpretation upon Pope's 
 lines. Their natural meaning is, that 
 man is too ignorant to comprehend 
 why he is not less instead of greater, 
 nay, that he cannot even tell why oaks 
 are taller than weeds, why Jupiter's 
 satellites are less than Jupiter, and 
 all his investigations into the earth 
 and the heavens will not supply him 
 with the answer. 
 
 * Pope did not generally condescend 
 to the artificial inversion which places 
 the adjective after the substantive. 
 Here, in a passage where simplicity 
 was an object, we have "systems 
 
 possible" followed by "wisdom in- 
 finite," combinations, too, which 
 
 I have the effect of producing a dis- 
 agreeable monotony, occurring in 
 
 \ the same part of the lines to which 
 they respectively belong. COKING- 
 TON. 
 
 5 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "Since 
 infinite wisdom not only established 
 the end, but directed the means, the 
 system of the universe must neces- 
 sarily be the best of all possible sys- 
 tems." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 There must be no interval, that 
 is, between the parts, or they will not 
 cohere. 
 
 7 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43 : "It 
 might be determined in the divine 
 ideas that there should be a gradation 
 of life and intellect throughout the 
 universe. In this case it was neces- 
 sary that there should be some crea- 
 tures at our pitch of rationality." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The theory of a chain of beings 
 was adopted by Bolingbroke and 
 Pope from Archbishop King's Essay 
 on the Origin of Evil. Arguing from 
 the analogy of our own world, King 
 contended that a universe fully 
 peopled with superior natures would 
 leave room for an inferior grade, and 
 these for lower grades still, in a con- 
 tinuously descending scale. There 
 must either be inferior creatures, or 
 else voids in creation, and we may pre- 
 sume that the maximum of existence 
 is most conducive to the ends of 
 benevolence and wisdom.
 
 352 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) 
 Is only this, if God has placed him wrong. 1 
 
 Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 
 May, must be right, as relative to all.* 
 In human works, though laboured on with pain, 
 A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain ; 
 In God's, one single can its end produce ; 
 Yet serves to second too some other use. 8 
 So man, who here seems principal alone, 
 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown, 
 Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal * 
 "Us but a part we see, 5 and not a whole. 6 
 
 50 
 
 55 
 
 GO 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 IB but if God has placed his creature wrong. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke, Fragment 50 : "The 
 seeming imperfection of the parts is 
 necessary to the real perfection of the 
 whole. " WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The sentence quoted by Wakefield 
 was copied by Bolingbroke from Leib- 
 nitz. Lord Shaftesbury adopted the 
 same hypothesis in his Inquiry con- 
 cerning Virtue. If, he says, our earth 
 is a part only of some other system, 
 and if what is ill in our system makes 
 for the good of the general system, 
 then there is nothing ill with respect 
 to the whole. Rousseau, who heartily 
 embraced the doctrine, remarks that 
 "we cannot give direct proofs for or 
 against, because these proofs depend 
 on a complete knowledge of the con- 
 stitution "of the universe, and of the 
 ends of its author." 
 
 3 Bolingbroke, Fragments 43 and 
 63 :" We labour hard, we complicate 
 various means to bring about some 
 one paltry purpose. In the works of 
 men the most complicated schemes 
 produce very hardly and very uncer- 
 tainly one single effect : in the works 
 of God one single scheme produces a 
 multitude of" different effects, and 
 answers an immense variety of pur- 
 poses." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 How clearly and closely is this sen- 
 
 timent erpressed by Pope, and yet 
 how difficult to render into verse with 
 precision and effect. BOWLES. 
 
 ^ In the first line the phrase "one 
 single," for " one single movement," 
 
 ^js especially inelegant. Bowles might 
 have selected many couplets from the 
 Essay on Man more deserving of the 
 commendation. The thought which 
 Pope owed to Bolingbroke, Boling- 
 I broke owed to Leibnitz, who says in 
 ihis Theodicee, "Everything in nature 
 is connected, and if a skilful artizan, 
 engineer, architect, statesman, often 
 makes the same contrivance serve for 
 several purposes, we may affirm that 
 God, whose wisdom and power are 
 perfect, does so always." Hence Pope 
 contends that what is defective in 
 man considered separately, may be 
 advantageous in relation to the hidden 
 ends he is intended to serve. 
 
 4 Bolingbroke, Fragments 43 : "We 
 ought to consider the world no other- 
 wise than as a little wheel in our 
 solar system ; nor our solar system 
 any otherwise than as a little but 
 larger wheel in the immense machine 
 of the universe ; and both the one and 
 the other necessary perhaps to the mo- 
 tion of the whole." WAKEFIELD. 
 MS.: 
 
 We see but here a part, etc. 
 6 Since the monarchy of the uni-
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 353 
 
 "When the proud steed shall know why man restrains 
 His fiery course, or 1 drives him o'er the plains ; 
 When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, 
 Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god ; * 
 Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend 
 His actions', passions', being's, use and end ; 
 Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled ; and why 
 This hour a slave, the next a deity.* 
 
 Then say not man's imperfect, heav'n in fault ; 
 Say rather man's as perfect as he ought :* ^-" 
 His knowledge measured to his state and place,' 
 His time a moment, and a point his space. 6 
 
 ) \j 
 
 70 
 
 verse is a dominion unlimited in 
 extent, and everlasting in duration, 
 the general system of it must neces- 
 sarily be quite beyond our compre- 
 hension. And since there appears 
 such a subordination, and reference 
 of the several parts to each other, as 
 to constitute it properly one admi- 
 nistration or government, we cannot 
 have a thorough knowledge of any 
 part without knowing the whole. 
 This surely should convince us that 
 we are much less competent judges 
 of the very small part which comes 
 under our notice in this world than 
 we are apt to imagine. BISHOP 
 BUTLER. 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 When the proud steed shall know why man 
 
 now reins 
 His stubborn neck, now drives, etc. 
 
 2 In the former editions, 
 
 Now wears a garland an Egyptian god. 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 A bull was kept at Memphis by 
 the Egyptians, and worshipped, under 
 the name of Apis, as a god. Other 
 oxen were sacrificed to him, which 
 brought the bovine "victims" and 
 the bovine "god" into direct con- 
 trast. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 3 Pope may mean that we cannot 
 tell with respect to the general 
 scheme of Providence why we are 
 made what we are, in which case he 
 unsays what he had said just before, 
 that "it is plain there must be 
 somewhere such a rank as man." 
 Or he may mean that we cannot tell 
 with respect to ourselves the use and 
 end of our being and its vicissitudes, 
 in which case the doctrine would 
 debase every person who received it, 
 by diverting him from his true end, 
 which is to imitate and adore the 
 perfections of God. 
 
 4 The expression, "as he ought," 
 is imperfect for "ought to bo." 
 WARTON. 
 
 5 Bolingbroke, Frag. 50 : " The 
 nature of every creature is adapted to 
 his state here, to the place he is to 
 inhabit." 
 
 6 This line is the application to 
 man of the language which the 
 schoolmen applied to the Deity, 
 that his eternity was a moment, 
 and his immensity a point. The 
 couplet in the MS. was at first as 
 follows : 
 
 Lord of a span, and hero of a day, 
 
 In one short scene to strut and pass away.
 
 354 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 His happi- 
 ness de- 
 pends on 
 his ignor- 
 ance tn a 
 certain 
 degree. 
 
 If to be perfect in a certain sphere, 
 What matter, soon or late, or here or there? 1 
 The bless'd to-day is as completely so, 
 As who began a thousand years ago.* 
 
 III. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate, 
 All but the page prescribed, their present state ; 
 From brutes what men, from men what spirits know ; 
 Or who could suffer being here below ?' 
 The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, 
 Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? 
 Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food, 
 And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood. 4 
 O blindness to the future ! kindly giv'n, 
 That each may fill the circle marked by heaVn : 
 Who sees with equal eye, as Gbd of all, 
 A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,* 
 
 75 
 
 80 
 
 85 
 
 1 MS.: 
 What then imports it whether here or there ? 
 
 s Ed. 1 : 
 
 If to be perfect in a certain state, 
 What matter here or there, or soon or late? 
 And he that's bless'd to-day as fully so, 
 As who began ten thousand years ago. 
 
 Omitted in the subsequent editions. 
 POPE. 
 
 This note appeared, 1735, in vol. 
 2 of the quarto edition of Pope's 
 Poetical Works. The lines originally 
 followed ver. 98, and when they 
 re-appeared in the text in 1743 
 they were shifted to their present 
 position. They are especially 
 bad, elliptical and prosaic in ex- 
 pression, and sophistical in argu- 
 ment. The suffering which matters 
 nothing when it is over is not unim- 
 portant while it lasts. A prolonged 
 imprisonment in a noisome dungeon 
 does not cease to be a penalty because 
 the captive will one day be free. The 
 Bible recognises the bitterness of 
 human misery, but teaches that 
 Christians are to be reconciled to it 
 on account of the moral purposes it 
 
 subserves, and the endless felicity 
 which ensues. Pope notes in his MS. 
 that ver. 76 is " reversed from Lucre- 
 tius on death," and Wakefield quotes 
 the translation of Dryden which Pope 
 copied : 
 
 {"The man as much to all intents is dead 
 J Who dies to-day, and will as long be so, 
 / As he who died a thousand years ago. 
 
 3 See this pursued in Epist. iii. 
 ver. 66, etc., ver. 79, etc. POPE. 
 
 4 This resembles Phaedrus, Fab. v. 
 15: 
 
 Ipsi principes 
 
 Illam osculantur, qua sunt oppressi, ma- 
 num. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 Matt. x. 29. WARBURTON. 
 Pope, in the MS., had expanded 
 the idea, and added this couplet : 
 
 No great, no little ; 'tis as much decreed 
 That Virgil's Gnat should die as Caesar 
 bleed. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Virgil was the 
 author of the Culex or Gnat, which, 
 says Mr. Long, " is a kind of Bucolic 
 poem in 413 hexameters, often very 
 obscure." Pope's assertion that there
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 355 
 
 Atoms or systems into ruin hurled, 1 
 
 And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 
 
 Hope humbly then ; with trembling pinions soar ; 
 "Wait the great teacher death, and God adore. 
 What future bliss he gives not thee to know, 
 But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.* 
 Hope springs eternal in the human breast ; 
 Man never is, but always to be blessed. 3 
 The soul, uneasy, and confined from 4 home, 
 Rests and expatiates in a life to come. 
 
 Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored mind 
 Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind ; * 
 His soul proud science never taught to stray 
 Far as the solar walk 6 or milky way ; 7 
 
 90 
 
 And on his 
 hope of a 
 relation to 
 a future 
 state. 
 
 95 
 
 100 
 
 is "no great, no little," is contra- 
 dicted by the passage in St. Matthew 
 to which Warburton refers. Our 
 Lord there assures us that " we are of 
 more value than many sparrows," and 
 the ruin of a world, with its myriad 
 of sentient beings, must be of infi- 
 nitely greater moment in the sight of 
 the Deity than the bursting of a 
 bubble. Pope repeats, ver. 279, a 
 statement which is repugnant to 
 reason, to revelation, and to his own 
 system of a scale of beings. 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Systems like atoms into ruin hurled. 
 
 2 Edit. 1. Fol. and Quart. : 
 
 What bliss above he gives not thee to 
 
 know, 
 But gives that hope to be thy bliss below. 
 
 Further opened in Epist. ii. ver. 283. 
 Epist. iii. ver. 74. Epist. iv. ver. 346, 
 etc. POPE. 
 
 3 Pope has frequently contradicted 
 this line, and allowed that men who 
 place their happiness in right objects, 
 and use the recognised means, enjoy 
 a present pleasure, in addition to the 
 hops of an equal or greater pleasure 
 in the future. This hope in turn is 
 
 constantly realised, in contradiction 
 to the lively saying ascribed to Lord 
 Bacon, that "hope makes a good 
 breakfast, but a bad supper. " 
 
 4 All editions till that of 1743 had 
 "at" for "from." The home of the 
 soul was this world according to the 
 first reading, and the next world 
 according to the second. The altera- 
 tion was made under the auspices of 
 "Warburton to get rid of the imputa- 
 tion that Pope doubted or disbelieved 
 the immortality of the soul. 
 
 8 MS. : 
 
 Seeks God in clouds or on the wings of 
 wind. 
 
 The savage, that is, being ignorant 
 of scientific laws, supposes the wind 
 and the rain to be produced directly 
 by the Deity without the inter- 
 position of secondary causes. 
 
 6 Dryden, Threnod. August. 
 Stanza 12 : 
 
 Out of the solar walk and heaven's high- 
 way. HURD. 
 
 7 The ancient opinion that the 
 souls of the just went thither. See 
 Tully, Som. Scipion. and Manilius i. 
 [ver. 733 799.] POPE. 
 
 A A 2
 
 356 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The pride of 
 aiming at 
 more know- 
 
 Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, 
 
 Behind the cloud-topped hill, 1 an humbler heav'n ; 
 
 Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, 
 
 Some happier island in the wat'ry waste/ 
 
 Where slaves once more their native land behold, 
 
 No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold. 1 
 
 To be, contents his natural desire ; 
 
 He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire ; 
 
 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
 
 His faithful dog shall bear him company." 
 
 IY. Go, wiser thou ! and in thy scale of sense/ 
 Weigh thy opinion against Providence ; 8 
 
 105 
 
 HO 
 
 Virtue is in Cicero the title of 
 admission into the milky way, but 
 the version which Manilius gives of 
 the popular creed assumes that the 
 milky way is the general receptacle 
 for earthly celebrities, without any 
 special regard to their morals. 
 
 1 Shakespeare, Tempest, Act iv. 
 Sc. 1. " The cloud-capped towers." 
 
 8 Dryden, ^En. vii. 310 : 
 
 From that dire deluge through the wat'ry 
 waste. WAXEFIELD. 
 
 MS. : 
 
 This hope kind nature's flattery has giv'n, 
 Behind his cloud-topp'd hills he builds a 
 
 heav'n ; [infold, 
 
 Some happier world which woods on woods 
 Where never Christian pierced for thirst of 
 
 gold. 
 
 Pope must have assumed that the 
 Indian's hope of a blissful immor- 
 tality was an unsubstantial dream, 
 or he would not have called it 
 " nature's flattery" 
 
 3 MS. : 
 % 
 Where gold ne'er grows, and never 
 
 Spaniards come, [with rum. 
 
 Where trees bear maize, and rivers flow 
 Exiled or chained he lets you understand 
 Death but returns him to his native land ; 
 Or firm as martyrs, smiling yields the 
 
 ghost, 
 
 Rich of a life that is not to be lost. 
 But does he say the Maker is not good, 
 Till he's exalted to what state he would : 
 
 Himself alone high heav'n's peculiar care, 
 Alone made happy when he will and where f 
 
 There is an earlier form of the last 
 coupk-t : 
 
 He waits for bliss in a remoter sphere 
 Nor proudly claims it when he will and 
 where. 
 
 4 So in Homer, at the funeral of 
 Patroclus, xxiii. 212, of our poet's 
 translation : 
 
 Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board, 
 Fall two, selected to attend their lord. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 " Sense " is put for "the senses," 
 and Pope exclaims against the folly 
 of censuring the government of God 
 on the strength of the imperfect in- 
 formation which the senses supply. 
 
 6 Bolingbroke, Fragment 25 : "This 
 is to weigh his own opinion against 
 Providence. " Pope adduces the con- 
 tented faith of the savage to rebuke 
 the dissatisfaction of certain civilised 
 men. The contrast completely fails. 
 The contentment and dissatisfaction 
 are applied by Pope to different 
 objects, the contentment of the 
 savage being limited to his idea of a 
 future life, whereas the dissatisfac- 
 tion of civilised man is said to be 
 chiefly with his present condition, 
 about which the savage is often dis- 
 satisfied likewise. The imperfect in-
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 357 
 
 Call imperfection what thou fanci'st such, 
 Say, Here he gives too little, there too much ! ' 
 Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,* 
 Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust ; 3 
 If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care, 
 Alone made perfect here, immortal there : * 
 Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, 5 
 Ee-judge his justice, be the god of God. 6 
 
 115 ledge and 
 perfection, 
 and the im- 
 piety of pre- 
 tcndiug to 
 ju^lge of the 
 dispensa- 
 tions of Pro- 
 vidence, the 
 causes of 
 man's error 
 
 120 and misery. 
 
 formation of missionaries is not even 
 sufficient warrant for asserting that 
 all Indians believed in a future state, 
 and if there were dissentients among 
 them their case did not differ from that 
 of civilised men. Above all the con- 
 tentment of the Indian is the result 
 of grovelling views, and uninqniring 
 ignorance, and whatever may be the 
 errors of infidels among ourselves they 
 cannot be remedied by an appeal to 
 those blind conceptions of the savage, 
 which Pope supposed to be false. 
 *'0ur flattering ourselves here," he 
 said to Spence, "with the thoughts 
 of enjoying the company of our friends 
 when in the other world may be but 
 too like the Indians thinking that 
 they shall have their dogs and horses 
 there." 
 
 1 First edition : 
 Pronounce He acts too little or too much. 
 
 J "Gust," or the relish for any- 
 thing, is the opposite of "disgust," 
 and is applied by Pope to the plea- 
 sures of the palate. The word is 
 found in Dryden, and several other 
 writers, but never came into general 
 use. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Yet if unhappy think tis He's unjust, 
 
 which is the reading of the first 
 edition, except that "thou" is sub- 
 stituted for "if." 
 
 4 The meaning cannot be that the 
 caviller complained that other crea- 
 tures were made perfect as well as 
 
 himself, because nobody supposed 
 that either men or animals were per- 
 fect. Pope apparently means that 
 these persons complained that man 
 was not an exception to the general 
 law of imperfection and mortality, 
 although he "alone" would then 
 have been "perfect" in this world, 
 and immortal in the next. It follows 
 that the objectors disbelieved in the 
 immortality of the soul, and that 
 Pope thought their demand for im- 
 mortality unreasonable. 
 
 5 The "balance" in which qualities 
 are weighed ; the ' ' rod " with which 
 offences are chastised. 
 
 5 Divines maintained that there 
 must be a future state, or that many 
 of the phenomena of this life would be 
 inexplicable. Bolingbroke rejected 
 a future state, and argued that this 
 life was a scheme complete in itself. 
 All who did not concur in his view 
 "joined," he said, "in a clamour 
 against Providence," and " mur- 
 mured against his justice." Not that 
 they had ever uttered a syllable 
 against Providence, for they were 
 devout and humble adorers of his 
 perfections, but they denied that 
 Bolingbroke' s scheme was God's 
 scheme, and Boliugbroke in his 
 arrogance and passion insisted that 
 whoever repudiated his philosophy 
 set himself \ip against God. Pope 
 versified the declamation of Boling- 
 broke, without pointing it to the 
 class against whom it was originally 
 directed.
 
 358 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The absur- 
 dity of con- 
 ceiting him- 
 self the 
 final cause 
 of creation, 
 or expecting 
 that perfec- 
 tion in the 
 moral world 
 which is not 
 in the 
 natural. 
 
 In pride, in reas'ning pride, 1 our error lies ; 
 All quit their sphere and rush into the skies ! 
 Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes, 
 Men would he angels, angels would he gods.* 
 Aspiring to he gods if angels fell, 
 Aspiring to he angels men rehel :* 
 And who hut wishes to invert the laws 
 Of order, sins against th' Eternal Cause. 
 
 Y. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, 
 Earth for whose use, Pride answers, 4 " 'Tis for mine 
 For me kind nature wakes her genial poVr, 
 Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r ;* 
 Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew 
 The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew ; 
 For me the mine a thousand treasures brings ; 
 For me health gushes from a thousand springs ; 
 Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise ; 
 My footstool earth, my canopy the skies ! " 
 
 125 
 
 130 
 
 185 
 
 140 
 
 1 The first edition reads " In pride, 
 my friend, in pride," and the edition 
 of 1735, " In reas'ning pride, my 
 friend." 
 
 2 Verbatim from Bolingbroke : 
 "Men would be angels, and we see 
 in Milton that angels would be 
 gods. " WAETON. 
 
 Sir Fulk Greville, "Works, 1633, 
 p. 73: 
 Men would be tyrants, tyrants would be 
 
 gods. HCBD. 
 
 3 Lord Bacon's Advancement of 
 Learning, ed. Montagu, p. 267 : 
 "Aspiring to be like God in power, 
 the angels transgressed and fell ; 
 aspiring to be like God in knowledge, 
 man transgressed and fell." 
 
 4 Piety must equally answer with 
 grateful adoration that all these things 
 have been created for the use of man. 
 The error of pride is in the assump- 
 tion that they have been created for 
 man alone, who is only one out of 
 an infinity of creatures on our globe, 
 
 as our globe again is only a portion 
 of a larger system. Hence Pope 
 intends us to infer, that it is folly 
 for us to test all things by the con- 
 sequences to ourselves. The Ian- j 
 guage, however, which he puts into 
 the mouth of pride is extravagant, and 
 " can hardly," says M. Crousaz, 
 " have been ever uttered by any one, 
 unless it were in jest. " 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Forme young nature decks her vernal bow'r, 
 Suckles each bud, and pencils ev'ry flow'r. 
 
 6 Garth, Dispensary, i. 175 : 
 
 His couch a trench, his canopy the skies. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope remembered Isaiah Ixvi. 1: 
 "Thus saith the Lord, The heaven 
 is my throne, and the earth is my 
 footstool." No sane man could ever 
 pretend that "earth was his foot- 
 stool," and Pope alone is responsible 
 for the unbecoming misapplication of 
 the prophet's language.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 359 
 
 But errs not nature from this gracious end, 
 From burning suns when livid deaths descend, 
 When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep' 
 Towns to one grave, whole nations 2 to the deep ?* 
 " No," 'tis replied, " the first Almighty Cause 
 Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws : 4 
 Th' exceptions few ; some change since all began ; 5 
 And what created perfect ? " Why then man ? 
 If the great end be human happiness, 
 Then nature deviates; 8 and can man do less? 7 
 
 143 
 
 150 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 or when oceans 
 
 When earth quick swallows, inundations 
 sweep. 
 
 2 "A nation" in the first edition. 
 The expression is hyperbolical. Pope 
 alludes to such catastrophes as the 
 inundation of Jutland when the sea 
 broke down the dykes in 1634, and 
 fifteen thousand people were drowned. 
 Irruptions on a smaller scale have 
 sometimes been occasioned by the 
 rising of the sea during an earthquake. 
 In that of 1783 the inhabitants of 
 Scilla, in the kingdom of Naples, 
 deserted their city to avoid being 
 crushed by the falling houses, and 
 fled to the shore. A mighty wave, 
 which swept three miles inland, 
 carried back with it 2473 persons, and 
 their prince among the number. Cow- 
 per, The Task, ii. 117, has recorded 
 the tragedy in his grandest verse : 
 
 Where now the throng 
 That pressed the beach, and hasty to depart, 
 Looked to the sea for safety ? They are gone, 
 Gone with the refluent wave into the deep, 
 A prince with half his people. 
 
 / 3 Pope says, that ' ' earthquakes 
 I swallow towns to one grave, whole 
 \nations to the deep," where "to" 
 j should be "in." But this would not 
 \ have suited the phrase ' ' tempests 
 sweep," and the poet preferred brevity 
 (. to correctness. 
 4 First edition : 
 
 Blame we for this the wise Almighty Cause ; 
 No, 'tis replied, he acts by geu'ral laws. 
 
 The government by general laws, we 
 are told, has "a few exceptions," 
 which must either refer to the 
 scripture miracles, which Pope did 
 not believe when he wrote the Essay 
 on Man, or to the doctrine of a 
 special providence, which he opposes 
 in the fourth epistle. 
 
 * " Some change " for "there has 
 been some change," is bad English. 
 The argument is not superior to the 
 language. Plagues, earthquakes, and 
 tempests, say the vindicators of 
 nature, may in part be explained by 
 the changes which have taken place 
 since the creation of the world. Pope, 
 Epist. iv. ver. 115, repeats that 
 " evil " has been " admitted " 
 through "change." As no reason is 
 assigned for this conversion of phy- 
 sical good into physical evil, the 
 supposition does not diminish the 
 difficulty. 
 
 6 On a cursory reading we might 
 understand Pope to mean that nature 
 sometimes deviates from her stated 
 course for the purpose of promoting 
 human happiness. This sense does 
 not agree with the context, and the 
 true interpretation is, that if the 
 great end of terrestrial creation is 
 allowed to be human happiness, then 
 it is clear that nature sometimes 
 deviates from that end, as in the 
 instance of plagues and earthquakes. 
 
 7 The assertion is monstrous that 
 we cannot be expected to control our
 
 860 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 As much that end a constant course requires 
 
 Of show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires : 
 
 As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, 
 
 As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise. 1 
 
 If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design, 
 
 Why then a Borgia or a Catiline ?* 
 
 Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, 
 
 Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms ; 
 
 Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, 3 
 
 Or turns young Ammon 4 loose to scourge mankind ? ' 
 
 From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs ; 
 
 Account for moral, as for nat'ral things : 8 
 
 154 
 
 160 
 
 evil passions because nature has her 
 storms, diseases, and earthquakes. 
 This is not to justify the ways of 
 God, but the ways of wicked men. 
 The physical evil ordained by the 
 ruler of the world, cannot be put 
 upon the same foundation with the 
 moral evil which reason and revela- 
 tion condemn. Sin is permitted be- 
 cause it is better that offences should 
 exist than that free will should be 
 destroyed, but it is lamentable that 
 we should will to do evil in preference 
 to good. The justification of the 
 abuses of free will is a distinct pro- 
 position from the argument into 
 which Pope glides, that it is not 
 harder to understand why man should 
 be allowed to be a scourge to man 
 than why suffering should be inflicted 
 through the agency of earthquakes 
 and pestilence. 
 
 1 To draw a parallel between things 
 of a nature entirely different is mere 
 sophistry. A continual spring would 
 be fatal to the earth and its inhabi- 
 tants, but how would the world suffer 
 if men were always wise, calm, and 
 temperate ? CROUSAZ. 
 
 2 Shortly after his father, Alex- 
 ander VI., ascended the papal throne 
 in 1492, Caesar Borgia commenced 
 
 the career of war, massacre, and 
 murder which made him the scourge 
 and terror of Italy. He was killed 
 by a musket-ball at a petty siege in 
 1507. The conspiracy of Catiline 
 against the Roman government was 
 terminated by his death at the head 
 of his banditti, B.C. 62, but from his 
 depraved and desperate character 
 there was every reason to believe that 
 he would have Tised a victory to 
 plunder with insatiable greediness, 
 and to destroy with remorseless 
 cruelty. 
 
 8 God does not "pour ambition 
 into Caesar's mind, " or the all-perfect 
 being would be the author of sin. 
 The aberrations of ambition are the 
 acts of the ambitious man. 
 
 4 Alexander the Great. He made 
 a pilgrimage to the temple of Jupiter 
 Ammon, in Africa, and the priests 
 styled him son of their god. Upon 
 the faith of the oracle his flatterers 
 believed, or affected to believe, that 
 he was of divine descent. 
 
 * The four lines, ver. 157160, 
 first appeared in the edition of 1743. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 From whence all physical or moral ill f 
 'Tis nature wand'ring from the eternal wilL 
 
 Pope plainly avows that physical
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 361 
 
 Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit ? 
 In both to reason right is to submit. 
 
 Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, i6 
 
 Were there all harmony, all virtue here ; 
 That never air or ocean felt the wind ; 
 That never passion discomposed the mind. 
 But all subsists by elemental strife ; 
 
 And passions are the elements of life. 1 wo 
 
 The gen'ral order, 2 since the whole began, 
 Is kept in nature, and is kept in man. 3 
 
 VI. What would this Man ? now upward will he soar, 
 And little less than angel, would be more ! 4 
 Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears 175 
 
 To want the strength 5 of bulls, the fur of bears. 6 
 
 H unrea- 
 
 soiiableneas 
 
 of the com- 
 plaints 
 
 
 evil is the disobedience of inanimate 
 nature to the Creator, as moral evil 
 arose from the disobedience of man. 
 The couplet, in an altered form, was 
 transferred to Epist. iv. ver. Ill, 
 where the context confirms the inter- 
 pretation which the present version 
 appears to require. 
 
 1 See this subject extended in 
 Epist. ii. from ver. 100 to vcr. 122 ; 
 ver. 165, etc. POPE. 
 
 Pope is answering the objections to 
 moral evil. The passions for which 
 he has undertaken to account are 
 vicious in kind or in degree they 
 are the passions which are contrary 
 to "virtue," ver. 166, the passions 
 of Borgia, Catiline, Caesar, and Alex- 
 ander, and these are not elements 
 essential to human life. 
 
 2 Pope uses almost the very words 
 of Bolingbroke : "To think worthily 
 of God we must think that the 
 natural order of things has been 
 always the same ; and that a being 
 of infinite wisdom and knowledge, to 
 whom the past and the future are 
 like the present, and who wants no 
 experience to inform him, can have 
 no reason to alter what infinite wis- 
 
 dom and knowledge have once done." 
 WARTON. 
 
 In saying that the "general order " 
 had been " kept," Pope did not mean 
 that there were no exceptions, for he 
 hold that there had been "some 
 change" since the beginning of things, 
 which was to reject the fanciful prin- 
 ciple of Bolingbroke. Infinite wis- 
 dom cannot err, but change is not 
 necessarily the reparation of error, 
 and a progressive may be preferable 
 to a stationary system. 
 
 3 This is Pope's summary of his 
 weak defence of moral evil. Moral 
 and physical irregularities, he says in 
 effect, have always prevailed, and 
 both are indispensable. He denies 
 this in his third epistle, and asserts 
 that universal innocence endured for 
 several generations to the great ad- 
 vantage of man. 
 
 4 Psalm viii. 5 : " Thou hast made 
 him a little lower than the angels, 
 and hast crowned him with glory and 
 honour." WARBTJRTON. 
 
 8 MS. : " Brawn." 
 
 6 Pope, in these lines, diverts him 
 self with drawing the picture of a 
 fool, that he may remark upon him,
 
 362 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 more facul- 
 ties would 
 make us 
 miserable. 
 
 Made for his use, all creatures if he call, 1 
 Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all : 
 Nature to these without profusion kind, 2 
 The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned ; 
 Each seeming want compensated of course, 
 Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force :' 
 All in exact proportion to the state ; 4 
 Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.* 
 Each beast, each insect, happy in its own :' 
 Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone ? 
 Shall he alone, whom rational we call, 
 Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all ? 7 
 The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find) 
 Is not to act or think beyond mankind ; 
 No pow'rs of body or of soul to share, 
 But what his nature and his state can bear. 8 
 
 180 
 
 185 
 
 190 
 
 and extend the remarks to mankind 
 in general. But such fools are rarely 
 to be met with, and I question 
 whether one can be found infatuated 
 to a degree like this. CROUSAZ. 
 
 Bishop Butler, like Crousaz, did 
 not believe that such "fools " existed. 
 "Who," he asked, "ever felt un- 
 easiness upon observing any of the 
 advantages brute creatures have over 
 us ? " Pope's authority was The Mo- 
 ralists of Lord Shaftesbury. " Why, 
 says one, was I not made by nature 
 strong as a horse ? Why not hardy 
 and robust as this brute creature ? or 
 nimble and active as that other ? " 
 
 1 The inversion is harsh ; and when 
 the words are ranged in their proper 
 order, "If he call all creatures made 
 for his use," is but uncouth English. 
 
 2 Shaftesbury's Moralists, Part ii. 
 Sect. 4 : "Nature has managed all 
 for the best, with perfect frugality 
 and just reserve ; profuse to none, 
 but bountiful to all." 
 
 3 It is a certain axiom in the ana- 
 tomy of creatures, that in proportion 
 
 as they are formed for strength their 
 swiftness is lessened ; or as they are 
 formed for swiftness their strength 
 is abated. POPE. 
 
 This is an error. The most power- 
 ful race-horses are often the fleetest. 
 
 4 First edition : 
 
 So justly all proportioned to each state. 
 
 5 Vid. Epist. iii. ver. 79, etc., and 
 ver. 109, etc. POPE. 
 
 6 That is, in its own state or con- 
 dition. 
 
 7 First edition : 
 
 Each beast, each insect, happy as it can, 
 Is heav'n unkind to nothing but to man ? 
 Shall man, shall reasonable man alone 
 Be or endowed with all, or pleased with 
 none? 
 
 8 First edition : 
 
 No self-confounding faculties to share, 
 No senses stronger than his brain can bear. 
 
 This rejected couplet embodied a 
 fancy from Lord Shaftesbury's 
 Moralists that the leading qualities 
 in any being are always provided at
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 363 
 
 Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
 
 For this plain reason, man is not a fly. 
 
 Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, 
 
 T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n P 1 
 
 Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, 
 
 To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore ? 
 
 Or quick effluvia darting through the brain, 
 
 Die of a rose in aromatic pain ? 2 
 
 If nature thundered in his op'ning ears, 
 
 And stunned him with the music of the spheres,* 
 
 How would he wish that heav'n had left him still 
 
 The whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill ? 
 
 Who finds not Providence all good and wise, 
 
 Alike in what it gives, and what denies ? 
 
 200 
 
 205 
 
 the expense of other organs, and that 
 if man had been endowed with greater 
 and more numerous bodily capacities 
 his brain would have been starved. 
 1 First edition : 
 
 What the advantage if his finer eyes 
 Study a mite, not comprehend the skies. 
 
 The second edition has some further 
 variations : 
 
 Why has not man a microscopic sight? 
 For this plain reason, man is not a mite : 
 Say what th' advantage of so fine an eye ? 
 T inspect a mite, not comprehend the sky 
 
 Pope owed the thought, and the 
 expression " microscopic eye " to 
 Locke, Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing, bk. ii. chap. 23, sect. 12 : 
 "If by the help of microscopical 
 eyes, a man could penetrate into the 
 secret composition of bodies, he would 
 not make any great advantage by the 
 change if he'could not see things he 
 was to avoid at a convenient dis- 
 tance." 
 
 3 The abbreviated language of the. 
 last four lines, which are not legiti-1 
 mate composition, makes it difficult ; 
 to follow the construction: "Say'j 
 what the use were finer touch given i 
 if, trembingly alive all o'er, we were ! 
 
 to smart and agonise at ev'ry pore ? 
 Or what the use of quick effluvia 
 darting through the brain, if we were 
 to die of a rose in aromatic pain ?" 
 
 3 Locke, Essay on the Human 
 Understanding, bk. ii. chap. 23, 
 sect. 12: "If our sense of hearing 
 were but one thousand times quicker 
 than it is, how would a perpetual 
 noise distract us. And we should in 
 the quietest retirement be less able 
 to sleep or meditate than in the 
 middle of a sea-fight." WAKTON. 
 
 Butler, Hudibras, ii. 1, 617. 
 
 Her voice, the music of the spheres, 
 So loud, it deafens mortal ears. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 It was an ancient fancy that the 
 planets rolled along spheres, emit- 
 ting music as they went. Pope's 
 supposition that the music would 
 stun us, alludes to the remarks of 
 Cicero, Somnium Scipionis, that the 
 crash of harmony is so tremendous 
 that human ears cannot receive it, 
 just as human eyes cannot gaze at the 
 sun. Warburton remarks that Pope 
 should not have illustrated a philoso- 
 phical argument by the example of 
 an unreal sound.
 
 364 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 There is an 
 universal 
 order and 
 gradation 
 through the 
 whole visi- 
 ble world, of 
 the sensible 
 and mental 
 faculties, 
 which 
 causes the 
 .subordina- 
 tion of 
 creature to 
 creature, 
 and of all 
 creatures to 
 man, whose 
 reason alone 
 countervails 
 all the other 
 faculties. 
 
 VII. Far as creation's ample range extends, 
 The scale of sensual, mental po w'rs ascends : 
 Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race, 1 
 From the green myriads in the peopled grass ; 
 What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme, 
 The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam : 
 Of smell, the headlong lioness between, 8 
 And hound sagacious on the tainted green : 
 Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood, 8 
 To that which warbles through the vernal wood ! 
 
 210 
 
 215 
 
 1 First edition : 
 
 Through gen'ral life, behold the scale 
 
 arise 
 
 Of sensual and of mental faculties ! 
 Vast range of sense from man's imperial 
 
 race 
 To the green myriads, etc. 
 
 A very little observation would have 
 satisfied Pope that "green" is not 
 the prevailing hue of the ' ' myriads 
 in the peopled grass." Wakefield 
 says that the expression "man's 
 imperial race," in ver. 209, is from 
 Dryden's Virg. Geo. iii. 377, and 
 that the general argument is from 
 Bolingbroke's Fragments : " There is 
 a gradation of sense and intelligence 
 here from animal beings imperceptible 
 to us for their minuteness, without 
 the help of microscopes, and even with 
 them, up to man." This is what 
 Leibnitz called "the law of con- 
 tinuity. " " Nature, " he said, ' ' never 
 proceeds by leaps." 
 
 2 The manner of the lions hunting 
 their prey in the deserts of Africa is 
 this ; at their first going out in the 
 night-time they set up a loud roar, 
 and then listen to the noise made by 
 the beasts in their flight, pursuing 
 them by the ear, and not by the 
 nostril. It is probable, the story of 
 the jackal's hunting for the lion was 
 occasioned by obserretMB of this de- 
 
 fect of scent in that terrible animal 
 POPE. 
 
 Pope was mistaken in his notion 
 that the lion hunted by ear alone, and 
 that his sense of smell was obtuse. 
 His scenting powers are very acuta 
 The account which Pope gives would 
 not, if it were true, explain why the 
 jackal should have been singled out 
 for the office of lion's provider. The 
 real reason is told by Livingstone. 
 When the lion is devouring his prey, 
 "the jackal comes sniffing about, 
 and sometimes suffers for his temerity 
 by a stroke from the lion's paw lay- 
 ing him dead." The persevering 
 attempt of the lesser animal to share 
 the spoils with the greater, led to the 
 belief that the two worked in concert 
 that the jackal was the pioneer, 
 and the lion the executioner. There 
 are two other readings of ver. 213 in 
 the MS. : 
 
 smell the stupid ass 
 Degrees of scent the vulgar brute between. 
 
 lAll the versions are deformed by the 
 License of putting the preposition 
 j" between" after its noun. 
 
 3 It was formerly a common belief 
 that fish were deaf ; but Pope ascribes 
 to them some capacity of healing, 
 and this is now known to be cor- 
 rect.
 
 AN ESSAY OX MAX. 
 
 365 
 
 The spider's toucli how exquisitely fine ! l 
 Feels at each thread, and lives along the line :* 
 In the nice hee, what sense so suhtly true 
 From pois'nous herhs extracts the healing dew? 3 
 How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine, 
 Compared, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine ! 4 
 'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier ! 
 For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near ! 
 Remembrance and reflection how allied ; 
 "What thin partitions sense from thought divide;* 
 
 820 
 
 225 
 
 1 Dryden, Marriage-a-la-mode, Act 
 ii. : 
 
 And when eyes meet far off, our sense is 
 
 such, 
 
 That, spider-like, we feel the tender*st touch . 
 WAKEFIELD. ^^^ 
 
 These lines are admirable patterns! 
 of forcible diction. The peculiar and* 
 discriminating expressiveness of the 
 epithets ought to be particularly re- 
 garded. Perhaps we' have no image 
 in the language more lively than that 
 of ver. 218. "To live along the 
 line," is equally bold and beautiful. 
 In this part of the epistle the poet 
 seems to have remarkably laboured 
 his style, which abounds in various 
 figures, and is much elevated. Pope 
 has practised the great secret of 
 Virgil's art, which was to discover 
 the very single epithet that precisely 
 suited each occasion. If Pope must 
 yield to other poets in point of fer- 
 tility of fancy, or harmony of numbers, 
 yet in point of propriety, closeness, 
 and elegance of diction, he can yield 1 
 to none. WARTON. | 
 
 2 The house-spider conceals itself 
 in a cell, which is constructed below 
 the web, and at a distance from it. 
 The threads which are spun from 
 the edge of the web to the spider's 
 lurking-hole, vibrate when a fly comes 
 in contact with the web, and are at 
 once a telegraph to give information 
 to the spider, and a bridge along 
 
 which it can rush forward to secure 
 its prey. 
 
 3 When the nectar of flowers is 
 poisonous, the bee has not the power 
 of separating its noxious from its 
 wholesome properties, nor do bees 
 always avoid the flowers which are 
 hurtful to them. Some honey which 
 is fatal to man may not be injurious 
 to the insects collecting it. 
 
 4 At first it ran, 
 
 How instinct varies ! What a hog may want 
 Compared with thine, half-reasoning ele- 
 phant. WARTON. 
 
 5 Dryden, Absalom and Achito- 
 phel : 
 
 Great wits are sure to madness near allied 
 And thin partitions do their bounds divide. 
 
 Pope is illustrating his proposition 
 that there nmst be grades of capacity 
 for animal to be subject to animal, 
 and all animals to man. The appli- 
 cation of the couplet to his argument 
 is obscure, and the couplet itself very 
 vague. The "remembrance" closely 
 "allied to reflection" appears to be 
 the effort of attention by which we 
 recall the dormant stores of memory. 
 "Thought" is a dubious term, but 
 seems to be put by Pope for the acts 
 of mind which take their rise in the 
 mind itself, as willing, imagining, 
 reasoning, etc., in contradistinction 
 to seeing, feeling, taste, etc., which 
 are produced by the operation of 
 external things upon the senses.
 
 306 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 How much 
 further this 
 gradation 
 and sub- 
 ordination 
 may extend, 
 were any 
 part of 
 which 
 broken the 
 whole con- 
 nected crea- 
 tion must be 
 destroyed. 
 
 And middle natures, how they long to join, 
 Yet never pass th' insuperable line ! ' 
 Without this just gradation could they be 
 Subjected, these to those, or all to thee ? 
 The pow'rs of all subdued by thee alone, 
 Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one ? 
 
 VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth, 
 All matter quick, and bursting into birth. 
 Above, how high progressive life may go ! 
 Around, how wide ! how deep extend below ! a 
 Vast chain of being ! which from God began, 
 Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, 3 
 Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 
 No glass can reach ; from infinite to thee, 
 From thee to nothing. 4 On superior pow'rs 
 Were we to press, inferior might on ours : 5 
 
 285 
 
 240 
 
 1 A two-fold or mixed nature was 
 sometimes in old language called 
 a "middle nature," such as a com- 
 pound of mind and matter, or an 
 amphibious animal, and Pope perhaps 
 meant that the double nature " longs 
 to join " in a more intimate union. 
 Or he may have meant by "middle," 
 an intermediate nature, such as any 
 creature which has an order of beings 
 above and below it, but then to satisfy 
 Pope's phraseology there must be 
 two of these middle natures which are 
 longing to unite with each other, and 
 the higher would not desire to be 
 "joined" to the lower. The couplet 
 seems at best to be mere mystical 
 jargon. 
 
 2 The idea is in Locke's Essay, 
 bk. iii. chap. 6, sect. 12, which 
 "Warton quotes. Bolingbroke, Frag- 
 ment 49, copied Locke and others, 
 and Pope copied Bolingbroke. 
 
 3 Ed. 1st : 
 
 Ethereal essence, spirit, substance, man. 
 POPE. 
 
 4 This is a magnificent passage. 
 1 Thomson had before said in Summer, 
 I ver. 333 : 
 
 Has any seen 
 The mighty chain of beings, lessening 
 
 down 
 
 From infinite perfection, to the blink 
 Of dreary nothing. WARTON. 
 
 Rennet's Pascal, p. 166: "He will 
 find himself hanging, in the material 
 scale, between the two vast abysses 
 of infinite and nothing." 
 
 5 All that can be said of a scale of 
 beings is to be found in the third 
 chapter of King's Origin of Evil, 
 and in a note ending with these em- 
 phatic words : ' ' Whatever system 
 God had chosen, there could have 
 been but a determinate multitude of 
 the most perfect creatures, and when 
 that was completed there would have 
 been a station for creatures less per- 
 fect, and it would still have been an 
 instance of goodness to give them a 
 being as well as others." WAR- 
 
 TON.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 367 
 
 Or in the full creation leave a void, 1 
 Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed : * 
 From nature's chain whatever link you strike, 
 Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike. 8 
 
 And if' each system in gradation roll 4 
 Alike essential to th' amazing whole, 5 
 The least confusion but in one, not all 
 That system only, but the whole must fall. 
 Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly," 
 Planets and suns run lawless through the sky ;' 
 Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled, 
 Being on being wrecked, and world on world ; 
 Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod, 
 And nature tremble 8 to the throrte of God ! 9 
 
 245 
 
 350 
 
 255 
 
 1 Suffer men, says Pope, to en- 
 croach upon superior powers, and 
 either inferior powers must rise to 
 the rank we have vacated, or by not 
 moving forward into the gap, they 
 will leave a void in creation. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 in nature what it hates, a void ; 
 Or leave a gap hi the creation void ; 
 The scale is broken if a step destroyed. 
 
 3 Dryden, Love Triumphant, Act 
 iv. Sc. 1 : 
 
 Great nature, break thy chain, that links 
 
 together 
 The fabric of this globe, and make a chaos. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Yet more ev'n systems in gradation roll 
 
 5 Bolingbroke, Fragment 42 : "We 
 cannot doubt that numberless worlds, 
 and systems of worlds, compose this 
 amazing whole, the universe." 
 
 6 Milton, Par. Lost, vii. 242 : 
 
 And earth self-balanced on her centre hung. 
 
 The tendency of the earth to move 
 in a straight line is balanced by the 
 attraction of the sun, and Pope sup- 
 poses this attraction to cease. 
 
 J I like the reading of earlier edi-/ 
 rions better ; 
 
 Planets and suns rush lawless through the j 
 
 sky. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 After Pope's death "tremble" 
 was misprinted "trembles,'' and the 
 error has been retained in most 
 editions. The construction is, " Let 
 planets and suns run lawless through 
 the sky, let being be wrecked on 
 being, world on world, let heaven's 
 whole foundations nod to their centre, 
 and let nature tremble to the throne 
 of God !" 
 
 9 These six lines, ver. 251256, | 
 are added since the first edition. 
 POPE. 
 
 Ruffhead says "there is no reading 
 these lines without being struck with 
 a momentary apprehension." "With- 
 out quite allowing this, we cannot 
 but feel their great beauty and force. 
 Line rises upon line, with greater 
 effect and nobler imagery, and in the 
 conclusion the poet has touched the 
 idea with propriety, as well as dignity 
 and sublimity. If he had been more 
 particular, the passage would have 
 been unworthy the grandeur of the 
 subject; had he been less it would 
 have been obscure. He has at once 
 evinced judgment and poetry. If
 
 368 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The extra- 
 vagance, im- 
 piety, and 
 pride of such 
 a desire. 
 
 All this dread order break for whom ? for thee ? 
 Vile worm ! madness ! pride ! impiety ! ! 
 
 IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread, 
 Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head ? 
 What if the head, the eye, or ear repined 
 To serve mere engines to the ruling mind ?* 
 Just as absurd for any part to claim 
 To be another, in this gen'ral frame : * 
 Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains 
 The great directing Mind of all ordains. 4 
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 5 
 
 260 
 
 265 
 
 there be a word or two not quite 
 suitable, perhaps it is "run," and 
 "foundations nod." I could have 
 wished such a word as " rushed law- 
 less," or "flamed lawless through the 
 sky." BOWLES. 
 
 1 The chief problem which Pope 
 undertook to solve was the existence 
 of moral evil. Yet, if man, in obe- 
 dience to God's commands, became 
 morally perfect, none of the disastrous 
 effects the poet describes would ensue. 
 Angels would not be hurled from 
 their spheres; worlds would not be 
 wrecked ; nor would heaven's founda- 
 tions nod to their centre. Reason 
 'and revelation unite in the conclusion 
 that moral perfection would, on the 
 contrary, be an unmitigated blessing. 
 Consequently Pope's hypothesis ex- 
 plains nothing unless he had shown 
 how it is that a system which ren- 
 dered evil impossible would be inferior 
 to our own. 
 
 4 Plotinus, translated by Cudworth, 
 Intellectual System, ed. Harrison, 
 vol. iii., p. 479 : "Some things in me 
 partake ouly of being, some of life 
 also, some of sense, some of reason, 
 and some of intellect above reason. 
 But no man ought to require equal 
 things from unequal; nor that the 
 finger should see, but the eye; it 
 
 being enough for the finger to be a 
 finger, and to perform its own office. " 
 WARTOX. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke, Fragment 66 : "No- 
 thing can be more absurd than the 
 complaints of creatures who are in 
 one of these orders, that they are not 
 in another." 
 
 4 Vid. the prosecution and applica- 
 tion of this in Epist. iv. ver. 162. 
 POPE. 
 
 5 "Soul," says Samuel Clarke, 
 ' ' signifies a part of a whole, whereof 
 body is the other part, and they, 
 being united, mutually affect each 
 other as parts of the same whole. 
 But God is present to every part of 
 the universe, not as a soul, but as a 
 governor, so as to act upon every- 
 thing in what manner he pleases, 
 himself being acted upon by nothing." 
 Warburton quotes some passages from 
 Sir Isaac Newton asserting the om- 
 nipresence of the Deity, and the 
 commentator affirms that the poet 
 expressed the identical doctrine of the 
 philosopher. This is a misrepresen- 
 tation. The extracts of Warbuton are 
 from the scholium to the Principia, 
 where Newton adds, "God governs 
 all things, not as a soul of the world, 
 but as the Lord of the universe. The 
 Godhead of God is his dominion, a
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 369 
 
 That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
 Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame, 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and hlossoms in the trees/ 
 Lives thro' all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 2 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,* 
 As full, as perfect in a hair as heart ;" 
 As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns, 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : * 
 To him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. 6 
 
 270 
 
 275 
 
 230 
 
 dominion not like that of a soul over 
 its own body, but that of a Lord over 
 his servants." The doctrine which 
 Pope held in common with Sir Isaac 
 Newton was the omnipresence of the 
 Deity. The doctrine which Sir Isaac 
 Newton repudiated, and which Pope 
 maintained, was that the world was 
 the body of God as the human frame 
 is of man. The world in this sense 
 was not the work of the Deity, but 
 a portion of him. Pope abandoned 
 his present creed, Epist. iii. ver. 229, 
 where he says, 
 
 The worker from the work distinct was 
 known. 
 
 Every ear must feel the ill effect 
 of the monotony in these lines. The 
 cause is obvious. When the pause 
 Falls on the fourth syllable, we shall 
 5nd that we pronounce the six last in 
 the same time that we do the four 
 first, so that the couplet is not only 
 divided into two equal lines, but each 
 line, with respect to time, is divided 
 into two equal parts. WEBB. 
 
 Our poet is certainly indebted to 
 the following verses of Mrs. Chandler 
 on Solitude : 
 
 He's all in all : his wisdom, goodness, pow'r, 
 Spring in each blade, and bloom in ev'ry 
 flow'r ; 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 ryhffl,) 
 therill: [ 
 rilL j 
 
 Smile o'er the meads, andbendtffltw'iy hill, " 
 Glide in the stream, and murmur in'the i 
 All nature moves obedient to his will. 
 
 Dryden, in the State of Innocence, 
 Act v., was probably also in our poet's 
 recollection : 
 
 Where'er thou art, he is : th" eternal mind 
 Acts through all places, is to none confined ; 
 Fills ocean, earth, and air, and all above, 
 And through the universal mass does move. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 "Our mortal part," is put in 
 opposition to "soul," and the anti- 
 thesis is a recognition of the soul's 
 immortality. The allusion was too 
 slight to offend Bolingbroke, or, per- 
 haps, to attract his notice. 
 
 4 Dugald Stewart observes that 
 everyone must be displeased with this 
 line, because the triviality of the alli- 
 teration is at vaiiance with the sub- 
 limity of the subject. 
 
 5 First edition : 
 
 As the rapt Seraphim that sings and bums. 
 The name Seraphim, says Warbur- 
 ton, signifies burners, and Wakefield 
 quotes, in illustration, from Spenser's 
 Hymn of Heavenly Beauty, stanza 
 14: 
 
 And those eternal burning Seraphims 
 Which from their faces dart out fiery light. 
 
 6 These are lines of a marvellous' 
 
 R T
 
 370 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The conse- 
 quence of 
 all, the abso- 
 lute submis- 
 sion due to 
 Providence, 
 both as to 
 our present 
 and future 
 state. 
 
 X. Cease then, nor order imperfection name : 
 Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 1 
 Know thy own point : this kind, this due degree* 
 Of blindness, weakness, heav'n bestows on thee. 
 Submit : in this, or any other sphere, 
 Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear ; 3 
 Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r/ 
 Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. 
 All nature is but art 5 unknown to thee, 6 
 All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; ' 
 All discord, harmony not understood ; " 
 All partial evil, universal good ; 
 
 285 
 
 290 
 
 energy and closeness of expression. 
 WABTON. 
 
 The concluding lines appear to be 
 a false jingle of words which nen- 
 tralise the whole of Pope's argument. 
 If there is to Providence "no high, 
 no low, no great, no small," the 
 gradation of beings is a delusion. 
 What things are in the sight of God, 
 that they are in reality, and since no 
 one thing in creation is superior or 
 inferior to any other thing, Pope's 
 language throughout this epistle is 
 unmeaning. The final phrase of the 
 couplet is bathos. God is not only 
 the "equal " of " all" his works, he 
 is immeasurably beyond them. 
 
 1 The "order" is the gradation of 
 beings, and " what we blame " is our 
 own rank in the scale of creation, 
 whereas, says Pope, our "proper bliss 
 depends upon it." 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 Cease then, nor order imperfection call 
 
 On which depends the happiness of all. 
 
 Reason, to think of God when she pre- 
 tends, 
 
 Begins a censor, an adorer ends. 
 
 See and confess, this just, this land 
 degree 
 
 Of blindness, etc. 
 
 3 Pope would not express a "sure 
 and certain hope in a blessed resur- 
 
 rection." He used the same equivocal 
 language as his "guide," who had no 
 faith that "another sphere" existed 
 for man. "Let the tranquillity of 
 my mind," said Bolingbroke, Frag. 
 51, "rest on this immovable rock, 
 that my future, as well as my present 
 state, are ordered by an almighty and 
 all- wise Creator." 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 In the same hand, the same all-plastic 
 pow'r. 
 
 5 " Nature is the art whereby God 
 governs the world," says Hobbes. 
 WARTON. 
 
 Sir T. Browne, Kelig. Med. Part i. 
 16 : "In brief all tilings are artifi- 
 cial ; for nature is the art of God. " 
 
 6 Art, in the sense of design, is 
 manifest in nature, and has been 
 traced in endless particulars. Pope 
 must mean by "unknown art" the 
 ultimate principles to which the laws 
 of nature owe their efficiency. 
 
 7 From Fontenelle : ' ' Everything 
 is chance, provided we give this 
 name to an order unknown to us." 
 WARTON. 
 
 8 Feltham's Eesolves : ' ' The world 
 is kept in order by discord, and every 
 part of it is but a more particular 
 composed jar. And in all these it 
 makes greatly for the Maker's glory
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 371 
 
 And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite, 1 
 One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. ) / 
 
 that such an admirable harmony Pope afterwards, says Johnson, dis- 
 
 should be produced out of such an covered, or was shown, that the 
 
 infinite discord." WARTON. "truth" which subsisted "in spite 
 
 1 This line ran thus in the first of reason " could not be very 
 
 edition: "clear." 
 And spite of pride, and in thy reason's spite. 
 
 * B 'Z
 
 ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II. 
 
 OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO 
 HIMSELF, AS AN INDIVIDUAL. 
 
 I. THE business of man not to pry into God, but to study himself. His 
 middle nature : his powers and frailties, ver. 1 to 19. The limits of his 
 capacity, ver. 19, &c. II. The two principles of man, self-love and reason, 
 both necessary, ver. 53, &c. Self-love the stronger, and why, ver. 67, &c. 
 Their end the same, ver. 81, &c. III. The passions, and their use, ver. 93 to 
 130. The predominant passion, and its force, ver. 132 to 160. Its necessity, 
 in directing men to different purposes, ver. 165, &c. Its providential use, in 
 fixing our principle, and ascertaining our virtue, ver. 177. IV. Virtue and 
 vice joined in our mixed nature ; the limits near, yet the things separate and 
 evident : what is the office of reason, ver. 202 to 216. V. How odious vice in 
 itself, and how we deceive ourselves into it, ver. 217. VI. That, however, 
 the ends of Providence and general good are answered in our passions and im- 
 perfections, ver. 238, &c. How usefully these are distributed to all orders of 
 men, ver. 241. How useful they are to society, ver. 251. And to individuals, 
 ver. 263. In every state, and every age of life, ver. 273, &c.
 
 EPISTLE II. 
 
 I. KNOW then thyself, presume not God to scan,' 
 The proper study of mankind is man.* 
 Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 3 
 A being darkly wise, and rudely great : 
 With too much knowledge for the sceptic side/ 
 With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, 8 
 He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; 8 
 In doubt to deem himself a god or beast; 7 
 
 The business 
 of man not 
 to pry into 
 God, but to 
 study him- 
 self. His 
 middle 
 nature, 
 his power, 
 " frailties, and 
 the limits of 
 his capacity. 
 
 'MS.: 
 
 Learn we ourselves, not God presume to 
 
 scan, 
 But know the study, etc. 
 
 The only science of mankind is man. 
 
 Ed. 2. : 
 
 The proper study, etc. POPE. 
 
 "The true science and true study 
 of man is man," says Charron in his 
 treatise on Wisdom ; and Pascal, in 
 his thoughts translated by Dr. Ken- 
 net, 1727, p. 248, says, "The study 
 of man is the proper employment 
 and exercise of mankind." But 
 Pascal is maintaining that man 
 should study himself in preference 
 to mathematics, and not to the ex- 
 clusion of God, which is a doctrine 
 that would have filled him with 
 horror. 
 
 3 From Cowley, who says of life, 
 in his ode on Life and Fame : 
 
 Vain, weak-built isthmus, which dost 
 
 proudly rise 
 Up betwixt two eternities. WARTON. 
 
 4 Rennet's Pascal, p. 160 : " We 
 have an idea of truth, not to be 
 effaced by all the wiles of the scep- 
 tic. " 
 
 5 The stoic took his stand upon 
 virtue, and with a stern faith in the 
 all-sufficiency of moral excellence he 
 calmly defied the trials of life. 
 
 6 Johnson, in his translation of 
 Crousaz, says he cannot determine 
 whether any one has discovered the 
 true meaning of the words ' ' in doubt 
 to act or rest." The language is 
 vague, and incapable of an inter- 
 pretation which is generally true; 
 but the probable sense seems to be 
 that man is in doubt whether to em- 
 brace an active belief, or whether to 
 resign himself to a passive, inert 
 scepticism. 
 
 7 First edition : 
 
 To deem himself a part of God or beast. 
 
 Rennet's Pascal, p. 30, furnished the 
 hint for the line : " "What, then, is 
 to be the fate of man ? Shall he be 
 equal to God, or shall he not be 
 superior to the beasts ? "
 
 376 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 
 
 Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err; 1 10 
 
 Alike in ignorance, his reason such, 1 
 
 Whether he thinks too little or too much;* 
 
 Chaos of thought and passion, all confused ; 4 
 
 Still by himself abused,* or disabused ; 
 
 Created half to rise, and half to fall ; 6 15 
 
 Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all ; 
 
 Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled ; 
 
 The glory, jest, and riddle of the world ! 7 
 
 8 Go, wondrous creature ! mount 9 where science guides, 
 Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; 20 
 
 1 Man is not born only to die, 
 but death has the present life on one 
 side of it, and immortality on the 
 other. Man does not reason only to 
 err, but to establish a multitude of 
 mighty truths. 
 
 2 " Such is the reason of man that 
 he is equally ignorant whether, etc." 
 
 J From Rennet's Pascal, p. 180 : 
 "If we think too little of a thing or 
 too much, our head turns giddy, and 
 we are at a loss to find out our way to 
 truth." 
 
 4 Rennet's Pascal, p. 162: "What 
 a chimaera then is man ! "What a 
 confused chaos ! What a subject of 
 contradiction ! " 
 
 * "Abused"'' here means "de- 
 ceived," a sense of the word which 
 was once common. Lord Bacon, Es- 
 say on Cunning : " Some build upon 
 the abusing of others, and, as we 
 now say, putting tricks upon them." 
 Bishop Hall, Contemplations upon 
 the New Testament, bk. ii. cont. 6 : 
 " Crafty men and lying spirits agreed 
 to abuse the credulous world. " 
 
 6 Rennet's Pascal, p. 162 : " If he 
 is too aspiring we can lower him ; if 
 too mean we can raise him." 
 
 7 From Rennet's Pascal, p. 162 : "A 
 professed judge of all things, and yet 
 a feeble worm of the earth ; the great 
 
 depositary and guardian of truth, and 
 yet a mere huddle of uncertainty; the 
 glory and the scandal of the universe. " 
 
 8 After ver. 18 in the MS.: 
 
 For more perfection than th is state can bear 
 In vain we sigh ; heav"n made us as we are. 
 [If gods we must because we trouWbe, then 
 Pray hard ye monkies, and ye may be men.] 
 As wisely sure a modest ape might aim 
 To be like man, whose faculties and frame 
 He sees, he feels, as you or I to be 
 An angel thing we neither know nor see. 
 Observe how near he edges on our race ; 
 What human tricks ! how risible of face ! 
 " It must be so why else have I the sense 
 Of more than monkey charms and excel- 
 lence ? 
 
 Why else to walk on two so oft essayed ? 
 And why this ardent longing for a maid! " 
 So Pug might plead, and call his gods un- 
 kind, 
 
 Till set on end, and married to his mind. 
 Go, reas'ning thing! assume the Doctor's 
 
 chair, 
 
 As Plato deep, as Seneca severe : 
 Fix moral fitness, and to God give rule, 
 Then drop, etc. WARBURTON. 
 
 The couplet between brackets was 
 omitted by Warburton. There is 
 still another reading in the MS. of 
 the couplet, "Observe how near," etc. 
 
 Observe his love of tricks, his laughing face ; 
 An elder brother, too, to human race. 
 
 9 MS.: 
 
 Go, reas'ning man, go mount, etc.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 377 
 
 Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, 1 
 Correct old Time,* and regulate the sun; 3 
 Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere, 
 To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; 4 
 Or tread the mazy round his followers trod; 
 And quitting sense call imitating God ;* 
 
 25 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Instruct erratic planets where to run. 
 
 2 "Warburton says that the phrase 
 "correct old Time " refers to Sir Isaac 
 Newton's Chronology of Antient King- 
 doms Amended, in which one of the 
 main positions was based upon astro- 
 nomical science. More probably Pope 
 alluded to the familiar fact of the 
 Gregorian reformation of the calendar 
 by substituting new style for old. 
 The change was adopted towards the 
 close of the sixteenth century through 
 the greater part of Europe, but the 
 old style was retained in England till 
 1752. By " regulate the sun," Wake- 
 field understands the use of equal 
 mean for unequal apparent time. 
 
 3 Ed. 4, 5. : 
 
 Show by what rules the wand'ring planets 
 
 stray, 
 Correct old Tim , and teach the sun his 
 
 way. POPE. 
 
 " Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to 
 rule," exclaims Pope, ver. 29, and 
 Warburton correctly remarks that the 
 sahtie summary is "a conclusion 
 from all that had been said before 
 from ver. 18 to this effect." The 
 illustrations which go before should 
 consequently be examples of the wild 
 attempts to show how the world 
 might have been better contrived, 
 and Pope points to such schemes 
 when he says, "Instruct the planets 
 in what orbs to run." But he has 
 perplexed his meaning by improperly 
 mixing up with instances of ignorant 
 presumption, those real discoveries in 
 science, which are the result of a 
 patient investigation of God's works, 
 
 and have no connection with the pre- 
 tence of "teaching Eternal Wisdom 
 how to rule." 
 
 4 Bolingbroke, Fragment 58 :" They 
 soar up on Platonic wings to the first 
 good and the first just." Plato taught 
 that there was a good in itself, a just 
 iu itself, a beautiful in itself, etc. 
 These ideas, as he called them, these 
 faultless archetypes of earthly quali- 
 ties, were not mere abstractions of 
 the mind. They had a real exist- 
 ence, and all that was good, beauti- 
 ful, and just in this world, was de- 
 rived .-from them. The "empyreal 
 sphepe " was the outermost of the 
 ninif fictitious spheres of the ancients, 
 and is "inhabited," says Cicero in 
 his Vision of Scipio, " by that all- 
 powerful God who controls the other 
 spheres." Pope learned his contempt 
 of Plato from Bolingbroke, who said 
 of him with his usual intemperance, 
 and more than his usual ignorance, 
 that he was the "father of philoso- 
 phical lying, and treated every sub- 
 ject like a bombast poet, and a mad 
 theologian." 
 
 s MS.: 
 
 And proudly rave of imitating God. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 2 : "I dare 
 not use theological familiarity and 
 talk of imitating God." Frag. 4 : 
 "I hold it to be worse than absurd 
 to assert that man can imitate 
 God." The Platonists taught that 
 if we would know and imitate God 
 we must withdraw the mind from 
 the things of sense, and contemplate 
 the spiritual and the perfect.
 
 878 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 As eastern priests in giddy circles run, 1 
 And turn their heads to imitate the sun.* 
 Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule 8 
 Then drop into thyself, and he a fool ! 
 
 Superior heings, when of late they saw 
 A mortal man 4 unfold all nature's law, 
 Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, 4 
 And showed a Newton, as we show an ape.' 
 
 Pope's object was to ridicule 
 those who thought that the perfec- 
 tions of the Deity were to be the 
 model for the imperfect efforts of 
 man. The notion, he says, is not 
 less preposterous than the Eastern 
 absurdity of twisting in a circle to 
 imitate the apparent revolution of 
 the sun. 
 
 1 MS.: 
 
 So Eastern madmen in a circle run. 
 
 2 Plutarch tells us, in his Life of 
 Numa, that the followers of Pytha- 
 goras were enjoined to turn them- 
 selves round during the performance 
 of their religious worship ; and that 
 this circumrotation was intended to 
 imitate the revolution of the world. 
 Pliny, in his Natural History, 
 xxviii. 5, mentions the same prac- 
 tice. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope referred to the sacred dance 
 of the Mahometan monks. "They 
 turn on their left foot," says Theve- 
 not, "like a wind-mill driven by a 
 strong wind," and Lady Mary W. 
 Montagu, who witnessed the cere- 
 mony, states that they whirled round 
 with an amazing swiftness for above 
 an hour without any of them showing 
 the least appearance of giddiness, 
 which, she adds, is not to be won- 
 dered at when it is considered they 
 are all used to it from their infancy. 
 
 s MS. : 
 
 Of moral fitness fix th' unerring rule. 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 Angels themselves, I grant it, when they saw 
 One mighty man, etc. 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Admired an angel in a human shape. 
 
 6 From the Zodiac of Paliugenius : 
 
 Simia ccelicolum, risusque jocusque deo- 
 
 rum est 
 Tune homo, cum temere ingenio confidit, 
 
 et audet 
 
 Abdita naturae scrutari, arcanaque divum. 
 WAKTON. 
 
 This image gives an air of burlesque 
 to the passage, notwithstanding all 
 that can be said. It is degrading to 
 the subject, to the idea of the "supe- 
 rior beings," and to the character on 
 whom it is meant as a panegyric. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 The author of a Letter to Mr. Pope, 
 1735, says that the lines on Newton 
 had been "generally admired and 
 repeated." From this praise he justly 
 dissents. Either the angels could not 
 have ' ' admired " Newton in the pro- 
 per sense of the word, or they could 
 not have " shown him as we show an 
 ape, " when he would have appeared a 
 grotesque and ludicrous object. The 
 idea is altogether a poor conceit, and 
 was not worth borrowing. In the 
 MS. an additional couplet followed 
 ver. 34 : 
 
 Ah, turn the glass ! it shows thee all 
 
 along 
 As weak in conduct, as in science strong.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Could he, whose rules the rapid comet 1 bind, 2 
 Describe or fix one movement of his mind ? 3 
 Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, 4 
 Explain his own beginning or his end ?* 
 Alas ! what wonder ! * man's superior part 7 
 Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art ;" 
 
 370 
 35 
 
 1 Ed. 4 : The whirling comet. 
 POPE. 
 
 2 Ed. 1 : 
 
 Could he who taught each planet where to 
 roll, 
 
 Describe or fix one movement of the soul? 
 
 Who marked their points to rise or to de- 
 scend, 
 
 Explain his own beginning or his end? 
 
 POPE. 
 
 3 Sir Isaac Newton showed the pro- 
 bability, converted into certainty by 
 later observations, that comets tra- 
 velled in elongated curves, and were 
 subjected to the identical law of 
 attraction which governed the mo- 
 tions of the planets. The laws of 
 gravitation were the "rules" which 
 " bound" the comets, and Pope con- 
 trasts these definite laws of matter 
 with the variable "movements" of 
 the human mind, which cannot be 
 "fixed" or reduced to rule. The 
 mind, however, has also its laws, 
 which, notwithstanding the disturb- 
 ing force of free-will, are sufficiently 
 understood for the practical purposes 
 of life. 
 
 4 Ed. 4 : 
 
 Who saw the stars here rise, and here 
 descend? POPE. 
 
 5 The comparison is pointless. 
 Newton knew far more of his end, 
 of his mission and ultimate destiny, 
 than of the purpose and fate of 
 comets, and did not know less of his 
 own beginning than of the origin of the 
 heavenly bodies. Man is incapable of 
 conceiving the mode by which a single 
 atom of the universe was called into 
 being, nor can he penetrate to the 
 essence of a single law or particle of 
 
 matter any better than to the essence 
 of mind. After ver. 38 there is this 
 couplet in the MS. : 
 
 Or more of God, or more of man can find, 
 Than this that one is good, and one is 
 blind? 
 
 There is a kindred antithesis in the 
 last verse of the Epistle, but the ex- 
 aggeration of the statement is less 
 strongly marked. 
 
 6 "Alas," says Pope, "what won- 
 der" that Newton should be unable 
 to "explain his own beginning and 
 end," since "what reason weaves is 
 undone by passion. " But this cannot 
 be the cause of our inability to unfold 
 the creative process, for when passion 
 is not permitted to interfere with 
 reason we make no advance towards 
 an explanation of our "own begin- 
 ning." Passion does often interfere 
 with the just perception of our proper 
 " end," and with the practice of the 
 duties we perceive, only Pope should 
 have known that to rise superior to 
 passion is the daily discipline of hosts 
 of men. "It seems," says Pascal, 
 "to be the divine intention to per- 
 fect the will rather than the under- 
 standing," and of the two we can 
 approximate nearer to moral perfec- 
 tion than to universal science. 
 
 MS. : 
 
 Unchecked may mount thy intellectual 
 
 part 
 From whim to whim at best from art to 
 
 art. 
 
 8 MS. : 
 
 Joins truth to truth, or mounts 
 There mounts unchecked, and soars from 
 
 art to art.
 
 380 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The two 
 principles 
 of man, self- 
 love and 
 reason, both 
 necessary. 
 
 But when his own great work is but begun, 
 What reason weaves, by passion is undone, 1 
 
 Trace science then, with modesty thy guide ; 
 First strip off all her equipage of pride ; 
 Deduct what is but vanity or dress, 
 Or learning's luxury, or idleness ; 
 Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain, 
 Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain ; 
 Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts 
 Of all* our vices have created arts ; 
 Then see how little the remaining sum, 
 Which served the past, and must the times to come !* 
 
 II. Two principles in human nature reign ; 
 Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain ; 4 
 Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call, 
 Each works its end to move or govern all :* 
 And to their proper operation still* 
 Ascribe all good ; to their improper, ill. 
 
 Sti 
 
 1 An allusion to the web of Pene- 
 lope in Homer's Odyssey. WAKE- 
 FIELD. 
 
 2 That is, of all the studies which 
 are dictated by the vices of pride and 
 vanity. He followed Bolingbroke, 
 who wrote long tirades against mo- 
 ralists, divines, and metaphysicians, 
 for indulging, from hope of fame, in 
 barren, chimerical speculations. 
 
 3 This paragraph first appeared in 
 the edition of 1743. In the preced- 
 ing paragraph, we are told that, in 
 physical science, man "may rise un- 
 checked from art to art." Unless, 
 therefore, Pope reckoned physical 
 science among the worthless depart- 
 ments of knowledge, there was, by 
 his own statement, one vast and 
 important scientific region which was 
 destined to unlimited extension, and 
 of which it was not correct to say 
 that a ' ' little sum " must serve the 
 future, as it had served the past. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Two different principles our nature move ; 
 One spurs, one reins ; this reason, that self 
 love. 
 
 Cicero's Offices, i. 28: "The powers 
 of the mind are twofold ; one -consists 
 in appetite, by the Greeks called 
 <5pju$J (impulse), which hurries man 
 hither and thither ; the other in rea- 
 son, which teaches and explains what 
 we are to do, and what we are to 
 avoid." 
 6 The MS. goes on thus : 
 
 Of good and evil gods what frighted fools, 
 Of good and evil, reason puzzled schools, 
 Deceived, deceiving taught, to these 
 
 refer ; 
 
 Know both must operate, or both must 
 . err. WAKBURTON. 
 
 6 ' ' Still " is thrust in to supply a 
 i rhyme. "Ascribe " is "we ascribe " 
 ! carried on from "we call" at ver. 
 55.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 381 
 
 Self-love, the spring of motion, acts ' the soul ; 
 Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. 2 
 Man, but for that, no action could attend, 
 And, but for this, were active to no end : 
 Fixed like a plant on his peculiar spot, 
 To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot ; 3 
 Or, meteor-like, flame lawless through the void, 4 
 Destroying others, by himself destroyed. 
 
 Most strength the moving principle requires ; 
 Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires ; 
 Sedate and quiet, the comparing lies, 
 Formed but to check, delib'rate, and advise. 
 Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh : 
 Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie :* 
 That sees immediate good by present sense ; 
 Reason, the future and the consequence." 
 
 60 
 
 Self-love 
 the stronger, 
 and why. 
 
 70 
 
 1 "Acts," in the signification of 
 "incites to action" was formerly 
 common. "Most men," says Bar- 
 row, " are greatly tainted with self- 
 love ; some are wholly possessed and 
 acted by it. " 
 
 2 MS.: 
 
 Self-love tlie spring of action lends the 
 
 force ; 
 Reason's comparing balance states the 
 
 course : 
 
 The primal impulse, and controlling weight 
 To give the motion, and to regulate. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 3, says that 
 " appetite and passion are the spring 
 of human nature ; reason the balance 
 to control and regulate it." The 
 image is borrowed from the works of 
 the watch, where the spring is the 
 moving power, and the balance regu- 
 lates the motion. 
 
 3 "Without self-love, that is, man 
 would be like "a plant," and with- 
 out reason like "a meteor," the 
 slave of destructive passions. The 
 first comparison is inconsiderate. 
 The man who had no self-love, 
 which means no moving principle, 
 
 no affections or desires, would not 
 even " draw nutrition, and propa- 
 gate." The appetite for food, the 
 sexual appetite, and the care for life, 
 would all be wanting, and he would 
 "rot "at once. Or if reason, with- 
 out desires, could induce him to 
 foster an existence to which he 
 was totally indifferent, reason might 
 equally impel him to other acts be- 
 sides the preservation of himself, and 
 the perpetuation of his race. 
 
 4 Meteors may flame lawless through 
 empty space, but man could not be 
 flaming through a ' ' void " when he 
 was ' ' destroying others. " 
 
 5 The objects, that is, of reason lie 
 at a distance. MS. : 
 
 Self-love yet stronger as its objects near ; 
 Keason's diminished as remote appear. 
 
 6 From Lord Bacon: "The affec- 
 tions carry ever an appetite to good 
 as reason doth. The difference is, 
 that the affection beholdeth merely 
 the present, reason beholdeth the 
 future and sum of time." RUFF- 
 HEAD.
 
 382 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Their end 
 the same. 
 
 Thicker than arguments, temptations throng, 
 At best more watchful this, but that more strong. 
 The action of the stronger to suspend, 
 Reason still use, to reason still attend. 
 Attention, habit and experience gains ; l 
 Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains. 
 
 Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight, 
 More studious to divide than to unite ; 
 And grace and virtue," sense 3 and reason split, 4 
 "With all the rash dexterity of wit. 
 Wits, just like fools, at war about a name, 
 Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. 5 
 Self-love and reason to one end aspire, 
 Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire ; 6 
 
 M 
 
 85 
 
 " The sensual man," says Crousaz 
 in illustration of the principle, "in- 
 dulges in the pleasures of a luxurious 
 table regardless of the diseases that 
 may be the consequence of his glut- 
 tony, but the reasoner prefers a last- 
 ing tranquillity to transient enjoy- 
 ment." 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Fragment 6 : " Self- 
 love is the original spring of human 
 actions. Experience and observation 
 require time ; and reason that collects 
 from them comes slowly to our assist- 
 ance." Experience enlightens reason 
 by showing us what is hurtful in 
 practice, and what beneficial. Pope's 
 line is badly expressed. "Attention 
 gains habit," for "habits are acquired 
 by attention," is barely English. 
 
 2 MS. : "nature." "Grace "here 
 signifies the Divine assistance vouch- 
 safed to the natural powers of man in 
 his efforts after goodness. Pope's ori- 
 ginal reading, ' ' grace and nature ' ' 
 was a censure of the attempts to de- 
 fine the respective influences exerted 
 by the nature of man, and the grace or 
 intervention of God. The substitute 
 of "virtue" for "nature," obscures 
 the meaning, but the poet apparently 
 
 had still in his mind the long contro- 
 versies on the share which apper- 
 tained to "grace "in the production 
 of "virtue." He may have thought 
 that it was needless to try and settle 
 the precise part which belonged to 
 grace, since nature and grace are both 
 gifts of the same Almighty Being. 
 
 3 Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato 
 divided the faculties into "sense and 
 reason," and the classification passed 
 from the ancients to the schoolmen. 
 " Sense " comprised the five senses, 
 with every act of the mind which was 
 supposed to depend on bodily sensa- 
 tions. Under this head were in- 
 cluded the passions and desires, and 
 "sense," in its moral signification, 
 was the equivalent of what Pope calls 
 "self-love." 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 Let metaphysics common reason split. 
 
 5 In the MS. this couplet follows : 
 
 Too nice distinctions honest sense will shun, 
 Know pleasure, good, and happiness ai-e one. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 Both fly from pain, to pleasure both aspire, 
 With one aversion, and with one desire.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 383 
 
 But greedy that, its object would devour, 
 This taste the honey, and not wound the flow'r : 
 Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, 
 Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. 
 
 III. Modes of self4ove the passions we may call ; 
 'Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all :' 
 But since not ev'ry good we can divide, 
 And reason hids us for our own provide, 
 Passions, though selfish, if their means he fair, 8 
 List 3 under reason, and deserve her care ; 
 Those, that imparted, court* a nobler aim, 
 Exalt their kind, and take some virtue's name. 5 
 
 90 
 
 The passions 
 and their 
 use. 
 
 05 
 
 100 
 
 Pope charges the schoolmen with 
 being at war about a name when 
 they distinguished between "sense" 
 and "reason," and the distinction 
 is a capital article in his own moral 
 creed. He charges them with main- 
 taining that sense and reason were 
 not merely separate, but contending 
 powers, and he too has insisted on 
 the universality of the strife. " Sense, " 
 or, in his language, "self-love," 
 "looks," ver. 73, to "immediate," 
 "reason" to "future good," and in 
 this difference of view the " tempta- 
 tions" of self-love "throng thicker 
 than the arguments " of reason. The 
 contest is the subject of a long disqui- 
 sition further on, and Pope laments, 
 ver. 149 160, that passion should 
 conquer in the fight. When he 
 interjected the paragraph, in which 
 he contradicted himself, he rested his 
 case on the proposition that reason, 
 which pursues interest well-under- 
 stood, and self-love, which gratifies 
 present passion, " aspire to one 
 tnd, pleasure." But the plea- 
 sure sought by reason and self-love 
 respectively is not the same pleasure, 
 and so incompatible were the two 
 pleasures in his estimation that he 
 calls one, ver. 92, ' ' our greatest 
 evil," the other "our greatest good." 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Reason itself more nicely shares in all. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 Passions whose ends are honest, means are 
 fair. 
 
 3 " List," which would probably 
 now be thought a vulgarism, was in 
 Pope's day the established word. 
 Our form, "enlist," was apparently 
 unknown to Johnson, who did not 
 insert it in his Dictionary. 
 
 4 "Passions that court an aim" 
 is surely a strange expression. 
 WARTON. 
 
 For "court" Pope had at first 
 written " boast." 
 
 5 The "imparted" or sympathetic 
 passions are the benevolent impulses 
 and affections. As to their " kind," 
 or nature, they are, says Pope, 
 "modes of self-love," biit when the 
 self-love assumes the form of loving 
 others the passion is " exalted, and 
 takes the name of some virtue." He 
 passes the affections over here with 
 this slight allusion, and returns to 
 them at ver. 255, and more at length 
 in Epistle iii.
 
 884 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 In lazy apathy let stoics boast 
 Their virtue fixed ; l 'tis fixed as in a frost ;* 
 Contracted all, retiring to the breast ; 3 
 But strength of mind is exercise, not rest :* 
 The rising tempest puts in act the soul,* 
 Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. 8 
 On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, 7 
 Reason the card/ but passion is the gale ;' 
 Nor God alone in the still calm we find, 
 He mounts the storms, and walks upon the wind. 10 
 
 103 
 
 110 
 
 1 What says old Epictetus, who 
 knew stoicism better than these 
 men? "I am not to be apathetic 
 or void of passions, like a statue. I 
 am to discharge all the relations of a 
 social and friendly life, the parent, 
 the husband, the brother, the magis- 
 trate." The stoic apathy was no 
 more than a freedom from irrational 
 and excessive agitations of the soul. 
 JAMES HARRIS. 
 
 3 That is, in cold insensibility. 
 Lady Chudleigh's dialogue on the 
 death of her daughter : 
 
 Honour is ever the reward of pain ; 
 A lazy virtue no applause will gain. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 The stoic aimed at inner per- 
 fection, and trusted to the serenity 
 of virtue to sustain him in all the 
 trials of life. Pope erroneously ima- 
 gined that stoics were selfish and in- 
 active because they were calm and 
 self-contained. Seneca, De Ot. i 4, 
 says, they insisted that we must never 
 cease labouring for the common good, 
 and Cicero, De Fin. iii. 19, says they 
 placed their force of character at the 
 service of mankind, and thought it 
 their duty to live, and if need were 
 to die, for the benefit of the public. 
 
 4 A couplet is added in the MS. : 
 
 Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight, 
 Conies without arms, and conquers but by 
 flight. 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Passions like tempests put in act the soul. 
 
 6 Spectator, June 18, 1712. No. 
 408 : ' ' Passions are to the mind as 
 winds to a ship ; they only can move 
 it, and they too often destroy it. 
 Keason must then take the place of 
 pilot, and can never fail of securing 
 her charge if she be not wanting to 
 herself." 
 
 1 Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, 
 Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 55 : 
 
 On life's wide ocean diversely launched out, 
 Our minds alike are tossed on waves of 
 
 doubt, 
 
 Holding no steady course, or constant sail, 
 But shift and tack with ev'ry veering 
 
 gale. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 8 In the mariner's compass the 
 paper on which the points of the 
 compass are marked is called ' ' the 
 card." 
 
 9 Carew's Poems : 
 
 A troop of deities came down to guide 
 Our steerless barks in passion's swelling 
 
 tide, 
 By virtue's card. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 After ver. 108 in the MS. : 
 
 A tedious voyage ! where how useless lies 
 The compass, if no pow'rful gusts arise ! 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 10 Psalm civ. 3: "Who layeth the 
 beams of his chambers in the waters, 
 and walketh upon the wings of the 
 wind." BOWLES.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 385 
 
 Passions, like elements, though born to fight, 
 Yet, mixed and softened, in his work unite : ' 
 These, 'tis enough to temper and employ ; 
 But what composes man, can man destroy ? 2 
 Suffice that reason keep to nature's road, 
 Subject, compound them, follow her and God. 3 _ 
 Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure's smiling train, 
 Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain, 4 
 These mixed with art, 5 and to due bounds confined, 
 Make and maintain the balance of the mind : 
 The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife' 
 Gives all the strength and colour of our life. 
 
 Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes ; 
 And when in act they cease, in prospect rise : 
 
 115 
 
 120 
 
 The pre- 
 dominant 
 passion and 
 its force. 
 
 Dryden's Ceyx and Alcyone : 
 
 And now sublime she rides upon the wind. 
 WARTON. 
 
 Pope held that "fierce ambition" 
 was instigated by the Almighty, 
 Epist. i. ver. 159, and compared his 
 inspiration of such tumultuous pas- 
 sions to his "heaving old ocean, and 
 winging the storm." The poet must 
 be understood as upholding the same 
 extended and licentious doctrine when 
 he returns to the comparison, and 
 talks of " God mounting the storm " 
 of the passions, and "walking upon 
 the wind." 
 
 1 After ver. 112 in the MS. : 
 
 The soft, reward the virtuous or invite ; 
 The fierce, the vicious punish or affright. 
 WARBUKTON. 
 
 2 How, that is, can the stoic suc- 
 ceed in destroying passions which 
 enter into the very composition of 
 man ? The stoic made no such pre- 
 tension. What he laboured to "de- 
 stroy" were those "perturbations 
 of mind" which Zeno, Tusc. iv. 6, 
 maintained to be " repugnant to 
 reason, and against nature," and 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 for which the stoical remedy, Tnsc. 
 iv. 28, was the demonstration that 
 they ' ' were vicious, and had no- 
 thing natural or necessary in them." 
 The principle for which Pope con- 
 tended was the very maxim of the 
 stoics, they insisted that "reason 
 should keep to nature's road." The 
 real question was, whether they did 
 not sometimes go too far, and con- 
 demn natural emotions under the 
 name of prohibited perturbations. 
 
 3 All he means is, that the intea- 
 tions of God are manifested in the 
 nature of man. 
 
 4 Dryden, State of Innocence, 
 Act v. : 
 
 With all the num'rous family of death. 
 Garth, Dispensary, vi. 138 : 
 And all the faded family of care. WAKB- 
 
 FIELD. 
 
 5 "Wartoii remarks that the group 
 of allegorical personages are here 
 suddenly changed to things which 
 are to be " mixed with art." 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 To blend them well, and harmonise tbsfr 
 
 strife 
 Makes all etc. 
 

 
 388 AN ESSAY ON MAR 
 
 Present to grasp, and future still to find,' 12.1 
 
 The whole employ of body and of mind." 
 
 All spread their charms, but charm not all alike ; 
 
 On diff'rent senses diff'rent objects strike ; 3 
 
 Hence diff'rent passions more or less inflame, 
 
 As strong or weak the organs of the frame ; 4 i?o 
 
 And hence one master passion in the breast, 
 
 Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest. 8 
 
 As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, 
 Receives the lurking principle of death : 
 The young disease, that must subdue at length, 135 
 
 Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength : 
 So, cast and mingled with his very frame, 6 
 The mind's disease, its ruling passion, came ; 
 Each vital humour which should feed the whole, 
 Soon flows to this, in body and in soul : 140 
 
 Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head, 
 As the mind opens, and its functions spread, 
 Imagination plies her dang'rous art, 
 
 And pours it all upon the peccant part. 7 
 / 
 
 1 In plain prose thus : " To grasp inward formation of either the solids 
 present pleasures and to find future or the fluids." According to Pope 
 pleasures is the whole employ of body the strongest organ gives rise to some 
 and mind." Pope's line is rendered passion of corresponding strength, 
 intolerable by its elliptical and in- which finally absorbs all other pas- 
 verted language, and the unmeaning sions. 
 
 expletive "still." s The use of this doctrine, as 
 
 2 MS. : applied to the knowledge of mankind, 
 Present to seize, or future to obtain is one of the subjects of the second 
 The whole employ of body and of brain. book. POPE. 
 
 3 MS. : Pope refers to Moral Essays, Epist. 1. 
 On stronger senses stronger passions strike. Of tlle Knowledge and Characters of 
 
 4 -.jo . Men. 
 
 6 The metaphor is taken from the 
 
 Hence passions rise, and more or less t j f tl Th mimVs 
 
 inflame, .... 
 
 Proportioned to each organ of the frame, disease, says Pope, is in the ori- 
 
 Nor here internal faculties control, ginal casting, and is not a defect 
 
 Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul. which arises subsequently. 
 
 Pope derived the notion from Man- 7 Aden's Juvenal, Sat. x. 489 : 
 deville, who says that the diversity One, with cruel art, 
 
 of passions in different men " depend Makes Colon suger for the p eccan t part, 
 
 only upon the different frame, the \VAKKFIKLD.
 
 AN" ESSAY ON MAN, 387 
 
 Nature its mother, habit is its nurse ; 145 
 
 Wit, spirit, faculties, 1 but make it worse ; 
 Reason itself but gives it edge and pow'r ;* 
 As heav'n's bless'd beam turns vinegar more sour. 3 
 
 We, wretched subjects, though to lawful sway, 4 
 In this weak queen some fav'rite still obey ; 150 
 
 Ah ! if she lend not arms as well as rules, 
 What can she more 5 than tell us we are fools ? 
 Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend, 
 A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend ! 
 Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade 155 
 
 The choice we make, or justify it made ; 6 
 Proud of an easy conquest all along, 
 She but removes weak passions for the strong. 7 
 So when small humours gather to a gout, 
 The doctor fancies he has driv'n them out." 160 
 
 Yes, nature's road must ever be preferred ; 
 Reason is here no guide, but still a guard ; 
 
 1 The "faculties" are not a class The ruling passion, be it what it will, 
 of powers distinct from ' ' wit, spirit, The rulin e P assion conquers reason still, 
 reason," but these last are among the 4 MS. : 
 
 faculties, and we must understand the 
 
 And we who vainly boast her rightful sway 
 passage as it rope had written that In our weak etc> 
 
 wit and spirit, with all the other 5 ,, 
 faculties, including reason itself, con- 
 tribute to the growth of the ruling Can reason more etc - 
 passion. 6 j- rom La Rochefoucauld : " Rea- 
 
 2 By inventing arguments in its son frequently puts itself on the side 
 justification, as Pope explains at O f the strongest passion ; there is no 
 vcr. 156. violent passion which has not its 
 
 3 Taken from Bacon, De Calore. reason to justify it. " WARTON. 
 WARTOX. 7 Pope copied Mandeville : "Man's 
 
 This comparison, which might be strong habits and inclinations can 
 
 very proper in philosophy, has a mean only be subdued by passions of greater 
 
 effect in poetry. BoWLErf. violence." 
 
 In the MS. this couplet is added : s Cowley's poem on the late civil 
 
 Its own bes* forces lead the mind astray, 
 
 Just as with Teague his own legs ran The plague, we know, drives all diseases 
 away. out. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Two lines, which do not appear in Ruffhead and Bowles unite in con- 
 
 the subsequent editions, were inserted demning the colloquial familiarity of 
 after ver. 148 in the quarto of 1735 : Pope's simile. 
 
 o c 2
 
 388 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Its necessity 
 In directing 
 men to 
 different 
 purposes. 
 
 Its provi- 
 dential use 
 in fixing 
 ur princi- 
 ple, and 
 ascertaining 
 our virtue. 
 
 'Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow, 
 And treat this passion more as friend than foe : 
 A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends, 1 
 And sev'ral men impels to sev'ral ends :* 
 Like varying winds, hy other passions tossed, 
 This drives them constant to a certain coast.' 
 Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please, 
 Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease ; 4 
 Through life 'tis followed, ev'en at life's expence ; 
 The merchant's toil, the sage's indolence, 
 The monk's humility, the hero's pride, 
 All, all alike find reason on their side. 
 
 Th' Eternal Art, educing good from ill, 5 
 Grafts on this passion our best principle : 
 'Tis thus the mercury of man is fixed,' 
 Strong grows the virtue with his nature mixed ; 
 The dross cements what else were too refined, 
 And in one int'rest body acts with mind. 
 
 As fruits, ungrateful to the planter's care, 
 On savage stocks inserted learn to bear, 7 
 
 170 
 
 175 
 
 180 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 This bias nature to our temper lends. 
 
 The couplet was not in the first 
 edition. 
 
 s The particular application of this 
 to the several pursuits of men, and 
 the general good resulting thence, 
 falls also into the succeeding book. 
 POPE. 
 
 The "succeeding book "is the Moral 
 Essays, which are almost entirely 
 made up of satiric sketches. Pope 
 dilated upon the evil resulting from 
 "the mind's disease, the ruling 
 passion," but barely touched upon 
 "the general good." 
 
 3 Man can only be driven from 
 passion to passion during the infancy 
 of the ruling passion, which con- 
 tinues to grow, Pope tells us, till it 
 has overspread the entire mind, and 
 obliterated every subordinate desire. 
 
 4 From Rochefoucauld, Maxim 266 : 
 " It is a mistake to believe that none 
 but the violent passions, such, as 
 ambition and love, are able to triumph 
 over the other passions. Laziness, 
 languid as it is, often gets the 
 mastery of them all, usurps over all 
 the designs and actions of life, and 
 insensibly consumes and destroys 
 both passions and virtues." WAR- 
 TON. 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ilL 
 
 6 Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's 
 Miscellanies, iv. p. 312 : 
 
 Hypocrisy at last should entei^in, 
 
 And fix this floating mercury of sin. 
 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 ? MS. : 
 
 The noblest fruits the planter's hope may 
 
 mock, 
 Which thrive inserted on the savage stock.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 389 
 
 The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, 1 
 Wild nature's vigour working at the root. 2 
 What crops of wit and honesty appear 
 From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear ! s 
 See anger, zeal and fortitude supply ; 4 
 Ev'n av'rice, prudence ; sloth, philosophy ; 
 Lust, through some certain strainers well refined, 
 Is gentle love, and charms all womankind ; 
 Envy, to which th' ignoble mind's a slave, 
 Is emulation in the learn'd or brave ; * 
 
 185 
 
 190 
 
 1 He argues that our primitive ten- 
 dencies are too various to be steady. 
 Man is mercurial and fickle till his 
 numerous passions are lost in the 
 ruling passion, which converts our 
 changeable propensities into a single 
 desire. Under the government of rea- 
 son this "savage" and vicious "stock" 
 sends forth a healthy shoot of virtue 
 which is rendered strong and stable 
 by the vigour of the ruling passion, 
 or parent stem. The theory is wrong 
 throughout. People are not com- 
 posed of only one passion, virtue 
 cannot be the product of a vice, and 
 the simulated virtue which proceeds 
 from a solitary passion will be as 
 contracted as its cause. Pope's cata- 
 logue of the ruling passions, and their 
 attendant virtues, exhibits a counter- 
 feit dismembered virtue, a single 
 false limb in the place of a complete 
 and living body. An unmaimed vir- 
 tue requires the cultivation of our 
 nature in its complexity, and virtues 
 are grafted on lawful tendencies, and 
 not on lawless passions. 
 
 2 Ver. 184 is followed by this 
 couplet in the MS. : 
 
 As dulcet pippins from the crabtree 
 
 come, 
 As sloes' rough juices melt into a 
 
 plum. 
 
 3 Pope probably alluded to Swift 
 
 when he spoke of the "crops of 
 wit and honesty" which were the 
 product of ' ' spleen, obstinacy, and 
 hate." The spleen and hate engen- 
 dered wit by prompting satiric effu- 
 sions; but wit is not in itself a 
 virtue, and when Pope inserted it in 
 his catalogue he must have been 
 thinking of the moral ends it might 
 subserve. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Vain-glory, courage, justice can sup 
 ply. 
 
 5 MS.: 
 
 Envy, in critics And old maids the 
 
 devil, 
 Is emulation in the learn'd and civil 
 
 "Emulation," says Bishop Butler, 
 "is merely the desire of equality 
 with, or superiority over others, with 
 whom we compare ourselves. To 
 desire the attainment of this equality, 
 or superiority, by the particular 
 means of others being brought down 
 to our level, or below it, is, I think, 
 the distinct notion of envy." A 
 man who was made up of rivalry, 
 which is Pope's supposition, would 
 be an odious character, even without 
 the additional taint of envy, from 
 which, nevertheless, he could hardly 
 be free.
 
 390 
 
 AN ESSAY OX MAX. 
 
 Virtue and 
 vice joined 
 in our mixed 
 nature ; 
 
 Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, 
 But what will grow on pride, 1 or grow on shame.* 
 s Thus nature gives us (let it check our pride) * 
 The virtue nearest to our vice allied ; * 
 
 195 
 
 1 Pope speaks after Mandeville, 
 who says that shame and pride are 
 the "two passions in which the seeds 
 of most virtues are contained. " Pride 
 he defined to be the faculty by which 
 men overvalued themselves, and were 
 led to do what would win them ap- 
 plause. "There is not," he says, 
 ' ' a duty to others or ourselves that 
 may not be counterfeited by it." No 
 quality, he admits, is more detested, 
 and it would defeat its own end if it 
 did not disguise itself in the garb of 
 virtue. 
 
 r 2 As Pope supposes shame to be 
 "a disease of the mind," he could 
 not apply the term to the self- 
 reproaches of an enlightened con- 
 science, but must mean the humi- 
 liation produced by censure. This 
 species of shame can only bind us 
 to average decency of conduct, is 
 a feeble protection against secret vice, 
 and often an incentive to baseness. 
 Spurious shame, as Mandeville 
 remarks, induces women to murder 
 their illegitimate children, drives 
 many to tell falsehoods to conceal 
 their faults, changes with the com- 
 pany and public opinion, and begets 
 a degrading compliance with the evil 
 habits of associates, and with the lax 
 customs of the age. 
 3 After ver. 194 in the MS. : 
 
 How oft with passion, virtue points her 
 
 charms ! 
 Then shines the hero, then the patriot 
 
 warms. 
 
 Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had known 
 Had Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none? 
 But virtues opposite to make agree, 
 That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee. 
 Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak. 
 "Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a 
 
 pique. 
 
 Once for a whim, persuade yourself to pay 
 A debt to reason, like a debt at play. 
 
 For right or wrong have mortals suffered 
 
 more? 
 Bflount] for his prince, or B* for his 
 
 whore? 
 
 Whose self-denials nature most control ? 
 His who would save a sixpence, or his 
 
 soul. 
 Web for his health, a Chartreux for his 
 
 sin, 
 Contend they not which soonest shall grow 
 
 thin? 
 What we resolve we can: but here's the 
 
 fault, 
 
 We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought. ' 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 There is another version of the last 
 couplet but one in the MS. : 
 
 Which will become more exemplary thin, 
 W[eb] for his health, De Ranee" for his shi ? 
 
 "Web may have been the General 
 Webb who got considerable reputa- 
 tion for his defeat of the French at 
 "Wynendale in 1708. Swift in his 
 Journal to Stella, April 19, 1711, 
 speaks of him as "going with a 
 cratch and a stick." Ranee was 
 born at Paris in 1626, and died 
 in 1700. In 1662 he assumed 
 the government of the monastery oi 
 La Trappe, and was noted for the 
 austerities he imposed and practised. 
 Mr. Croker thinks that "B." who 
 " suffered for his prince " was Edward 
 Blount, the Roman Catholic Devon- 
 shire squire. He went into voluntary 
 exile after the rebellion of 1715, but 
 did not remain abroad many years. 
 
 4 Yet in the previous couplet we 
 are informed that there is hardly a 
 virtue which will not grow on the 
 "pride" we arc here enjoined to 
 "check." 
 
 * MS. : 
 
 Thus every ruling passion of the mind 
 Stands to some virtue and some vice . in- 
 clined.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 891 
 
 Reason the bias turns to good from ill, 1 
 And Nero reigns a Titus if he will. 8 
 The fiery soul abhorred in Catiline, 
 In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine : s 
 The same ambition can destroy or save, 
 And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. 4 
 
 This light and darkness in our chaos joined, 
 What shall divide ? The god within the mind. 5 
 
 Extremes in nature equal ends produce, 
 In man they join to some mysterious use ;* 
 Though each by turns the other's bound invade, 
 As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade/ 
 
 200 
 
 the limits 
 near, yet 
 the things 
 separata and 
 evident. 
 The office of 
 re'isou. 
 
 205 
 
 1 The MS. has two other versions 
 of this line : 
 
 Clieck but its force or compass short of ill. 
 Turn but the bias from the side of ill. 
 
 2 But not by grafting temperance 
 and humanity upon his ruling pas- 
 sions sensuality and cruelty. He 
 must have torn up his evil passions 
 by the roots, and cultivated virtues 
 in their stead. 
 
 3 Catiline hemmed in by superior 
 forces died fighting with the courage 
 of despair. Unless he was greatly 
 maligned his conspiracies were 
 prompted by profligate selfishness 
 without any mixture of patriotism. 
 Decius, instructed by a vision on the 
 eve of the battle of Vesuvius, B.C. 
 340, that the general on the one side, 
 and the army on the other was 
 doomed, rushed into the thick of the 
 fight to ensure by his own death the 
 destruction of the enemy. The story 
 of Decius may be fabulous, like that 
 of Pope's next example, Curtius, who 
 when informed, B.C. 362, that a 
 chasm which had opened in the 
 Roman forum could never be filled 
 up till the basis of the Roman great- 
 ness had been committed to it, was 
 alleged to have mounted on horseback 
 clad in armour, and to have leaped 
 into the gulf. Courage, the quality 
 comniou to Catiline, Decius, and 
 
 Curtius, is never a ruling passion, but 
 is the effect of some antecedent mo- 
 tive, which may be vanity or duty, 
 lofty patriotism or criminal ambition. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 And either makes a patriot or a knave. 
 
 5 MS.: 
 
 Divide, before the genius of the mind, 
 or, 
 
 Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind. 
 
 The idea expressed in the couplet is 
 an adaptation of a passage in the first 
 chapter of Genesis. As God in the 
 chaos of the world " divided the light 
 from the darkness," so the God with- 
 in us, which is our reason, does the 
 same with the chaos of the mind. 
 The chaos, on Pope's system, was in 
 the actions, and not in the motives. 
 The sweet water and the bitter flowed 
 from the same tainted fountain, 
 from ambition, pride, sloth, etc. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 Extremes in man concur to gen'ral use. 
 Pope's meaning seems to be that in 
 all terrestrial things, except man, 
 extremes or contraries produce oppo- 
 site and uncom pounded effects. In 
 man, extremes, in the shape of virtue 
 and vice, join and mix together. There 
 is no force in the distinction. Hot 
 water, for instance, mixes with cold, 
 and a mean temperature is the result. 
 
 7 "Great purposes," says War-
 
 392 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 And oft so mix, the diff'rence is too nice 1 
 Where ends the virtue, or begins the vice. 
 
 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 ? 8 
 Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain ; 
 'Tis to mistake them costs the time and pain. 3 
 
 210 
 
 215 
 
 burton in explanation of this passage, 
 ''are served by vice and virtue in- 
 vading each other's bounds, no less 
 than the perfecting the constitution 
 of the whole, as lights and shades, in 
 a well wrought picture, make the 
 harmony and spirit of the composi- 
 tion." By this rule virtue dashed 
 with vice is more "spirited and har- 
 monious " than virtue without alloy. 
 Warburton allowed himself to be de- 
 luded by a metaphor. Black paint 
 has no resemblance to black morals, 
 shadows in a picture to hatred, ava- 
 rice, and so on. 
 
 / * Too nice, that is, to permit us to 
 
 distinguish where ends, etc. The 
 
 } ellipse goes beyond any poetical 
 
 .' licence which is consistent with writ- 
 
 ( ing English. 
 
 2 The lines from ver. 207 to 214 
 are versified from Clarke's Evidences 
 of Natural and Kevealed Religion, 
 10th ed., p. 184: "As in painting 
 two very different colours may, from 
 the highest intenseness in either ex- 
 treme, terminate in the midst insen- 
 sibly, so that it shall not be possible 
 to determine exactly where the one 
 ends, and the other begins, and yet 
 the colours may differ as much as can 
 be, not in degree only but in kind, 
 so, though it may, perhaps, be very 
 difficult in some nice cases to define 
 exactly the bounds of right and 
 wrong, yet right and wrong are totally 
 different, even altogether as much as 
 white and black, light and darkness." 
 The argument of Clarke was directed 
 against Hobbes, and his disciples, 
 
 who denied that there was any inhe- 
 rent difference between good and evil, 
 and supported their paradox by plead- 
 ing the impossibility of drawing a 
 line between the two. 
 
 3 Here follows in the MS. : 
 
 To strangle in its birth each rising crime 
 Requires but little, just to think in time. 
 In ev'ry vice, at first, in some degree 
 We see some virtue, or we think we 
 
 see. 
 
 Our vices thus are virtues in disguise, 
 Wicked but by degrees, or by surprise. 
 
 Of the last couplet there is a second 
 version : 
 
 Thus spite of all the Frenchman's witty 
 
 lies 
 Most vices are but virtues hi disguise. 
 
 The witty Frenchman was La Roche- 
 foucauld. Pope's counter-maxim 
 is only a form of La Rochefoucald's 
 principle, converted into an ap- 
 parent contradiction by an equi- 
 vocal use of the phrase "virtues in 
 disguise." Those who pursue vi- 
 cious objects are reluctant to allow 
 that they are the slaves of vice. 
 "Hence," says Hutcheson, in a 
 passage quoted by "Warton, " the 
 basest actions are dressed in some 
 tolerable mask. What others call 
 avarice, appears to the agent a pru- 
 dent care of a family or friends ; fraud, 
 artful conduct; malice and revenge, 
 a just sense of honour ; fire and sword 
 and desolation among enemies, a 
 just defence of our country ; persecu- 
 tion, a zeal for truth." Pope 
 assumes that the vice is inspired by 
 genuine virtue, whereas the virtue is
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 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, 
 35- first endure, then pity, 2 then embrace. 3 
 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 ; 4 
 
 Vice odious 
 in itself and 
 how we 
 deceive our- 
 selves into 
 it. 
 
 225 
 
 a pretence, a flimsy pretext to ex- 
 cuse wrong-doing. The vice is real, 
 the virtue fictitious, and this is the 
 principle of La llocliefoucauld. 
 1 Dryden's Hind and Panther, Part 
 
 For truth has such a face and such a mien, 
 As to be loved needs only to be seen. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The lines from ver. 217 to 221 are 
 thus varied in the MS. : 
 
 Vice all abhor, the monster is too foul ; 
 Naked, indeed, she shocks us to the soul; 
 But dressed too well, with tempting time 
 
 and place, 
 
 That but to pity her is to embrace. 
 Where art thou, Vice? 'twas never yet 
 
 agreed, etc. 
 
 2 The word is inappropriate. Men 
 do not become sensual out of pity to 
 the miseries of sensuality, or envious 
 from compassion for the pangs of 
 envy. Pity may be felt for the evils 
 which vice entails, but this is not 
 pity for the vice, nor a temptation to 
 practise it. 
 
 3 After ver. 220 in ed. 1 : 
 
 A cheat, a whore, who starts not at the 
 
 name, 
 In all the luns of Court, or Drury Lane ? 
 
 These two omitted in the subsequent 
 editions. POPE. 
 
 The dishonest lawyer, and woman 
 of the town, applied soft names to 
 their vices, and were startled to be 
 called by their proper appellations. 
 
 The couplet was followed in the MS. 
 by some further illustrations : 
 
 Bflun]t but does 
 
 K brings matters on ; 
 Rogues but do business ; spies but serve the 
 
 crown; 
 
 Sid has the secret, Chartres 
 Hfe]r[ve]y the court, and Huggins knows 
 
 the town ; 
 
 Kind-hearted Peter helps the rich in want, 
 Nero's a wag, and Messaline gallant. 
 
 The last couplet assumed a second 
 
 form: 
 
 Nero's a wag, Faustina some suspect 
 Of gallantly, and Sutton of neglect. 
 
 Sutton, Peter Walter, Hervey, Hug- 
 gins, Chartres, and Blunt will reappear 
 in connection with the offences for 
 which they are satirised here. Sid was 
 Lord Godophin, who was lampooned 
 under the name of Sid Hamet by 
 Swift. Pope, in his Moral Essays, 
 Epist. 1, ver 86, speaks of his 
 Newmarket fame, and judgment in a bet ; 
 
 and the phrase, " Sid has the secret " 
 is an insinuation that his "judgment 
 in a bet" sometimes arose from his 
 being privy to the tricks of the turf. 
 4 After ver. 226 in the MS. : 
 
 The Col'nol swears the agent is a dog ; 
 The scriv'ncr vows th' attorney is a rogue, 
 Agaiust the thief th' attorney loud inveighs, 
 For whose ten pound the county twenty 
 
 pays; 
 The thief damns judges, and the knaves of 
 
 state, 
 And dying mourns small villains hanged by 
 
 great. W A RBU ETON.
 
 Ths ends of 
 Providence, 
 and general 
 good, 
 answered 
 in our pas- 
 sions and 
 imperfec- 
 tions. How 
 usefully 
 these are 
 distributed 
 to all orders 
 of men. 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Ev'n those who dwell beneath its very zone,' 
 Or never feel the rage, or never own ; a 
 What happier natures shrink at with affright, 
 The hard inhabitant contends is right. 3 
 
 Virtuous and vicious ev'ry man must be, 
 Few in th' extreme, but all in the degree : 4 
 The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise ; 
 And ev'n the best, by fits, what they despise. 5 
 'Tis but by parts we follow good or ill ; 
 For, vice or virtue, self directs it still ; 6 
 Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal ; 
 But heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole. 
 That counterworks each folly and caprice ; 
 That disappoints th' effect of ev'ry vice ; 7 
 
 230 
 
 235 
 
 '140 
 
 The agent of whom the Colonel com- 
 plained was the army agent. The 
 scrivener, who drew contracts, and 
 invested money, hated the attorneys 
 because they were in part competitors 
 for the same class of business. Bos- 
 well, in his Life of Johnson, says, 
 that Mr. Ellis, who died in 1791, 
 aged 93, was the last of the scriveners. 
 Their occupation had gradually lapsed 
 to other professions, legal or mone- 
 tary. Pope's remaining instances are 
 forced. The attorney did not pay 
 more than his neighbours to the 
 county expenditure for prosecuting 
 thieves, and as the trials were much 
 to his own profit, he was the last per- 
 son who had an interest in inveighing 
 against thievery. As little did the 
 thief at his execution denounce " the 
 knaves of state," of whom he com- 
 monly knew nothing. Pope has put 
 the satire of the Beggar's Opera into 
 the mouth of the veritable pick-pockets 
 and highwaymen. 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone. 
 
 2 From moral insensibility, that is, 
 they are either unconscious of their 
 
 vice, or, being conscious, pretend 
 ignorance. 
 
 3 Pope goes too far. The worst 
 men acknowledge that some things 
 are crimes. 
 
 4 Addison, Spectator, No. 183 : 
 " There was no person so vicious who 
 had not some good in him, nor any 
 person so virtuous who had not in 
 him some evil." 
 
 5 This couplet follows ver. 234 in 
 the MS. : 
 
 Some virtue in a lawyer has been known, 
 Nay in a minister, or on a throne. 
 
 6 Complete virtue, and complete 
 vice, says Pope, are both hostile to 
 self-interest, a plain confession that 
 his selfish system was incompatible 
 with thorough virtue. He assures 
 us, Epist. iv. ver. 310, that "virtue 
 alone is happiness below," but to be 
 consistent he must have meant virtue 
 seasoned with vice. 
 
 7 He is far from saying that good 
 effects naturally rise from vice or 
 folly, and affirms nothing but that 
 God superintends the world in such a 
 manner that they do not produce all 
 those destructive consequences that
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 395 
 
 That, happy frailties to all ranks applied,' 
 
 Shame to the virgin, 2 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, 245 
 
 Which seeks no interest, no reward but praise ; 3 
 
 And build 4 on wants, and on defects of mind, 
 
 The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind. 
 
 Heav'n forming each on other to depend, HOW useful 
 
 those arc to 
 
 A master, or a servant, or a mend, 250 society m 
 
 general : 
 
 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 int'rest, or endear the tie. 
 
 To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, 255 
 
 Each home-felt joy that life inherits here ; 5 
 
 Yet from the same we learn, in its decline, 
 
 Those joys, those loves, those int'rests to resign : 6 
 
 might reasonably be expected from "happy, "fear must be a recormnenda- 
 
 them. JOHNSON. tion in a statesman, rashness in a 
 
 MS. : general, presumption in a king, and 
 
 That draws a virtue out of ev'ry vice. a credulous faith in the presumption 
 
 o , the best condition for the people. 
 
 2 The sense of shame in virgins is 
 And public good extracts from private vice. not a frailty to be ranked ^^ pride> 
 
 The last version is taken from the title rashness, and presumption, 
 of Mandeville's work, " The Fable of 3 There is another side to the 
 
 the Bees, or Private Vices, Public pic^e- The ends of vice are also 
 
 Benefits." Johnson's interpretation raised from vanity, which begets 
 
 of the text does not agree with Pope's wastefulness, debt, slander, and a 
 
 assertion, that "imperfections are multitude of evils, 
 usefully distributed to all orders of * T | iat 1S > "leaven can build," the 
 
 mcn v "can" being supplied from "can 
 
 i TITO raise," ver. 245. 
 
 5 Shaft esbury's Moralists : "Is not 
 Each frailty wisely to each rank applied. bf)t]l con j ngftl a ff ection and llatural 
 
 The line is disfigured by the clumsy affection to parents, love of a common 
 
 transition from the present tense to city, community, or country, with the 
 
 the past for the sake of the rhyme, other duties and social parts of life, 
 
 which is a trifle in comparison with founded in these very wants?" 
 
 the doctrine that "heaven applies WARTON. 
 
 happy frailties to all ranks." If the G Men, says Pope, are reconciled 
 
 "frailties" specified by Pope are to death from growing weary of the
 
 396 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 And to in- 
 dividuals in 
 particular 
 in every 
 state : 
 
 And in every 
 age of life. 
 
 Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, 
 To welcome death, and calmly pass away. 
 
 Whate'er the passion, knowledge, fame, or pclf,- 
 Not one will change his neighbour with himself. 1 
 The learn' d is happy nature to explore, 2 
 The fool is happy that he knows no more ; 
 The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n, 
 The poor contents hi-m, with the care of heav'n. 
 See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, 
 The sot a hero, lunatic a king ; 
 The starving chemist in his golden views 
 Supremely blessed, 3 the poet in his muse." 
 
 See some strange comfort ev'ry state attend, 
 And pride bestowed on all, a common friend : ! 
 See some fit passion ev'ry age supply, 
 Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. 6 
 
 2GO 
 
 205 
 
 230 
 
 "wants, frailties, and passions "of life. 
 "The observation," says Warburton, 
 "is new, and would in any place be 
 extremely beautiful, but has here an 
 infinite grace and propriety." This is 
 one of the stock forms of Warburton 's 
 adulation. Pope's remark was stale, 
 and from the nature of the case could 
 not be new if, as he asserted, it was 
 generally true, since all men in their 
 declining years could not, through all 
 time, have left unexpressed the feeling 
 which made them all willing to die. 
 What all men think many men will 
 say. 
 
 1 The MS. adds this couplet : 
 
 What partly pleases, totally will shock ; 
 
 Nor Koss would be Argyle, nor Toland 
 
 I question much if Toland would be Locke. 
 
 The Duke of Argyle and General 
 Ross were both soldiers, both poli- 
 ticians, and both Scotchmen. Ross 
 was a member of the House of 
 Commons. Toland introduced meta- 
 physics into his infidel works, and 
 Pope signifies by his couplet that the 
 inferior in a particular department 
 
 would not desire on the whole to 
 change characters with a superior in 
 the same department. 
 MS. : 
 
 The learn'd are blessed such wonders to 
 explore. 
 
 3 Buoyed up by the expectation 
 that he would hit upon the secret of 
 transmuting the baser metals into 
 gold. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 The chemist's happy in his golden views, 
 Payn in his madness, Welstcd in his inuse. 
 
 8 From La Rochefoucauld, Maxim 
 36 : " Nature seems to have bestowed 
 pride on us, on purpose to save us the 
 pain of knowing our own imperfec- 
 tions. ' ' WARTON. 
 
 6 Bolingbroke, Frag. 50: "Hope, 
 that cordial drop, which sweetens 
 every bitter potion, even the last." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 MS. : 
 
 With ev'ry age of man new passions rise, 
 Hope travels through nor quits him when 
 he dies.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Behold the child, by nature's kindly law 1 
 Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw : 
 Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, 
 A little louder, 3 but as empty quite : 
 Scarfs, garters, 3 gold, amuse his riper stage, 4 
 And beads 5 and pray'r-books are the toys of age 
 Pleased with this bauble still, as that before ; 
 Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er. 6 
 Mean while 7 opinion gilds with varying rays 
 Those painted clouds that beautify our days; 8 
 
 397 
 275 
 
 280 
 
 1 The lines, ver. 275282, first ap- 
 peared in the edition of 1743. They 
 were evidently suggested by a passage 
 in Garth's Dispensary, Canto v. : 
 
 Children at toys as men at titles aim, 
 And in effect both covet but the same, 
 This Philip's son proved in revolving years. 
 And first for rattles, then for worlds shed 
 tears. 
 
 /' 2 "When Pope used the phrase "a 
 'little louder," he was thinking of the 
 " rattle," and forgot the "straw." 
 
 3 The ' ' garters " refer to the badge 
 of the order of the garter. " Scarf," 
 in the sense of a badge of honour, 
 was in Pope's day appropriated to the 
 nobleman's chaplain. "His sister," 
 says Swift, speaking of a clerical 
 time-server in his Essay on the Fates 
 of Clergymen, "procured him a scarf 
 from my lord." Addison in the 
 Spectator, No. 21, compares bishops, 
 deans, and archdeacons to generals ; 
 doctors of divinity, prebendaries, and 
 "all that wear scarves" to field- 
 officers; and the rest of the clergy 
 to subalterns. " There has been," 
 he says, " a great exceeding of late 
 years in the second division, several 
 brevets having been granted for the 
 converting of subalterns into scarf- 
 officers, insomuch that within my 
 memory the price of lute- string" 
 the material of which the scarf was 
 made " is raised above twopence in 
 
 a yard. " The number of chaplains a 
 nobleman could " qualify " varied 
 with his rank. A duke might nomi- 
 nate six, a baron three. The dis- 
 tinction, when Pope wrote his Essay, 
 was too slight to be fitly classed with 
 orders of knighthood. 
 
 4 The infant's pleasure in trifles 
 may be the kindly work of nature 
 providing for the enjoyments of an 
 age incapable of better things ; but 
 the maturer delight in the ' ' scarfs, 
 garters, gold," is not the work of 
 nature, but of folly. The first is 
 a harmless instinct ; the other a cul- 
 pable vanity. CROLY. 
 
 5 Small balls of glass or pearl, or 
 other substance, strung upon a thread, 
 and used by the Romanists to count 
 their prayers ; from whence the phrase 
 "to tell beads," or to be at one's 
 ' ' beads, " is, to be at prayer. 
 JOHNSON. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 At last he sleeps, and all the care is o'er. 
 
 7 MS: "Till then." 
 
 8 MS.: 
 
 Observant then, how from defects of 
 mind 
 
 Spring half the bliss, or rest of human- 
 kind ! 
 
 How pride rebuilds what reason can destroy,
 
 398 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 284 
 
 And each vacuity of sense hy pride : l 
 These build as fast as knowledge can destroy ;* 
 In folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy ; 
 One prospect lost, another still we gain ; 3 
 And not a vanity is giv'n in vain ;" 290 
 
 Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine, 
 The scale to measure others' wants by thine. 5 
 See, and confess, one comfort still must rise ; ' 
 / 'Tis this, though man's a fool, yet God is wise ! 7 
 
 ' MS. : 5 See further of the use of this 
 
 Of certainty by faith, of sense by pride. principle in man, Epist. 3, ver. 121, 
 
 2 Mg . 124, 133, 143, 199, etc., 269, etc., 
 
 316, etc. And Epist. 4, ver. 353 and 
 
 These still repair what wisdom would ggg POPE 
 
 destroy. ^ _ 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Confess one comfort ever will arise 
 Through life's long dream new prospects 
 
 entertain. 7 Bolingbroke, Fragment 53 :" Grid 
 
 4 MS. : is wise and man a fool." 
 
 Life's prospects alter eVry step we gain, 
 *nd Nature gives no vanity in vata.
 
 ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE in. 
 
 OF THE NATTJEE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 I. THE whole universe one system of society, ver. 7, &c. Nothing made 
 wholly for itself, nor yet wholly for another, ver. 27. The happiness of 
 animals mutual, ver. 49. II. Reason or instinct operate alike to the good 
 of each individual, ver. 79. III. Reason or instinct operate also to society 
 Ju all animals, ver. 109. How far society carried by instinct, ver. 115. How 
 much farther by reason, ver. 131. IV. Of that which is called the state of 
 nature, ver. 144. Reason instructed by instinct in the invention of arts, ver. 
 169, and in the forms of society, ver. 179. V. Origin of political societies, 
 ver. 199. Origin of monarchy, ver. 207. VI. Patriarchal government, ver. 
 215. Origin of true religion and government, from the same principle of love, 
 231, &c. Origin of superstition and tyranny, from the same principle of fear, 
 ver. 241, &c. The influence of self-love operating to the social and public 
 good, ver. 269. Restoration of true religion and government on their first 
 principle, ver. 283. Mixed government, ver. 288. Various forms of each, 
 and the true end of all, ver. 303, &c.
 
 EPISTLE III. 
 
 I. HERE then we rest : " The Universal Cause 
 Acts to one end, 1 but acts by various laws." 3 
 In all the madness of superfluous health, 
 The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth," 
 Let this great truth be present night and day : 
 But most be present if we preach or pray. 
 
 Look round our world, behold the chain of ]ove : 
 Combining all below and all above. 
 See plastic nature working to this end, 6 
 The single atoms each to other tend, 
 Attract, attracted to, the next in place 
 Formed and impelled its neighbour to embrace/ 
 
 The whole 
 universe 
 one system 
 of society. 
 
 10 
 
 1 In several editions in quarto, 
 
 Lean), Dulness, learn ! " The Universal 
 Cause," etc. WAHBUKTON. 
 
 2 The "one end" is the good of 
 the whole. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Must act by gen'ral not by partial laws 
 
 4 That is, those who are rich in 
 temporal blessings should remember 
 that the world is not made for them 
 alone . 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Look nature through, and see the chain of 
 love. 
 
 6 Ed. 1. : 
 
 See lifeless matter moving to one end. 
 POPE. 
 
 " Plastic," or as Bolingbroke called 
 it, "fashioning nature," was in its 
 etymological and popular sense, the 
 V OL. u. POETRY. 
 
 power in nature which gave things 
 their shape or figure. This seems to 
 be the meaning in Pope. The philo- 
 sophic sense of the phrase was more 
 extensive. The laws of matter may 
 have been made self-acting, or they 
 may be maintained by the direct 
 and constant interposition of God. 
 Cudworth, and some other writers, 
 who held the first of these opinions, 
 called "plastic nature" the inward 
 energy, the operative principle which 
 is as a sort of life to the laws. The 
 " plastic nature " of Cudworth is, iu 
 reality, nothing more than the laws 
 of matter, with the proviso that they 
 work by an inherent virtue infused 
 into them by the Creator once for 
 all. 
 
 7 "Embrace" is an inappropriate 
 word. The particles of matter do 
 not clasp. They are not even in 
 contact, but only contiguous. 
 
 D I)
 
 402 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 .Nothing 
 made wholly 
 for itself, 
 nor yet 
 
 See matter next with various life endued, 
 Press to one centre still, the gen'ral good. 1 
 See dying vegetables life sustain, 
 See life dissolving vegetate again : ! 
 All forms that perish other forms supply, 
 (By turns we catch tho vital breath and die*) 
 Like bubbles on the sea of matter born, 
 They rise, they break, and to that sea return. 
 Nothing is foreign ; parts relate to whole ; 
 One all-extending, all-preserving soul 
 Connects each being, greatest with the least ;' 
 Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast ; 5 
 All served, all serving : nothing stands alone ; 
 The chain holds on, and where it ends unknown. 
 
 Has God, thou fool I worked solely for thy good, 
 Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food ? 
 
 20 
 
 io 
 
 1 MS.: 
 
 Press to one centre of cominutual good. 
 
 As the inorganic, or lifeless matter, 
 of which he had previously spoken, 
 gravitates to a centre, so the ' ' mat- 
 ter" which is "endued with life" 
 also "presses" to a "centre" "the 
 general good." The comparison of 
 the general good to the centre of 
 gravity is inaccurate. The centre 
 of gravity is a point; the general 
 good is diffused good. 
 
 2 Shaftesbury's Moralists, Part i. 
 Sect. 3 : "The vegetables by their 
 death sustain the animals, and ani- 
 mal bodies dissolved enrich the earth, 
 and raise again the vegetable world." 
 WARTON. 
 
 3 Pope is speaking in the context 
 of plants and animals, which are the 
 "they" of ver. 20. He threw ver. 
 18 into a parenthesis, and said, "we 
 catch," because the interjected re- 
 mark relates to men. The power dis- 
 played in the transmission of life from 
 parents to progeny is happily illus- 
 
 trated by Fenelon, in his Traite de 
 1'Existence de Dieu : " What should 
 we think of a watchmaker who could 
 make watches which would produce 
 other watches to infinity, insomuch 
 that the two first watches would be 
 sufficient to propagate and perpetuate 
 the species over all the earth ? What 
 should we say of an architect who 
 had the art to construct houses which 
 generated fresh houses to replace our 
 dwellings before they began to fall 
 into ruin ? " 
 
 I 4 " Connects," that is, "the great- 
 est with the least." Pope, in his 
 'free use of elliptical expressions, 
 .having omitted "the," Warburton 
 interprets the phrase according to 
 the strict language, and supposes the 
 meaning to be that the greatness of 
 the Deity is manifested most in the 
 creatures which are least. 
 
 5 Another couplet follows in the 
 MS. : 
 
 More pow'rful each as needful to the rest, 
 Each in proportion as he blesses blessed.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 403 
 
 Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, 
 For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn : ' 
 Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings ? 
 Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. 
 Is it for thee the Linnet pours his throat ? 
 Loves of his own and raptures* swell the note. 
 The bounding steed you pompously 8 bestride, 
 Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride. 
 Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain ? 
 The birds of heav'n shall vindicate their grain. 
 Thine the full harvest of the golden year ? 
 Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer ; 
 The hog, that ploughs not, nor obeys thy call, 
 Lives on the labours of this lord of all. 4 
 Know, nature's children all divide her care ; 
 The fur that warms a monarch 5 warmed a bear." 
 While man exclaims, " See all things for my use ! " 
 " See man for mine ! " replies a pampered goose : 7 
 
 wholly fur 
 another, but 
 the happi- 
 ness of all 
 animals 
 mutual. 
 
 J The passage is indebted to Fenton, 
 in his Epistle to Southemo : 
 
 Who winged the winds, and gave the 
 
 streams to flow, 
 And raised the rocks, arid spread the lawn* 
 
 below. WAKE FIELD. 
 
 MS. : 
 
 Think'st thou for thee he feeds the wanton 
 
 fawn 
 
 And not as kindly spreads for him the lawn ? 
 Think'st thou for thee the sky-lark mounts 
 
 and sings ? 
 
 2 Apart from the metre the proper 
 order of the words would be, " loves 
 and raptures of his own swell the 
 note." 
 
 3 MS: "gracefully." The reading 
 Pope substituted is not much better, 
 for the generality of men are not ab- 
 surd enough to ride "pompously." 
 
 4 This description of the hog as 
 living on the labours of the lord of 
 creation, without ploughing, or obey- 
 ing his call, gives the idea of some 
 
 untamed depredator, and not of a 
 domestic animal kept to be eaten. 
 The lord lives on the hog. 
 
 5 MS. : " Sir Gilbert, " which meant 
 Sir Gilbert Heathcote, a rich London 
 alderman, who had been lord mayor. 
 The fur was a part of his official 
 robes. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 Know, Nature's children with one care are 
 
 nursed ; [first. 
 
 What warms a monarch, warmed an ermine 
 
 7 After ver. 46 in the former 
 editions : 
 
 What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to 
 treat him ! [him. 
 
 All this he knew ; but not that 'twas to eat 
 
 As far as goose could judge he reasoned 
 right ; 
 
 But as to man, mistook the matter quite. 
 
 WAKBUKTON. 
 
 Cowley, in his Plagues of Egypt, 
 stanza 1 : 
 
 All creatures the Creator said were thine : 
 No creature but might since say, " Man is 
 mine." 
 
 D D 2
 
 401 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 And just as short of reason he must fall, 
 Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.' 
 Grant that the pow'rful still the weak control ; 
 Be man the wit, 9 and tyrant of the whole : 
 Nature that tyrant checks ; he only knows, 3 
 And helps, another creature's wants and woes. 4 
 Say, will the falcon, stooping from above, 
 Smit with her varying 5 plumage, spare the dove ? 
 Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings ? 
 Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings ? 6 
 
 Gay, Fable 49 : 
 
 The snail looks round on flow'r and tree, 
 And cries, " All these were made for me." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The goose is taken from Peter 
 Charron ; but such a familiar and 
 burlesque image is improperly intro- 
 duced among such solid and serious 
 reflections. WARTON. 
 
 Pope copied Charron's predecessor, 
 Montaigne, Book ii. Chap. 12: "For 
 why may not a goose say thus, ' The 
 earth serves me to walk upon, the 
 sun to light me. I am the darling 
 of nature. Is it not man that keeps, 
 lodges, and serves me? It is for 
 me that he both sows and grinds.' " 
 ' ' The pampered goose, " says Southey, 
 " must have been forgetful of pluck- 
 ing time, as well as ignorant of the 
 rites that are celebrated in all old- 
 fashioned families on St. Michael's 
 Day." The goose's ignorance of his 
 future fate was part of Pope's argu- 
 ment, and he contended that the men 
 who exclaimed, "See all things for 
 my use," were equally blind to the 
 purposes for which they were destined. 
 The illustration is poor both poeti- 
 cally and philosophically. 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Fragment 43 : "The 
 hypothesis that assumes the world 
 made for man is not founded in 
 reason." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 That is, " Let it be granted that 
 man is the intellectual lord ; " for 
 
 "wit" is here used in its extended 
 sense of intellect in general. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Tis true the strong the weaker still control, 
 And pow'rful man is master of the whole : 
 Him therefore nature checks ; he only 
 knows, etc. 
 
 4 What an exquisite assemblage is 
 here, down to ver. 70, of deep reflec- 
 tion, humane sentiments, and poetic 
 
 j imagery. It is finely observed that 
 ( compassion is exclusively the property 
 1 of man alone WARTON. 
 
 6 That is, varying with her position, 
 and the different angles in which the 
 reflected light strikes upon the eye. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 6 MS. : 
 
 Turns he his ear when Philomela sings ? 
 Admires her e3 r e the insect's gilded wings 1 
 
 The superior mercy with which 
 Pope accredits men is of an unre- 
 flecting description, since he implies 
 that it is regulated by gaiety of colour, 
 and sweetness of song, and not by 
 the capacities of creatures for pleasure 
 and pain. The claim itself is un- 
 founded under the circumstances of 
 his comparison. The falcon and the 
 jay must eat their natural prey or 
 starve, and when hunger or gratifica- 
 tion solicits him, man never hesitates 
 to kill the animals which are needful 
 for his support or delicious to his 
 palate. If he had a taste for 
 "insects with gilded wings," the
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 40, 
 
 Man cares for all : to birds he gives his woods, 
 
 To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods. 
 
 For some his int'rest prompts him to provide, 
 
 For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride : eo 
 
 All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy 
 
 Th' extensive blessing of his luxury. 1 
 
 That very life his learned hunger craves, 
 
 He saves from famine, from the savage saves ; 
 
 Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast, GS 
 
 And, till he ends the being, makes it blessed, 
 
 Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain, 
 
 Than favoured man by touch ethereal 2 slain. 3 
 
 The creature had his feast of life before ; 
 
 Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er ! ?o 
 
 To each unthinking being, heav'n, a friend, 
 Gives not the useless knowledge of its end : 
 To man imparts it ; but with such a view 4 
 As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too ; 
 
 gilding on their wings would not with declaring that the motive is 
 
 restrain him. Martial, Lib. xiii. " interest, pleasure, and pride. " 
 
 Ep. 70, says of the peacock, "You a Borrowed from Milton's Samson 
 
 admire him every time he displays Agonistes. ver. 549 : 
 
 his jewelled wings, and can yon, 
 
 hard-hearted man, deliver him to the Wherever fountain or fresh current flowed 
 
 cruel cook?" and Pope in his cele- Against the eastern ray, translucent, pure 
 
 t__A_a j-i, i 4-Ti With touch ethereal of heav'n's fiery 
 
 brated lines on the pheasant had , 
 
 commemorated the impotence of j drank. WAKEFIELD. 
 brilliant plumage to touch the com- 
 passion of the sportsman. The poet, 3 Several ol the ancients, and 
 in this Epistle, forgot that in Epist. i. many of the Orientals since, esteemed 
 ver. 117, he had accused man those who were struck by lightning 
 of " destroying all creatures for as sacred persons, and the particular 
 his sport or gust," which is to favourites of heaven. POPE. 
 place him below the animals. He is Plutarch mentions that persons 
 undoubtedly without an equal in his struck with lightning were held 
 destructive propensities, and too often in honour, which did not accord 
 abuses his power over the sentient with the concurrent belief that 
 world. lightning was the instrument of 
 1 Pope starts with the intimation Jove's vengeance. Superstitions 
 that mankind extend their protection often clash. 
 
 to animals from commiseration for 4 " View " is " prospect, " a vision 
 
 their "wants and woes," and ends of future bliss.
 
 406 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 Reason or 
 instinct 
 alike operate 
 to the good 
 ot each 
 individual. 
 
 The hour concealed, and so remote the fear, 
 Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. 
 Great standing miracle ! that heav'n assigned 
 Its only thinking thing 1 this turn of mind. 2 
 
 II. Whether with reason, or with instinct blessed, 
 Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best : * 
 To bliss alike by that direction tend, 
 And find the means proportion'd to their end. 
 Say, where full instinct is th' unerring guide, 
 What pope or council* can they need beside ? 5 
 Reason, however able, cool at best, 
 Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed, 
 
 n 
 
 M 
 
 1 Sir W. Temple, Works, vol. iii. 
 . 539 : "Man is a thinking thing, 
 whether he will or no. " 
 
 2 Pope repeats in this paragraph 
 the argument he uses Epist. i. ver. 
 77 98, to prove that death has been 
 beneficently disarmed of its terrors. 
 Unthinking animals cannot be trou- 
 bled at the prospect, for they have 
 no knowledge, he says, of their end, 
 which is more than we can tell ; and 
 thinking beings, according to him, 
 have, in addition to the hope which 
 mingles with their dread, the un- 
 failing belief that death, though al- 
 ways drawing nearer, is never near. 
 Such an irrational delusion in a 
 "thinking thing" is, in Pope's esti- 
 mation, a "standing miracle." The 
 ostensible miracle is deduced from 
 his exaggeration of the truth. The 
 conviction that death is distant 
 usually yields when appearances are 
 against the supposition. Hale men 
 often rush consciously upon certain 
 destruction ; old and sick men have 
 constantly the genuine belief that 
 their end is at hand ; and dying men 
 expect each day or hour to be their 
 last. The false expectation of pro- 
 longed life does not enter into their 
 minds, and can have nothing to do 
 with their resignation, peace, or joy. 
 
 3 This is the true principle from 
 which Pope immediately departs, and 
 exalts instinct above reason. " Man, " 
 says Aristotle, ' ' has sometimes more, 
 sometimes less than the beast ; " for 
 they are adapted to different func- 
 tions, and man excels in his sphere, 
 and beasts in theirs. The sphere of 
 man is the highest, and his faculties 
 are proportionate. He cannot do the 
 work of the bee, but he can do his 
 own work, which is greater. 
 
 4 The roman catholic council, which 
 claims to be infallible. Instinct, 
 says Pope, being infallible does not 
 need the guidance of any other in- 
 fallible authority. When he speaks 
 of " full instinct," he probably means 
 that instinct is always complete with- 
 in its own limited domain, for if he 
 intended to put "full instinct" in 
 opposition to the instinct which is 
 defective and misleads, he would con- 
 tradict ver. 94, in which he states 
 that instinct "must go right." 
 
 5 After ver. 84 in the MS. : 
 
 While man with op'uiug views of various 
 
 ways 
 
 Confounded, by the aid of knowledge strays : 
 Too weak to choose, yet choosing still in 
 
 haste, 
 
 One moment gives the pleasure and distaste. 
 WARBURTON.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 407 
 
 Stays till we call, and then not often near ; ' 
 But honest instinct comes a volunteer, 
 Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit, 
 While still too wide or short is human wit ; 
 Sure by quick nature happiness to gain, 
 Which heavier reason labours at in vain.* 
 This too serves always, reason never long ; 
 One must go right, 3 the other may go wrong. 
 
 90 
 
 1 111 Pope's wide sense of the 
 term, reason adapts means to ends, 
 and distinguishes between truth 
 and falsehood, right and wrong. The 
 faculty operates in part spontaneously, 
 and in part with effort. In an end- 
 less number of ordinary circumstances 
 man cannot help observing, com- 
 paring, and inferring, and his reason 
 is itself an instinct which " comes a 
 volunteer." The distinction is, that 
 man does not stop with the uncon- 
 strained exercise of his powers. He 
 aspires to progress, and laboriously 
 pushes forward, while animals turn 
 round, generation after generation, in 
 the same narrow circle. What Pope 
 supposed was a mark of man's in- 
 feriority is just the ground of his 
 superiority. His conquests begin 
 with his difficulties and exertions. 
 
 8 Pope says, ver. 79, that whether 
 blessed with reason or instinct "all 
 enjoy the power that tends to bliss, 
 all find the means proportioned 
 to the end." He now contradicts 
 himself with regard to reason, and 
 says that, in the effort to determine 
 which of our impulses are beneficial 
 and which injurious, it never hits 
 the mark, but laboiirs in vain after 
 happiness. The wisdom he denies to 
 reason he erroneously ascribes to in- 
 stinct, which has no superiority 
 in securing an immunity from ill. 
 Through want of foresight, and the 
 limitation of their powers of contriv- 
 ance, myriads of creatures die of hunger 
 and cold. Those which come oft' with 
 
 life suffer frequently from scarcity and 
 inclement seasons. Their defective 
 sagacity makes them a prey to each 
 other and to man, and often when they 
 escape death they receive torturing 
 injuries. The young are exposed to 
 wholesale destruction, and in many 
 instances the parents manifest a grief 
 which if short is at least acute. 
 Creatures of the same species have 
 their intestine enmities, and engage 
 in combats attended by wounds and 
 death. They have their fears, 
 jealousies, and tempers, their alter- 
 nations of contentment and dissatis- 
 faction, and upon the whole the 
 instinct conferred upon animals seems 
 a less protection from present evils 
 than a moderate use of reason in man. 
 What alleviation there may be to 
 animals in their inevitable trials can- 
 not be known to us, but no one will 
 imagine that they can be supported 
 by sublimer hopes than eur own. 
 
 3 This is a mistake. Instinct is 
 often imperfect with reference to its 
 own special ends. Misled by the 
 odour of the African carrion flower, 
 the flesh-flies lay their eggs in it, and 
 the progeny, not being vegetable 
 feeders, are starved. Here the injury 
 is to the offspring. In other cases 
 the en-ing individuals suffer for 
 their own mistake. Pope, in this 
 Epistle, magnifies instinct, and dis- 
 parages reason. In Epist. i., ver. 232, 
 he took the opposite side, and said 
 that the reason of man was all the 
 " powers " of animals "in one."
 
 408 
 
 AN ESSAY ON .MAN. 
 
 &-e tlien the acting and comparing pow'rs 
 One in their nature, which are two in ours ; ' 
 And reason raise o'er instinct as you can, 1 
 In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.' 
 
 Who taught the nations of the field and flood 4 
 To shun their poison, 5 and to choose their food? 6 
 Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, 
 Build on the wave, 7 or arch beneath the sand ? 
 
 100 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 One in their act to think and to pursue, 
 Sure to will right, and what they will to do. 
 
 Pope's meaning is, that there is no 
 conflict in animals, as in man, be- 
 tween passion and reason, between 
 desire and judgment, that there is 
 not in the operations of animals, as 
 in man's contrivances, a studied adap- 
 tation of means to ends, nor a balan- 
 cing of method against method, and 
 of end against end, but that animals 
 are endowed with singleness of pur- 
 pose, know instinctively what to do, 
 and how to do it. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 Reason prefer to instinct if you can. 
 
 3 Addison, Spectator, No. 121 : 
 "To me instinct seems the imme- 
 diate direction of Providence. A 
 modern philosopher delivers the same 
 opinion where he says, God himself 
 is the soul of brutes," Upon the 
 theory that brutes act from the 
 immediate impulse of their Maker, 
 there is a difficulty in explaining the 
 cases of misdirected instinct, as when 
 a jackdaw drops cart-loads of sticks 
 down a chimney, in the vain en- 
 deavour to obtain a basis for its nest. 
 Some animals, again, profit by experi- 
 ence, as foxes which improve in cun- 
 ning, and we must infer that the 
 assistance afforded by the Deity in- 
 creases with the experience of the 
 animals, though the experience is in 
 nowise concerned in the result. A 
 vicionsness of temper, which resem- 
 
 bles the evil passions of men, some- 
 times dominates in brutes, as we 
 may see in horses and dogs, and 
 we cannot ascribe these propensities 
 to the immediate instigation of the 
 Creator, unless we accept Pope's doc- 
 trine that God "pours fierce ambition 
 into Caesar's mind." 
 
 4 "Wood "in all editions, though 
 designated as an erratum by Pope in 
 his small edition of 1736. The men- 
 tion of "tides" and "waves" in the 
 next couplet should have called at- 
 tention to a mistake, which seems 
 obvious enough even without any 
 special notice. CROKER. 
 
 5 This instinct is not invariable. 
 Animals eat food poisoned artificially, 
 and sometimes feed greedily upon 
 poisonous natural products. Yew is 
 a poison to cows and horses, and yet 
 with an abundance of wholesome 
 herbage they will sometimes cat the 
 yew. 
 
 6 Every verb and epithet has here 
 a descriptive force. We find more 
 imagery from these lines to the end 
 of the Epistle, than in any other 
 parts of this Essay. The origin of 
 the connections in social life, the 
 account of the state of nature, the 
 rise and effects of superstition and 
 tyranny, and the restoration of true 
 religion and just government, all 
 these ought to be mentioned as pas- 
 sages that deserve high applause, 
 nay, as some of the most exalted 
 pieces of English poetry. WAHTOX. 
 
 7 The halcyon or king-fisher was
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 409 
 
 Who made the spider parallels design, 1 
 Sure as Demoivre,' without rule or line ? 3 
 Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore 
 Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before ? H 
 Who calls the council, states the certain day, 5 
 Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way ? 6 
 
 105 
 
 reputed by the ancients "to build 
 upon the wave," and the entrance to 
 the floating nest was supposed to be 
 contrived in a manner to admit the 
 bird, and exclude the water of the 
 sea. Either Pope believed the fable, 
 or he thought himself at liberty to 
 illustrate the marvels of instinct by 
 fictitious examples. The couplet 
 was originally thns in the MS. : 
 The cramp-fish, remora what secret charm 
 To stop the bark, arrest the distant arm ? 
 
 The cramp-fish is the torpedo. "She 
 has the quality," says Montaigne, 
 "not only to benumb all the mem- 
 bers that touch her, but even through 
 the nets transmits a heavy dullness 
 into the hands of those that move 
 them : nay, it is further said, that if 
 one pour water upon her, he will feel 
 this numbness mount up the water 
 to the hand, and stupify the feeling 
 through the water. " The remora, or 
 sucking-fish, sticks by the disc on 
 the top of its head, to ships and other 
 fishes, and "renders imnioveable," 
 says Pliny, " the vessels which no 
 chain could stay, no weighty anchor 
 moor. " The mighty prowess ascribed 
 to the remora is imaginary, and the 
 electrical capacity of the torpedo 
 greatly exaggerated. The story of 
 halcyon, cramp-fish, and remora are 
 all in Book ii. chap. 12 of Montaigne's 
 
 1 The geometric, or garden- spider, 
 makes a web of concentric circles, 
 but the house-spider, which used to 
 have credit for weaving a web of 
 parallel longitudinal lines crossed by 
 parallel transverse lines, observes no 
 
 such regularity in the construction 
 of her toils. 
 
 2 An eminent mathematician. 
 POPE. 
 
 He was born in France in 1667. 
 Driven from his native countiy in 
 1685 by the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes, he settled in London, and 
 died there in 1754. He got his 
 living mainly by teaching mathe- 
 matics, in which his skill was con- 
 summate, and his publications on 
 the subject attest the acuteness and 
 originality of his genius. He was 
 on terms of friendship with Newton. 
 
 3 The poet probably took the hint 
 of this passage from Lord Bacon's 
 De augmeutis scientiarum : " Who 
 taught the raven in a drought to 
 throw pebbles into an hollow tree 
 where she espied water, that the 
 water might rise so as she might 
 come to it ? Who taught the bee to 
 sail through such a vast sea of air, 
 and to find a way from the field in 
 flower, a great way off to her hive ? " 
 
 RlTFFHEAD. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Through air's vast oceans see the storks 
 
 explore, 
 Columbus-like, a world unknown before. 
 
 5 From Le Spectacle de la Nature 
 of the Abbe" Pluche : " Who informed 
 their young that it would be requi- 
 site to travel into a foreign country ? 
 What particular bird takes the charge 
 upon him of assembling their grand 
 council, and fixing the day of their 
 departure ? " 
 
 6 The MS. has the lines which 
 follow :
 
 410 
 
 AX ESSAY OX MAX. 
 
 Reason or 
 instinct 
 operate also 
 to society in 
 all animals. 
 
 How far 
 society 
 carried by 
 instinct 
 
 III. God, in the nature of eacli being, founds 
 Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds : 
 But as he framed a whole, the whole to bless, 
 On mutual wants built mutual happiness : l 
 So from the first, eternal order ran, 
 And creature linked to creature, man to man. 
 Whate'er of life all-quick'ning ether 8 keeps, 
 Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps, 
 Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds 
 The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds. 
 Not man alone, but all that roam the wood, 
 Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood, 
 Each loves itself, but not itself alone, 
 Each sex desires alike, till two are one. 
 Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace : 
 They love themselves a third time in their race. 3 
 
 no 
 
 115 
 
 120 
 
 Boast we of arts ? a bee can better hit 
 The squares than Gibbs, the bearings than 
 
 Sir Kit. 
 
 To poise his dome a martin has the knack, 
 While bold Bernini lets St. Peter's crack. 
 
 Gibbs was born about 1674 and 
 died in 1754. He designed St. 
 Martin's church in London, and the 
 Kadcliffe library at Oxford. Sir Kit 
 is Sir Christopher Wren. A century 
 after the dome of St. Peter's was 
 erected, Bernini inserted staircases 
 in the hollow piers which support the 
 cupola, and the cracks in the dome 
 were falsely ascribed to his opera- 
 tions. The martins are not more 
 infallible than man, and, unlike man, 
 they do not profit by experience. 
 "White of Selborne relates that they 
 built in the window corners of a 
 house in his neighbourhood, where 
 the recess was too shallow to protect 
 their work, which was washed down 
 with every hard rain, and yet year 
 after year they persevered through the 
 summer in their useless drudgery. 
 
 1 Bolingbroke, Fragment 51 : "We 
 are designed to be social, not solitary 
 
 creatures. Mutual wants unite us, 
 and natural benevolence and poli- 
 tical order, on which our happiness 
 depends, are founded in them." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Ether was reputed to be an ele- 
 ment finer than air, and to fill the 
 regions beyond our atmosphere. Some 
 of the stoics believed that ether 
 was the animating principle of all 
 things, and Pope adopted the doc- 
 trine. Hence he calls ether "all- 
 quickening," and says that " one 
 nature feeds the vital flame" in all 
 the creatures of earth, air, and water. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke, Fragment 51 : "As 
 our parents loved themselves in us, 
 so we love ourselves in our children." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Uryden, Absalom and Achitophel : 
 
 Our fond begetters who would never die, 
 Love but themselves in their posterity. 
 
 The lines from ver. 115 to ver. 124 
 are varied in the MS. : 
 
 Quick with this spirit new-born nature 
 
 moved, 
 Itself each creature in its species loved ;
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Thus beast and bird their common charge attend, 
 The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend ; ' 
 The young dismissed to wander earth or air, 
 There stops the instinct, and there ends the care : * 
 The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace, 
 Another love succeeds, another race. 
 A longer care man's helpless kind demands ; 
 That longer care contracts more lasting bands : 3 
 Reflection, reason, still the ties improve, 
 At once extend the int'rest, and the love ; 4 
 With choice we fix," with sympathy we burn ; 
 Each virtue in each passion takes its turn ; 
 
 411 
 125 
 
 130 
 
 JIow much 
 farther 
 society is 
 earned by 
 reason. 
 
 135 
 
 Each sought a pleasure not possessed alone, 
 Each sex desired alike till two were one. 
 This impulse animates ; one nature feeds 
 The vital lamp, and swells the genial seeds : 
 All spread their image with like ardour 
 
 stung, 
 All love themselves, reflected in their young. 
 
 Dr. George Campbell remarks, in 
 his Philosophy of Rhetoric, that to 
 talk of creatures loving themselves 
 in their progeny is nonsensical rant. 
 Of many fathers and mothers it would 
 be nearer the truth to say that they 
 love their children almost to the 
 exclusion of themselves. Neither 
 Pope nor Bolingbroke had children, 
 and not having experienced, they 
 misapprehended, the parental feeling. 
 
 1 Pope's division of duties is not 
 the law of creation. In a multipli- 
 city of cases both parents feed, and 
 both defend their young. When the 
 sire is of no use in providing food, 
 as with grass-eating animals, he 
 equally abandons his defending func- 
 tion, and does not even recognise his 
 offspring. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 Till taught to range the wood, or wing the 
 
 air, 
 There instinct ends its passion and its care. 
 
 3 Locke, Civil Government, book ii. 
 chap. vii. sect. 79 :" The conjunction 
 
 between male and female ought to 
 last so long as is necessary to the 
 support of the young ones. And 
 herein, I think, lies the chief, if not 
 the only reason, why the male and 
 female in mankind are tied to a 
 longer conjunction than other crea- 
 tures, whose young being able to 
 subsist of themselves before the time 
 of procreation returns again, the con- 
 jugal bond dissolves of itself." 
 
 4 Bolingbroke, Fragment 3 : "Rea- 
 son improved sociability, extended 
 it to relations more remote, and 
 united several families into one com- 
 munity, as instinct had united several 
 individuals into one family." "In- 
 terest " in Pope's line signifies "ad- 
 vantage." Reason, he says, teaches 
 man to improve on the ties of in- 
 stinct, and form connections beyond 
 his immediate family, whereby he at 
 once extends his love, and the ad- 
 vantages derived from it. 
 
 5 That is, man becomes constant 
 from choice. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 And ev'ry tender passion takes its turn. 
 
 The line in the text alludes to Pope's 
 hypothesis that every virtue is grafted 
 upon a ruling passion.
 
 412 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Of the state 
 of nature 
 tluit it was 
 social. 
 
 And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise, 
 That graft benevolence on charities. 1 
 Still as one brood, and as another rose, 
 These nat'ral love maintained, habitual those : s 
 The last scarce ripened into perfect man, 
 Saw helpless him from whom their life began : 3 
 Mem'ry and forecast just returns engage, 
 That pointed back to youth, this on to age ; 
 While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined, 
 Still spread the int'rest, and preserved the kind. 4 
 
 IY. Nor think in nature's state they blindly trod ; 
 The state of nature was the reign of God : 5 
 Self-love and social at her birth 8 began, 
 Union' the bond of all things, and of man. 
 
 uo 
 
 145 
 
 150 
 
 1 " Charity " is used in the anti- 
 quated sense of "love." "New 
 needs," says Pope, give rise to "new 
 helps," and the virtue "benevo- 
 lence" is grafted upon the natural 
 affections. 
 
 2 He means that the latest brood, 
 being young children, love their 
 parents by nature, while the previous 
 brood, being grown up, only love 
 parents from habit. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Scarce had the last the parents' care out- 
 grown 
 
 Before they saw those parents want their 
 own. 
 
 Drydeu, Palamon and Arcite, Book 
 iii. : 
 
 and issuing into man, 
 Grudges their life from whence his own 
 began. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Stretch the long interest, and support the 
 line. 
 
 s The MS. goes on thus : 
 
 She spake, and man her high behests 
 obeyed ; [strayed ; 
 
 Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he 
 
 For pride was not; joint tenant of the 
 shade 
 
 He shared with beasts his table and his bed ; 
 
 No murder etc. 
 
 " He speaks," says M. Crousaz, 
 "of what passed in the earliest ages 
 of the world no less positively than 
 an eye-witness." Pope followed the 
 ancient fable which he may have 
 read, among other places, in Mon- 
 taigne's Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12 : 
 "Plato, in his picture of the golden 
 age under Saturn, reckons, among 
 the chief advantages that a man then 
 had, his communications with beasts, 
 by which he acquired a very perfect 
 intelligence and prudence, and led 
 his life more happily than we could 
 do." 
 
 6 "Her birth" is the birth ot 
 nature. The personification of na- 
 ture in the phrase "the state of 
 nature," or "the natural state," is 
 so forced, that we do not at once 
 perceive that ' ' nature " is the noun 
 to which "her " refers. 
 
 7 "Union" is put for voluntary 
 union, the union of social affection, 
 in contrast to the bonds of fear, 
 coercion, and the necessities of life, 
 which are large elements in the pre- 
 sent condition of mankind. The 
 beasts were included in the common 
 league, and animals of prey unknown
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 413 
 
 Pride tlicn was not ; nor arts, that pride to aid ; 
 
 Man walked witli beast joint tenant of the shade ;' 
 
 The same his table, and the same his bed ; 
 
 No murder clothed him," and no murder fed. 
 
 In the same temple, the resounding wood, 3 155 
 
 All vocal beings hymned their equal God :* 
 
 The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed, 
 
 Unbribcd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest : 5 
 
 Heav'n's attribute was universal care, 
 
 And man's prerogative to rule, but spare. 100 
 
 Ah ! how unlike the man of times to come ! 6 
 
 Of half that live the butcher and the tomb ; 
 
 Who, foe to nature, hears the gen'ral groan, 
 
 Murders their species, and betrays his own. 8 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds, jr>5 
 
 And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds ; 
 
 in Pope's state of nature. But he 
 did not keep steady to his first ac- 
 count. 
 
 1 So Hall, Satires, Book iii. Sat. 1 : 
 
 Then crept in pride, and peevish covetise, 
 And man grew greedy, discordous, and nice. 
 Now man that erst hail-fellow was with 
 
 beast, 
 
 Woxe on to ween himself a god at least. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 2 Dryden, Ovid's Metamorphoses, 
 Book xv. : 
 
 The woolly fleece that clothed her murderer. 
 
 3 Virgil, Eel. x. 58 : " lucos sonan- 
 tcs;" Dryden, "sounding woods." 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 He called on heav'n for blessing, they for 
 food. 
 
 5 MS.: 
 
 Unstained with gore the grassy altar grow, 
 Priests yet were temperate, yet no passions 
 
 knew; 
 
 Nor yet would glutton zeal devoutly eat, 
 Nor faithful av'rice hugged his god in plate. 
 
 The pagans feasted upon the meat 
 they ofl'ered to idols, which is what 
 we are to understand by the "glutton 
 zeal " that ' ' devoutly eats. " 
 6 Dryden, A r irg. JEn. ix. 640 : 
 
 Ah how unlike the living is the dead. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 ? MS.: 
 Of half that live himself the living tomb. 
 
 8 MS.: 
 
 Who, foe to nature, other kinds o'erthrown 
 Restless he seeks dominion o'er his own. 
 
 Or, 
 
 Who deaf to nature's universal groan, 
 Murders all other kinds, betrays bis own. 
 
 This is the same amiable being who 
 is celebrated, ver. 51, for "helping 
 the wants and woes of other crea- 
 tures," and sparing singing-birds and 
 gilded insects out of pure compas- 
 sion.
 
 414 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Reason 
 instructed 
 by instinct 
 in the 
 invention 
 of arts, and 
 in the forms 
 of society. 
 
 The fury-passions from that hlood began, 
 And turned on man a fiercer savage, 1 man. 2 
 See him from nature rising slow to art ! 3 
 To copy instinct then was reason's part ; 
 Thus then to man the voice of nature spake 4 
 " Go, from the creatures thy instructions take : 
 Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield ; 5 
 Learn from the beasts the physic of the field ;' 
 Thy arts of building from the bee receive ; 7 
 Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave ; 8 
 Learn of the little nautilus to sail, 
 Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. 9 
 
 170 
 
 175 
 
 1 Pope probably meant that man 
 was a "fiercer savage" than the 
 animals of which he shed the blood, 
 but as the "blood" only is men- 
 tioned, there is no proper positive to 
 the comparative. 
 
 2 Dryden in his version of the 
 speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. 
 Book xv., which our poet doubtless 
 had in view through this whole de- 
 lineation : 
 
 Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began, 
 And after forged the sword to murder man. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 MS.: 
 
 While nature, strict the injury to scan, 
 Left man the only beast to prey on man. 
 
 3 MS.: 
 
 In early times when man aspired to art. 
 
 The lines from ver. 161 to 168 are 
 parenthetical, and Pope now goes 
 back to the primitive age in which 
 uncomipted man associated freely 
 with the beasts, and profited by their 
 teaching. 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake. 
 
 6 It is a caution commonly prac- 
 tised amongst navigators, when thrown 
 upou a desert coast, and in want of 
 refreshments, to observe what fruits 
 have been touched by the birds, and 
 
 to venture on these without further 
 hesitation. WARBURTON. 
 
 6 See Pliny's Nat. Hist. Lib. viii. 
 cap. 27, where several instances are 
 given of animals discovering the me- 
 dicinal efficacy of herbs by their own 
 iise of them, and pointing to some 
 operations in the art of healing by 
 their own practice. WARBURTON. 
 
 The instances are all fanciful or 
 fabulous. 
 
 7 Montaigne, Essays, Book ii. 
 Chap. 12: "Democritus held and 
 proved, that most of the arts we 
 have were taught us by other ani- 
 mals, as by the spider to weave and 
 sew, by the swallow to build, by the 
 swan and nightingale music, and by 
 several animals to make medicines." 
 
 8 The MS. adds : 
 
 Behojd the rabbit's fortress in the sands, 
 The beaver's storied house not made with 
 hands. 
 
 A rabbit-burrow has no resemblance 
 to a military fortress, and Pope 
 prudently omitted the incongruous 
 comparison. Martial, Lib. xiii. 
 Ep. 60, had used the illustration in a 
 directly opposite sense, and said that 
 rabbits, by teaching the art of mining, 
 had shown the enemy how fortresses 
 could be taken. 
 
 9 Oppian, Halicut. Lib. i., describes 
 this fish in the following manner:
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 415 
 
 Here too all forms of social union find, 
 
 And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind : ' 
 
 Here subterranean works and cities see ; 
 
 There towns aerial on the waving tree. 
 
 Learn each small people's genius, policies, 
 
 The ants' republic, and the realm of bees : 
 
 How those in common all their wealth bestow, 8 
 
 And anarchy without confusion know ; 3 
 
 And these for ever, though a monarch reign, 
 
 Their separate cells and properties maintain. 4 
 
 Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state, 
 
 Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate. 
 
 In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw, 
 
 Entangle justice in her net of law, 
 
 And right, too rigid, harden into wrong ; 5 
 
 Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong. 
 
 180 
 
 185 
 
 190 
 
 "They swim on the surface of the 
 sea, on the back of their shells, 
 which exactly resemble the hulk of 
 a ship. They raise two feet like 
 masts, and extend a membrane be- 
 tween, which serves as a sail ; the 
 other two feet they employ as oars at 
 the side. They are usually seen in 
 the Mediterranean." POPE. 
 
 The paper-nautilus, or Argonauta 
 Argo, has eight arms. The first pair 
 in the female expand at their extre- 
 mities, so that each of the two arms 
 terminates in a broad thin membrane. 
 These broad membranes do not exist 
 in the male, and modern naturalists 
 reject the idea that they are used for 
 sails. 
 
 1 MS.: 
 There, too, each form of social commerce 
 
 and, 
 
 So late by reason taught to human kind. 
 Behold th' embodied locust rushing forth 
 In sabled millions from th' inclement north; 
 In herds the wolves, invasive robbers, roam, 
 In flocks, the sheep pacific, race at home. 
 What warlike discipline the cranes display, 
 How leagued their squadron, how direct 
 
 their way. 
 
 2 The Guardian, No. 157: " Every- 
 thing is common among ants." 
 
 3 " Anarchy without confusion "is 
 a contradiction in terms, according to 
 the meaning which is now universally 
 attached to the word anarchy. Pope 
 understands by it the mere absence of 
 all inequality of station. 
 
 4 The Guardian, No. 157: "Bees 
 have each of them a hole in their 
 hives ; their honey is their own ; 
 every bee minds her own. concerns." 
 The natural history of former times 
 abounded in fables, and among the 
 number was the fancy that each bee 
 had its separate cell, and private store 
 of honey . 
 
 5 An adaptation of the Latin pro- 
 verb, mentioned by Cicero, Off. i. 10, 
 and Terence, Heaut. iv. 5, that over- 
 strained law is often unrestrained 
 injustice. The letter contravenes the 
 spirit. 
 
 6 The imagery of the passage is 
 derived from an observation of a 
 Greek philosopher, who compared 
 laws to spiders' webs, too fragile to
 
 416 
 
 AN ESSAY OX MAX. 
 
 Origin of 
 
 political 
 
 societies. 
 
 Yet go ! and thus o'er all the creatures sway, 
 Thus let the wiser make the rest obey ; 
 And for those arts mere instinct could afford, 
 Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods adored.'" 
 
 V. Great nature spoke ; observant man obeyed ; 
 Cities were built, societies were made :' 
 Here rose one little state ; another near 3 
 Grew by like means, and joined through love or fear. 
 Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend, 
 And there the streams in purer rills descend ? 
 What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, 
 And he returned a friend who came a foe. 
 Converse and love mankind might strongly draw, 4 
 
 195 
 
 200 
 
 20S 
 
 hold fast great offenders, and too 
 strong to suffer trivial culprits to 
 escape. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope upbraids men (or enacting 
 laws too strong for the weak instead 
 of following the laws of bees, which 
 are- "wise as nature, and as fixed as 
 fate." Such is their superior con- 
 sideration for the weak that the 
 workers kill the drones when they 
 become burthensome to them, and so 
 far are we behind them in our poor 
 law legislation that we are compelled 
 to maintain the useless members of 
 society, the old, the crippled, the 
 hopelessly sick, the insane, the idiotic 
 all of whom, if we would only learn 
 mercy and wisdom of the bee, we 
 should immediately put to death. 
 The doctrine of Pope is altogether 
 childish. The contracted routine of 
 a bee's existence has too little in 
 common with the complicated rela- 
 tions of human life for bee-hive 
 iisages to displace the statutes of the 
 realm. 
 
 1 Till cd. 5 : 
 
 Who for those arts they learned of brutes 
 
 before, 
 
 As kings shall crown them, or as gods 
 e. -Pop*. 
 
 Roscommon's version of Horace's 
 Art of Poetry : 
 
 Cities were built, and useful laws were 
 made. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 In the MS. thus : 
 
 The neighbours leagued to guard their com- 
 mon spot, 
 
 And love was nature's dictate, murder not 
 
 For want alone each animal contends ; 
 
 Tigers with tigers, that removed, are friends. 
 
 Plain nature's wants the common mother 
 crowned, 
 
 She poured her acorns, herbs, and streams 
 around. 
 
 No treasure then for rapine to invade, 
 
 What need to fight for sunshine, or fol 
 shade? 
 
 And half the cause of contest was removed, 
 
 When beauty could be kind to all who 
 loved, W A RBU RTOX. 
 
 Of the first couplet there are two 
 other versions in the MS. : 
 
 Fear would forbid th' unpractised to engage, 
 And nature's dictate love, not blood and 
 rage. 
 
 Or, 
 
 Unpractised man, that knewno murj'ring 
 
 skill, 
 And nature's dictate was to love, not kill. 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 Commerce, convenience, change might 
 strongly draw.
 
 AX ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 417 
 
 When love was liberty, and nature law. 1 
 
 Thus states were formed : the name of king unknown, 
 
 Till common int'rest placed the sway in one.* 
 
 'Twas virtue only (or in arts or arms, 
 
 Diffusing blessings, or averting harms), 
 
 The same which in a sire the sons obeyed, 8 
 
 A prince the father of a people made. 4 
 
 VI. Till then, by nature crowned, each patriarch sat, 
 King, priest, and parent of his growing state; 5 
 
 Origin of 
 monarchy. 
 
 210 
 
 215 
 
 . 
 
 patriarchal 
 government. 
 
 1 These two lines added since the 
 first edition. POPE. 
 
 The second line of the couplet had 
 already appeared in the Epistle of 
 Eloisa to Abelard, ver. 92, in connec- 
 tion with sentiments which leave no 
 doubt of Pope's meaning. In the 
 primitive and golden age he held that 
 love had full liberty to obey its incli- 
 nations, or, as he expressed it in the 
 passage of the MS. quoted by War- 
 burton, "beauty could then be kind 
 to all who loved." In other words 
 there was a community of women 
 regulated by no other law than natu- 
 ral impulse. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 These states had lords 'tis true, but each 
 
 its own, 
 
 Not all subjected to the rule of one, 
 Unless where from one lineage all began, 
 And swelled into a nation from a man. 
 
 The nature of the distinction which 
 Pope draws between the lordship over 
 the early states, and kingly rule, is 
 clear from ver. 215, where he says 
 that till monarchy was established 
 patriarchal government prevailed, and 
 each state was only a collection of 
 relations who obeyed the family chief. 
 In a monarchy two or more states 
 were joined together, and the national 
 began to take the place of the family 
 tie. The effect of the change would 
 be great. The social bond between 
 the governor and the governed would 
 be weakened, and the official dignity, 
 
 VOL. II.- POETRY. 
 
 the harsh authority, and selfish im- 
 pulses of the ruler would be quickly 
 increased. 
 
 3 " Sons," that is, " obeyed a 
 sire" on account of his "virtue," 
 and not on account of his parental 
 authority. Pope had in his mind 
 the remarks of Locke. A mature 
 understanding is necessary for the 
 right direction of the will, and pa- 
 rents must govern the will of the 
 child till he is competent to govern 
 his own. He is then responsible to 
 himself. He owes his parents last- 
 ing honour, gratitude, and assistance, 
 but ceases to be under their com- 
 mand, and if, in primitive times, the 
 children, who had arrived at years of 
 discretion, accepted a father for their 
 ruler, his "virtue," says Pope, was 
 the cause. 
 
 4 Locke, Civil Government, bk. ii. 
 chap. vi. sect. 74 : "It is obvious to 
 conceive how easy it was in the first 
 ages of the world for the father of 
 the family to become the prince of 
 it." The right order of Pope's dis- 
 torted language is that " virtue made 
 the father of a people a prince. " He 
 was raised to be a prince because he 
 had manifested a fatherly care for the 
 people. 
 
 5 Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. 
 chap. x. sect. 4: "The chiefest per- 
 son in every household was always as 
 it were a king, and fathers did at the 
 first exercise the office of priests." 
 
 E E
 
 418 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 r 
 
 On him, their second Providence, they hung, 
 Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. 
 He from the wond'ring furrow called the food, 1 
 Taught to command the fire, control the flood, 
 Draw forth the monsters of th' ahyss profound, 
 Or fetch th' aerial eagle to the ground, 2 
 Till drooping, sick'ning, dying they began 3 
 Whom they revered as god to mourn as man : 
 Then, looking up from sire to sire, explored 
 One great first Father, and that first adored ; 4 
 
 220 
 
 225 
 
 1 A finer example can perhaps 
 scarce be given of a compact and 
 comprehensive style. The manner in 
 which the four elements were sub- 
 dued is comprised in these four lines 
 alone. There is not an useless word 
 in this passage. There are but three 
 epithets, "wond'ring, profound, 
 aerial" and they are placed precisely 
 with the very substantive that is of 
 most consequence. If there had been 
 epithets joined with the other sub- 
 stantives, it would have weakened 
 the nervousness of the sentence. 
 This was a secret of versification 
 Pope well understood, and hath often 
 practised with peculiar success. 
 WARTON. 
 
 Warton's criticism appears to be 
 wrong throughout. He says the lines 
 describe "the manner in which the 
 four elements were subdued ;" but 
 we learn nothing of "the manner" 
 by being told that "fire" was "com- 
 manded," and water "controlled." 
 He says "there is not an useless 
 word ; " but as either ' ' command " 
 or " control" would apply with equal 
 propriety to both fire and water, the 
 second verb is added solely to eke 
 out the line, and the adjective " pro- 
 found," when joined to "abyss," is 
 weak tautology for the sake of the 
 rhyme. He says that the epithets 
 " are placed precisely with the very 
 substantive that is of most conse- 
 
 quence ;" but why is the "fire" less 
 important than the "abyss?" The 
 verses might pass without comment 
 if "Warton had not extolled them for 
 imaginary merits. The first line is 
 an example of the sacrifice of truth 
 and picturesqueness to hyperbolical, 
 affected forms of speech. To talk of 
 "calling food from the wond'ring 
 furrow" conveys a false idea of agri- 
 cultural processes. 
 * MS. : 
 
 He crowned the wond'ring earth with golden 
 
 grain, 
 Taught to command the fire, control the 
 
 main, 
 
 Drew from the secret deep the finny drove, 
 And fetched the soaring eagle from above. 
 
 The first couplet is again varied : 
 
 He taught the arts of life, the means of 
 
 food, 
 To pierce the forest, and to stem the flood. 
 
 3 MS.: 
 
 Till weak, and old, and dying they began. 
 
 This couplet is followed in the MS. 
 by a second which Pope omitted : 
 
 Saw his shrunk arms, pale cheeks, and 
 
 faded eye, 
 Beheld him bend, and droop, and sink, and 
 
 die. 
 
 4 Men are said by the poet to have 
 been awakened by the death of the 
 patriarch to reflection upon his ori- 
 ginal, and to have advanced upwards
 
 AX ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 419 
 
 Or plain tradition, that this all hegun, 1 
 Conveyed unbroken faith from sire to son ; 
 The worker from the work distinct was known, 
 And simple reason never sought but one. 2 
 Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light,' 
 Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right ; 4 
 To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod, 
 And owned a father when he owned a God.* 
 Love all the faith, and all th' allegiance then, 
 For nature knew no right divine in men, 8 
 No ill could fear in God ; and understood 
 A sov'reign being but a sov' reign good. 
 
 235 Origin of 
 true religion 
 and govern- 
 ment from 
 the princi- 
 ple of love ; 
 and of 
 superstition 
 
 from father to father, that is, from 
 cause to cause, till their enquiries 
 terminated in one original Father, 
 one first, independent, uncreated 
 cause. JOHNSON. 
 
 At ver. 148 we are told that "the 
 state of nature was the reign of God," 
 and at ver. 156 that "all vocal beings" 
 man, bird, and beast joined then 
 in ' ' hymning " their Creator. This 
 condition of things, we learn from 
 ver. 149, dated from the "birth" of 
 nature, which is contrary to Pope's 
 present conjecture that the primitive 
 families may, perhaps, have had no 
 conception of a Deity. The poet's 
 language is irrational. If God did not 
 reveal himself to them in any direct 
 way, they might yet be supposed cap- 
 able of inferring from their own exist- 
 ence and that of the universe, a truth 
 which their posterity deduced from 
 the death of patriarch after patri- 
 arch. 
 
 1 Pope ought to have written "be- 
 gan." He has improperly put the 
 participle for the past tense. The 
 meaning of the couplet is, that men 
 may possibly have learned from tradi- 
 tion that, "this all," did not exist 
 from eternity, but had a beginning, 
 and therefore a Creator. 
 
 2 A belief, that is, in the unity of 
 
 God was the original faith, and poly- 
 theism a later corruption. 
 
 3 "Warburton says that the allusion 
 is to the refraction of light in passing 
 through the oblique sides of the glass 
 prism. 
 
 4 It was before the fall that God 
 pronounced that all was good. But 
 our author never adverts to any lapsed 
 condition of man. WAETOX. 
 
 He adverts to it in this passage, 
 where he contrasts primitive virtue 
 with subsequent license. 
 
 5 This couplet follows in the MS. : 
 
 'Twas simple worship in the native grove, 
 Religion, morals, had no name but love. 
 
 6 The divine right of kings to their 
 throne, and the unlawfulness of de- 
 posing them, however much they 
 might oppress the people for whose 
 benefit they were appointed to rule, 
 was a doctrine first taught in the 
 time of the Stuarts. " It was never 
 heard of among mankind," says Locke 
 writing in 1690, "till it was revealed 
 to us by the divinity of this last 
 age." In opposition to the slavish 
 theory which would subject nations 
 to despots, Pope says that when go- 
 vernment was instituted allegiance 
 was the voluntary homage of love. 
 
 E E -2
 
 420 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 and tyranny 
 from that of 
 fear. 
 
 True faith, true policy, united ran, 
 
 That was but love of God, and this of man. a 
 
 Who first taught souls enslaved, and realms undone, 
 Th' enormous 1 faith of many made for one ; 
 That proud exception to all nature's laws, 
 T' invert the world, and counterwork its cause ?* 
 Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law ; 341 
 
 Till superstition taught the tyrant awe,' 
 Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid, 
 And gods of conqu'rors, slaves of subjects made : 
 She, midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound, 
 When rocked the mountains, and when groaned the ground, * 
 She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, 
 To pow^r unseen, and mightier far than they : 
 She, from the rending earth and bursting skies, 
 Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise : * 
 Here fixed the dreadful, there the bless'd abodes ; 
 Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods ; 
 
 251 
 
 255 
 
 1 Mr. Pope told us that of the 
 number that had read these Epistles, 
 he knew of no one that took the ele- 
 gance, or even the true meaning of 
 the word "enormous," except Lord 
 Bolingbroke alone. I wonder at it. I 
 am sure I never understood it other- 
 wise than as "out of all rule," and I do 
 not know how anybody could that had 
 read Horace's "abnormis sapiens," 
 and Milton's " enormous bliss." Mr. 
 Pope added for that reason, against 
 his rule of brevity, the two next lines 
 to explain it, and accordingly I since 
 saw them interlined in the original 
 MS. RICHARDSON. 
 
 Milton's "enormous bliss" was 
 bliss " wild, above rule or art." The 
 personswho misunderstood the epithet 
 in Pope's poem must have been those 
 who read the MS. ; for the explana- 
 tory couplet appeared in the first 
 edition of the Epistle. He obviously 
 meant by "enormous faith" that the 
 
 faith was an enormity, and it is diffi- 
 cult to conjecture what other sense 
 could be attached to his phrase. 
 
 * The "cause" here signifies the 
 purpose or motive manifested in the 
 constitution of the world, and this 
 purpose is "inverted" by the doctrine 
 that "many are made for one." The 
 one is made for the many, the prince 
 for the people. 
 
 3 Wicked rulers, terrified by an evil 
 conscience, became the dupe of im- 
 postors who professed to speak in the 
 name of the invisible powers. 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending 
 ground. 
 
 Wakefield points out that the lines, 
 ver. 249 252, are from Lucretius, v. 
 1217. 
 
 * MS. : 
 
 From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal 
 
 nigh, 
 And gods supernal from the bursting sky.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 421 
 
 Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, 
 Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust; 1 
 Such as the souls of cowards might conceive, 
 And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would believe. 2 
 Zeal then, not charity, became the guide ; 
 And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride. 
 Then sacred seemed th' ethereal vault no more ; 3 
 Altars grew marble then, and reeked with gore : * 
 Then first the Flamen 1 tasted living food ; 6 
 Next his grim idol smeared with human blood ; 7 
 
 260 
 
 265 
 
 1 Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., trans- 
 lated by Addison : 
 
 An umpire, partial, and unjust, 
 And a lewd woman's impious lust. 
 
 2 Bolingbroke, Fragment 22 : "Men 
 made the Supreme Being after their 
 own image. Fierce and cruel them- 
 selves they represented him hating 
 without reason, revenging without 
 provocation, and punishing without 
 measure." Pope says that tyrants 
 would believe such gods as were 
 formed like tyrants. He meant that 
 the tyrants would believe in the gods, 
 but probably found the "in" un- 
 manageable. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 The native wood seemed sacred now no 
 more. 
 
 People no longer held sacred the 
 natural temple in which, ver. 155, 
 men and beasts formerly "hymned 
 their God," but it was thought neces- 
 sary to worship in costly buildings, 
 and sacrifice animals on " marble 
 altars." 
 
 4 Bolingbroke, Fragment 24 : "God 
 was appeased provided his altars 
 reeked with gore." A sentence of 
 the same Fragment furnished Pope 
 with his view of heathen sacrifices : 
 " The Supreme Being was represented 
 so vindictive and cruel, that nothing 
 less than acts of the utmost cruelty 
 could appease his anger, and his 
 
 priests were so many butchers of men 
 and other animals." 
 
 5 The "flamen" was a priest at- 
 tached exclusively to the service of 
 some particular god. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 The glutton priest first tasted living food. 
 
 Bolingbroke, Fragment 24: "As 
 if God was appeased whenever the 
 priest was glutted with roast meat. " 
 AVakefield remarks that Pope followed 
 Pythagoras in calling food "living," 
 because it had once been alive. A 
 meat diet is said, ver. 167, to have 
 been the origin of wars, and here we 
 are told that the ' ' flamen first tasted 
 living food" after war and tyranny 
 had over-spread the earth, which is 
 an inconsistency, unless Pope believed 
 that his " glutton priests " were more 
 abstemious than the rest of mankind 
 till animals were sacrificed in the name 
 of religion. The poet, in this Epis- 
 tle, is loud in denouncing the practice 
 of eating animal food, but he ate it 
 without scruple himself. 
 
 7 Milton, Par. Lost, i. 392 : 
 
 First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with 
 
 blood 
 
 Of human sacrifice, and parent's tears, 
 Though for the noise of drums and timbrels 
 
 loud 
 Their children's cries unheard, that passed 
 
 through fire 
 To his grim idoL 
 
 Many of Pope's writings are strewed
 
 422 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 The influ- 
 ence of self- 
 love operat- 
 ing to the 
 social and 
 public 
 good. 
 
 Restoration 
 of true 
 religion and 
 government 
 on their first 
 principle. 
 
 With heav'n's own thunders shook the world below, 
 And played the god an engine on his foe. 1 
 
 So drives self-love, through just, and through unjust, 
 To one man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust: 
 The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause 
 Of what restrains him, government and laws.* 
 For what one likes, if others like as well, 
 What serves one will, when many wills rebel ? 
 How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake, 
 A weaker may surprise, a stronger take ?' 
 His safety must his liberty restrain : 
 All join to guard what each desires to gain. 
 Forced into virtue thus by self-defence, 
 Ev'n kings learned justice and benevolence : 
 Self-love forsook the path it first pursued, 
 And found the private in the public good." 
 
 'Twas then the studious head or gen'rous mind, 
 FolTwer of God, or friend of human-kind, 
 Poet or patriot,* rose but to restore 
 The faith and moral nature gave before ; 
 
 270 
 
 875 
 
 285 
 
 with Miltonic phrases, though they 
 need not be pointed out, and cer- 
 tainly do not detract from his general 
 merit. Such interweavings of signi- 
 ficant and forcible expressions have 
 often a striking effect. BOWLES. 
 
 1 The image is derived from the 
 old engines of war, such as the 
 catapult which threw stones. The 
 Flamen made an engine of his god, 
 and assailed foes by threatening them 
 with chastisement from heaven. 
 
 2 Hooker, Eccles. Polity, bk. i. 
 chap. x. sect. 5: "At the first, it 
 may be, that all was permitted unto 
 their discretion which were to rule, 
 till they saw that to live by one man's 
 will became the cause of all men's 
 misery. This constrained them to 
 come unto laws." WARTON. 
 
 In the MS. there is this couplet after 
 ver. 272 : 
 
 For say what makes the liberty of man ? 
 'Tis not in doing what he would but 
 can. 
 
 The lines were intended to give the 
 reason why law is not an infringement 
 of liberty, and were probably cancelled 
 because the reason was as applicable 
 to cruel as to salutary laws. Upon 
 Pope's principle the worst despotism 
 would not interfere with the liberty 
 of the subject, provided only that 
 resistance was hopeless. 
 
 3 When the proprietor is asleep the 
 weak rob him by stealth, and when 
 he is awake the strong rob him by 
 violence. 
 
 4 Bolingbroke, Fragment 6 : "Pri- 
 vate good depends on the public." 
 
 5 The inspired strains of the He- 
 brew Scriptures are the only instance 
 in which poetry has "restored faith 
 and morals." The heathen poets
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 423 
 
 Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new ; 
 
 If not God's image, yet his shadow drew : 
 
 Taught pow Ys due use to people and to kings ; 
 
 Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings, 290 
 
 The less, or greater, set so justly true, Mixed 
 
 govern- 
 That touching one must strike the other too ;' mwlt 
 
 Till jarring int'rests of themselves create 
 
 Th' according music * of a well-mixed state. 3 
 
 Such is the world's great harmony, that springs 295 
 
 From order, union, full consent 4 of things ;* 
 
 Where small and great, where weak and mighty made 
 
 To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade ; 6 
 
 More pow'rful each as needful to the rest, 
 
 And in proportion as it hlesses, bless'd ; soo 
 
 Draw to one point, and to one centre bring 
 
 Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king. 
 
 For forms of government let fools contest ; arfoua 
 
 Whate'er is best administered is best : 7 each, and 
 
 adopted the absurd and profligate harmonia a musicis dicitur in cantu, 
 
 fables current in their day, and ea est in civitate concordia." WAR- 
 
 christian poets have never done more TON. 
 
 than reflect the prevalent Christianity. 3 The deduction and application of 
 
 The term "patriot " is commonly ap- the foregoing principles, with the use 
 
 plied to political benefactors, and not or abuse of civil and ecclesiastical 
 
 to the preachers and disseminators of policy, was intended for the subject 
 
 righteousness. Pope fell back on the of the third book. POPE. 
 
 fiction of regenerating poets and pa- 4 "Consent" is now limited to 
 
 triots to avoid all mention of the mental consent, and the word is ob- 
 
 saints and martyrs who really per- solete in the sense of "consent of 
 
 formed the mighty work. Bolingbroke things. " 
 
 hated the apostles of genuine religion, 5 From Denham's Cooper's Hill : 
 
 and his pupil had no reverence for Wisely she knew the harmony of things, 
 
 them. -^ 8 we ^ *" that of sounds, from discord 
 
 1 Pope breaks down in his com- Bprings.-HuRD. 
 
 parison of a mixed government to a "Where the small and weak" 
 
 stringed instrument. An instrument are " made to serve, not suffer," "the 
 
 would not be " set justly true," but great and mighty to strengthen, not 
 
 rendered worthless, when in "touch- invade." 
 
 ing one" string the musician "must 7 This couplet is at variance with 
 
 strike the other too." ver. 289 294, where a mixed form 
 
 2 This is the very same illustration of government is lauded for its snpe- 
 that Tullyuses, De Republica: "Quse riority.
 
 424 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; 
 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right : ' 
 In faith and hope the world will disagree,* 
 Eat all mankind's concern is charity : 3 
 All must be false that thwart this one great end ; 
 And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend. 
 
 Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives ; 
 The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives." 
 On their own axis as the planets run, 
 Yet make at once* their circle round the sun, 6 
 
 so 
 
 310 
 
 1 Cowley's verses on the death of 
 Crashaw : 
 
 His path, perhaps, in some nice tenets 
 
 might 
 Be wrong; his life, I'm sure, was in the 
 
 right. 
 
 The position is demonstrably absurd 
 in both, poets. All conduct originates 
 in principles. Where the principles, 
 therefore, are not strictly pure, and 
 accurately true, the conduct must 
 deviate from the line of perfect recti- 
 tude. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 "I prefer a bad action to a bad 
 principle," says Rousseau, somewhere, 
 and Rousseau was right. A bad 
 action may remain isolated ; a bad 
 principle is always prolific, because, 
 after all, it is the mind which governs, 
 and man acts according to his thoughts 
 much oftener than he himself ima- 
 gines. GITIZOT. 
 
 He whose life is in the right can- 
 not, says Pope, in any sense calling 
 for blame, have a wrong faith. But 
 the answer is that his life cannot be 
 in the right unless in so far as it 
 bends to the influences of a tine 
 faith. How feeble a conception must 
 that man have of the infinity which 
 lurks in a human spirit, who can 
 persuade himself that its total capa- 
 cities of life are exhaustible by the 
 few gross acts incident to social rela- 
 
 tions, or open to human valuation ? 
 The true internal acts of moral man 
 are his thoughts, his yearnings, his 
 aspirations, his sympathies or repul- 
 sions of heart. This is the life of 
 man as it is appreciable by heavenly 
 eyes. DE QUINCEY. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 Prefer we then the greater to the less, 
 For charity is all men's happiness. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 But charity the greatest of the three. 
 
 1 Cor. xiii. 13 : " And now abide th 
 faith, hope, charity, these three ; but 
 the greatest of these is charity." 
 
 4 The MS. adds this couplet : 
 
 Th' extended earth is but one sphere of 
 
 bliss 
 To him, who makes another's blessing his. 
 
 5 At the same time. 
 
 6 From the Spectator, No. 588, 
 said to be written by Mr. Grove : " Is 
 benevolence inconsistent with self- 
 love ? Are their motions contrary ? 
 No more than the diurnal rotation of 
 the earth is opposed to its annual ; or 
 its motion round its own centre, 
 which might be improved as an illus- 
 tration of self-love, to that which 
 whirls it about the common centre of 
 the world, answering to universal 
 benevolence. " WAKTON.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 496 
 
 So two consistent motions act the soul, su 
 
 And one regards itself, aiid one the whole. 
 
 Thus God and nature ' linked the gen'ral frame, 
 And bade self-love and social be the same.* 
 
 1 "Nature" is not a power co- due use of our reason makes self-love 
 ordinate with God, but only the and social coincide, or even become in 
 means by which he acts. effect the same." " 
 
 2 Bolingbroke, Fragment {1; A
 
 ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE IV. 
 
 OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO 
 HAPPINESS. 
 
 I. False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular, answered from 
 ver. 19 to 26. II. It is the end of all men, and attainable by all, ver. 29. 
 God intends happiness to be equal ; and, to be so, it must be social, since all 
 particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not 
 particular laws, ver. 35. As it is necessary for order, and the peace and wel- 
 fare of society, that external goods should be unequal, happiness is not made 
 to consist in these, ver. 49. But notwithstanding that inequality, the balance 
 of happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two passions 
 of hope and fear, ver. 67. III. What the happiness of individuals is, as far as 
 is consistent with the constitution of this world ; and that the good man has 
 here the advantage, ver. 77. The error of imputing to virtue what are only 
 the calamities of nature, or of fortune, ver. 93. IV. The folly of expecting 
 that God should alter his general laws in favour of particulars, ver. 121. 
 V. That we are not judges who are good ; but that whoever they are, they 
 must be happiest, ver. 131, &c. VI. That external goods are not the proper 
 rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of virtue, ver. 167. That 
 even these can make no man happy without virtue : instanced in riches, 
 ver. 185. Honours, ver. 193. Nobility, ver. 205. Greatness, ver. 217. 
 Fame, ver. 237. Superior talents, ver. 259, &c. With pictures of human 
 infelicity in men possessed of them all, ver. 269, &c. VII. That virtue only 
 constitutes a happiness whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal, 
 ver. 309. That the perfection of virtue and happiness consists in a conformity 
 to the order of Providence here, and a resignation to it here and hereafter, 
 ver. 327, &c.
 
 EPISTLE IY. 
 
 HAPPINESS ! our being's end and aim, 1 
 Good, pleasure, ease, content ! whate'er thy name : 
 That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh, 
 For which we bear to live, or dare to die ; 
 Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies, 
 O'erlooked, seen double by the fool and wise : a 
 Plant of celestial seed ! if dropped below, 3 
 Say, in what mortal soil thou deign' st to grow? 4 
 Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shine, 5 
 Or deep with diamonds in the flaming 6 mine ? 
 
 10 
 
 1 Happiness is with Pope the sole 
 end of life, and virtue is only a 
 means. The means cannot be more 
 binding than the end, and happi- 
 ness is not obligatory and virtue 
 is. A certain contempt, again, for 
 pain and privation is heroic, but in- 
 difference to moral worth is degrada- 
 tion. Thus virtue is plainly an end 
 in itself, and is superior, not subordi- 
 nate, to happiness. 
 
 2 Overlooked in the things which 
 would yield it, and in other things 
 magnified by the imagination, as is 
 happily expressed by Young, when 
 he says, Universal Passion, Sat. i., 
 238 : 
 
 None think the great unhappy but the 
 great. 
 
 3 Pope personified happiness at the 
 beginning, but seems to have dropped 
 that idea in the seventh line, where 
 the deity is suddenly transformed 
 into a plant, from whence this me- 
 taphor of a vegetable is carried on 
 through the eleven succeeding lines 
 till he suddenly returns to consider 
 happiness again as a person, in the 
 eighteenth line. WAKTON. 
 
 The change from a person to a 
 thing commences at the third verse, 
 where Pope calls happiness " that 
 something," and he changes back to 
 the person in the eighth verse, where 
 he addresses happiness as "thou." 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 O happiness ! to which we all aspire, 
 Winged with strong hope, and borne with 
 
 full desire ; 
 
 That good, we still mistake, and still pursue, 
 Still out of reach, yet ever in our view ; 
 That ease, for which in want, in wealth we 
 
 sigh, 
 
 That ease, for which we labour and we die ; 
 Tell me, ye sages, (sure 'tis yours to know) 
 Tell in what mortal soul this ease may grow 
 
 6 "la there," asks Mr. Croker, 
 "any other authority for shine as a 
 noun ? " The noun is found in Mil- 
 ton, and Locke, and in much earlier 
 waiters, but Johnson says, "it is a 
 word, though not unanalogical, yet 
 ungraceful, and little used." 
 
 6 " Flaming" is not an appropriate 
 epithet for mines. The line calls up 
 a false idea of splendour, and not a 
 vision of subterranean gloom and 
 desolation.
 
 430 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield, 
 Or reaped in iron harvests of the field ?' 
 Where grows ! where grows it not ? * If vain our toil, 
 We ought to blame the culture, not the soil : s 
 Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere/ 
 'Tis no where to be found, or eVry where : 
 'Tis never to be bought, but always free ; 
 And, fled from, monarchs, St. John ! dwells with thee. s 
 Ask of the learn'd the way ! The learn'd are blind ; 
 This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind ; 
 Some place the bliss in action, 6 some in ease, 7 
 Those call it pleasure, and contentment these ; 
 
 2C 
 
 1 Dryden, .En. xii. 963 : 
 
 An iron harvest mounts, and still remains 
 to mow. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope's image is not sufficiently dis- 
 tinctive. There is only one word, 
 the epithet "iron, "to indicate that 
 he is speaking of military renown, 
 and this epithet, drawn from the 
 material of which swords are made, 
 is also applicable to the sickle. 
 
 2 "Say in what mortal soil thou 
 deign' st to grow," is the invocation 
 addressed by Pope to Happiness. He 
 now strangely answers his own in- 
 quiry in a tone of rebuke, as though 
 it were preposterous to ask the ques- 
 tion. "Where grows ! where grows 
 it not?" 
 
 3 These lines follow in the MS. : 
 
 Heav"n plants no vain desire in human kind, 
 But what it prompts to seek, directs to find, 
 From whom, so strongly pointing at the 
 
 end, 
 
 To hide the means it never could intend. 
 Now since, whatever happiness we call, 
 Subsists not in the good of one, but all, 
 And whosoever would be blessed must bless, 
 Virtue alone can form that happiness. 
 
 A sentence in Hooker's Eccl. Pol., 
 Book i. Chap. viii. Sect. 7, will ex- 
 plain Pope's idea in the last four lines : 
 " If I cannot but wish to receive all 
 good at every man's hand, how should 
 
 I look to have any part of my desire 
 satisfied, unless myself be careful to 
 satisfy the like desire in other men ?" 
 
 4 "Sincere" in its present use is 
 the opposite of "disingenuous," " de- 
 ceptive," and has always a moral 
 signification. Formerly it had the 
 sense, which Pope gives it here, of 
 ' ' pure, " " unadulterated, ' ' without 
 any necessary ethical meaning. Thus 
 Dryden, Palamon and Arcite, Bk. iii. 
 
 And none can boast sincere felicity. 
 
 Philemon Holland talks of "sincere 
 vermillion," Arbuthuot of " sincere 
 acid," and Hooker speaks of keeping 
 the Scriptures " entire and sincere." 
 
 5 This was flattery. Bolingbroke 
 was notoriously a prey to factious 
 rancour, and the pangs of disappointed 
 ambition. 
 
 6 Epicureans. POPE. 
 
 7 Stoics. POPE. 
 
 Pope's account of the epicureans is 
 the exact opposite of the truth. He 
 says they ' ' placed bliss in action," 
 whereas Seneca tells us, Benef. iv. 4 : 
 "Quae maxima Epicuro felicitas vide- 
 tur, nihil agit." The poet's account 
 of the stoics is equally wrong. In- 
 stead of placing "bliss in ease" the}' 
 inculcated the sternest self-denial, 
 and untiring efforts to fulfil all virtue.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 431 
 
 Some sunk to beasts find pleasure end in pain ; ' 
 Some swelled to gods confess e'en virtue vain ;* 
 Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, 
 To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.' 
 
 Who thus define it, say they more or less 
 Than this, that happiness is happiness ? 4 
 
 Take nature's path, 9 and mad opinion's leave ; 
 All states can reach it, and all heads conceive ; 
 Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell ; " 
 There needs but thinking right, and meaning well ; ! 
 
 Happiness 
 
 is the end 
 of all in en, 
 *" and attain- 
 able by all. 
 
 1 Epicureans. POPE. 
 
 2 Stoics. POPE. 
 
 The true stoic did not, as Pope 
 asserts, "confess virtue vain." He 
 contended that it was all-sufficient. 
 Till the edition of 1743 this couplet 
 was as follows : 
 
 One grants his pleasure is but rest from 
 
 pain; 
 One doubts of all; one owns ev*n virtue 
 
 vain. 
 
 The two lines which conclude the 
 paragraph, and which first appeared 
 in the edition of 1743, were written 
 at "Warburton's suggestion. The 
 object of the addition was to re- 
 present the credulous man who 
 trusted everything as equally de- 
 ceived with the sceptic who trusted 
 in nothing. Of the last line there is 
 a second version : 
 One trusts the senses, and one doubts of all. 
 
 3 Sceptics. POPE. 
 
 Pyrrho and his followers held that 
 we can only know things as they ap- 
 pear, and not as they are. Thence 
 they maintained that appearances 
 must be absolutely indifferent, and 
 that we could be equally happy in all 
 conditions, in sickness, for instance, 
 Cicero, Fin. ii. 13, as in health. The 
 one reality which Pyrrho admitted 
 was virtue, and this he said (Cicero, 
 Fin. iv. 16), was the supreme good 
 which he who possessed had nothing 
 left to desire. 
 
 4 Pope's complaint, that the direc- 
 tions of the ancient moralists amounted 
 to no more than that "happiness is 
 happiness," arose from his ignorance 
 of their tenets. The stoics and sceptics 
 placed the supreme good in uncon- 
 ditional virtue, and the epicureans 
 taught the precise doctrine of Pope 
 himself, that pleasure is the goal, and 
 virtue the road. The admonition, 
 "take nature's path," which Pope 
 would substitute for the teaching of 
 these sects, was the maxim on which 
 they all insisted. 
 
 5 Pope has here adopted the senti- 
 ments of the Grecian sage who said, 
 " That if we live according to nature 
 we shall never be poor, and if we live 
 according to opinion we shall never be 
 
 rich. " KtTFFHE AO. 
 
 For opinion creates the fantastic 
 wants of fashion and luxury. 
 
 6 He means that happiness does 
 not "dwell" in any "extreme" of 
 wealth, rank, talent, etc., but that 
 all "states," or classes of men "can 
 reach it." 
 
 7 MS. : 
 
 True happiness, 'tis sacred truth I tell, 
 Lies but in thinking, &c. 
 
 The man who always " thinks 
 right" is infallible in wisdom, and if 
 he always "means well" he must act 
 in obedience to his infallible convic- 
 tions, when he will also be impeccable. 
 There needs but this, says Pope, to
 
 432 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 God governs 
 by general 
 not particu- 
 lar laws; 
 intends 
 happiness to 
 be equal, 
 and to be so 
 it must be 
 social, since 
 all particu- 
 lar happi- 
 ness depends 
 on general. 
 
 And mourn our various portions as we please, 
 Equal is common sense, 1 and common ease.* 
 
 Remember, man, " the Universal Cause 
 Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws ; " 
 And makes what happiness we justly call,* 
 Subsist, not in the good of one, but all. 
 There's not a blessing individuals find, 
 But some way leans and hearkens 4 to the kind ; * 
 No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride, 
 No caverned hermit rests self-satisfied : 
 Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend, 
 Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend. 
 Abstract what others feel, what others think, 
 All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink : 
 Each has his share ; and who would more obtain, 
 Shall find the pleasure pays not half the pain.' 
 
 40- 
 
 secure happiness. He scoffs at the 
 vague definitions of philosophers, and 
 substitutes the luminous direction 
 that we should be infallible in our 
 views, and impeccable in our conduct. 
 
 1 ' ' The common sense " and ' ' com- 
 mon ease" of which all the world 
 have an equal share, cannot exceed 
 the measure of sense and ease which 
 falls to the lot of the most foolish and 
 suffering of mankind. This is the 
 same sort of equality that there is 
 between the income of a pauper and 
 a millionaire, since both have half-a- 
 crown a week. 
 
 2 The MS. adds : 
 
 In no extreme lies real happiness, 
 Not ev'n of good or wisdom in excess. 
 
 "Good" and "wisdom" in the last 
 Hue might be supposed to mean 
 something that was not true wisdom 
 and goodness if Pope had not argued, 
 ver. 259-268, that real wisdom was in- 
 jurious to happiness. He would have 
 the "right thinking" alloyed with 
 
 error, and the "meaning well" 'with 
 evil. 
 
 3 That is, all which can "justly* 
 or rightly be termed happiness. 
 
 4 The image is drawn from a person 
 leaning towards another, and listen- 
 ing to what he says. Pope took the 
 expression from the simile of the 
 compasses in Donne's Songs and 
 Sonnets : 
 
 And though it in the centre sit, 
 Yet when the other far doth roam, 
 
 It leans, and hearkens after it, 
 And grows erect, as that comes home. 
 
 5 The MS. goes on thus : 
 
 'Tis not in self it can begin and end, 
 The bliss of one must with another blend : 
 The strongest, noblest pleasures of the mind 
 All hold of mutual converse with the kind. 
 Can sensual lust, or selfish rapine, know 
 Such as from bounty, love, or mercy flow ? 
 Of human nature wit its worst may write, 
 Wo all revere it in our own despite. 
 
 6 This couplet follows in the MS. : 
 
 To rob another's is to lose our own, 
 And the just bound once passed the whole 
 is gone.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 433 
 
 Order is heav'n's first law ; and this confessed, 
 Some are, and must be, greater than the rest, 
 More rich, more wise ; but who infers from hence 
 That such are happier, shocks all common sense. 1 
 Heav'n to mankind impartial we confess, 
 If all are equal in their happiness : 
 But mutual wants this happiness increase ; 
 All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace. 
 Condition, circumstance is not the thing ; 
 Bliss is the same in subject or in king, 
 In who obtain defence, or who defend, 
 In him who is, or him who finds a friend : 
 Heav'n breathes through ev'ry member of the whole 
 One common blessing, as one common soul. 
 But fortune's gifts if each alike possessed, 
 And each were equal, must not all contest ? 
 If then to all men happiness was meant, 
 God in externals could not place content. 2 
 
 Fortune her gifts may variously dispose, 
 And these be happy called, unhappy those ; 
 But heav'n's just balance equal will appear, 
 While those are placed in hope, and these in fear : s 
 
 It is neces- 
 sary for 
 
 50 order, and 
 the com- 
 mon peace., 
 that exter- 
 nal goods be 
 unequal, 
 therefore 
 happiness is 
 not consti- 
 tuted in 
 these. 
 
 55 
 
 70 
 
 The balance 
 of human 
 happiness 
 kept equal, 
 notwith- 
 standing 
 externals, 
 
 1 MS.: 
 
 inference if you make, 
 That such are happier, 'tis a gross mis- 
 take. 
 Say not, "Heav'n's here profuse, there 
 
 poorly saves, 
 And for one monarch makes a thousand 
 
 slaves ;" 
 You'll find when causes and their ends are 
 
 known, 
 Twiis for the thousand heaVn has made 
 
 that one. 
 Ev'n mutual want to common blessings 
 
 tends, 
 
 One labours, one directs, and one defends, 
 While double pay benevolence receives, 
 Is blessed in what it takes, and what it 
 
 gives. 
 
 In what (heav'n's hand impartial to confess) 
 Need men be equal but in happiness. 
 The bliss of all, if heav'n's indulgent aim, 
 He could not place in riches, pow'r or fame. 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. 
 
 In these suppose it placed, one greatly 
 blessed, 
 
 Others were hurt, impoverished, or op- 
 pressed ; 
 
 Or did they equally on all descend, 
 
 If all were equal must not all contend? 
 
 2 After ver. 66 in the MS. 
 
 Tis peace of mind alone is at a stay : 
 
 The rest mad fortune gives or takes away : 
 
 All other bliss by accident's debarred, 
 
 But virtue's, in the instant, a reward ; 
 
 In hardest trials operates the best, 
 
 And more is relished as the more distressed. 
 
 WARBDRTON. 
 
 There is still another couplet in the 
 MS.: 
 
 Virtue's plain consequence is happiness, 
 Or virtue makes the disappointment less. 
 
 3 The exemplification of this truth,
 
 434 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 by hope 
 an fear. 
 
 In what the 
 happiness of 
 individuals 
 consists, and 
 that the 
 good man 
 has the ad- 
 vantage 
 even in this 
 world. 
 
 Not present good or ill, the joy or curse, 
 But future views of better, or of worse. 1 
 
 sons of earth ! attempt ye still to rise, 
 By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?" 
 Heav'n still 3 with laughter the vain toil surveys/ 
 And buries madmen in the heaps they raise. ! 
 
 Know, all the good that individuals find, 
 Or God and nature* meant to mere mankind/ 
 I Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, 
 Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence. 8 
 
 so 
 
 by a view of the equality of happiness 
 in the several particular stations of 
 life, was designed for the subject of a 
 future Epistle. POPE. 
 
 " Heaven's just balance " is 
 made " equal," says this writer, 
 because men are harassed with fears 
 in proportion to their elevation, and 
 amused with hopes in a state of dis- 
 tress. But a man may be good either 
 in high or low rank ; and God does 
 not, to make the happiness of man- 
 kind equal, fill the heart of one with 
 idle fears, and of the other with chi- 
 merical hopes. CKOUSAZ. 
 
 1 Sir W. Temple, Works, vol. iii. 
 p. 531 : "Whether a good condition 
 with fear of being ill, or an ill with 
 hope of being well, pleases or dis- 
 pleases most." Pope's MS. goes on 
 thus: 
 
 How widely then at happiness we aim 
 By selfish pleasures, riches, pow'r or 
 
 fame ! 
 
 Increase of these is but increase of pain, 
 Wrong the materials, and the labour 
 
 vain. 
 
 2 He had in his mind Virgil's de- 
 scription, borrowed from Homer, of 
 the attempt made by the giants, in 
 their war against the gods, to scale 
 the heavens by heaping Ossa upon 
 Pelion, and Olympus upon Ossa. 
 Pope took the expressions " sons of 
 earth," and "mountains piled on 
 
 mountains," from Dryden's transla- 
 tion, Geor. i. 374. 
 
 "Still" is repeated to give force 
 to the remonstrance. " Attempt still 
 to rise, and Heaven will still survey 
 your vain toil with laughter." 
 
 4 An allusion to Psalm ii. 1, 4 : 
 "Why do the heathen rage, and the 
 people imagine a vain thing? He 
 that sitteth in the heavens shall 
 laugh. " WAKEFIELD. 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 The gods with laughter on the labour 
 
 gaze, 
 And bury such in the mad heaps they 
 
 raise. 
 
 6 "Nature" is a name for the 
 second causes, or instruments, by 
 which God works. Pope speaks as if 
 nature's meaning was distinct from 
 the meaning of God. 
 
 7 By ' ' mere mankind " Pope means 
 man in his present earthly condition, 
 and not the generality of mankind as 
 distinguished from favoured mortals, 
 for he says, ver. 77, that individuals 
 can no more attain to any greater 
 good than mankind at large. 
 
 8 From Bolingbroke, Fragment 52 : 
 " Agreeable sensations, the series 
 whereof constitutes happiness, must 
 arise from health of body, tranquil- 
 lity of mind, and a competency of 
 wealth."
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 435 
 
 But health consists with temperance alone ; 
 
 And peace ! virtue ! peace is all thy own. 1 
 
 The good or had the gifts of fortune gain ; 
 
 But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.* 
 
 Say, in pursuit of profit or delight, 86 
 
 Who risk the most, that 3 take "nrrong means or right ? 
 
 Of vice or virtue, whether blessed or cursed, 
 
 Which meets contempt, or which compassion first ? 4 
 
 Count all th' advantage prosp'rous vice attains, 
 
 'Tis but what virtue flies from and disdains : 
 
 And grant the bad what happiness they would, 
 
 One they must want, 5 which is to pass for good. 9 
 
 O blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below, 
 Who fancy bliss to vice, 7 to virtue woe ! 
 Who sees and follows that great scheme the best, 
 Best knows the blessing, and will most be blessed. 
 But fools the good alone unhappy call, 
 For ills or accidents that chance to all. 
 See Falkland dies, the virtuous and the just ! 
 See god-like Turenne prostrate on the dust ! 100 
 
 Of) 
 
 That no 
 man is un- 
 happy 
 through 
 95 virtue. 
 
 1 The MS. adds, 
 
 Behold the blessing then to none denied 
 But through our vice, by error or by 
 
 pride ; 
 Which nothing but excess can render 
 
 vain, 
 And then lost only when too much we 
 
 gain. 
 
 2 The sense of this ill-expressed 
 line is, that bad men taste the gifts 
 of fortune less than good men, in 
 proportion as they obtain them by 
 worse means. The couplet was origi- 
 nally thus in the MS. : 
 
 The good, the bad may fortune's gifts 
 
 possess ; 
 The bad acquire them worse, enjoy them 
 
 less. 
 
 3 "That" is put improperly for 
 " those that." 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Secure to find, ev'n from the very worst, 
 If vice and virtue want, compassion 
 first. 
 
 5 But are not the one frequently 
 mistaken for the other ? How many 
 profligate hypocrites have passed for 
 good ? WARTON. 
 
 Men not intrinsically virtuous have 
 often had the good opinion of the 
 world ; the happiness they want is a 
 good conscience. 
 
 6 After ver. 92 in the MS. : 
 
 Let sober moralists correct their speech, 
 No bad man's happy : he is great, or rich. 
 WARBUKTON. 
 
 7 That is, "who fancy bliss al- 
 lotted to vice."
 
 436 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 See Sidney bleeds amid the martial strife ! 
 "Was this their virtue, or contempt of life ? ' 
 Say, was it virtue, more though heav'n ne'er gave, 
 Lamented Digby ! * sunk thee to the grave ? 3 
 Tell me, if virtue made the son expire, 
 Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire ? 4 
 Why drew Marseilles' good bishop* purer breath, 
 When nature sickened, and each gale was death ? 6 
 
 105 
 
 1 Lord Falkland was killed by a 
 musket ball at the battle of Newbury, 
 Sept. 20, 1643. Turenue was killed 
 by a cannon ball, near Sassback, 
 July 26, 1675. Sir Philip Sidney 
 was mortally wounded by a bullet 
 at Zutphen, Sept. 22, 1586, and died 
 a few days afterwards. Sidney was 
 32 years of age at his death, Falkland 
 33, and Turenne 64. 
 
 2 The Hon. Robert Digby, who 
 died, aged 40, April 19, 1726. Pope 
 wrote his epitaph. 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 Brave Sidney falls amid the martial strife, 
 Not that he's virtuous, but profuse of 
 
 life. 
 Not virtue snatched Arbuthnot's hopeful 
 
 bloom, 
 And sent thee, Craggs, untimely to the 
 
 tomb. 
 
 Say not 'tis virtue, but too soft a frame, 
 That Walsh his race, and Scud'more ends 
 
 her name. 
 Think not their virtues, more though 
 
 heav'n ne'er gave, 
 Unites so many Digbys in a grave. 
 Fierce love, not virtue, Falkland, was thy 
 
 doom, 
 Her grief, not virtue, nipped Louisa's bloom. 
 
 The Arbuthnot mentioned here was 
 Charles, a clergyman, and son of the 
 celebrated physician. His death in 
 1732 was supposed to have been 
 occasioned by the lingering effects of 
 a wound he received in a duel he 
 fought while at Oxford with a fellow- 
 collegian, his rival in love. James 
 Craggs died of the small -pox Feb. 14, 
 1721, aged 35. Virtue had certainly 
 
 no share in his death, for he was 
 licentious in private life, and in his 
 public capacity accepted a bribe from 
 the South Sea directors. "Walsh died 
 in 1708, at the age of 49. His virtue 
 may be estimated by his confession 
 that he had committed every folly in 
 love, except matrimony. Lady Scu- 
 damore, widow of Sir James Scuda- 
 more, and daughter of the fourth 
 Lord Digby, died of the small- pox, 
 May 3, 1729, aged 44. She left only 
 a daughter, who married, and hence 
 Pope's expression, " Scud'more ends 
 her name." The many Digbys 
 united in one grave were the children 
 of the fifth Lord, the father of the 
 poet's friend, Robert. I do not 
 know what is meant by the " fierce 
 love "which was Falkland's "doom," 
 nor can 1 identify the Louisa who 
 died of grief. 
 
 4 "William, fifth Lord Digby, was 
 74 when this fourth Epistle was 
 published in 1734, and he lived 
 to be 92. He died December 
 1752. 
 
 5 M. de Belsunce, was made bishop 
 of Marseilles in 1 709. In the plague 
 of that city in 1720 he distinguished 
 himself by his activity. He died at 
 a very advanced age in 1755. 
 WARTOX. 
 
 6 Some anonymous verses in Dry- 
 den's Miscellanies, vi. p. 76 : 
 
 When nature sickens, and with fainting 
 
 breath 
 
 Struggles beneath the bitter pangs of death. 
 WAKEFJELD.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 487 
 
 Or why so long (in life if long can be) ' 
 Lent heav'n a parent to the poor and me ? ' 
 
 What makes all physical or moral ill ? 
 There deviates nature, and here wanders will. 
 God sends not ill, if rightly understood, 
 Or partial ill is universal good, 
 Or change admits, or nature lets it fall 
 Short, and hut rare, till man improved it all. 3 
 We just as wisely might of heav'n complain, 
 That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain, 
 As that the virtuous son is ill at ease 
 When his lewd father gave the dire disease. 
 
 120 
 
 1 Dryden, Virg. x. 1231 : 
 
 Rhcebus ! we have lived too long for 
 
 me, 
 
 If life and long were terms that could agree. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Yet hemmed with plagues, and breathing 
 
 deathful air, 
 Marseilles' good bishop still possess the 
 
 chair ; 
 And Ion/ kind chance, or heav'n's more 
 
 kind decree, 
 Lends an old parent, etc. 
 
 Pope's mother died June 7, 1733. 
 She was said by the poet to be 93, 
 but was only 91, if the register of 
 her baptism, June 18, 1642, gives the 
 year of her birth, which is doubtless 
 the case, since an elder sister was 
 baptised in 1641, and a younger in 
 1643. 
 
 s How change can admit, or nature 
 let fall any evil, however short and 
 rare it may be, under the government 
 of an all-wise, powerful, and benevo- 
 lent Creator, is hardly to be under- 
 stood. These six lines are perhaps 
 the most exceptionable in the whole 
 poem in point both of sentiment and 
 expression. WARTON. 
 
 Pope's justification of the partial 
 
 ill which is not a general good is, 
 in substance, that Providence has 
 not supreme dominion over his 
 physical laws, that change and 
 nature act independently of him, 
 and vitiate his work. In place of 
 ver. 113 16 the earlier editions have 
 this couplet : 
 
 God sends not ill, 'tis nature lets it fall, 
 Or chance escape, and man improves it 
 all. 
 
 The notion that the disturbing 
 operations of "chance " could explain 
 the existence of evil was intrinsically 
 absurd, and inconsistent with Ep. i., 
 ver. 290, where Pope says that "all 
 chance is direction." Chance is, 
 in strictness, a nonentity, and 
 merely signifies that the cause of 
 an effect is unknown to us, or 
 beyond our control. Neither suppo- 
 sition could apply to the Almighty. 
 "\Varburton quotes a couplet from 
 the MS., which could not be retaiiK-d 
 without a glaring contradiction, when 
 Pope had discovered two other evil- 
 doers besides man, nature and 
 chance : 
 
 Of every evil, since the world began 
 The real source is not in God, Tint mnn.
 
 438 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Think we, like some weak prince, th' Eternal Cause, 
 Prone for his fav'rites to reverse his laws ?' 
 
 Shall burning JEtna, if a sage requires,* 
 Forget to thunder, and recall her fires ? 3 
 On air or sea new motions be impressed, 4 
 blameless Bethel ! to relieve thy breast? 5 
 When the loose mountain trembles from on high, 
 Shall gravitation cease if you go by? 6 
 
 121 
 
 1 This comparison of the favourites 
 of the Almighty to the favourites of 
 a weak prince is fallacious and re- 
 volting. Weak princes select their 
 favourities from weak or vicious 
 motives. The favourites of heaven 
 are the righteous. 
 
 2 "Warburton says that Pope alluded 
 to Empedocles. The story ran that 
 he pretended to be a divinity, and 
 threw himself into the crater of ^Etna, 
 that nobody might know what had 
 become of him, and might conclude 
 that he had been carried up into 
 heaven. All the circumstances of his 
 death are doubtful, and whether he 
 was a calumniated sage, or a con- 
 ceited madman, legends are not a 
 proper illustration of God's dealings 
 with mankind. Pope had originally 
 written, 
 
 T explore Vesuvius if great Pliny aims, 
 Shall the loud mountain call back all its 
 flames? 
 
 At the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, 
 Pliny, the naturalist, was command- 
 ing the Koman fleet in the Gulf of 
 Naples. He made for the coast in 
 the neighbourhood of the volcano, 
 till checked by the falling stones and 
 ashes, he sailed to Stabise, and landed. 
 In a few hours the tottering of the 
 houses, shaken by the earthquake, 
 warned him to fly, and according to 
 his nephew he was overtaken by 
 flames and sulphurous vapours, and 
 suffocated. Stabise is ten miles from 
 Vesuvius, and the flame and vapour 
 
 could hardly have been propelled 
 from the mountain. 
 
 3 The forgetfulness to thunder sup- 
 poses unconscious obliviousness, the 
 recalling the fires conscious activity. 
 The mountain would not at the same 
 moment forget to keep up the irrup- 
 tion, and remember to restrain it. 
 
 4 "VVollaston, Religion of Nature, 
 sect. v. prop. 18 : " If a man's safety 
 should depend upon winds or rains, 
 must new motions be impressed upon 
 the atmosphere ? " 
 
 5 "Warton tells us in a note on one 
 of Pope's letters to Bethel, that the 
 latter was ' ' celebrated in two fine 
 lines in the Essay on Man on account 
 of an asthma with which he was 
 afflicted." I find in Ruff head's Life 
 a quotation from a letter of Pope's 
 to Bethel, "then in Italy," and we 
 may conclude that Bethel, being 
 troubled with an asthma, visited 
 Italy for relief, but that in crossing 
 the sea the ' ' motions of the sea and 
 air" disagreed with him, as they do 
 with most people. CROKER. 
 
 6 " You," is Bolingbroke, to 
 whom the epistle is addressed. A 
 writer in the Adventurer, No. 
 63, quotes "Wollaston, Religion of 
 Nature, sect. v. prop. 18: " If a 
 good man be passing by an infirm 
 building, just in the article of falling, 
 can it be expected that God should 
 suspend the force of gravitation till 
 he is gone by, in order to his de- 
 liverance ?" The illustrations and 
 language Pope copied from "Wollaston
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 439 
 
 Or some old temple nodding to its fall, 
 For Chartres' head reserve the hanging wall ? 
 But still this world, so fitted for the knave, 
 Contents us not. A better shall we have ? 
 A kingdom of the just then let it be :* 
 But first consider how those just agree. 
 The good must merit God's peculiar care ; 
 But who, but God, can tell us who they are ? 
 One thinks on Calvin heav'n's own Spirit fell ; 
 Another deems him instrument of hell ; 
 If Calvin feel heav'n's blessing, or its rod, 
 This cries there is, and that, there is no God. 3 
 What shocks one part will edify the rest, 4 
 Nor with one system can they all be blessed. 5 
 The very best will variously incline, 6 
 And what rewards your virtue, punish mine. 
 
 130 
 
 135 
 
 140 
 
 are the objections of those who deny 
 a special Providence, and Wollaston 
 only stated the arguments to refute 
 them. 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Or shall some ruin, as it nods to fall, 
 
 For Chartres' brains reserve the hanging 
 
 wall? 
 
 No, in a scene far higher heav'n imparts 
 Rewards for spotless Hands, and honest 
 
 hearts. 
 
 The last couplet is a direct acknowledg- 
 ment of a future state, and was pro- 
 bably omitted to avoid contradicting 
 the infidel tenets of Bolingbroke. 
 
 2 Christians have never raised the 
 objection. They only say that since 
 this world is not a kingdom of the just, 
 reason, as well as revelation, teaches 
 that there must be a kingdom to 
 come. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke, Fragment 57 : 
 " Christian divines complain that 
 good men are often unhappy, and 
 bad men happy. They establish a 
 rule, and are not agreed about the 
 application of it ; for who are to 
 be reputed good Christians ? Go 
 
 to Rome, they are papists. Go to 
 Geneva, they are calvinists. If par- 
 ticular providences are favourable to 
 those of your communion they will be 
 deemed unjust by every good pro- 
 testant, and God will be taxed with 
 encouraging idolatry and supersti- 
 tion. If they are favourable to those 
 of any of our communions they will 
 be deemed unjust by every good pa- 
 pist, and God will be taxed with 
 nursing up heresy and schism." 
 MS.: 
 
 This way, I fear, your project too must fall, 
 Will just what serves one good man serve 
 'em all ? 
 
 5 After ver. 142 in some editions : 
 
 Give each a system, all musst be at strife ; 
 What diff'rent systems for a man and wife ? 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 6 Young, Universal Passion, Sat. 
 iii. 61 . 
 
 The very best ambitiously advise. 
 
 MS. : 
 The best in habits variously incline.
 
 440 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 145 
 
 150 
 
 Whatever is, is right. 1 This world, 'tis true, 
 
 Was made for Caesar, but for Titus too : s 
 
 And which more hless'd? who chained his country, say, 
 
 Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day ? 3 
 
 " But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed." 
 What then ? Is the reward of virtue hread ? 4 
 That vice may merit, 'tis the price of toil ; 5 
 The knave deserves it when he tills the soil, 
 The knave deserves it when he tempts the main, 
 Where folly fights for kings, or dives for gain. 8 
 The good man may be weak, be indolent ; 
 Nor is his claim to plenty, but content. 
 But grant him riches, your demand is o'er ? 
 "No shall the good want health, the good want pow'r?" 
 Add health, and pow'r, and ev'ry earthly thing : 
 " Why bounded pow'r P why private ? why no king ?' ieo 
 
 155 
 
 1 MS.: 
 
 E'en leave it as it is ; this world, etc. 
 
 2 He alludes to the complaint of 
 Cato in Addison's tragedy, Act. iv. 
 Sc. 4: 
 
 Justice gives way to force : the conquered 
 
 world 
 Is Caesar's ; Cato has no business in it 
 
 And Act v. Sc. 1 : 
 
 This world was made for Caesar. 
 
 "If," says Pope, "the world is 
 made for ambitious men, such as 
 Caesar, it is also made for good men, 
 like Titus. " Extreme cases test prin- 
 ciples, and to establish his position, 
 that the virtuous in this life have 
 always a larger share of enjoyments 
 than the worldly, Pope should have 
 dealt with some of the numerous in- 
 stances in which the good have been 
 condemned to tortures in consequence 
 of their goodness. 
 
 3 Remembering one evening that 
 he had given nothing during the day, 
 Titus exclaimed, " My friends, I have 
 lost a day." 
 
 * Unquestionably it must be one of 
 
 the rewards if Pope is right in main- 
 taining that present happiness is pro- 
 portioned to virtue. No more cruel 
 mockery could be conceived than to 
 act on his doctrine, and tell a vir- 
 tuous mother, surrounded by starving 
 children, that she and her little ones 
 were quite as happy as the families 
 who lived in abundance. 
 * MS. : 
 
 Can God be just if virtue be unfed ? 
 Why, fool, is the reward of virtue bread? 
 Tis his who labours, his who sows the 
 
 plain, 
 'Tis his who threshes, or who grinds the 
 
 grain. 
 
 6 The MS. has two readings : 
 
 Where madness fights for tyrants or for gain. 
 Where folly fights for kings or drowns for 
 gain. 
 
 In the early editions Pope adopted 
 the first version; in the later the 
 second, with the change of "dives" 
 for "drowns." 
 
 7 "Why no king?" is equivalen 
 to "why is he not any king?" The 
 proper form would be "why not a 
 km*!"
 
 AX ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 441 
 
 Nay, why external for internal giv'n ? 
 "Why is not man a god, and earth a heav'n ?"' 
 Who ask and reason thus, will scarce conceive 
 God gives enough while he has more to give : a 
 Immense the pow'r, immense were the demand ; 
 Say, at what part of nature will they stand ? 
 
 What nothing earthly gives or can destroy, 
 The soul's calm sunshine, and the heartfelt joy, 
 Is virtue's prize. A better would you fix ? 
 Then give humility a coach and six, 3 
 Justice a conqu'ror's sword, or truth a gown/ 
 Or public spirit its great cure/ a crown. 6 
 Weak, foolish man ! will heav'n 7 reward us there, 8 
 With the same trash mad mortals wish for here ? 
 
 165 
 
 That ex- 
 ternal goods 
 are not the 
 proper 
 rewards of 
 virtue, often 
 170 inconsistent 
 with, or 
 destructive 
 of it; but 
 that all 
 these can 
 make no 
 man happy 
 without 
 virtue. In- 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 Then give him this, and ^hat, and every- 
 thing : 
 
 Still the complaint subsists ; he is no king. 
 Outward rewards for inward worth are odd : 
 Why then complain not that he is no god ? 
 
 Ver. 162 in the text is inconsistent 
 with ver. 161. Pope supposes the 
 good to rise in their demands until 
 they rebel against receiving external 
 rewards for internal merits, and insist 
 that man should be a god, and earth 
 a heaven, which heaven is one of the 
 externals they have just indignantly 
 repudiated. 
 
 3 Pope is speaking of the good, and 
 what good man eyer did ' ' ask and 
 reason" according to Pope's repre- 
 sentation ? 
 
 8 In a work of so serious a cast 
 surely such strokes of levity, of satire, 
 of ridicule, as also lines 204, 223, 276, 
 however poignant and witty, are ill- 
 placed and disgusting, are violations 
 of that propriety which Pope in gene- 
 ral so strictly observed. WARTON. 
 
 4 MS.: 
 
 But come, for virtue the just payment fix, 
 Foi humble merit say a coach and six, 
 For justice a Lord Chancellor's awful gown, 
 
 Pope showed his consciousness of 
 the weakness of his cause by raising 
 false issues. Virtue would not be 
 rewarded by swords, gowns, and 
 coaches, but is it rewarded by the 
 cross, the stake, the rack, and the 
 dungeon ? 
 
 8 This sarcasm was directed against 
 George II. When Prince of Wales 
 he quarrelled with his father, and 
 patronised the opposition. On his 
 accession to the throne he abandoned 
 the opposition, to which Pope's friends 
 belonged, and retained the ministers 
 of George I. 
 
 6 After ver. 172 in the MS. : 
 
 Say, what rewards this idle world im- 
 parts, 
 
 Or fit for searching heads or honest hearts. 
 WABBUBTON. 
 
 7 Heaven in this line has cither 
 improperly the double sense uf a 
 person and a place, the God of 
 heaven, and the kingdom of the 
 blessed or else " there " is a clumsy 
 tautological excrescence to furnish a 
 rhyme. 
 
 8 These eight succeeding lines were 
 not in former editions; and indeed 
 none of them, especially lines 177 and
 
 442 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 stances in 
 each of 
 them. 
 
 1. Riches. 
 
 8. Honours, 
 
 The boy and man an individual makes, 1 
 Yet sigh'st thou now for apples and for cakes ? 
 Go, like the Indian, in another life 
 Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife, 
 As well as dream such trifles are assigned, 
 As toys and empires, for a god-like mind : 
 Rewards, that either would to virtue bring 
 No joy, or be destructive of the thing : 
 How oft by these at sixty are undone 
 The virtues of a saint at twenty-one ! 
 
 To whom can riches give repute or trust," 
 Content, or pleasure, but the good and just ? 3 
 Judges and senates have been bought for gold, 
 Esteem and love were never to be sold. 4 
 O fool ! to think God hates the worthy mind, 
 The lover and the love of human kind,* 
 Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear, 
 Because he wants a thousand pounds a year.' 
 
 Honour and shame from no condition rise ; 
 Act well your part, there all the honour lies. 
 
 175 
 
 180 
 
 185 
 
 190 
 
 179, do any credit to the author. 
 WAHTON. 
 
 From "Warton's note it would ap- 
 pear that the lines were first printed 
 in his own edition ia 1797, whereas 
 they were published in Pope's 
 edition of 1743. The poet had 
 then renounced Bolingbroke for 
 Warburton, and ventured to admit 
 that there was a heaven reserved for 
 man. 
 
 1 The "boy and man makes an 
 individual" is not grammar. 
 
 2 Thus till the edition of 1743 : 
 
 For riches, can they give, but to the just, 
 His own contentment, or another's trust? 
 
 * We see in the world, alas ! too 
 many examples of riches giving re- 
 pute and trust, content and pleasure 
 to the worthless and profligate. 
 WAKTON. 
 
 4 Dryden : 
 
 Let honour and preferment go for gold, 
 But glorious beauty isn't to be sold. 
 
 The MS. adds : 
 
 Were health of mind and body purchased 
 
 here, 
 'Twere worth the cost; all else is bought 
 
 too dear. 
 
 5 The man, that is, who is the 
 lover of human kind, and the object 
 of their love. 
 
 6 No rational believer in Provi- 
 dence ever did suppose that to have 
 less than a thousand a year was a 
 mark of God's hatred, or ever doubted 
 that the sufferings of good men in 
 this life were consistent with the dis- 
 pensations of wisdom and mercy. 
 Pope began by undertaking to prove 
 that happiness was independent of 
 externals, and drops into the sepa- 
 rate and indubitable proposition that
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 443 
 
 Fortune in men has some small difference made, 
 
 One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade ; ' 
 
 The cobbler aproned, 4 and the parson gowned, 
 
 The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned. 
 
 " What differ more," you cry, "than crown and cowl?" 
 
 I'll tell you, friend ; a wise man and a fool. 3 
 
 You'll find, if once the monarch acts the monk, 4 
 
 Or, cobbler-like, the parson will be drunk, 
 
 Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow ; 
 
 The rest is all but leather or prunella. 5 
 
 Stuck o'er with titles, and hung round with strings, 8 
 That thou may'st be by kings, or whores of kings : 7 
 
 195 
 
 200 
 
 205 3. Title 
 
 earthly happiness and the blessing of 
 God are not dependent upon the pos- 
 session of a thousand a year. 
 
 1 This seems not to be proper ; the 
 words "flaunt " and " flutter" might 
 with more propriety have changed 
 places. JOHNSON. 
 
 The satirical aggravation here is 
 conducted with great dexterity by an 
 interchange of terms : the gaudy word 
 "flaunt" properly belongs to the 
 sumptuous dress, and that of "flut- 
 ter " to the tattered garment. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 "Wakefield did not perceive that the 
 language no longer fitted the facts; 
 for though flimsy rags flutter, the stiff 
 brocade did not. Pope avoided the 
 inconsistency iu his first draught : 
 
 Oft of two brothers one shall be surveyed 
 Fluttering in rags, one flaunting in brocade. 
 
 2 This must be understood as if 
 Pope had written, "The cobbler is 
 aproned ." 
 
 3 MS. : 
 
 What differs more, you cry, than gown and 
 
 hood? 
 A wise man and a fool, a bad and good. 
 
 The miserable rhyme in the text had 
 the authority of a pun in Shakespeare, 
 3 Henry VI. Act v. Sc. 6 : 
 
 Why what a peevish fool was that of Crete 
 That taught his son the office of a fowl ? 
 And yet, for all his wings, the fool was 
 drowned. 
 
 4 He alluded to Philip V. of Spain, 
 who resigned his crown to his son, 
 Jan. 10, 1724, and retired to a 
 monastery. The son died in August, 
 and on Sept. 5, 1724, Philip reas- 
 cended the throne. "Weak-minded, 
 hard-hearted, superstitious, and me- 
 lancholy mad, he was a just instance 
 of a man who owed all his considera- 
 tion to the trappings of royalty. 
 
 * That is, the rest is mere outside 
 appearance, the leather of the cob- 
 bler's apron, or the prunella of the 
 clergyman's gown. Prunella was a 
 species of woollen stuff. 
 
 6 Cordon is the French term for 
 the ribbon of the orders of knight- 
 hood ; but in England the ribbons 
 are never called "strings," nor would 
 Pope have used the term unless he 
 had wanted a rhyme for "kings." 
 The concluding phrase of the couplet 
 was aimed at the supposed influence 
 of the mistresses of George II. 
 
 ." Cowley, Translation of Hor. Epist. 
 i. 10: 
 
 To kings or to the favourites of kings. 
 HCTRD.
 
 444 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAfc. 
 
 4. Birth. 
 
 5. Great- 
 
 ness. 
 
 Boast the pure blood of an illustrious race, 
 
 In quiet flow from Lucrece to Lucrece :* 
 
 But by your fathers' worth if yours you rate, 
 
 Count me those only who were good and great. 
 
 Go ! if your ancient, but ignoble blood 
 
 Has crept through scoundrels ever since the flood,' 
 
 Go ! and pretend your family is young ; 
 
 Nor own your fathers have been fools so long. 
 
 What can ennoble sots, or slaves, or cowards ? 
 
 Alas ! not all the blood of all the Howards." 
 
 Look next on greatness ; say where greatness lies. 
 " Where but among the heroes and the wise ! " 
 Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed, 
 From Macedonia's madman ' to the Swede ; 
 
 310 
 
 21* 
 
 220 
 
 1 In the MS. thus : 
 
 The richest blood, right-honourably old, 
 Down from Lucretia to Lucretia rolled, 
 May swell thy heart and gallop in thy 
 
 breast, 
 
 Without one dash of usher or of priest : 
 Thy pride as much despise all other 
 
 pride 
 
 As Christ-church once all colleges beside. 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 2 A bad rhyme to the preceding 
 word "race." It is taken from Boi- 
 leau, Sat. v. : 
 
 Et si leur sang tout pur, ainsi que leur 
 
 noblesse, 
 Est passe" jusqu'a vous de Lucreco en Lu- 
 
 ci-ece. WARTOS. 
 
 The bad rhyme did not appear till 
 the edition of 1743. The couplet had 
 previously stood as follows : 
 
 Thy boasted blood, a thousand years or so 
 May from Lucretia to Lucretia flow. 
 
 8 Hall, Sat. iii. : 
 
 Or tedious bead rolls of descended blood, 
 From father Japhet since Deucalion's flood. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 There are two other versions of 
 this couplet in the MS. : 
 
 But to make wits of fools, and chiefs of 
 
 cowards, 
 What can? not all the pride of all th 
 
 Howards. 
 
 And, 
 
 But make one wise, or loved, or happy 
 
 man, 
 Not all the pride of all the Howards can. 
 
 5 Pope took the phrase from Man- 
 deville, Fable of the Bees, vol. i., 
 p. 26 :" Who can forbear laughing 
 when he thinks on all the great men 
 that have been so serious on the 
 subject of that Macedonian mad- 
 man ? " Warton protests against the 
 application of tho term to Alexander 
 the Great, and adds that Charles XII. 
 of Sweden "deserved not to be 
 joined with him." The objection is 
 well-founded, for Pope not only com- 
 pared them in their rage for war, but 
 said that neither "looked further 
 than his nose," which was true ot 
 Charles XII., and false cf Alexander, 
 who mingled grand schemes of civili- 
 sation with his selfish lust of do- 
 minion.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 445 
 
 The whole strange purpose of their lives to find, 
 Or make, an enemy of all mankind ! ' 
 Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, 2 
 Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose. 3 
 No less alike 4 the politic and wise; 
 All sly slow things, 5 with circumspective eyes : 
 Men in their loose unguarded hours they take, 
 Not that themselves are wise, but others weak. 
 But grant that those can conquer, these can cheat, 
 'Tis phrase absurd 6 to call a villain great : 7 
 Who wickedly is wise, or madly brave, 
 Is but the more a fool, the more a knave. 
 Who noble ends by noble means obtains, 
 Or, failing, smiles in exile or in chains, 
 Like good Aurelius let him reign, 8 or bleed 
 Like Socrates, 9 that man is great indeed. 
 
 225 
 
 230 
 
 235 
 
 1 "To find an enemy of all man- 
 kind," signifies to find some one who 
 is an enemy of all mankind, whereas 
 Pope means to say that heroes desire 
 to find all mankind their enemies. He 
 exaggerated the " strangeness " of the 
 conqueror's "purpose." The making 
 enemies is incidental to the purpose, 
 but is not itself the end. 
 
 2 The idea expressed in this line is 
 put more clearly by Johnson in his 
 description of Charles XII : 
 
 Peace courts his hand, but spreads her 
 
 charms in vain, 
 "Think nothing gained," he cries, "till 
 
 nought remain." 
 
 3 There is something so familiar, 
 nay even vulgar, in these two lines 
 as renders them very unworthy of 
 our author. RUFFHEAB. 
 
 4 That is, "the politic and wise " 
 are "no less alike" than the heroes, 
 of whom he had said, ver. 219, that 
 they had all the same characteristics. 
 
 5 Shakespeare. Richard II. Act i. 
 Sc. 3 "The sly, slow hours." 
 
 6 '"Tis phrase absurd" is one of 
 those departures from pure English 
 
 which would only be endurable in 
 familiar poetry. 
 
 7 The pronunciation of "great" 
 was not uniform in Pope's day. 
 "When I published," says Johnson, 
 "the plan for my Dictionary, Lord 
 Chesterfield told me that the word 
 'great' should be pronounced so as 
 to rhyme to ' state,' and Sir William 
 Yonge sent me word that it should 
 be pronounced so as to rhyme to 
 ' seat,' and that none but an Irishman 
 would pronounce it 'grait.'" Pope, 
 in this epistle, and elsewhere, has 
 made "great" rhyme to both sounds. 
 
 8 Marcus Aurelius, who regulated 
 his life by the lofty principles of the 
 Stoics, was born A.D. 121 and died 
 180. The man, says Pope, who aims 
 at noble ends by noble means is 
 great, whether he attains his end or 
 fails, whether he reigns like Aurelius 
 or perishes like Socrates, 
 
 9 Considering the manner in which 
 Socrates was put to death, the word 
 "bleed" seems to be improperly 
 used. WARTON. 
 
 /
 
 446 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Fame What's fame ? a fancied life in others' breath, 1 
 
 A thing beyond us, ev'n before our death.* 
 Just what you hear, you have, and what's unknown 
 The same, my lord,* if Tully's, or your own. 
 All that we feel of it begins and ends 
 In the small circle of our foes or friends ;* 
 To all beside as much an empty shade 5 
 An Eugene living, 6 as a Caesar dead ; 
 Alike, or when or where they shone or shine, 
 Or on the Rubicon, or on the Rhine. 
 A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod ; 7 
 An honest man's 8 the noblest work of God. 
 Fame but from death a villain's name can save,' 
 As justice tears his body from the grave ; 
 When what t' oblivion better were resigned, 
 Is hung on high, to poison half mankind.'" 
 
 250 
 
 1 Wollaston, Religion of Nature, 
 sect. v. prop. 19 : " Fame lives but 
 in the breath of the people." 
 
 2 Is depreciating the passion for 
 fame consistent with the doctrine 
 before advanced, Epist. ii. ver. 290, 
 that " not a vanity is giv'n in vain ?" 
 WARTON. 
 
 3 This is said to Bolingbroke. 
 
 4 Celebrated men are aware that 
 their reputation spreads wide, and 
 whether fame is valuable or worth- 
 less, " all that is felt of it " does not 
 "begin and end in the small circle of 
 friends and foes." 
 
 5 The men of renown, the 
 Shakespeares, Bacons, and Newtons, 
 can never be "empty shades" 
 while we have the works which were 
 the fruit of their prodigious intel- 
 lects. "When the wealth of a great 
 mind is preserved to posterity we 
 possess a principal part of the man, 
 and if in the next world he takes no 
 cognisance of his fame in this, it is 
 we that are the empty shades to him ; 
 he is a substance and a power to us. 
 
 6 "Wakefield says that "but for his 
 political bias Pope would have 
 written, ' A Marlb'rough living. ' " 
 But Marlborough died in 1722, and 
 the point of Pope's line consisted in 
 opposing the example of a living man 
 to a dead. 
 
 7 The "wit" is not to be taken 
 here in its narrow modern sense of a 
 jester. Pope is deriding fame in 
 general, and divides famous men into 
 two classes, "heroes and the wise." 
 The wise, such as Shakespeare, Bacon, 
 and Newton, are compared t o feathers, 
 which are flimsy and showy ; and 
 the heroes, who are the scourges of 
 mankind, are compared to rods. 
 
 8 "Honest "was formerly used in 
 a less confined sense than at present, 
 but the word has never been adequate 
 to designate "the noblest work of 
 God." 
 
 9 Pope has hitherto spoken of all 
 fame. He now speaks of bad fame, 
 and this was never supposed to be an 
 element of happiness. 
 
 10 He alludes to the disintennent
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 All fame is foreign, but of true desert ; 
 
 Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart; 
 
 One self- approving hour whole years outweigns 
 
 Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas ; 
 
 And more true joy Marcellus ' exiled feels, 
 
 Than Caesar with a senate at his heels. 2 
 
 In parts superior 3 what advantage lies ? 
 Tell, for you can, what is it to be wise ? 
 'Tis but to know how little can be known ; 4 
 To see all others' faults, and feel our own ; s 
 Condemned in bus'ness or in arts to drudge, 
 "Without a second or without a judge : " 
 
 7. Superior 
 parts. 
 
 260 
 
 of the bodies of Cromwell, Bradshaw, 
 and Ireton on Jan. 30, 1661, the 
 anniversary of the execution of 
 Charles I. The putrid corpses were 
 hung for the day upon a gibbet at 
 Tyburn, were decapitated at night, 
 and the heads fixed on the front of 
 Westminster Hall. The trunks were 
 buried in a hole dug near the gibbet. 
 
 1 Marcellus was an opponent of 
 Caesar, and a partisan of Pompey. 
 After the battle of Pharsalia he re- 
 tired to Mitylene, was pardoned by 
 Caesar at the request of the senate, 
 and assassinated by an attendant on 
 his way back to Rome. His moral 
 superiority over Caesar is conjecture. 
 "Warton mentions that "by Mar- 
 cellus Pope was said to mean the 
 Duke of Ormond," a man of small 
 abilities, and a tool of Bolingbroke 
 and Oxford. He fled from England 
 at the death of Queen Anne, joined 
 the court of the Pretender, and being 
 attainted had to pass the rest of his 
 life abroad. He died at Madrid, 
 Nov. 16, 1745, aged 94. One ver- 
 sion of the couplet in the MS. has the 
 names of Walpole, and the Jacobite 
 member of parliament, Shippen : 
 
 And more contentment honest Shpppen] 
 
 feels 
 Than W[alpole] with a senate at his heels. 
 
 2 So Lord Lansdowne of Cato : 
 
 More loved, more praised, more envied in 
 
 his doom, 
 Than Caesar trampling on the rights Oi 
 
 Rome. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 "Superior parts" are ranked by 
 Pope among " external goods," which 
 is a palpable error. Nothing can be 
 less external to a man than his mind. 
 
 4 Which does not hinder our ad- 
 vancing with delight from truth to 
 truth, nor are we depressed because, 
 to quote Pope's language, Epist. i. 
 ver. 71, " our knowledge is measured 
 to our state and place." 
 
 5 In the interests of charity, humi- 
 lity, and self-improvement, it were 
 to be wished that this was the uni- 
 versal result of superior intelligence. 
 
 6 Pope objects that wise men 
 are "condemned to drudge," which 
 is not an evil peculiar to the 
 tasks of wise men, and so im- 
 mensely does the pleasure of mental 
 exercise preponderate over the weari- 
 ness, that a taste for philosophy, 
 letters, and science is one of the 
 surest preservatives against the tedium 
 of life. He objects that the wise 
 have no one to second or judge them 
 rightly, which never happens. The 
 most neglected genius wins disciples 
 from the beginning, who make up in
 
 448 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land ? 
 All fear, none aid you, and few understand. 1 
 Painful pre-eminence ! * yourself to view 
 Above life's weakness, and its comforts too. 3 
 
 Bring then these blessings to a strict account ; 
 Make fair deductions ; see to what they 'mount : 
 How much of other each is sure to cost ; 
 How each for other oft is wholly lost ; 
 How inconsistent greater goods with these ; 
 How sometimes life is risked, and always ease. 
 Think, and if still the things thy envy call/ 
 Say would'st thou he the man to whom they fall ? 
 To sigh for ribhons if thou art so silly, 
 Mark how they grace Lord Umbra, or Sir Billy.* 
 
 270 
 
 275 
 
 weight what they want in number, 
 and were the adherents fewer, the 
 capacity which conceives important 
 truths would be self-sustained from 
 the consciousness that truth is mighty 
 and will prevail. 
 
 1 The allusion is to Bolingbroke's 
 patriotic pretensions, and political 
 impotence. The cause of his want 
 of success is reversed by Pope. He 
 was understood well enough, and no- 
 body trusted him in consequence. 
 His selfish, unprincipled ambition 
 was too transparent. 
 
 2 To a person that was praising 
 Dr. Balguy's admirable discourses on 
 the Vanity and Vexation of our Pur- 
 suits after Knowledge, he replied, 
 "I borrowed the whole from ten 
 lines of the Essay on Man, ver. 
 259 268, and I only enlarged upon 
 what the poet had expressed with 
 such marvellous conciseness, penetra- 
 tion, and precision. " He particularly 
 admired ver. 266. WAKTON. 
 
 The exclamation "painful pre- 
 eminence," is from Addison's Cato, 
 Act iii. Sc. 5, where Cato applies the 
 phrase to his own situation. 
 
 3 This line is inconsistent with 
 ver. 261 2. A man who feels pain- 
 
 fully his own ignorance and faults is 
 not "above life's weakness." The 
 line is also inconsistent with ver. 310. 
 No one can be above life's weak- 
 ness who is not transcendent in 
 virtue, and then he cannot be above 
 "life's comfort," since Pope says, 
 that " virtue alone is happiness 
 below." The melancholy picture, 
 again, which the passage presents 
 of the species of martyrdom endured 
 by Bolingbroke from his intellectual 
 pre-eminence, is inconsistent with 
 ver. 18, where Pope says that per- 
 fect happiness has fled from kings 
 to dwell with St. John. 
 "Call "for "call forth." 
 5 Lord Umbra may have stood for 
 a dozen insignificant peers who had 
 the ribbon of some order. Sir Billy 
 was Sir William Yonge, who was 
 made a Knight of the Bath when the 
 order was revived in May, 1725. 
 " Without having done anything," 
 says Lord Hervey, "out of the com- 
 mon track of a ductile courtier, and 
 a parliamentary tool, his name was 
 proverbially used to express every- 
 thing pitiful, corrupt, and con- 
 temptible." His one talent was a 
 fluency which sounded like eloquence,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 449 
 
 Is yellow dirt the passion of tliy life ? 
 Look but on Gripus, or on Gripus' wife. 1 
 If parts allure thee, think how Bacon shined, 
 The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind : 2 
 Or ravished with the whistling of a name, 3 
 See Cromwell, damned to everlasting fame ! 4 
 If all, united, thy ambition call, 
 From ancient story learn to scorn them all.* 
 There, in the rich, the honoured, famed, and great, 
 See the false scale of happiness complete ! 
 In hearts of kings, or arms of queens who lay, 
 How happy those to ruin, 6 these betray ! 
 
 280 
 
 88f. 
 
 290 
 
 and meant nothing, and this ready 
 flow of specious language, unaccom- 
 panied by solid reasoning or convic- 
 tion, and always exerted on behalf of 
 his patron, Walpole, rendered his un- 
 conditional subserviency conspicuous. 
 
 1 Mr. Croker suggests that Gripus 
 and his wife may be Mr. Wortley 
 Montagu and Lady Mary. Pope 
 accused them both of greed for 
 money. 
 
 2 Oldham : 
 
 The greatest, bravest, wittiest of maukind. 
 BOWLES. 
 
 3 From Cowley, Translation of 
 Virgil : 
 
 Charmed with the foolish whistlings of a 
 name. HUBD. 
 
 4 This resembles some lines in Ros- 
 common's Essay : 
 
 That wretch, in spite of his forgotten 
 
 rhymes, 
 
 Condemned to live to all succeeding times. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 Pope's examples would not bear out 
 his language unless Bacon and Crom- 
 well were generally reprobated, 
 whereas both have distinguished 
 champions and innumerable adhe- 
 rents. 
 
 * MS. : 
 
 VOL. II. -POE*RY. 
 
 In one man's fortune, mark and scorn them 
 all. 
 
 The "ancient story" was a pre- 
 tence which Pope inserted when he 
 turned the invective against the Duke 
 of Marlborough into a general satire 
 upon a class. 
 
 6 Mr. Croker asks " who was 
 happy to ruin and betray ? the 
 favourite or the sovereign ? " The 
 language is confused, but "their" in 
 the next line refers to those who 
 "ruin" and "betray," and shows that 
 the favourites were meant. They 
 were happy to ruin those the kings, 
 to betray these the queens. The 
 couplet made part of the attack upon 
 the Duke of Marlborough, and the 
 words of ver. 290 were borrowed from 
 Burnet, who said in his defence of 
 the Duke, "that he was in no con- 
 trivance to ruin or betray' 1 James II. 
 While, however, he was a trusted 
 officer in the army of James he 
 entered into a secret league with the 
 Prince of Orange, and deserted to 
 him on his landing. The accusation 
 of lying in the arms of a queen, and 
 afterwards betraying her, alludes, 
 says Wakefield, to Marlborough's 
 youthful intrigue with the Duchess 
 of Cleveland, the mistress of
 
 450 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Mark by what wretched steps their glory grows, 1 
 From dirt and sea- weed as proud Venice rose ; 
 In each how guilt and greatness equal ran,' 
 And all that raised the hero sunk the man : 3 
 Now Europe's laurel on their brows behold, 
 But stained with blood, or ill-exchanged for gold 
 Then see them broke with toils, or sunk in ease, 
 Or infamous for plundered provinces. 4 
 wealth ill-fated ! which no act of fame * 
 E'er taught to shine, 6 or sanctified from shame ! r 
 
 295 
 
 300 
 
 Charles II., and we need not reject 
 the interpretation because the mis- 
 tress of a king is not a queen, or 
 because there is no ground for be- 
 lieving that Marlborough betrayed 
 her. Pope constantly sacrificed accu- 
 racy of language to glitter of style, 
 and historic truth to satirical venom. 
 
 1 In the MS. "great * * grows," 
 that is, great Churchill or Marlbro'. 
 CHOKER. 
 
 2 MS. : 
 
 One equal course how guilt and greatness 
 ran. 
 
 3 This couplet and the next have a 
 view to his supposed peculation as 
 commander-in-chief, and his prolonga- 
 tion of the war on this account. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The charges were the calumnies of 
 an infuriated faction. His military 
 career while he was commander-in- 
 chief was free from reproach. He 
 was never known to sanction an act 
 of wanton harshness, or to exceed the 
 recognised usages of war. The pre- 
 tence that he prolonged the contest 
 for the sake of gain does not require 
 a refutation, for his accusers could 
 never produce a fragment of colour- 
 able evidence in support of the allega- 
 tion. The Duke of Wellington ridi- 
 culed the notion, and said that 
 however much Marlborough might 
 have loved money he must have 
 
 loved his military reputation more. 
 The poet, who denounced him as a 
 man "stained with blood," and 
 "infamous for plundered provin- 
 ces," could, at ver. 100, call Tu- 
 renne "god-like," though he gave 
 the atrocious command to pillage and 
 burn the Palatinate, and turned it 
 into a smouldering desert. " Habit," 
 says Sismondi, "had rendered him 
 insensible to the sufferings of the 
 people, and he subjected them to the 
 most cruel inflictions." 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Let gathered nations next their chief 
 behold, 
 
 How blessed with conquest, yet more 
 blessed with gold : 
 
 Go then, and steep thy age in wealth and 
 ease, 
 
 Stretched on the spoils of plundered pro- 
 vinces. 
 
 5 " Acts of fame" are not the best 
 means of ' ' sanctifying " wealth. True 
 charity is unostentatious. 
 
 6 "Wakefield quotes Horace, Od. ii. 
 2, or, as Creech puts it in his trans- 
 lation, silver has no brightness, 
 
 Unless a moderate use refine, 
 A value give, and make it shino. 
 
 ' Dryden, Virg. Mn. iv. 250 : 
 
 But called it marriage, by that specious 
 
 name 
 
 To veil the crime, and sanctify the shame. 
 WAKEFIELD.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 What greater bliss attends their close of life ? 
 Some greedy minion, 1 or imperious wife, 
 The trophied arches, storied halls 2 invade, 
 And haunt their slumbers in the pompous shade. 8 
 Alas ! not dazzled with their noon-tide ray, 
 Compute the morn and ev'ning to the day ; 
 The whole amount of that enormous fame, 
 A tale, that blends their glory with their shame ! 
 Know then this truth, enough for man to know, 
 " Virtue alone is happiness below." 4 
 The only point where human bliss stands still, 5 
 And tastes the good without the fall to ill ; 
 Where only merit constant pay receives, 
 Is blessed in what it takes, 6 and what it gives ; ' 
 
 305 
 
 310 That virtue 
 only con- 
 stitutes a 
 happiness 
 whose ob- 
 ject is 
 universal, 
 and whoso 
 prospect 
 eternal. 
 
 1 Originally, "Ambition, avarice, 
 and th' imperious " etc., for Marl- 
 borough, was never the dupe of a 
 "greedy minion." 
 
 2 "Storied halls" are halls painted 
 with stories or histories, as in Milton, 
 11 Penseroso, ver. 159 : 
 
 And storied windows richly dight 
 Casting a dim religious light. 
 
 The walls and ceiling of the saloon 
 at Blenheim are painted with figures 
 and trophies, and some rooms are 
 hung with tapestry commemorating 
 the great sieges and battles of the 
 Duke. The tapestry, which was 
 manufactured in the Netherlands, 
 and was a present from the Dutch, 
 is described by Dyer in The Fleece, 
 Book iii. ver. 499517. 
 
 3 Addison's Verses on the Play- 
 House : 
 
 A lofty fabric does the sight invade, 
 And stretches o'er the waves a pompous 
 shade. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 Pope may mean that nothing 
 affords happiness which infringes 
 
 virtue, and this would contradict the 
 conclusion of the second epistle, 
 where he dwells upon the continuous 
 happiness we derive from follies and 
 vanities. Or he may mean that 
 virtue is by itself complete happiness, 
 whatever else may be our circum- 
 stances, which would contradict ver. 
 119, where he says that the "vir- 
 tuous son is ill at ease " when he 
 inherits a ' ' dire disease " from his 
 profligate father. 
 
 5 The allusion here seems to be to 
 the pole, or central point, of a 
 spherical body, which, during the 
 rotatory motion of every other part, 
 continues immoveable and at rest. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 The " human bliss " does not 
 ' ' stand still, " unless we believe that 
 the virtuous man suffers nothing 
 when his virtue subjects him to 
 scorn, persecution, and tortures. 
 
 6 "It" in this couplet and the 
 next stands for virtuous "merit." 
 
 7 Merchant of Venice, Act iv. 
 Sc. 1 : 
 
 it is twice blessed ; 
 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that 
 takes. 
 
 a G 2
 
 452 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 That the 
 
 The joy unequalled, if its end it gain, 1 
 And if it lose, attended with no pain :* 
 "Without satiety, though e'er so blessed, 
 And hut more relished as the more distressed : 
 The broadest mirth 3 unfeeling folly wears, 
 Less pleasing far than virtue's very tears: 4 
 Good, from, each object, from each place acquired, 
 For ever exercised, yet never tired ; 5 
 Never elated, while one man's oppressed ; 
 Never dejected, while another's blessed ; 
 And where no wants, no wishes can remain, 
 Since but to wish more virtue is to gain. 6 
 
 See the sole bliss heav'n could on all bestow ! 
 Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know ; 
 
 M* 
 
 sso 
 
 1 Immortality must be the "end" 
 which it will be "unequalled joy to 
 gain," and yet "no pain to lose," 
 since the annihilated will not be con- 
 scious of the loss. Lord Byron ex- 
 pressed the same idea in a letter, 
 Dec. 8, 1821 : " Indisputably, the 
 firm believers in the gospel have a 
 great advantage over all others, for 
 this simple reason, that, if true, they 
 will have their reward hereafter, and 
 if there be no hereafter, they can be 
 but with the infidel in his eternal 
 sleep, having had the assistance of an 
 exalted hope through life." Pope 
 and Byron leave out of their reckon- 
 ing the sufferings to which Christians 
 are constantly exposed through their 
 homage to Christianity. 
 
 8 After ver. 316 in the MS. : 
 Ev'n while it seems unequal to dispose, 
 And chequers all the good man's joys with 
 
 woes, 
 
 Tis but to teach him to support each state, 
 With patience this, with moderation that ; 
 And raise his base on that one solid joy, 
 Which conscience gives, and nothing can 
 
 destroy. WABBURTON. 
 
 The sense in the first line is not 
 completed. Virtue "seems unequal 
 to dispose " something, but we are 
 not told what. 
 
 3 This is the Greek expression, 
 ir\arvs yt\ti>$, broad or wide laugh- 
 ter, derived, I presume, from the 
 greater aperture of the mouth in 
 loud laughter. WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 More pleasing, then, humanity's soft tears 
 Than all the mirth unfeeling folly wears. 
 
 There are numerous grades of cha- 
 racter between " unfeeling folly " and 
 Christian excellence, and many grati- 
 fications of the earthly-minded are 
 assuredly more pleasant for the time 
 than the sharp and ennobling pangs 
 of suffering virtue. 
 
 5 MS. : 
 
 Which not by starts, and from without 
 
 acquired, 
 Is all ways exercised, and never tired. 
 
 6 Is it so impossible that a " wish " 
 should " remain " when Pope has 
 just said that virtue is " never elated 
 while one oppressed man" exists? 
 Or has virtue in tears, ver. 320, no 
 wish for that happiness which Pope 
 says, ver. 1, is "our being's end and 
 aim ? " Or is the " wish " for "more 
 virtue" fulfilled by the act of wishing, 
 without frequent failure, and per- 
 petual conflict, and prolonged self- 
 denial ?
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 453 
 
 Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind, 
 The bad must miss ; the good, 1 untaught, will find ; 
 Slave to no sect, 2 who takes no private road, 
 But looks through nature up to nature's God ; 3 
 Pursues that chain which links th' immense design, 
 Joins heav'n and earth, and mortal and divine ; 
 Sees, that no being any bliss can know, 
 But touches some above and some below ; 
 Learns from this union of the rising whole, 
 The first, last purpose of the human soul ; 
 And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, 
 All end, in love of God, and love of man. 4 
 
 For him alone hope leads from goal to goal, 
 And opens still, and opens on his soul ; 
 Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined, 
 It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. 5 
 He sees why nature plants in man alone 
 Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown : 
 (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind 
 Are giv'n in vain, 6 but what they seek they find ;) 7 
 
 consists in a 
 conformity 
 .. to the order 
 830 of Provi- 
 dence here, 
 and a resig- 
 nation to it 
 herb and 
 hereafter. 
 
 335 
 
 840 
 
 845 
 
 1 " The good " is singular, and 
 stands for "the good man," as is 
 required by the verbs "takes,"' 
 "looks," " pursues," etc., up to the 
 end of the paragraph. 
 
 2 Creech's Horace, Epist. i. 1, ver. 23 : 
 
 But if you ask me now what sect I own, 
 I swear a blind obedience unto none. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 3 Bolingbroke's Letters to Pope : 
 ' ' The modest enquirer follows nature, 
 and nature's God." WAKEFIELD. 
 
 4 MS. : 
 
 Let us, my S[t. John], this plain truth 
 confess, 
 
 Good nature makes, and keeps our happi- 
 ness; 
 
 And faith and morals end as they began, 
 
 All in the love of God, and love of man. 
 
 In his second epistle Pope main- 
 tains that we are born with the germ 
 of an unalterable ruling passion 
 which grows with our growth, and 
 
 swallows up every other passion. 
 Among these ruling passions he 
 specifies spleen, hate, fear, anger, 
 etc., which are dispensed by fate, 
 absorb the entire man, and of ne- 
 cessity exclude love. Here, on the 
 contrary, we are told, ver. 327-340, 
 that "the sole bliss heaven could 
 on all bestow," is the virtue which 
 " ends in love of God and love of 
 man." 
 
 5 He hopes, indeed, for another 
 life, but he does not from hence infer 
 the absolute necessity of it, in order 
 to vindicate the justice and goodness 
 of God. WARTON. 
 
 6 The " other kind" is the animal 
 creation, which, says Pope, has not 
 been given any abortive instinct. 
 Nature, which furnishes the impulse, 
 never fails to provide appropriate 
 objects for its gratification. 
 
 7 The meaning of this couplet
 
 454 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Wise is her present : she connects in this 
 
 His greatest virtue with his greatest bliss ; l wo 
 
 At once his own bright prospect to be blessed, 
 
 And strongest motive to assist the rest. 
 
 Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine, 
 Gives thee to make thy neighbour's blessing thine. 
 Is this too little for the boundless heart ? sss 
 
 Extend it, let thy enemies have part : 
 Grasp the whole worlds of reason, life, and sense, 
 In one close system of benevolence : * 
 Happier as kinder, in whate'er degree, 
 And height of bliss but height of charity. seo 
 
 God loves from whole to parts : but human soul 
 Must rise from individual to the whole. 
 Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
 As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; 3 
 The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, 365 
 
 Another still, and still another spreads ; 
 Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace ; 
 His country next ; and next all human race ; * 
 "Wide and more wide th' o'erflowings of the mind 
 Take ev'ry creature in, of ev'ry kind ; 370 
 
 comes out clearer in the prose expla- " earth to smile with boundless 
 
 nation which Pope has written on bounty blessed." But bounty cannot 
 
 his MS. : "God implants a desire of benefit the recipients, if the poet is 
 
 immortality, which at least proves right in maintaining that happiness 
 
 he would have us think of, and is independent of externals, 
 
 expect it, and he gives no appetite 3 Warton remarks that this simile, 
 
 in vain to any creature. As God which is copied from Chaucer, was 
 
 plainly gave this hope, or instinct, it used by Pope in two other places, 
 
 is plain man should entertain it. The Temple of Fame, ver. 436, and 
 
 Hence flows his greatest hope, and the Dunciad, ii. ver. 407. 
 
 greatest incentive to virtue." 4 Waller, Divine Love, Canto v. : 
 
 1 "His greatest virtue" is bene- 
 volence; "his greatest bliss" the A love so unconfined 
 hope of a happy eternity. Nature t arms extended would embrace mau- 
 conuects the two, for the bliss depends Self . love would ceas6i or ^ dilated) when 
 on the virtue. We should behold as many selfs as men. 
 
 1 Pope exalts the duty of "bene- WAKEFIELD. 
 volence," which, ver. 371, causes
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 455 
 
 Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blessed, 
 And heav'n beholds its image in his breast. 1 
 
 Come then, my friend ! * my genius ! come along, 
 master of the poet and the song ! 
 And while the muse now stoops, or now ascends, 
 To man's low passions, or their glorious ends, 3 
 Teach me, like thee in various nature wise, 
 To full with dignity, with temper rise ;" 
 Formed by thy converse, happily to steer 
 From grave to gay, from lively to severe : ' 
 Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, 
 Intent to reason, or polite to please.' 
 
 375 
 
 380 
 
 1 MS. : 
 
 To rise from individuals to the whole 
 Is the true progress of the godlike soul. 
 The first impression the soft passions make, 
 Like the small pebble in the limpid lake, 
 Begets a greater and a greater still, 
 The circle widening till the whole it fill ; 
 Till God and man, and brute and reptile 
 
 kind 
 
 All wake, all move, all agitate his mind ; 
 Earth with his bounteous overflows is 
 
 blessed ; [breast. 
 
 Heav'n pleased beholds its image in his 
 Parent or friend first touch the virtuous 
 
 mind, 
 His country next, and next all human kind. 
 
 2 In the MS. thus : 
 
 And now transported o'er so vast a plain, 
 While the winged courser flies with all her 
 
 rein. 
 While heav'n- ward now her mounting wing 
 
 she feels, 
 Now scattered fools fly trembling from her 
 
 heels, 
 Wilt thou, my St. John ! keep her course 
 
 in sight, 
 
 Confine her fury, and assist her flight? 
 WARBURTON. 
 
 The exaggerated estimate which 
 Pope had formed of the Essay 
 on Man is apparent from this 
 passage. With respect to the poetry, 
 "the winged courser flew with all 
 her rein ;" with respect to the argu- 
 ment, " scattered fools flew trem- 
 bling" from its crushing power. 
 
 3 "Stoops to man's low passions 
 or ascends to the glorious ends " 
 for which those passions have been 
 given. 
 
 4 " Did he rise with temper," asks 
 the writer of A Letter to Mr. Pope, 
 1735, "when he drove furiously out 
 of the kingdom the Duke of Marl- 
 borough I or did he fall with dignity 
 when he fled from justice, and joined 
 the Pretender ? " Lord Hervey as- 
 serts, and many circumstances con- 
 firm his testimony, that Bolingbroke 
 " was elate and insolent in power, 
 dejected and servile in disgrace." 
 
 5 Boileau's Art of Poetry, trans- 
 lated by Soame and Dryden, 
 Canto i. : 
 
 Happy, who in his verse can gently steer 
 From grave to light, from pleasant to severe. 
 WAKEFIELD. 
 
 6 MS. : 
 
 And while the muse transported, uncon- 
 
 fined, 
 
 Soars to the sky, or stoops among mankind, 
 Teach her like thee, through various fortune 
 
 wise, 
 
 With dignity to sink, with temper rise ; 
 Formed by thy converse, steer an equal 
 
 flight 
 
 From grave to gay, from profit to delight 
 Artful with grace, and natural to please, 
 Intent in business, elegant in ease.
 
 456 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Oil ! while along the stream of time thy name 
 
 Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame ; 
 
 Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 335 
 
 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ? : 
 
 When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose, 
 
 "Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes,* 
 
 Shall then this verse to future age pretend s 
 
 Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend ? siw 
 
 That, urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art 
 
 From sounds to things, from fancy to the heart; 4 
 
 For wit's false mirror held up nature's light ; 
 
 Showed erring pride, whatever is, is right ; 
 
 That reason, passion, answer one great aim ; 395 
 
 That true self-love and social are the same ; 
 
 That virtue only makes our bliss below ; 
 
 And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. 5 
 
 1 From Statins, Silv. Lib. i. 4 Pope professes to believe that all 
 Carm. iv. 120 : his poetry up to the Essay on Man 
 
 immense veluticonnexacarina was made U P of ." sounds " to the 
 
 Cymba minor, cum ssevit hyems, pro partc, exclusion of " things," and was ad- 
 
 furentes dressed as little "to the heart" as 
 
 Parva receptat aquae, et eodem volvitur to the understanding. His change of 
 
 subject, and his panegyrics on virtue, 
 
 Mr. Pope forgot while he wrote nad at least not taught him that the 
 
 ver. 3836, the censures he had so manly simplicity of truth was to be 
 
 justly cast, ver. 237, upon that vain preferred to insincere hyperboles, 
 desire of an useless immortality. 6 ^ n the MS. thus : 
 
 That just to find a God is all we can, 
 
 - An unfortunate prophecy. Pos- And all the study of mankind is man. 
 
 terity has more than confirmed the WARBUKTON. 
 
 contempt in which Bolingbroke's 
 
 character was held by his contem- lhe MS " Las anotlier vcrsion of the 
 
 poraries. cou l )lct in the text : 
 
 3 ' ' Pretend" is used in the old and And all our knowledge, all our bliss below, 
 
 literal sense "to stretch out before To love our neighboui, and ourselves to 
 
 any one." Its exact synonym in know. 
 
 Pope's line is ' ' proclaim. "
 
 DEO OPT. MAX
 
 THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER. 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "ESSAY ON MAN." 
 
 London : Printed for R. DODSLEY, at Tully's-Head, in Pall-Mall, 1738, 
 Price Sixpence. 
 
 This pamphlet, which carjs out in folio, and octavo, and probably in quarto, 
 was the only separate edition of the Universal Prayer.
 
 FOR closeness and comprehension of thought, and for brevity and 
 energy of expression, few pieces of poetry in our language can be 
 compared with this Prayer. I am surprised Johnson should not 
 make any mention of it. When it was first published many orthodox 
 persons were, I remember, offended at it, and called it the Deist's 
 Prayer. It were to be wished the deists would make use of so good 
 a one. WARTON. 
 
 How extraordinary it is that Warton should be ever accused as 
 if he wished to decry Pope ! No one has borne such willing and 
 ample testimony to his excellence as a poet, when he truly deserves 
 it. In this place Warton gives the poetry more praise than it appears 
 entitled to, though this composition is beautiful, and the two last 
 stanzas sublime ; but I fear, if we were to examine the greater part 
 by the Horatian rule, which Warton recommends, that is, altering 
 the rhyme and measure, 1 we should not find the "disjecti membra 
 poetse. " BOWLES. 
 
 Warburton says that " some passages in the Essay on Man having 
 been unjustly suspected of a tendency towards fate and naturalism, 
 the author composed this prayer as the sum of all, to show that his 
 system was founded in free-will, and terminated in piety." The 
 prayer was written shortly before Warburton stretched out his helping 
 hand to Pope, and therefore before the poet had renounced the system 
 and assistance of Bolingbroke, in reliance on a more serviceable 
 defender. He did not yet venture, as Warburton pretends, to abjure 
 " naturalism," but kept to it in every line, and even in the title of 
 his poem. A " universal " could not be a Christian prayer. He 
 avowedly set aside the distinguishing characteristics of the gospel, 
 and professed to exclude all language which could not be adopted by 
 the votaries of "every age and clime," by "savage" as well as 
 "saint," by the idolaters of " Jupiter" as well as by the worshippers 
 of " Jehovah." No wonder that many persons in England should 
 have called the Universal, the Deist's Prayer, or that when trans- 
 lated i:ito French it should have gone by the title of Priere duDeiste.* 
 Wartou "wished the deists would make use of so good a one." 
 There was nothing in their creed which could require them to use a 
 worse. 
 
 1 The rale of Horace and Warton for testing poetry was to divest it of metre 
 by changing the order of the words. The language of Bowles would give the idea 
 that the change was to be from one measure and set of rhymes to another. 
 
 2 Voltaire, (Euvres, torn. xiv. p. 169.
 
 400 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 On the question of "free-will," Pope taught discordant doctrines. 
 In the Universal Prayer it is said that the " human will is left free," 
 and in the Essay on Man "moral ill" is ascribed to its "wander- 
 ings." 1 But in other parts of the Essay we are told that Caesar's 
 fierce ambition is inspired by God, and that man is born with a single 
 ruling passion which, do all he cau, engulfs every sentiment of his 
 soul. Neither this, nor any other discrepancy, is cleared up in the 
 Universal Prayer. The contradictions are only multiplied. Accord- 
 ing to the Prayer " nature is bound fast in fate," and according to 
 the Essay " nature deviates," which is asserted to account for the 
 "physical ill" that God does "not send." 2 The Essay teaches us 
 that the moral law of mankind is selfishness, and that we are to be 
 virtuous solely because it promotes our individual happiness. The 
 fourth stanza of the Prayer reverses the relation in which virtue 
 stands to happiness, and bids U3 shun evil more than hell or pain, 
 pursue good more than heaven or felicity. Pope's view of Provi- 
 dence in the Essay is that God will not interpose to protect his 
 servants. 3 The Prayer contains a petition for "bread and peace," 
 which is either a delusive form or a confession that the Almighty 
 adapts events to the pious dispositions of particular men. Reason 
 concurs with revelation in this conclusion. The necessary inference 
 from the perfection of God's attributes is that his government takes 
 in every circumstance, and as mind is superior to matter, physical 
 laws cannot be framed without a special regard to the fervent prayers 
 of faithful hearts. 
 
 The Universal Prayer failed to fulfil Pope's main design, and in- 
 creased the confusion it was meant to remove. His defective mate- 
 rial is cast in an unsuitable form, and, wanting to expound his 
 opinions, he has introduced comments which are misplaced or offen- 
 sive in a prayer. No worshipper of Jehovah would blasphemously 
 address him as " Jehovah or Jove," and no one, except the persons 
 who preach while they pray, would introduce such reflections as that 
 " God is paid when man receives," and that " binding nature f;ist 
 in fate he had left free the human will." The faulty conception is 
 not redeemed by the exquisiteness of the poetry. The composition 
 is tame and prosaic, and never rises above the level of a second-rate 
 hymn. 
 
 1 Epist. iv. ver. 112. 2 Epist. iv. ver. 111113. 
 
 3 Epist. iv. ver. 121.
 
 THE 
 
 UNIVERSAL PRAYER 
 
 DEO OPT. MAX. 
 
 FATHER of all ! in ev'ry age, 
 
 In ev'ry clime adored, 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! ' 
 
 1 Archbishop Whately, Bacon's 
 Essays, p. 145, quotes this stanza, 
 and says that it is strange that Pope, 
 and those who use similar language, 
 should have " failed to perceive that 
 the pagan nations were in reality 
 atheists. For by the word God we 
 understand an Eternal Being, who 
 made and who governs all things. 
 And so far were the ancient pagans 
 from believing that ' in the beginning 
 God made the heavens and the earth,' 
 that, on the contrary, the heavens, 
 and the earth, and the sea, and many 
 other natural objects, were among 
 the very gods they adored. Accord- 
 ingly, the apostle Paul expressly 
 calls the ancient pagans, atheists, 
 Ephes. ii. 12, though he well knew 
 that they worshipped certain sup- 
 posed superior beings which they 
 called gods. But he says in the 
 Epistle to the Romans that 'they 
 
 worshipped the creature more than, 
 that is, instead of the Creator.' And 
 at Lystra, when the people were going 
 to do sacrifice to him and Barnabas, 
 mistaking them for two of their gods, 
 he told them to 'turn from those 
 vanities to serve the living God, who 
 made heaven and earth.' " The 
 pagans were equally ignorant of the 
 holiness of the Supreme Being ; and 
 Pope himself, describing the heathen 
 divinities, Essay on Man, Epist. iii. 
 257, calk them 
 
 Gtxls partial, changeful, passionate, un- 
 just, 
 
 Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or 
 lust. 
 
 Such a divinity was Jupiter, and 
 to worship an abominable phan- 
 tom, conspicuous for " rage, re- 
 venge, and lust," was not to adore 
 " Jehovah."
 
 462 
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Thou Great First Cause, least understood ! 
 
 Who all my sense confined 1 
 To know but this, that thou art good,* 
 
 And that myself am blind ; 
 
 Yet gave me in this dark estate, 
 
 To see the good from ill : 
 And binding nature fast in fate, 
 
 Left free the human will. 8 
 
 What conscience dictates to be done, 
 
 Or warns me not to do, 
 This teach me more than hell to shun, 
 
 That, more than heav'n pursue. 
 
 What blessings thy free bounty gives 
 
 Let me not cast away ; 
 For God is paid when man receives : 
 
 T* enjoy is to obey. 
 
 10 
 
 15 
 
 1 It ought to be " confinedst " or 
 4< didst confine," and afterwards 
 "gavedst" or "didst give" in the 
 second person. WARTON. 
 
 2 This may mean that the Deity 
 was beneficent, or holy, or both, but 
 whatever sense Pope attached to the 
 word, he held with Bolingbroke that 
 the attributes of the Divine Being 
 were not the qualities which passed 
 by the same name among us, and the 
 present stanza is a re-assertion of 
 the doctrine of the Essay on Man, 
 Epist. ii. 1, that we must not "pre- 
 sume to scan God," or think to know 
 more than the bare fact that he is 
 " good." 
 
 3 First edition : 
 
 Loft conscience free and will. 
 
 Here followed, if it is genuine, a 
 suppressed stanza, which Mrs. Thrale 
 repeated to Dr. Johnson, and which 
 she said a clergyman of their acquaint- 
 ance had discovered : 
 
 Can sins of moments claim the rod 
 
 Of everlasting fires ? 
 And that offend great nature's God 
 
 Which nature's self inspires 
 
 Mrs. Thrale called the stanza "li- 
 centious," Johnson observed that it 
 was borrowed from the Pastor Fido 
 of Guarini, and Boswell pointed our 
 that a "rod of fires" was an incon- 
 gruous metaphor. "I warrant you, 
 however," said Johnson, " Pope wro te 
 this stanza, and some friend struck 
 it out." The folly of the lines is 
 transparent. The " sins " witli 
 which ' ' nature's self inspires " man, 
 "conscience warns him not to do," 
 ver. 14, and Pope assumes that 
 God will never be "offended" if 
 we disregard conscience, and yield to 
 temptation. 
 
 4 This stanza was evidently directed 
 against the ascetic acts which were 
 rated high among virtues by the 
 papists.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 463 
 
 Yet not to earth's contracted span 
 
 The goodness let me bound, 
 Or think Thee Lord alone of man, 
 
 "When thousand worlds are round : 
 
 Let not this weak, unknowing hand 25 
 
 Presume thy bolts to throw, 
 And deal damnation round the land l 
 
 On each I judge thy foe. 2 
 
 If I am right, thy grace impart 
 
 Still in the right to stay : so 
 
 If I am wrong, oh teach my heart 
 
 To find that better way. 
 
 Save me alike from foolish pride, 
 
 Or impious discontent, 
 At aught thy wisdom has denied, ss 
 
 Or aught thy goodness lent. 
 
 Teach me to feel another's woe, 
 
 To hide the fault I see ; 
 That mercy I to others show, 
 
 That mercy show to me. 8 40 
 
 There is something elevated in opinions to be equally innocent, or 
 
 the idea and expression, affects to conceive that man is an- 
 
 Or think Thee Lord alone of man, swerable only for the sincerity of his 
 
 When thousand worlds are round ; convictions. He is accountable for 
 
 , , ,, , . . , his opportunities, his understanding. 
 
 but the conclusion is a contrast ot , ,. , ,., 
 
 ..,,, and his knowledge, andii he espouses 
 
 error through negligence, prejudice, 
 
 And deal damnation round the land. or presumption, he involves himself 
 
 BowLES - in the full criminality of his error. 
 
 2 Unquestionably no man of right CROLY. 
 
 judgment will pronounce the holder 3 I have often wondered that the 
 
 of any opinion to be beyond the limits same poet who wrote the Dunciad 
 
 of divine mercy ; but he may justly should have written these lines, 
 
 pronounce the opinion itself to be Alas for Pope, if the mercy he showed 
 
 ruinous in the highest degree, to others was the measure of the 
 
 Nothing can be more false than the mercy he received, COWPER. 
 spurious liberality which presumes all
 
 464 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Moan though I am, not wholly so, 
 
 Since quickened by thy breath : 
 Oh lead me wheresoe'er I go, 
 
 Through this day's life or death. 
 
 This day be bread and peace my lot : 45 
 
 All else beneath the sun, 
 Thou know'st if best bestowed or not, 
 
 And let thy will be done. 
 
 To Thee, whose temple is all space, 
 
 Whose altar, earth, sea, skies, 1 50 
 
 One chorus let all being raise ; 
 All nature's incense rise ! 
 
 LUS&JJ, ix. 578 : 
 
 Estnc Dei sedes, nisi terra, ctpontus, et An 
 Kt co?lum, ot virtu? ? WA.K EKUJ>.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF 
 WILLIAM WARBURTON, D.D. 
 
 ON THE 
 
 ESSAY ON MAN. 1 
 
 COMMENTARY ON EPISTLE I. 
 
 THE opening of this Poem, in fifteen lines, is taken up in giving an account 
 of the subject ; which, agreeably to the title, is an Essay on Man, or a philo- 
 sophical inquiry into his nature and end, his passions and pursuits. The 
 exordium relates to the whole work, of which the Essay on Man was only the 
 first book. The sixth, seventh, and eighth lines allude to the subjects of this 
 Essay, viz. the general order and design of Providence ; the constitution of 
 the human mind ; the origin, use, and end of the passions and affections, both 
 selfish and social ; and the wrong pursuits of happiness in power, pleasure, &c. 
 The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, &c. have relation to the subjects of the books 
 intended to follow, viz. the characters and capacities of men, and the limits of 
 science, which once transgressed, ignorance begins, and errors without end 
 succeed. The thirteenth and fourteenth, to the knowledge of mankind, and 
 the various, manners of the age. 
 
 The poet tells us next, line 16, with what design he wrote, viz. 
 
 To vindicate the ways of God to man. 
 
 The men he writes against, he frequently informs us, are such as weigh their 
 opinions against Providence, ver. 114, such as cry, if man's unhappy, God's 
 
 1 Erudition and acuteness are not the only requisites of a good commentator. That 
 conformity of sentiment which enables him fully to enter into the intention of his author, 
 and that fairness of disposition which places him above every wish of disguising or misre- 
 pi'esenting it, are qualifications not less essential. In these points it is no breach of can- 
 dour to affirm, since the public voice has awarded the sentence, that Dr. Warburton has, 
 in various of his critical labours, shown himself extremely defective, and perhaps in none 
 more than in those he has expended upon this performance, his manifest purposes in 
 which, have been to give it a systematic perfection that it does not possess, to conceal as 
 much as possible the suspicious source whence the author derived his leading ideas, and 
 to reduce the whole to the standard of moral orthodoxy. So much is the sense of the poet 
 strained and warped by these processes of his commentator, that it is scarcely possible in 
 many places to enter into his real meaning, without laving aside the commentary, and 
 letting the text speak for itself. AIKIN. 
 
 VOL, II. POETRY. H H
 
 468 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 unjust, ver. 118, or such as fall into the notion, that vice and virtue there id 
 none at all, Epistle ii. ver. 212. This occasions the poet to divide his vindi- 
 cation of the ways of God into two parts ; in the first of which he gives direct 
 answers to those objections which libertine men, on a view of the disorders 
 arising from the perversity of the human will, have intended against Provi- 
 dence ; and in the second, he obviates all thoso o) jections, by a true delineation 
 of human nature, or a general, but exact, map ol man. The first Epistle is 
 employed in the management of the first part of this dispute ; and the three 
 following, in the discussion of the second. So that this whole book consti- 
 tutes a complete Essay on Man, written for the best purpose, to vindicate 
 the ways of God. 
 
 Ver. 17. Say first, of God above, or man below, tc.] The poet having 
 declared Ms subject ; his cud of writing ; and the quality of his adversaries, 
 proceeds, from ver. 16 to 23, to instruct us, from whence he intends to draw 
 his arguments; namely, from the visible things of God in this system, to 
 demonstrate the invisible things of God, his eternal power and godhead. 
 And why ? Because we can reason only from what we know ; and as we 
 know no more of man than what we see of his station here, so we know no 
 more of God than what we see of his dispensations in this station ; being 
 able to trace him no further than to the limits of our own system. This 
 naturally leads the poet to exprobrate the miserable folly and impiety of 
 pretending to pry into, and call in question, the profound dispensations of 
 Providence : which reproof contains, from ver. 22 to 43, a sublime descrip- 
 tion of the omniscience of God, and the miserable blindness and presump- 
 tion of man. 
 
 Ver. 43. Of systems possible, <tc.] So far the poet's modest and sober intro- 
 duction : in which he truly observes, that no wisdom less than omniscient 
 
 Can tell why heav'n has made us as we are. 
 
 Yet though we be unable to discover the particular reasons for this mode of 
 our existence, we may be assured in general that it is right. For now, 
 entering upon his argument, he lays down this evident proposition as the 
 foundation of his thesis, which he reasonably supposes will be allowed him, 
 That, of all possible systems, infinite wisdom hath formed the best, ver. 43, 
 44. From whence he draws two consequences : 
 
 1. The first, from ver. 44 to 51, is, that as the best system cannot but be 
 such a one as hath no unconnected void ; such a one in which there is a 
 perfect coherence and gradual subordination in all its parts ; there must needs 
 be, in some part or other of the scale of reasoning life, such a creature as 
 man, which reduces the dispute to this absurd question, Whether God has 
 placed him wrong ? 
 
 Ver. 51. Respecting man, ttc.] It being shown that man, the subject of this 
 inquiry, has a necessary place in such a system as this is confessed to be ; and 
 it being evident, that the abuse of free-will, from whence proceeds all moral 
 evil, is the certain effect of such a creature's existence ; the next question will 
 be, how these evils can be accounted for, consistently with the idea we have 
 of God's moral attributes ? Therefore, 
 
 2. The second consequence he draws from his principle, That of all possible 
 systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best, is, that whatever is wrong in our 
 private system, is right as relative to the whole : 
 
 Respecting man, -whatever wrong we call, 
 May, must be right, as relative to all
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 467 
 
 That it may, lie proves, from ver. 52 to 61, by showing in what consists the 
 difference between the systematic works of God, and those of man ; viz. that, 
 in the latter, a thousand movements scarce gain one purpose ; in the former, 
 one movement gains many purposes. So that 
 
 Man, who here seems principal alone, 
 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown. 
 
 And acting thus, the appearance of wrong in the partial system may be right 
 in the universal ; for 
 
 Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 
 
 That it must, the whole body of this epistle is employed to illustrate and 
 enforce. Thus partial evil is universal good, and thus Providence is fairly 
 acquitted. 
 
 Ver. 61. WJicn the proud steed, &c.~\ From all this the poet draws a general 
 conclusion, from ver. 60 to 91, that, as what has been said is sufficient to 
 vindicate the ways of Providence, man should rest submissive and content, 
 and own everything to be disposed for the best ; that to think of discovering 
 the manner how God conducts this wonderful scheme to its completion, is 
 as absurd as to imagine that the horse and ox shall ever be able to com- 
 prehend why they undergo such different treatment in the hand of man : 
 nay, that such knowledge, if communicated, would be even pernicious, and 
 make us neglect or desert our duty here. This he illustrates by the case 
 of the lamb, which is happy in not knowing the fate that attends it from 
 the butcher ; and from thence takes occasion to observe, that God is the equal 
 master of all his creatures, and provides for the proper happiness of each and 
 every of them. 
 
 Ver. 91. Hope humbly then; <L-c.] But now an objector is supposed to put 
 in, and say, "You tell us, indeed, that all things shall terminate in good; 
 but we see ourselves surrounded with present evil; yet you forbid us all 
 inquiry into the manner how we are to be extricated from it, and, in a word, 
 leave us in a very disconsolate condition." Not so, replies the poet; you may 
 reasonably, if you please, receive much comfort from the hope of a happy 
 futurity ; a hope implanted in the human breast by God himself for this very 
 purpose, as an earnest of that bliss, which, always flying from ns here, is 
 reserved for the good man hereafter. The reason why the poet chooses to 
 insist on this proof of a future state, in preference to others, is in order to 
 give his system (which is founded in a sublime and improved Platonism) the 
 greater grace of uniformity. For hope was Plato's peculiar argument for a 
 future state ; and the words here employed, The soul uneasy, &c. his peculiar 
 expression. The poet in this place, therefore, says in express terms, that God 
 gave us hope to supply that future bliss, which he at present keeps hid from 
 us. In his second Epistle, ver. 274, he goes still further, and says, this hope 
 quits us not even at death, when every thing mortal drops from us : 
 
 Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die. 
 
 And in the fourth Epistle he shows how the same hope is a proof of a future 
 state, from the consideration of God's giving his creatures no appetite in vain, 
 or what he did not intend should be satisfied : 
 
 He sees, why nature plants in man alone 
 
 Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown : 
 
 Nature, whose dictates to no other kind 
 
 Are giv'n hi vain, but what they seek they find. 
 
 H H 2
 
 468 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 It is only for the good man, he tells us, that hope leads from goal to goal, &c. 
 It would then be strange indeed, if it should prove an illusion. 
 
 Ver. 99. Lo! the poor Indian, <L-c.] The poet, as we said, having hid man 
 comfort himself with expectation of future happiness ; having shown him that 
 this hope is an earnest of it, and put in one very necessary caution, 
 
 Hope humbly then ; with trembling pinions soar ; 
 
 provoked at those miscreants whom he afterwards, Ep. iii. ver. 263, describes 
 as building hell on spite, and heaven on pride, he upbraids them, from ver. 98 
 to 112, with the example ot the poor Indian, to whom also nature hath given 
 this common hope of mankind : but though his untutored mind had betrayed 
 him into many childish fancies concerning the nature of that future state, yet 
 he is so far from excluding any part of his own species (a vice which could 
 proceed only from the pride of false science), that he humanely, though simply, 
 admits even his faithful dog to bear him company. 
 
 Ver. 113. Go, wiser thou! d-c.] He proceeds with these accusers of Provi- 
 dence, from ver. 112 to 122, and shows them, that complaints against the 
 established order of things begin in the highest absurdity, from misapplied 
 reason and power ; and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade 
 the God of heaven, and to assume his place : 
 
 Alone made perfect here, immortal there : 
 
 That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality : to which 
 sense the lines immediately following confine us : 
 
 Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, 
 Re- judge his justice, be the God of God. 
 
 Ver. 123. In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; <t-c.] From these 
 men, the poet now turns to his friend ; and, from ver. 122 to 130, remarks, 
 that the ground of all this extravagance is pride ; which, more or less, infects 
 the whole reasoning tribe ; shows the ill effects of it, in the case of the fallen 
 angels ; and observes, that even wishing to invert the laws of order, is a lower 
 species of their crime. He then brings an instance of one of the effects of 
 pride, which is the folly of thinking everything made solely for the use of 
 man, without the least regard to any other of the creatures of God. 
 
 Ask for -what end the heav'nly bodies shine, <tc. 
 
 The ridicule of imagining the greater portions of the material system to be 
 solely for the use of man, true philosophy has sufficiently exposed : and 
 tommon sense, as the poet observes, instructs us to conclude, that our fellow- 
 creatures, placed by Providence as the joint inhabitants of this globe, are 
 designed to be joint sharers with us of its blessings : 
 
 Has God, thou fool ! worked solely for thy good, 
 Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food ? 
 Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn, 
 For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn. 
 
 Ver. 141. But errs not nature from this gracious end,] The author conies 
 next to the confirmation of his thesis, That partial moral evil is universal 
 good ; but introduceth it with an allowed instance in the natural world, to 
 abate our wonder at the phenomenon of moral evil ; which he forms into an 
 argument on a concession of his adversaries. If we ask you, says he, from 
 ver. 140 to 150, whether nature doth not err from the gracious purpose of its
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 469 
 
 Creator, when plagues, earthquakes, and tempests unpeople whole regions at a 
 time ; you readily answer, No : for that God acts by general, and not by 
 particular laws ; and that the course of matter and motion must be necessarily 
 subject to some irregularities, because nothing is created perfect. I then ask, 
 why you should expect this perfection in man ? If you own that the great 
 end of God (notwithstanding all this deviation) be general happiness, then 
 it is nature and not God that deviates ; do you expect greater constancy 
 in man ? 
 
 Then nature deviates ; and can man do less ? 
 
 That is, if nature, or the inanimate system (on which God hath imposed his 
 laws, which it obeys, as a machine obeys the hand of the workman), may in 
 course of time deviate from its first direction, as the best philosophy shows it 
 may ; where is the wonder that man, who was created a free agent, and hath 
 it in his power every moment to transgress the eternal rule of right, should 
 sometimes go out of order ? 
 
 Ver. 151. As much that end, etc.] Having thus shown how moral evil came 
 into the world, namely, by man's abuse of his own free-will, our poet comes 
 to the point, the confirmation of his thesis, by showing how moral evil 
 promotes good; and employs the same concessions of his adversaries, con- 
 cerning natural evil, to illustrate it. 
 
 1. He shows it tends to the good of the whole, or universe, from ver. 151 
 to 164, and this by analogy. You own, says he, that storms and tempests, 
 clouds, rain, heat, and variety of seasons, are necessary (notwithstanding 
 the accidental evil they bring with them) to the health and plenty of this 
 globe ; why then should you suppose there is not the same use, with regard 
 to the universe, in a Borgia or a Catiline ? But you say you can see the 
 one, and not the other. You say right : one terminates in this system, 
 the other refers to the whole : which whole can be comprehended by none but 
 the great Author himself. For, says the poet in another place, 
 
 Of this frame, the bearings and the ties, 
 The strong connexions, nice dependencies, 
 Gradations just, has thy pervading soul 
 Look'd through ? or can a part contain the whole ? 
 
 Own therefore, says he, that 
 
 From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs ; 
 Account for moral, as for nat'ral things : 
 Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit ? 
 In both, to reason right, is to submit. 
 
 Ver. 165. Better for us, <c.] But, secondly, to strengthen the foregoing 
 analogical argument, and to make the wisdom and goodness of God still more 
 apparent, he observes, from ver. 165 to 172, that moral evil is not only pro- 
 ductive of good to the whole, but is even productive of good in our own 
 system. It might, says he, perhaps appear better to us, that there were 
 nothing in this world but peace and virtue ; 
 
 That never air or ocean felt the wind ; 
 That never passion discomposed the mind. 
 
 But then consider, that as our material system is supported by the strife of 
 its elementary particles, so is our intellectual system, by the conflict of our 
 passions, which are the elements of human action. In a word, as without the 
 benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, corrupt, and
 
 470 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 spread universal contagion throughout all the ranks of animals that inhabit, 
 or are supported by, them ; so, without the benefit of the passions, such virtue 
 as was merely the effect of the absence of those passions, would be a lifeless 
 calm, a stoical apathy. 
 
 Contracted all, retiring to the breast : 
 But health of mind is exercise, not rest. 
 
 Therefore, instead of regarding the conflicts of the elements, and the passions 
 of the roind, as disorders, you ought to consider them as part of the general 
 order of Providence : and that they are so, appears from their always preserving 
 the same unvaried course, throughout all ages, from the creation to the present 
 time: 
 
 The gen'ral order, since the whole began, 
 
 Is kept in nature, and is kept in man. 
 
 "We see, therefore, it would be doing great injustice to our author to suspect 
 that he intended by this to give any encouragement to vice. His system, as 
 all his Ethic Epistles show, is this : That the passions, for the reasons given 
 above, are necessary to the support of virtue : that, indeed, the passions in 
 excess produce vice, which is, in its own nature, the greatest of all evils, and 
 comes into the world from the abuse of man's free-will ; but that God, in his 
 infinite wisdom and goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity 
 to the advancement of human happiness, and makes it productive of general 
 good: 
 
 Th' eternal art educes good from all. 
 
 This, set against what we have observed of the poet's doctrine of a future 
 state, will furnish us with an instance of his steering (as he well expresses it 
 in his preface) "between doctrines seemingly opposite: if his Essay has any 
 merit, he thinks it is in this." And doubtless it is uncommon merit to reject 
 the visions and absurdities of every system, and take in only what is rational 
 and real. The Characteristics and the Fable of the Bees are two seemingly 
 inconsistent systems ; the folly of the first is in giving a scheme of virtue 
 without religion ; and the knavery of the latter, in giving a scheme of religion 
 without virtue. These our poet leaves to any that will take them up; but 
 agrees, however, so far with the first, that "virtue would be worth having, 
 though itself was its only reward;" and so far with the latter, that "God 
 makes evil, against its nature, productive of good." 
 
 Ver. 173. What would this man? <fcc.] Having thus justified Providence 
 in its permission of partial moral evil, our author employs the remaining part 
 of his Epistle in vindicating it from the imputation of certain supposed 
 natural evils. For now he shows, from ver. 172 to 207, that though the 
 complaint of his adversaries against Providence be on pretence of real moral 
 evils ; yet, at bottom, it all proceeds from their impatience under imaginary 
 natural ones, the issue of a depraved appetite for visionary advantages, which 
 if man had, they would be either useless or pernicious to him, as repugnant 
 to his state, or unsuitable to his condition. Though God, says he, hath so 
 bountifully bestowed on man faculties little less than angelic, yet he ungrate- 
 fully grasps at higher; and then, extravagant in another extreme, with a 
 passion as ridiculous as that is impious, envies, as what would be advantages 
 to himself, even the peculiar accommodations of brutes. But here his own 
 false principles expose the folly of his falser appetites. He supposes them all 
 made for his use : now what use coiild he have of tliem, when he had robbed
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 471 
 
 thtir, of all their qualities ? Qualities distributed with the highest wisdom, as 
 they are divided at present ; but which, if bestowed according to the froward 
 _humour of these childish coinplainers, would be everywhere found to be 
 either wanting or superfluous. But even though endowed with these brutal 
 qualities, man would not only be no gainer, but a considerable loser ; as the 
 poet shows in explaining the consequences which would follow from his having 
 his sensations in that exquisite degree in which this or the other animal is 
 observed to possess them. 
 
 Ver. 207. Far as creation's ample range extends,] He tells us next, from 
 ver. 206 to 233, that the complying with such extravagant desires would not 
 only be useless and pernicious to man, but would be breaking into the order, 
 and deforming the beauty of God's creation, in which this animal is subject 
 to that, and every one to man, who, by his reason, enjoys the sum of all their 
 powers. 
 
 Ver. 233. See, through this air, <tc.] And further, from ver. 232 to 267, 
 that this breaking the order of things, which, as a link or chain, connects all 
 beings, from the highest to the lowest, would unavoidably be attended with 
 the destruction of the universe ; for that the several parts of it must at least 
 compose as entire and harmonious a whole as the parts of a human body, can 
 be doubted of by no one. Yet we see what confusion it would make upon our 
 frame, if the members were set upon invading each other's office : 
 
 What if the foot, &c. 
 
 Who will not acknowledge, therefore, that a connexion in the disposition of 
 things, so harmonious as here described, is transcendently beautiful ? But 
 the fatalists suppose such an one. "What then ? Is the First Free Agent, the 
 great Cause of all things, debarred a contrivance infinitely exquisite, because 
 some men, to set up their idol, fate, absurdly represent it as presiding over 
 such a system ? 
 
 Ver. 267. All are bid parts of one stupendous whole,] Our author having 
 thus given a representation of God's work, as one entire whole, where all the 
 parts have a necessary dependence on, and relation to each other, and where 
 each particular part works and concurs to the perfection of the whole, as such 
 a system transcends vulgar ideas, to reconcile it to common conceptions he 
 shows, from ver. 266 to 281, that God is equally and intimately present to 
 every sort of substance, to every particle of matter, and in every instant of 
 being ; which eases the labouring imagination, and makes us expect no less 
 from such a presence, than such a dispensation. 
 
 Ver. 281. Cease then, nor order imperfection name .-] And now the poet, 
 as he had promised, having vindicated the ways of God to man, concludes, 
 from ver. 280 to the end, that, from what had been said, it appears, that 
 the very things we blame contribute to our happiness, either as unrelated 
 particulars, or at least as parts of the universal system ; that our state of 
 ignorance was allotted to us out of compassion; that yet we have as rmich 
 knowledge as is sufficient to show us, that we are, and always shall be, as 
 blessed as we can bear ; for that nature is neither a Stratonic chain of blind 
 
 causes and effects, 
 
 (All nature is but art, unknown to thee,) 
 
 nor yet the fortuitous result of Epicurean atoms, 
 
 (All chance, direction, which thou canst not see) ; 
 
 as those two speeches of atheism supposed it; btit the wonderful art and con-
 
 472 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 trivance, unknown indeed to man, of an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, and 
 free Being. And therefore we may be assured, that the arguments brcmght 
 above, to prove partial moral evil productive of universal good, are con- 
 clusive ; from whence one certain truth results, in spite of all the pride and 
 cavils of vain reason, That whatever is, is right. 
 
 That the reader may see in one view the exactness of the method, as 
 well as force of the argument, I shall here draw up a short synopsis of this 
 Epistle. The poet begins by telling us, his subject is an Essay on Man : that 
 his end of writing is to vindicate Providence : that he intends to derive his 
 arguments from the visible things of God seen in his system : lays down this 
 proposition, that of all possible systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best : 
 draws from thence two consequences ; 1. That there must needs be somewhere 
 such a creature as man ; 2. That the moral evil, which he is the author of, is 
 productive of the good of the whole. This is his general thesis ; from whence 
 he forms this conclusion, that man should rest submissive and content, and 
 make the hopes of futurity his comfort ; but not suffer this to be the occasion 
 of pride, which is the cause of all his impious complaints. He proceeds to 
 confirm his thesis. Previously endeavours to abate our wonder at the pheno- 
 menon of moral evil ; shows, first, its use to the perfection of the universe, by 
 analogy, from the use of physical evil in this particular system. Secondly, its 
 use in this system, where it is turned, providentially, from its natural bias, to 
 promote virtue. Then goes on to viudicate Providence from the imputation 
 of certain supposed natural evils, as he had before justified it for the pel-mis- 
 sion of real moral evil, in showing that, though the atheist's complaint against 
 Providence be on pretence of real moral evil, yet the true cause is his impa- 
 tience under imaginary natural evil ; the issue of a depraved appetite for 
 fantastical advantages, wliich, if obtained, would be useless or hurtful to man, 
 and deforming of, and destructive to, the universe, as breaking into that 
 order by which it is supported. He describes that order, harmony, and close 
 connexion of the parts ; and by showing the intimate presence of God to his 
 whole creation, gives a reason for an universe so amazingly beautiful and 
 perfect. From all this he deduces his general conclusion, That nature being 
 neither a blind chain of causes and effects, nor yet the fortuitous result of 
 wandering atoms, but the wonderful art and direction of an all- wise, all-good, 
 and free Being, Whatever is, is right, with regard to the disposition of God, 
 and its ultimate tendency; which, once granted, all complaints against 
 Providence are at an end. 
 
 COMMENTAKY ON EPISTLE II. 
 
 Ver. 2. The proper study, <fcc.] The poet having shown, in the first Epistle, 
 that the ways of God are too high for our comprehension, rightly draws this 
 conclusion, and methodically makes it the subject of his introduction to the 
 second, which treats of the nature of man. But here presently the accusers 
 of Providence would be apt to object, and say, "Admit that we ran into an 
 excess, when we pretended to censure or penetrate the designs of Providence, 
 a matter, perhaps, too high for us, yet have not you gone as far into the
 
 AX ESSAY ON MAN. 47S 
 
 opposite extreme, while you only seiid us to the knowledge of ourselves ? 
 You must mock us when you talk of this as a study ; for who can doubt but 
 we are intimately acquainted with our own nature ? The proper conclusion, 
 therefore, from your proof of our inability to comprehend the ways of God, is, 
 that we should turn ourselves to the study of the frame of general nature." 
 Thus, I say, would they be apt to object ; for, of all men, those who call 
 themselves freethinkers are most given up to pride ; especially to that kind 
 which consists in a boasted knowledge of man, the effects of which pride are 
 so well exposed in the first Epistle. The poet, therefore, to convince them 
 that this study is less easy than they imagine, replies, from ver. 2 to 19, to 
 the first part of the objection, by describing the dark and feeble state of the 
 human understanding, with regard to the knowledge of ourselves. And 
 further to strengthen this argument, he shows, in answer to the second part 
 of the objection, from ver. 18 to 31, that the highest advances in natural 
 knowledge may be easily acquired, and yet we, all the while, continue very 
 ignorant of ourselves. For that neither the clearest science, which results 
 from the Newtonian philosophy, nor the most sublime, which is taught by the 
 Platonic, will at all assist us in this self-study; nay, what is more, that 
 religion itself, when grown fanatical and enthusiastic, will be equally useless, 
 though pure and sober .religion will best instruct us in man's nature ; that 
 knowledge being necessary to religion, whose subject is man, considered in all 
 his relations, and consequently, whose object is God. 
 
 Ver. 31. Superior beings, etc.] To give this second argument its full force, 
 he illustrates it, from ver. 30 to 43, by the noblest example that ever was in 
 science, the incomparable Newton, who, although he penetrated so far beyond 
 others into the works of God, yet could go no further in the knowledge of his 
 own nature than the generality of his fellows. Of which the poet assigns this 
 very just and adequate reason, in all other sciences the understanding is 
 unchecked and uncontrolled by any opposite principle ; but in the science of 
 man, the passions overturn as fast as reason can build up. 
 
 Ver. 43. Trace science then, <fcc.] The conclusion, therefore, from the whole 
 is, from ver. 42 to 53, that as on the one hand, we should persist in the 
 study of nature, so, on the other, in order to arrive at science, we should pro- 
 ceed in the simplicity of truth ; and then the produce, though small, will yet 
 be real. 
 
 Ver. 53. Two principles, <fcc.] The poet having shown the difficulty which 
 attends the study of man, proceeds to remove it, by laying before us the 
 elements or true principles of this science, in an account of the origin, use, 
 and end of the passions ; which, in my opinion, contains the truest, clearest, 
 shortest, and consequently the best system of ethics that is anywhere to be 
 met with. He begins, from ver. 52 to 59, with pointing out the two grand 
 principles in human nature, self-love and reason. Describes their general 
 nature : the first sets man upon acting, the other regulates his action. How- 
 ever, these principles are natural, not moral; and, therefore, in themselves, 
 neither good nor evil, but so only as they are directed. This observation is 
 made with great judgment, in opposition to the desperate folly of those 
 fanatics, who, as the ascetic, vainly pretend to eradicate self-love ; or, as the 
 mystic, are more successful in stifling reason; and both, on the absurd fancy 
 of their being moral, not natural, principles. 
 
 Ver. 59. Self -law, the spring of motion, acts the smd ;] The poet proceeds, 
 from ver. 58 to 67, more minutely to mark out the distinct offices of these two 
 principles, which offices he had before assigned only in general ; and here he
 
 474 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 shows their necessity; for without self-love, as the spring, man would be 
 unaetive ; and without reason as the balance, active to no piirpose. 
 
 Ver. 67. Most strength the movi'ng principle requires-] Having thus ex- 
 plained the ends and offices of each principle, he goes on, from ver. 66 to 79, 
 to speak of their qualities ; and shows how they are fitted to discharge those 
 functions, and answer their respective intentions. The business of self-love 
 being to excite to action, it is quick and impetuous ; and moving instinctively, 
 has, like attraction, its force prodigiously increased as the object approaches, 
 and proportionably lessened as it recedes. On the contrary, reason, like the 
 Author of attraction, is always calm and sedate, and equally preserves itself 
 whether the object be near or far off. Hence the moving principle is made 
 more strong, though the restraining be more quick- sigh ted. The consequence 
 he draws from this is, that if we would not be carried away to our destruction, 
 we must always keep reason upon guard. 
 
 Ver. 79. Attention, &c.~\ But it would be objected, that if this account be 
 true, human life would be most miserable ; and even in the wisest, a perpetual 
 conflict between reason and the passions. To this, therefore, the poet replies, 
 from ver. 78 to 81, first, that Providence has so gracioxisly contrived, that 
 even in the voluntary exercise of reason, as in the mechanic motion of a limb, 
 habit makes what was at first done with pain, easy and natural. And 
 secondly, that the experience gained by the long exercise of reason, goes a 
 great way towards eluding the force of self-love. Now the attending to 
 reason, as here recommended, will gain us this habit and experience. Hence 
 it appears, that our station, in which reason is to be kept constantly upon 
 guard, is not so uneasy a one as may be at first imagined. 
 
 Ver. 81. Let subtle schoolmen, <fcc.] From this description of self-love and 
 reason, it follows, as the poet observes, from ver. 80 to 93, that both conspire 
 to one end, namely, human happiness, though they be not equally expert in 
 the choice of the means ; the difference being this, that the first hastily seizes 
 every thing which has the appearance of good ; the other weighs and examines 
 whether it be indeed what it appears. This shows, as he next observes, the 
 folly of the schoolmen, who consider them as two opposite principles, the one 
 good and the other evil. The observation is seasonable and judicious ; for 
 this dangerous school-opinion gives great support to the Manichean or 
 Zoroastrian error, the confutation of which was one of the author's chief ends 
 in writing. For if there be two principles in man, a good and evil, it is 
 natural to think him the joint product of the two Manichean Deities (the first 
 of which contributed to his reason, the other to his passions), rather than the 
 creature of one Individual Cause. This was Plutarch's opinion, and as we 
 may see in him, of some of the more ancient theistical philosophers. It was 
 of importance, therefore, to reprobate and subvert a notion that served to the 
 support of so dangerous an error ; and this the poet hath done with more 
 force and clearness than is often to be found in whole volumes written against 
 that'heretical opinion. 
 
 Ver. 93. Modes of self-love, <te.] Having given this account of the nature 
 of self-love in general, he comes now to anatomize it, in a discourse on the 
 passions, which he aptly names the modes of self-love. The object of all 
 these, he shows, from ver. 92 to 101, is good ; and when under the guidance 
 of reason, real good, either of ourselves or of another; for some goods, not 
 being capable of division, or communication, and reason at the same time 
 directing us to provide for ourselves, we therefore, iu pursuit of these objects, 
 sometimes aim at our own good, sometimes at the good of others. When
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 475 
 
 fairly aiming at our own, the quality is called prudence ; when at another's, 
 virtue. Hence as he shows, from ver. 100 to 105, appears the folly of the 
 stoics, who would eradicate the passions, things so necessary both to the good 
 of the individual aud of the kind. Which preposterous method of promoting 
 virtue he therefore very reasonably reproves. 
 
 Ver. 105. The rising tempest puts in act the seraZ,] But as it was from 
 observation of the evils occasioned by the passions, that the stoics thus 
 extravagantly projected their extirpation, the poet recurs, from ver. 104 to 
 111, to his grand principle, so often before, and to so good purpose, insisted 
 on, that partial ill is universal good; and shows, that though the tempest 
 of the passions, like that of the air, may tear and ravage some few parts 
 of nature in its passage, yet the salutary agitation produced by it preserves 
 the whole in life and vigour. This is his first argument against the stoics, 
 which he illustrates by a very beautiful similitude, on a hint taken from 
 Scripture : 
 
 Nor God alone in the still calm we find ; 
 
 He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind. 
 
 Ver. 111. Passions, like elements, <frc.] His second argument against the 
 stoics, from ver. 110 to 133, is, that passions go to the composition of a moral 
 character, just as elementary particles go to the composition of an organized 
 body. Therefore, for man to project the destruction of what composes his 
 very being is the height of extravagance. It is true, he tells us, that these 
 passions, which, in their natural state, like elements, are in perpetual jar, 
 must be tempered, softened, and united, in order to perfect the work of the 
 great plastic Artist ; who, in this office, employs human reason ; whose busi- 
 ness it is to follow the road of nature, and to observe the dictates of the 
 Deity ; follow her and God. The use and importance of this precept is evi- 
 dent : for in doing the first, she will discover the absurdity of attempting to 
 eradicate the passions ; in doing the second, she will learn how to make them 
 subservient to the interests of virtue. 
 
 Ver. 123. Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes-] His third argument 
 against the stoics, from ver. 122 to 127, is, that the passions are a continual 
 spur to the pursuit of happiness ; which, without these powerful inciters, we 
 should neglect, and sink into a senseless indolence. Now happiness is the end 
 of our creation ; and this excitement, the means to that end ; therefore, these 
 movers, the passions, are the instruments of God, which he hath put into the 
 hands of reason to work withal. 
 
 Ver. 127. All spread their charms, etc.] The poet now proceeds in his sub- 
 ject ; and this last observation leads him naturally to the discussion of his 
 next principle. He shows then, that though all the passions have their turn 
 in swaying the determinations of the mind, yet every man hath one master 
 passion, that at length stifles or absorbs all the rest. The fact he illustrates 
 at large in his Epistle to Lord Cobham. Here, from ver. 126 to 149, he giveth 
 us the cause of it. Those pleasures or goods, which are the objects of the 
 passions, affect the mind by striking on the senses; but as, through the 
 formation of the organs of our frame, every man hath some one sense stronger 
 and more acute than others, the object which strikes the stronger or acuter 
 sense, whatever it be, will be the object most desired ; and consequently, the 
 pursuit of that will be the ruling passion : That the difference of force in this 
 ruling passion shall at first, perhaps, be very small, or even imperceptible ; 
 but nature, habit, imagination, wit, nay, even reason itself, shall assist its
 
 476 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 growth, till it hath at length drawn and converted every other into itself. All 
 which is delivered in a strain of poetry so wonderfully sublime, as suspends, 
 for a while, the ruling passion in every reader, and engrosses his whole admi- 
 ration. This naturally leads the poet to lament the weakness and insuffi- 
 ciency of human reason, from ver. 148 to 161, and the purpose he had in so 
 doing, was plainly to intimate the necessity of a more perfect dispensation to 
 mankind. 
 
 Ver. 161. Yes, nature's road, <tc.] Now as it appears from the account here 
 given of the ruling passion and its cause, which results from the structure 
 of the organs, that it is the road of nature, the poet shows, from ver. 160 
 to 167, that this road is to be followed. So that the office of reason is 
 not to direct us what passion to exercise, but to assist us in rectifying, and 
 keeping within due bounds, that which nature hath so strongly impressed ; 
 because 
 
 A mightier pow'r the strong direction sends, 
 And sev'ral men impels to several ends. 
 
 Ver. 167. Like varying winds, d-c.] The poet, having proved that the ruling 
 passion (since nature hath given it us) is not to be overthrown, but rectified ; 
 the next inquiry will be, of what use the ruling passion is ; for an use it must 
 have, if reason be to treat it thus mildly. This use he shows us, from ver. 166 
 to 197, is twofold, natural and moral. 
 
 1. Its natural use is to conduct men steadily to one certain end, who would 
 otherwise be eternally fluctuating between the equal violence of various and 
 discordant passions, driving them up and down at random ; and, by that 
 means, to enable them to promote the good of society, by making each a con- 
 tributor to the common stock : 
 
 Let pow'r or knowledge, gold or glory, please, etc. 
 
 2. Its moral use is to ingraft our ruling virtue upon it ; and by that means 
 to enable us to promote our own good, by turning the exorbitancy of the ruling 
 passion into its neighbouring virtue : 
 
 See anger, zeal and fortitude supply, <tc. 
 
 The wisdom of the Divine Artist is, as the poet finely observes, very illus- 
 trious in this contrivance ; for the mind and body having now one common 
 interest, the efforts of virtue will have their force infinitely augmented : 
 
 Tis thus the mercury, <tc. 
 
 Ver. 197. Reason the bias, <fcc.] But lest it should be objected that thie 
 account favours the doctrine of necessity, and would insinuate that men are 
 only acted upon, in the production of good out of evil ; the poet teacheth, from 
 ver. 196 to 203, that man is a free agent, and hath it in his power to turn the 
 natural passions into virtues or into vices, properly so called : 
 
 Reason the bias turns to good from ill, 
 And Nero reigns a Titus, if he wilL 
 
 Secondly, if it should be objected, that though he doth, indeed, tell us some 
 actions arc beneficial and some hurtful, yet he could not call those virtuous, 
 nor these vicious, because, as he hath described things, the motive appears to 
 be only the gratification of some passion, give me leave to answer for him, that 
 this would be mistaking the argument, which, to ver. 249 of this epistle, con-
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 477 
 
 siders the passions only with regard to society, that is, with regard to their 
 effects rather than their motives : That, however, it is his design to teach that 
 actions are properly virtuous and vicious ; and though it be difficult to distin- 
 guish genuine virtue from spurious, they having both the same appearance, 
 and both the same public effects, yet that they may be disentangled. If it be 
 asked, by what means ? he replies, from ver. 202 to 205, by conscience ; the 
 God within the mind ; and this is to the purpose ; for it is a man's own con- 
 cern, and no one's else, to know whether his virtue be pure and solid ; for what 
 is it to others, whether this virtue (while, as to them, the effect of it is the 
 same) be real or imaginary ? 
 
 Ver. 205. Extremes in nature equal ends produce, etc.] But still it will be 
 said, Why all this difficulty to distinguish true virtue from false ? The poet 
 shows why, from ver. 204 to 211, that though indeed vice and virtue so invade 
 each other's bounds, that sometimes we can scarce tell where one ends and the 
 other begins, yet great purposes are served thereby, no less than the perfecting 
 the constitution of the whole, as lights and shades, which run into one another 
 insensibly in a well-wrought picture, make the harmony and spirit of the 
 composition. But on this account to say there is neither vice nor virtue, the 
 poet shows, from ver. 211 to 217, would be just as wise as to say, there is 
 neither black nor white, because the shade of that, and the light of this, often 
 run into one another, and are mutually lost : 
 
 Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain ; 
 Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain. 
 
 This is an error of speculation, which leads men so foolishly to conclude, that 
 there is neither vice nor virtue. 
 
 Ver. 217. Vice is a monster, <&c.] There is another error, an error of prac- 
 tice, which hath more general and hurtful effects; and is next considered, from 
 ver. 216 to 221. It is this, that though, at the first aspect, vice be so horrible 
 as to fright the beholder, yet, when by habit we are once grown familiar with 
 her, we first suffer, and in time begin to lose the memory of her nature, which 
 necessarily implies an equal ignorance in the nature of virtue. Hence men 
 conclude that there is neither one nor the other. 
 
 Ver. 221. But where th' extreme of vice, cfcc.] But it is not only that extreme 
 of vice which stands next to virtue, which betrays us into these mistakes. 
 We are deceived too, as he shows us, from ver. 220 to 231, by our observa- 
 tions concerning the other extreme. For, from the extreme of vice being 
 unsettled, men conclude that vice itself is only nominal, at least rather com- 
 parative than real. 
 
 Ver. 231. Virtuous and vicious ev'rij man must be,] There is yet a third 
 cause of this error of no vice, no virtue, composed of the other two, i.e. partly 
 speculative, and partly practical. And this also the poet considers, from 
 ver. 230 to 239, showing it ariseth from the imperfection of the best characters, 
 and the inequality of all ; whence it happens that no man is extremely virtu- 
 ous or vicious, nor extremely constant in the pursuit of either. Why it so 
 happens, the poet informs us, who with admirable sagacity assigns the cause 
 
 in this line : 
 
 For, vice or virtue, self directs it still. 
 
 An adherence or regard to what is, in the sense of the world, a man's own 
 interest, making an extreme, in either, almost impossible. Its effect in 
 keeping a good man from the extreme of -virtue needs no explanation ; and, 
 in an ill man, self-interest showing him the necessity of some kind of reputa
 
 478 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 tion, the procuring and preserving that will necessarily keep him from the 
 extreme of vice. 
 
 Ver. 239. That counter-works each folly and caprice;] The mention of 
 this principle, that self directs vice and virtue, and its consequence, which 
 is, that 
 
 Each individual seeks a sev'ral goal, 
 
 leads the author to observe, 
 
 That heav'n's great view is one, and that the whole. 
 
 And this brings him naturally round again to his main subject, namely, God's 
 producing good out of ill, which he proseciites from ver. 233 to 249. 
 
 Ver. 249. Heaven forming each on other to depend,} I. Hitherto the poet 
 hath been employed in discoursing of the use of the passions, with regard to 
 society at large ; and in freeing his doctrine from objections. This is the first 
 general division of the subject of this epistle. 
 
 II. He comes now to show, from ver. 248 to 261, the use of these passions, 
 with regard to the more confined circle of our friends, relations, and acquaint- 
 ance ; and this is the second general division. 
 
 Ver. 261. Whatever the passion, <fce.] III. The poet having thus shown the 
 use of the passions in society and in domestic life, comes, in the last place, 
 from ver. 260 to the end, to show their use to the individual, even in their 
 illusions; the imaginary happiness they present, helping to make the real 
 miseries of life less insupportable : and this is his third general division : 
 
 Opinion gilds with varying rays 
 Those painted clouds that beautify our days, &c. 
 One prospect lost, another still we gain ; 
 And not a vanity is giv'n in vain. 
 
 Which must needs vastly raise our idea of God's goodness ; who hath not only 
 provided more than a counterbalance of real happiness to human miseries, but 
 hath even, in his infinite compassion, bestowed on those who were so foolish 
 as not to have made this provision, an imaginary happiness, that they may not 
 be quite overborne with the load of human miseries. This is the poet's great 
 and noble thought, as strong and solid as it is new and ingenious. It teaches, 
 that these illusions are the faults and follies of men, which they wilfully fall 
 into, and thereby deprive themselves of much happiness, and expose them- 
 selves to equal misery ; but that still, God, according to his universal way of 
 working, graciously turns these faults and follies so far to the advantage of his 
 miserable creatures, as to become, for a time, the solace and support of their 
 
 distresses : 
 
 Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 479 
 
 COMMENTARY ON EPISTLE III. 
 
 WE are now come to the third Epistle of the Essay on Han. It having 
 been shown, in explaining the origin, use, and end of the passions, in the 
 second Epistle, that man hath social as well as selfish passions, that doctrine 
 naturally introduceth the third, which treats of man as a social animal, and 
 connects it with the second, which considered him as an individual. And as 
 the conclusion from the subject of the first Epistle made the introduction to 
 the second, so here again, the conclusion of the second 
 
 Ev'n moan self-love becomes, by force divine 
 The scale to measure others' wants by thine, 
 
 inaketh the introduction to the third : 
 
 Here then we rest : ' The Universal Cause 
 Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.' 
 
 The reason of variety in those laws, which tend to one and the same end, the 
 good of the whole generally, is, because the good of the individual is likewise 
 to be provided for ; both which together make up the good of the whole 
 universally. And this is the cause, as the poet says elsewhere, that 
 
 Each individual seeks a several goal. 
 
 But to prevent our resting there, God hath made each need the assistance o.f 
 another ; and so 
 
 On mutual wants built mutual happiness. 
 
 It was necessary to explain the two first lines, the better to see tho 
 pertinency and force of what followeth, from ver. 2 to 7, where the poet 
 warns such to take notice of this truth, whose circumstances placing them 
 in an imaginary station of independence, and inducing a real habit of insen- 
 sibility to mutual wants (from which wants general happiness results), make 
 them but too apt to overlook the true system of things ; viz. the men in full 
 health and opulence. This caution was necessary with respect to society ; but 
 still more necessary with respect to religion. Therefore he especially recom- 
 mends the memory of it as well to the clergy as laity when they preach or 
 pray ; because the preacher who doth not consider the First Cause under this 
 view, as a Being consulting the good of the whole, must needs give a very 
 unworthy idea of him ; and the supplicant, who prayeth as one not related to 
 a whole, or indifferent to the happiness of it, will not only pray in vain, but 
 offend his Maker by neglecting the interest of his dispensation. 
 
 Ver. 7. Look round our world; &c.~\ He now introduceth his system of 
 human sociability, ver. 7, 8, by showing it to be the dictate of the Creator ; 
 and that man, in this, did but follow the example of general nature, which is 
 united in one close system of benevolence. 
 
 Ver. 9. See plastic nature working to this end,"\ This he proveth, first, from 
 ver. 8 to 13, on the noble theory of attraction, from the economy of the 
 material world, where there is a general conspiracy in all the particles of 
 matter to work for one end, the use, beauty, and harmony of the whole mass.
 
 480 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Ver. 13. See matter next, JL-c.] The second argument, from ver. 12 to 27, is 
 taken from the vegetable and animal world, whose parts serve mutually for 
 the production, support, and sustentation of each other. But the observation, 
 that God 
 
 Connects each being, greatest with the least ; 
 
 Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast : 
 
 All served, all serving, 
 
 awaking again the pride of his impious adversaries, who cannot bear that 
 man should be thought to be serving as well as served, he takes this occasion 
 again to humble them, from ver. 26 to 49, by the same kind of argument 
 he had so successfully employed in the first Epistle, and which the comment 
 on that epistle hath considered at large. 
 
 Ver. 49. Grant that the powerful still the weak control;'] However, his 
 adversaries, loth to give up the question, will reason upon the matter ; and 
 we are now to suppose them objecting against Providence in this manner. 
 " "We grant," they say, "that in the irrational, as in the inanimate creation, 
 all is served, and all is serving : but with regard to man, the case is different : 
 he standeth single : for his reason hath endowed him both with power and 
 address sufficient to make all things serve him ; and his self-love, of which 
 you have so largely provided for him, will indispose him, in his turn, to serve 
 any : therefore your theory is imperfect." Not so, replies the poet, from 
 ver. 48 to 79. I grant that man, indeed, affects to be the wit and tyrant of the 
 whole, and would fain shake off 
 
 that chain of love 
 Combining all below and all above : 
 
 But nature, even by the very gift of reason, checks this tyrant. For reason, 
 endowing man with the ability of setting together the memory of the past 
 with his conjectures about the future, and past misfortunes making him 
 apprehensive of more to come, this disposeth him to pity and relieve others 
 in a state of suffering. And the passion growing habitual, naturally 
 extendeth its effects to all that have a sense of suffering. Now as brutes 
 have neither man's reason, nor his inordinate self-love, to draw them from 
 the system of beneficence, so they wanted not, and therefore have not, this 
 human sympathy of another's misery, by which passion, we see, those 
 qualities, in man, balance one another, and so retain him in that orderly 
 connexion, in which Providence hath placed its whole creation. But this is 
 not all : man's interest and amusement, his vanity and luxury, tie him still 
 closer to the system of beneficence, by obliging him to provide for the support 
 of other animals, and though it be, for the most part, only to devour them 
 with the greater gust, yet this does not abate the proper happiness of the 
 animals so preserved, to whom Providence hath not imparted the useless 
 knowledge of their end. From all which it appears, that the theory is yet 
 uniform and perfect. 
 
 Ver. 79. Whether with reason, <fcc.] But even to this as a caviller would still 
 object, we must suppose he does so. "Admit," says he, "that nature hath 
 endowed all animals, whether human or brutal, with such faculties as 
 admirably fit them to promote the general good, yet, in its care for this, hath 
 not nature neglected to provide for the private good of the individual ? We 
 have cause to think she hath ; and we suppose, it was on exclusive con- 
 sideration, that she kept back from brutes the gift of reason (so necessary a 
 means of private happiness), because reason, as we find in the case of man,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 481 
 
 where there is occasion for all the complicated contrivance you have described 
 above, to make the effects of his passions counter-work the immediate powers 
 of his reason, in order to keep him subservient to the general system ; reason, 
 we say, naturally tendeth to draw beings into a private independent system. " 
 This the poet answers, by showing, from ver. 78 to 109, that the happiness of 
 animal and that of human life are widely different : the happiness of human 
 life consisting in the improvement of the mind, can be procured by reason 
 only ; but the happiness of animal life consisting in the gratifications of sense, 
 is best promoted by instinct. And, with regard to the regular and constant 
 operation of each, in that, instinct hath plainly the advantage ; for here God 
 directs immediately ; there only mediately through man. 
 
 Ver. 109. God, in the iiature of each being, <tc.] The author now cometh 
 to the main subject of his epistle, the proof of man's sociability, from the 
 two general societies composed by him ; the natural, subject to paternal 
 authority ; and the civil, subject to that of a magistrate. This he hath the 
 address to introduce, from what had preceded, in so easy and natural a 
 manner, as showeth him to have the art of giving all the grace to the 
 dryness and severity of method, as well as wit to the strength and depth of 
 reason. The philosophic nature of his work requiring he should show by 
 what reason those societies were introduced, this affords him an opportunity 
 of sliding gracefully and easily from the preliminaries into the main subject ; 
 and so of giving his work that perfection of method, which we find only in 
 the compositions of great writers. For having just before, though to a 
 different purpose, described the power of bestial instinct to attain the happi- 
 ness of the individual, he goeth on, in speaking of instinct as it is serviceable 
 both to that, and to the kind, from ver. 108 to 147, to illustrate the original 
 of society. He showeth, that though, as he had before observed, God had 
 founded the proper bliss of each creature in the nature of its own existence, 
 yet these not being independent individuals, but parts of a whole, God, to 
 bless that whole, built mutual happiness on mutual wants. Now, for the 
 supply of mutual wants, creatures must necessarily come together, which is 
 the first ground of society amongst men. He then proceeds to that called 
 natural, subject to paternal authority, and arising from the union of the two 
 sexes ; describes the imperfect image of it in brutes ; then explains it at 
 large in all its causes and effects. And lastly shows, that, as in fact, like 
 mere animal society, it is founded and preserved by mutual wants, the 
 supplial of which causeth mutual happiness, so it is likewise in right, as a 
 rational society, by equity, gratitude, and the observance of the relation 
 of things in general. 
 
 Ver. 147. Nor think in nature's state they blindly trod;] But the atheist 
 and Hobbist, against whom Mr. Pope argueth, deny the principle of right, or 
 of natural justice, before the invention of civil compact, which, they say, gave 
 being to it ; and accordingly have had the effrontery publicly to declare, that 
 a state of nature was a state of war. This quite subverteth the poet's natural 
 society ; therefore, after this account of that state, he proceedeth to support 
 the reality of it, by overthrowing the opponent principle of no natural 
 justice ; which he doth, from ver. 146 to 169, by showing in a fine description 
 of the state of innocence, as represented in Scripture, that a state of nature 
 was so far from being without natural justice, that it was, at first, the reign 
 of God, where right and truth universally prevailed. 
 
 Ver. 169. See him from nature rising slow to art/] Strict method (in which, 
 by this time, the reader finds the poet to be more conversant, than some were 
 
 VOL. II. POETJir. I I
 
 482 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 aware of) leads him next to speak of that society, which succeeded the natural, 
 namely, the civil. He first explains, from ver. 169 to 199, the intermediate 
 means which led mankind from natural to civil society. These were the inven- 
 tion and improvement of arts. For while men lived in a mere state of nature, 
 there was no need of any other government than the paternal ; but when arts 
 were found out and improved, then that more perfect form, under the direction 
 of a magistrate, became necessary. And for these reasons ; first, to bring those 
 arts, already found, to perfection; and, secondly, to secure the product of 
 them to their rightful proprietors. The poet, therefore, comes now, as we 
 say, to the invention of arts ; but being always intent on the great end for 
 which he wrote his Essay, namely, to mortify that pride which occasions all 
 the impious complaints against Providence, he speaks of these inventions 
 as only lessons learned of mere animals guided by instinct, and thus, at 
 the same time, gives a new instance of the wonderful Providence of God, 
 who hath continued to teach mankind in a way, not only proper to humble 
 human pride, but to raise our idea of divine wisdom to the highest pitch. 
 This he does in a prosopopoeia the most sublime that ever entered into the 
 human imagination : 
 
 Thus then to man the voice of nature spake : 
 "Go, from the creatures thy instructions take, &c., 
 And for those arts mere instinct could afford, 
 Be crowned as monarchs, or as Gods adored." 
 
 The delicacy of the poet's address in the first part of the last line is very 
 remarkable. In this paragraph he hath given an account of those intermediate 
 means which led men from natural to civil society, that is to say, the inven- 
 tion and improvement of arts. Now here, on his conclusion of this account, 
 and on his entry upon the description of civil society itself, he connects the 
 two parts the most gracefully that can be conceived, by this true historical cir- 
 cumstance, that it was the invention of those arts which raised to the magis- 
 tracy, in this new society formed for the perfecting of them. 
 
 Ver. 199. Great nature spoke-] After all this necessary preparation, the 
 poet shows, from ver. 198 to 209, how civil society followed, and the advan- 
 tages it produced. 
 
 Ver. 209. Thus states were formed-} Having thus explained the original of 
 civil society, he shows us next, from ver. 208 to 215, that to this society a 
 civil magistrate, properly so called, did belong. And this in confutation of 
 that idle hypothesis, which pretends that God conferred the regal title on the 
 fathers of families ; from whence men, when they had instituted society, were 
 to fetch their governors. On the contrary, our author shows that a king was 
 unknown till common interest, which led men to institute civil government, 
 led them at the same time to institute a governor. However, that it is true 
 that the same wisdom or valour, which gained regal obedience from sons to 
 the sire, procured kings a paternal authority, and made them considered as 
 fathers of their people, which probably was the original (and, while mistaken, 
 continues to be the chief support) of that slavish error, antiquity representing 
 its earliest monarchs under the idea of a common father, irar^p avSpiav. 
 Afterwards, indeed, they became a kind of foster-fathers, irot/iteVa \aS>v, as 
 Homer calls one of them, till at length they began to devour that flock they 
 had been so long accustomed to shear; and, as Plutarch says of Cecrops, 
 CK xplfToC ftatn\fws &ypiov /col SpaKovrcaSr] yfv6^fvov rvpavvov. 
 
 Ver. 215. Till then, by nature crowned, die.} The poet now returns, at
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 483 
 
 ver. 215 to 241, to what lie had left unfinished in nis description of natural 
 society. This, which appears irregular, is, indeed, a fine instance of his 
 thorough knowledge of method. I will explain it. This third epistle, we 
 see, considers man with respect to society; the second, with respect to him- 
 self; and the fourth, with respect to happiness. But in none of these relations 
 does the poet ever lose sight of him under that in which he stands to God. 
 It will follow, therefore, that speaking of him with respect to society, the 
 account would be most imperfect, were he not at the same time considered 
 with respect to his religion ; for between these two there is a close, and, while 
 things continue in order, a most interesting connexion : 
 
 True faith, true policy united ran ; 
 
 That was but love of God, and this of man. 
 
 Now religion suffering no change or depravation when man first entered into 
 civil society, but continuing the same as in the state of nature, the author, to 
 avoid repetition, and to bring the account of true and false religion nearer to 
 one another, in order to contrast them by the advantage of that situation, 
 deferred giving an account of his religion till he had spoken of the origin of 
 civil society. Thence it is, that he here resumes the account of the state of 
 nature, that is, so much of it as he had left untouched, which was only the 
 religion of it. This consisting in the knowledge of the one God, the Creator 
 of all tilings, he shows how men came by that knowledge : that it was either 
 found out by reason, which giving to every effect a cause, instructed them to 
 go from cause to cause, till they came to the first, who, being causeless, would 
 necessarily be judged self-existent ; or else that it was taught by tradition, 
 which preserved the memory of the creation. He then tells us what these 
 men, undebauched by false science, understood by God's nature and attri- 
 butes : first, of God's nature, that they easily distinguished between the 
 worker and the work ; saw the substance of the Creator to be distinct and 
 different from that of the creature, and so were in no danger of falling into 
 the horrid opinion of the Greek philosophers, and their follower, Spinoza. 
 And simple reason teaching them that the Creator was but one, they easily 
 saw that all was right, and so were in as little danger of falling into the 
 Manichean error, which, when oblique wit had broken the steady light of 
 reason, imagined all was not right, having before imagined that all was 
 not the work of One. Secondly, he shows, what they understood of God's 
 attributes ; that they easily acknowledged a Father where they found a 
 Deity, and could not conceive a sovereign Being to be any other than a 
 sovereign Good. 
 
 Ver. 241. Who first taught souls enslaved, &c.'\ Order leadeth the poet to 
 speak, from ver. 240 to 245, of the corruption of civil society into tyranny, 
 and its causes ; and here, with all the dexterity of address, as well as force ot 
 truth, he observes, it arose from the violation of that great principle, which 
 he so much insists upon throughout his Essay, that each was made for the use 
 of all. We may be sure, that in this corruption, where right or natural justice 
 was cast aside, and violence, the atheist's justice, presided in its stead, religion 
 would follow the fate of civil society. We know, from ancient history, it did 
 so. Accordingly Mr. Pope, from ver. 244 to 269, together with corrupt 
 politics, describes corrupt religion and its causes. He first informs us, agree- 
 able to his exact knowledge of antiquity, that it was the politician, and not 
 the priest (as the illiterate tribe of freethinkers would make us believe), who 
 first corrupted religion. Secondly, that the superstition he brought in was 
 
 i i 2
 
 484 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 not invented by him, as an engine to play upon others (as the dreaming atheist 
 feigns, who would thus account for the origin of religion), but was a trap he 
 first fell into himself: 
 
 Superstition taught the tyrant awe. 
 
 Ver. 269. So drives self-love, <tc.] The inference our author draws from all 
 this, from ver. 268 to 283, is, that self-lore driveth through right and wrong ; 
 it causeth the tyrant to violate the rights of mankind ; and it causeth the 
 people to vindicate that violation. For self-love being common to the whole 
 species, and setting each individual in pursuit of the same objects, it became 
 necessary for each, if he would secure his own, to provide for the safety of 
 another's. And thus equity and benevolence arose from that same self-love 
 which had given birth to avarice and injustice : 
 
 His safety must his liberty restrain ; 
 
 All join to guard what each desires to gain. 
 
 The poet hath not anywhere shown greater address, in the disposition of 
 this work, than with regard to the inference before us, which not only giveth 
 a proper and timely support to what had been advanced in the second Epistle 
 concerning the nature and effects of self-love, but is a necessary introduction 
 to what follows, concerning the reformation of religion and society ; as we 
 shall see presently. 
 
 Ver. 283. 'Twos then, the studious head, Ac.'] The poet hath now described 
 the rise, perfection, and decay of civil policy and religion in the more early 
 times. But the design had been imperfect, had he dropped his discourse here. 
 There was, in after-ages, a recovery of these from their several corruptions. 
 Accordingly, he hath chosen that happy era for the conclusion of his song. 
 But as good and ill governments and religions succeed one another without 
 ceasing, he now leaveth facts, and turneth his discourse, from ver. 282 to 295, 
 to speak of a more lasting reform of mankind, in the invention of those philo- 
 sophic principles, by whose observance a policy and a religion may be for ever 
 kept from sinking into tyranny and superstition : 
 
 "Twas then, the studious head, or generous mind, 
 Follow'r of God, or friend of human kind, 
 Poet or patriot, rose but to restore 
 The faith and moral, nature gave before ; <tc. 
 
 The easy and just transition into this subject from the foregoing is admirable. 
 In the foregoing he had described the effects of self-love; and now, with great 
 art and high probability, he maketh men's observations on these effects the 
 occasion of those discoveries which they have made of the true principles of 
 policy and religion, described in the present paragraph ; and this he evidently 
 hinteth at in that fine transition : 
 
 'Twas then, the studious head, &c. 
 
 Ver. 295. Such is the world's great harmony, <kc.~\ Having thus described 
 the true principles of civil and ecclesiastical policy, he proceedeth, from 
 ver. 294 to 303, to illustrate the harmony between the two policies, by the 
 universal harmony of nature : 
 
 Such is the world's great harmony, that springs 
 From order, union, full consent of things. 
 
 Thus, as in the beginning of this epistle he supported the general principle of 
 mutual icvc or association, by considerations drawn from the particular pro-
 
 AN ESSAY OX MAX. 485 
 
 perties of matter, and the mutual dependence between vegetable and animal 
 life, so, in the conclusion, he hath enforced the particular principles of civil 
 and religious society, from that general harmony, which springs, in part, from 
 those properties and dependencies. 
 
 Ver. 303. For forms of government let fools contest ; <c.] But now the poet, 
 having so much commended the invention and inventors of the philosophic 
 principles of religion and government, lest an evil use should be made of this, 
 by men's resting in theory and speculation, as they have been always apt to 
 do in matters where practice makes their happiness, he cautions his reader, 
 from ver. 302 to 311, against this error. The seasonableness of this reproof 
 will appear evident enough to those who know that mad disputes about liberty 
 and prerogative had once well nigh overturned our constitution ; while others 
 about mystery and church authority had almost destroyed the very spirit of 
 our religion. 
 
 Ver. 311. Man, like the, generous vine, <fec.] Having thus largely con- 
 sidered man in his social capacity, the poet, in order to fix a momentous 
 truth in the mind of his reader, concludes the Epistle in recapitulating the 
 two principles which concur to the support of this part of his character, 
 namely, self-love and social, and in showing that they are only two different 
 motions of the appetite to good, by which the Author of Nature hath en- 
 abled man to find his own happiness in the happiness of the whole. This 
 he illustrates with a thought as sublime as that general harmony which he 
 describes : 
 
 On their own axis as the planets run. 
 
 Yet make at once their circle round the sun ; 
 
 So two consistent motions act the soul ; 
 
 And one regards itself, and one the whole. 
 
 Thus God and nature linked the general frame, 
 
 And bade self-love and social be the same. 
 
 For he hath the art of converting poetical ornament into philosophic reason- 
 ing; and of improving a simile into an analogical argument ; of which, more 
 in our next. 
 
 COMMENTAEY ON EPISTLE IV. 
 
 THE two foregoing Epistles having considered man with regard to the means 
 (that is, in all his relations, whether as an individual, or a member of society), 
 this last comes to consider him with regard to the end, that is, happiness. It 
 opens with an invocation to happiness, in the manner of the ancient poets; 
 who, when destitute of a patron god, applied to the muse ; and if she was not 
 at leisure, took up with any simple virtue next at hand, to inspire and prosper 
 their undertakings. This was the ancient invocation, which few modem poets 
 have had the art to imitate with any degree either of spirit or decorum : but 
 our author has contrived to make his subservient to the method and reasoning 
 of his philosophic composition. I will endeavour to explain so uncommon a 
 beauty. It is to be observed, that the pagan deities had each their several 
 names and places of abode, with some of which they were supposed to be more
 
 486 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 delighted than others, and consequently to be then most propitious when 
 invoked by the favourite name and place. Hence we find the hymns of 
 Homer, Orpheus, and Callimachus to be chiefly employed in reckoning up 
 the several titles and habitations by which the patron god was known and 
 distinguished. Our poet hath made these two circumstances serve to introduce 
 his subject. His purpose is to write of happiness : method, therefore, requires 
 that he first define what men mean by happiness, and this he does in the 
 ornament of a poetic invocation, in which the several names that happiness 
 goes by are enumerated : 
 
 Oh happiness ! our being's end and aim ! 
 
 Good, pleasure, ease, content ! whate'er thy name. 
 
 After the definition, that which follows next is the proposition, which is, 
 that human happiness consists not in external advantages, but in virtue. 
 For the subject of this Epistle is to detect the false notions of happiness, and 
 to settle and explain the true ; and this the poet lays down in the next sixteen 
 lines. Now the enumeration of the several situations where happiness is 
 supposed to reside, is a summary of false happiness placed in externals : 
 
 Plant of celestial seed ! if dropped below, 
 Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow f 
 Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shrine, 
 Or deep with diamonds in the naming mine ? 
 Twined with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield, 
 Or reaped in iron harvests of the field ? 
 
 The six remaining lines deliver the true notion of happiness, and show that it 
 is rightly placed in virtue, which is summed up in these two : 
 
 Fixed to no spot is happiness sincere 
 Tis no where to be found, or every where. 
 
 The poet, having thus defined his terms, and laid down his proposition, pro- 
 ceeds to the support of his thesis, the various arguments of which make up 
 the body of the epistle. 
 
 Ver. 19. Ask for the learn'd, etc.] He begins, from ver. 18 to 29, with detecting 
 the false notions of happiness. These are of two kinds, the philosophical and 
 popular. The popular he had recapitulated in the invocation, when happiness 
 was called upon, at her several supposed places of abode : the philosophical 
 only remained to be delivered : 
 
 Ask of the learn'd the way ? The learn'd are blind ; 
 This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind : 
 Some place the bliss in action, some in ease ; 
 Those call it pleasure, and contentment these. 
 
 They differed as well in the means, as in the nature of the end. Some placed 
 happiness in action, some in contemplation ; the first called it pleasure, the 
 second ease. Of those who placed it in action and called it pleasure, the route 
 they pursued either sunk them into sensual pleasures, which ended in pain ; 
 or led them in search of imaginary perfections, unsuitable to their nature and 
 station, see Ep. i., which ended in vanity. Of those who placed it in ease, 
 the contemplative station they were fixed in made some, for their quiet, find 
 truth in every thing ; others, in nothing : 
 
 Who thus define it, say they more or less 
 Than this, that happiness is happiness ?
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 487 
 
 The confutation of these philosophic errors he shows to be very easy, one 
 common fallacy running through them all, namely this, that instead of telling 
 us in what the happiness of human nature consists, which was what was asked 
 of them, each busies himself in explaining in what he placed his own. 
 
 Ver. 29. Take nature 1 s path, <fcc.] The poet then proceeds, from ver. 28 to 
 35, to reform their mistakes ; and shows them that, if they will but take the 
 road of nature, and leave that of mad opinion, they will soon find happiness 
 to be a good of the species, and, like common sense, equally distributed to all 
 mankind. 
 
 Ver. 35. Remember, man, <fcc.] Having exposed the two false species of hap- 
 piness, the philosophical and popular, and announced the true ; in order to 
 establish the last, he goes on to a confutation of the two former. 
 
 I. He first, from ver. 34 to 49, confutes the philosophical, which, as we 
 said, makes happiness a particular, not a general good. And this two ways ; 
 1. From his grand principle, that God acts by general laws; the consequence 
 of which is, that happiness, which supports the well-being of every system, 
 must needs be universal, and not partial, as the philosophers conceived. 2. From 
 fact, that man instinctively concurs with this designation of Providence, to 
 make happiness universal, by his having no delight in any thing uncommu 
 nicated or uncommuuicable. 
 
 Ver. 49. Order is Jicavcris first law ;] II. In the second place, from ver. 48 
 to 67, he confutes the popular error concerning happiness, namely, that it con- 
 sists in externals. This he does, first, by inquiring into the reasons of the 
 present providential disposition of external goods, a topic of confutation 
 chosen with the greatest accuracy and penetration. For, if it appears they 
 were given in the manner we see them distributed, for reasons different from 
 the happiness of individuals, it is absurd tc think that they should make part 
 of that happiness. He shows, therefore, that disparity of external possessions 
 among men was for the sake of society : 1. To promote the harmony and 
 happiness of a system ; because the want of external goods in some, and the 
 abundance in others, increase general harmony in the obligor and obliged. 
 Yet here, says he, mark the impartial wisdom of heaven ; this very inequality 
 of externals, by contributing to general harmony and order, produceth an 
 equality of happiness amongst individuals. 2. To prevent perpetual discord 
 amongst men equal in power, which an equal distribution of external goods 
 would necessarily occasion. From hence he concludes, that as external goods 
 were not given for the reward of virtue, but for many different purposes, 
 God could not, if he intended happiness for all, place it in the enjoyment of 
 externals. 
 
 Ver. 67. Fortune her gifts may variously dispose, &c.~\ His second argument, 
 from ver. 66 to 73, against the popular error of happiness being placed in 
 externals, is, that the possession of them is inseparably attended with fear ; 
 the want of them with hope ; which directly crossing all their pretensions to 
 making happy, evidently shows that God had placed happiness elsewhere. 
 And hence, in concluding this argument, he takes occasion, from ver. 72 to 
 77, to upbraid the desperate folly and impiety of those who, in spite of God 
 and nature, will yet attempt to place happiness in externals : 
 
 Oh sons of earth ! attempt ye still to rise, 
 By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies ? 
 Heav'n still with laughter the vain toil surveys, 
 And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
 
 488 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Ver. 77. Know, all the good, &c. ] The poet having thus confuted the two 
 errors concerning happiness, the philosophical and popular, and proved thai 
 true happiness was neither solitary and partial, nor yet placed in externals, 
 goes on, from ver. 76 to 83, to show in what it doth consist. He had before 
 said in general, and repeated it, that happiness lay in common to the whole 
 species. He now brings us better acquainted with it, in a more explicit 
 account of its nature, and tells us, it is all contained in health, peace, and 
 competence ; but that these are to be gained only by virtue, namely, by 
 temperance, innocence, and industry. 
 
 Ver. 83. TJte good or bad, <fcc.] Hitherto the poet hath only considered 
 Aealth and peace : 
 
 But health consists with temperance alone ; 
 And peace, oh virtue ! peace is all thy own. 
 
 One head yet remained to be spoken to, namely, competence. In the pursuit 
 of health and peace there is no danger of running into excess ; but the case is 
 different with regard to competence : here wealth and affluence would be apt 
 to be mistaken for it, in men's passionate pursuit after external goods. To 
 obviate this mistake, therefore, the poet shows, from ver. 82 to 93, that, as 
 exorbitant wealth adds nothing to the happiness arising from a competence, 
 so, as it is generally ill-gotten, it is attended with circumstances which weaken 
 another part of this triple cord, namely, peace. 
 
 Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense, 
 Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence. 
 But health consists with temperance alone ; 
 And peace, oh virtue ! peace is all thy own. 
 
 Ver. 93. Oh blind to truth, tfcc.] Our author having thus largely confuted 
 the mistake, that happiness consists in externals, proceeds to expose the 
 terrible consequences of such an opinion, on the sentiments and practice of all 
 sorts of men; making the dissolute, impious and atheistical; the. religious, 
 uncharitable and intolerant; and the good, restless and discontent. For 
 when it is once taken for granted, that happiness consists in externals, it is 
 immediately seen that ill men are often more happy than the good, which sets 
 all conditions on objecting to the ways of Providence, and some even on 
 rashly attempting to rectify his dispensations, though by the violation of all 
 laws, divine and human. Now this being the most important part of the 
 subject under consideration, is deservedly treated most at large. And here it 
 will be proper to take notice of the art of the poet in making this confutation 
 serve, at the same time, for a full solution of all objections which might be 
 made to his main proposition, that happiness consists not in externals. 
 
 1. He begins, first of all, with the atheistical complainers ; and pursues 
 their impiety from ver. 93 to 131. 
 
 Oh blind to truth ! and God's whole scheme below, Ac. 
 
 Ver. 97. But fools, the good alone unhappy call, <fcc.] He exposes their 
 folly, even in their own notions of external goods. 1. By examples, from 
 ver. 98 to 111, where he shows, first, that if good men have been untimely 
 cut off, this is not to be ascribed to their virtue, but to a contempt of life, 
 which hurried them into dangers. Secondly, That if they will still persist in 
 ascribing untimely death to virtue, they must needs, on the same principle,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 489 
 
 ascribe long life to it also ; consequently, as the argument, in fact, concludes 
 both ways, in logic it concludes neither. 
 
 Say, was it virtue, more though hsav'n ne'er gave, 
 Lamented Digby ! sunk thee to the grave ? 
 Tell me, if virtue made the son expire, 
 Why, full of days and honour, lives the sire ? 
 
 Ver. 111. What makes all physical or moral ill?] 2. Ho exposes their 
 folly, from ver. 110 to 131, by considerations drawn from the system of 
 nature : and these twofold, natural and moral. You accuse God, says he, 
 because the good man is subject to natural and moral evil. Let us see whence 
 these proceed. Natural evil is the necessary consequence of a material world 
 so constituted. But that this constitution was best, we have proved in the 
 first Epistle. Moral evil ariseth from the depraved will of man. Therefore 
 neither one nor the other from God. But you say, adds the poet, to these 
 impious complaiuers, that though it be fit man should suffer the miseries 
 which he brings upon himself, by the commission of moral evil ; yet it seems 
 unfit that his innocent posterity should bear a share of the burden. To this, 
 says he, I reply, 
 
 We just as wisely might of heav'n complain 
 That righteous Abel was destroyed by Cain, 
 As that the righteous son is ill at ease, 
 When his lewd father gave the dire disease. 
 
 But you will still say, "Why doth not God either prevent or immediately 
 repair these evils ? You may as well ask, why he doth not work continual 
 miracles, and every moment reverse the established laws of nature : 
 
 Shall burning Etna, if a sage requires, &c. 
 
 This is the force of the poet's reasoning, and these the men to whom he 
 addresseth it, namely, the libertine cavillers against Providence. 
 
 Ver. 131. But still this world, t&c.l II. But now, so imhappy is the con- 
 dition of our corrupt nature, that these are not the only complainers. 
 Religious men are but too apt, if not to speak out, yet sometimes secretly 
 to murmur against Providence, and say, its ways are not equal. Those 
 especially, who are more inordinately devoted to a sect or party, are scan- 
 dalised, that the just, (for such they esteem themselves,) the just, who are to 
 judge the world, have no better a portion in their own inheritance and 
 dominion. The poet, therefore, now leaves those more professedly impious, 
 and turns to these less profligate complainers, from ver. 130 to 149 : 
 
 But still this world, so fitted for the knave, <fec. 
 
 As the former wanted external goods to be the reward of virtue for the moral 
 man, so these want them for the pious, in order to have a kingdom of the 
 just. To this the poet holds it sufficient to answer : Pray first agree 
 among yourselves who those just are. As they are not likely to do this, he 
 bids them to rest satisfied ; to remember his fundamental principle, that 
 whatever is, is right ; and to content themselves (as their religion teaches 
 them to profess a more than ordinary submission to the will of Providence) 
 with that common answer which he, with so much reason and piety, gives to 
 every kind of complainer. However, though there be yet no kingdom of the 
 just, there is still no kingdom of the unjust ; both the virtuous and the vicious 
 (whatsoever becomes of those whom every sect calls the faithful) have their
 
 490 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 share in external goods ; and what is more, the virtuous have infinitely the 
 most enjoyment of their share : 
 
 This world, 'tis true, 
 Was made for Caesar, but for Titus too : 
 And which more bless'd ? who chained his country? say t 
 Or he whose virtue sighed to lose a day ? 
 
 I have been the more solicitous to explain this last argument, and to show 
 against whom it is directed, because a great deal depends upon it for the 
 illustration of the sense, and the defence of the poet's reasoning. For if we 
 suppose him to be still addressing himself to those impious complainers, con- 
 futed in the forty preceding lines, we should make him guilty of a paralogism, 
 in the argument about the just ; and in the illustration of it by the case of 
 Calvin. For then the libertine asks, Why the just, that is, the moral man, 
 is not rewarded ? The answer is, that none but God can tell, who the just, 
 that is, the faithful man, is. Where the term is changed, in order to support 
 the argument ; for about the truly moral man there is no dispute ; about the 
 truly faithful or the orthodox, a great deal. But take the poet right, as 
 arguing here against religious complainers, and the reasoning is strict and 
 logical. They ask, why the truly faithful are not rewarded ? He answereth, 
 they may be for aught you know ; for none but God can tell who they are. 
 
 Ver. 149. " But sometimes virtue starves, while vice is fed."] III. The poet, 
 having dispatched these two species of murmurers, comes now to the third, 
 and still more pardonable sort, the discontented good men, who lament only 
 that virtue starves, while vice riots. To these he replies, from ver. 148 to 157, 
 that, admit this to be the case, yet they have no reason to complain, either 
 of the good man's lot in particular, or of the dispensation of Providence in 
 general. Not of the former, because happiness, the reward of virtue, con- 
 sisteth not in externals ; nor of the latter, because ill men may gain wealth 
 by commendable industry ; good men want necessaries through indolence or 
 ill conduct. 
 
 Ver. 157. But grant him riches, <fcc.] But as modest as this complaint 
 seemeth at first view, the poet next shows, from ver. 156 to 167, that it 
 is founded on a principle of the highest extravagance, which will never let 
 the discontented good man rest, till he becomes as vain and foolish in his 
 imagination as the very worst sort of complainers. For that when once he 
 begins to think he wants what is his due, he will never know where to stop, 
 while God hath any thing to give. 
 
 Ver. 167. What nothing earthly gives, <-c.] But this is not all ; the poet 
 showeth next, from ver. 166 to 185, that these demands are not only 
 unreasonable, but in the highest degree absurd likewise. For that those very 
 goods, if granted, would be the destruction of that virtue for which they are 
 demanded as a reward. He concludes, therefore, on the whole, that 
 
 What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy, 
 The soul's calm sunshine, and the heart-felt joy, 
 Is virtue's prize, 
 
 And that to aim at other, which not only is of no use to us here, but, what 
 is more, will be of none hereafter, is a passion like that of an infant or a 
 savage, where the one is impatient for what he will soon despise, and the 
 other makes a provision for what he can never want. 
 
 Ver. 185. To whom can riches give repute, or trust,'] The poet now enters 
 more at large upon the matter; and still continuing his discourse to this
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 491 
 
 third sort of complainers (whom he indulgeth, as much more pardonable 
 than the first or second, in rectifying all their doubts and mistakes), lie 
 proves, both from reason and example, how unable any of those things are, 
 which the world most admires, to make a good man happy. For as to the 
 philosophic mistakes concerning happiness, there being little danger of their 
 making a general impression, he had, after a short confutation, dismissed 
 them altogether. But external goods are those syrens, which so bewitch the 
 world with dreams of happiness, that it is of all things the most difficult to 
 awaken it out of its delusions ; though, as he proves in an exact review of the 
 most pretending, they dishonour bad men, and add no lustre to the good. 
 That it is only this third, and least criminal sort of complainers, against 
 whom the remaining part of the discourse is directed, appeareth from the 
 poet's so frequentty addressing himself, henceforward, to his friend. 
 
 1. He beginneth therefore, from ver. 184 to 205, with considering riches. 
 1. He examines first, what there is of real use or enjoyment in them ; and 
 showeth, they can give the good man only that very contentment in himself, 
 and that very esteem and love from others, which he had before ; and scorn- 
 fully cries out to those of a different opinion : 
 
 Oh fool ! to think God hates the worthy mind, 
 The lover and the love of human-kind, 
 Whose life is healthful, and whose conscience clear, 
 Because he wants a thousand pounds a year ! 
 
 2. He next examines the imaginary value of riches, as the fountain of 
 honour. For the objection of his adversaries standeth thus : As honour is the 
 genuine claim of virtue, and shame the just retribution of vice ; and as 
 honour, in their opinion, follows riches, and shame, poverty, therefore the 
 good man should be rich. He tells them in this they are much mistaken : 
 
 Honour and shame from no condition rise ; 
 Act well your part ; there all the honour lies. 
 
 What power then has fortune over the man ? None at all ; for as her favours 
 can confer neither worth nor wisdom ; so neither can her displeasure cure him 
 of any of his follies. On his garb, indeed, she hath some little influence ; but 
 his heart still remains the same : 
 
 Fortune in men has some small difference made ; 
 One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade. 
 
 So that this difference extends no further than to the habit ; the pride of heart 
 is the same both in the flaunter and the flutterer, as it is the poet's intention 
 to insinuate by the use of those terms. 
 
 Ver. 205. Stuck o'er with titles, &c.~\ II. Then, as to nobility, by creation 
 or birth ; this too the poet shows, from ver. 204 to 217, is in itself as devoid 
 of all real worth as the rest ; because, in the first case, the honour is 
 generally gained by no merit at all ; in the second, by the merit of the first 
 founder of the family, which, when well considered, is generally the subject 
 rather of humiliation than of glory. 
 
 Ver. 217. Look next on greatness; &c.~\ III. The poet now unmasks, from 
 ver. 216 to 237, the false pretences of greatness, whereby it is seen that the 
 hero and the politician (the two characters which would monopolize that 
 quality) do, after all their bustle, if they want virtue, effect only this, that the 
 one proves himself a fool, and the other a knave : and virtue they but too
 
 492 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 generally want ; the art of heroism being understood to consist in ravage 
 and desolation ; and the art of politics, in circumvention. It is not success, 
 therefore, that constitutes true greatness ; but the end aimed at, and the 
 means which are employed. Aud if these be right, glory will follow as 
 the reward, whatever happens to be the issue : 
 
 Who noble ends by noble means obtains, 
 Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, 
 Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed 
 Like Socrates, that man is great indeed. 
 
 Ver. 237. What's fame ?] IV. "With regard to fame, that still more fan- 
 tastic blessing, he showeth, from ver. 236 to 259, that all of it, besides what 
 we hear ourselves, is merely nothing ; and that, even of this small portion, 
 no more of it giveth the possessor a real satisfaction, than what is the fruit of 
 virtue. Thus he shows, that honour, nobility, greatness, glory, so far as they 
 have any thing real and substantial, that is, so far as they contribute to the 
 happiness of the possessor, are the sole issue of virtue ; and that neither 
 riches, courts, armies, nor the populace, are capable of conferring them. 
 
 Ver. 259. In parts superior what advantage lies ?] V. But lastly, the poet 
 shows, from ver, 258 to 269, that as no external goods can make man happy, 
 so neither is it in the power of all internal. For that even superior parts 
 bring no more real happiness to the possessor than the rest ; nay, that they 
 put him into a worse condition ; for that the quickness of apprehension and 
 depth of penetration do but sharpen the miseries of life. 
 
 Ver. 269. Bring then these blessings to a strict account; <fcc.] Having thus 
 proved how empty and unsatisfactory all these greatest external goods are, 
 from an examination of their nature ; he proceeds to strengthen his argu- 
 ment, from ver. 268 to 309, by these three further considerations : 
 
 1. That the acquirement of these goods is made with the loss of one 
 another, or of greater, either as inconsistent with them, or as spent in attain- 
 ing them. 
 
 2. That the possessors of each of these goods are generally such, as are so 
 far from raising envy in a good man, that he would refuse to take their 
 persons, though accompanied with their possessions : and this the poet 
 illustrates by examples. 
 
 3. That even the possession of them altogether, where they have excluded 
 virtue, only terminates in more enormous misery. 
 
 Ver. 309. Know then this truth, <fcc.] Having thus at length shown that 
 happiness consists neither in external goods of any kind, nor in all kinds of 
 internal (that is, in such of them as are not of our own acquirement), nor yet 
 in the visionary pursuits of the philosophers, he concludes, from ver. 308 to 
 811, that it is to be found in virtue alone. 
 
 Ver. 311. The only point where, human Hiss stands still, cDc.] Hitherto the 
 poet had proved, negatively, that happiness consists in virtue, by showing, 
 that it did not consist in anything else. He now, from ver. 310 to 327, 
 proves the same positively, by an enumeration of the qualities of virtue, all 
 naturally adapted to give and to increase human happiness ; as its constancy, 
 capacity, vigour, efficacy, activity, moderation, and self-sufficiency. 
 
 Ver. 327. See the sole bliss heaifn could on all bestow!] Having thus proved 
 that happiness is placed in virtue ; he proves next, from ver. 326 to 329, that 
 it is rightly placed there ; for that then, and then only, all may partake of it, 
 and all be capable of relishing it.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 493 
 
 Ver. 329. Yet poor with fortune, &c.~\ The poet then, with some indignation, 
 observeth, from ver. 328 to 341, that as obvious and as evident as this truth 
 was, yet riches and false philosophy had so blinded the discernment even of 
 improved minds, that the possessors of the first placed happiness in externals, 
 unsuitable to man's nature ; and the followers of the latter, in refined visions, 
 unsuitable to his situation : while the simple-minded man, with nature only 
 for his guide, found plainly in what it should be placed. 
 
 Ver. 341. For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,] But this is not 
 all ; the author shows further, from ver. 340 to 353, that when the simple- 
 minded man, on his first setting out in the pursuit of truth in order to happi- 
 ness, hath had the wisdom 
 
 To look through nature up to nature's God, 
 
 (instead of adhering to any sect or party, where there was so great odds of 
 his choosing wrong), that then the benefit of gaining the knowledge of God's 
 will written in the mind, is not confined there ; for standing on this sure 
 foundation, he is now no longer in danger of choosing wrong, amidst such 
 diversities of religions ; but by pursuing this grand scheme of universal bene- 
 volence, in practice as well as theory, he arrives at length to the knowledge 
 of the revealed will of God, which is the consummation of the system of 
 benevolence : 
 
 For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, 
 
 And opens still, and opens on his soul ; 
 
 Till lengthened on to faith, and unconfined, 
 
 It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. 
 
 Ver. 353. Self-love, thus pushed to social, tfcc.] The poet, in the last place, 
 marks out, from ver. 352 to 373, the progress of his good man's benevolence, 
 pushed through natural religion to revealed, till it arrives to that height 
 which the sacred writers describe as the very summit of Christian perfection ; 
 and shows how the progress of human differs from the progress of divine 
 benevolence. That the divine descends from whole to parts ; but that the 
 human must rise from individual to universal. His argument for this 
 extended benevolence is, that, as God has made a whole, whose parts have 
 a perfect relation to, and an entire dependency on each other, man, by 
 extending his benevolence throughout that whole, acts in conformity to the 
 will of his Creator ; and therefore this enlargement of his affection becomes a 
 duty. But the poet hath not only shown his piety in this observation, but 
 the utmost art and address likewise in the disposition of it. The Essay on 
 Man opens with exposing the murmurs and impious conclusions of foolish 
 men against the present constitution of things. As it proceeds, it occasion- 
 ally detects all those false principles and opinions, which led them to 
 conclude thus perversely. Having now done all that was necessary in 
 speculation, the author turns to practice, ami ends his Essay with the 
 recommendation of an acknowledged virtue, charity, which, if exercised in 
 that extent which conformity to the will of God requireth; would effectually 
 prevent all complaints against the present order of nature, such complaints 
 being made with a total disregard to everything but their own private system, 
 and seeking remedy in the disorder, and at the expense of all the rest. This 
 observation, 
 
 Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake, 
 
 is important. Eochefoucault, Esprit, and their coarse and wordy disciple,
 
 494 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Mandeville, had observed, that self-love was the origin of all those virtues 
 which mankind most admire, and therefore foolishly supposed it was the 
 end likewise, and so taught that the highest pretences to disinterestedness 
 were only the more artful disguises of self-love. But our author, who says 
 somewhere or other, 
 
 Of human nature, wit its worst may write ; 
 We all revere it in our own despite, 
 
 saw, as well as they, and everybody else, that the passions began in self-love ; 
 yet he understood human nature better than to imagine that they ended 
 there. He knew that reason and religion could convert selfishness into its 
 very opposite ; and therefore teacheth that 
 
 Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake : 
 
 and thus hath vindicated the dignity of human nature, and the philosophic 
 truth of the Christian doctrine. 
 
 Ver. 394. Showed erring pride, whatever is, is right ;] The poet's address 
 to his friend, which concludeth this Epistle so nobly, and endeth with a 
 recapitulation of the general argument, affords me the following observation, 
 with which I shall conclude these remarks. There is one great beauty that 
 shines through the whole Essay. The poet, whether he speaks of man as an 
 individual, a member of society, or the subject of happiness, never misseth an 
 opportunity, while he is explaining his state under any of these capacities, to 
 illustrate it in the most artful manner by the enforcement of his grand prin- 
 ciple, that every thing tendeth to the good of the whole, from whence his 
 system gaineth the reciprocal advantage of having that grand theorem realized 
 by facts, and his facts justified on a principle of right or nature. 
 
 Thus I have endeavoured to analyse and explain the exact reasoning of 
 these four Epistles. Enough, I presume, to convince every one, that it hath 
 a precision, force, and closeness of connection rarely to be met with, even in 
 the most formal treatises of philosophy. Yet in doing this, it is but too 
 evident I have destroyed that grace and energy which animates the original. 
 And now let the reader believe, if he be so disposed, what M. de Crousaz, in 
 his critique upon this work, insinuates to be his own opinion, as well as that 
 of his friends : " Some persons, " says he, "have conjectured that Mr. Pope 
 did not compose this Essay at once, and in a regular order ; but that after he 
 had written several fragments of poetry, all finished in their kind, (one, for 
 example, on the parallel between reason and instinct, another upon man's 
 groundless pride, another on the prerogatives of human nature, another on 
 religion and superstition, another on the original of society, and several frag- 
 ments besides on self-love and the passions), he tacked these together as he 
 could, and divided them into four epistles ; as, it is said, was the fortune of 
 Homer's Rhapsodies." I suppose this extravagance will be believed just as 
 soon of one as of the other. But M. Du Eesnel, our poet's translator, is not 
 behind-hand with the critic, in his judgment on the work. " The only 
 reason," says he, "for which this poem can be properly termed an Essay, is, 
 that the author has not formed his plan with all the regularity of method 
 which it might have admitted." And again: "I was, by the unanimous 
 opinion of all those whom I have consulted on this occasion, and, amongst 
 these, of several Englishmen completely skilled in both languages, obliged to 
 follow a different method. The French are not satisfied with sentiments,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 495 
 
 however beautiful, unless they be methodically disposed. Method being the 
 characteristic that distinguishes our performances from those of our neigh- 
 bours," &c. After having given many examples of the critical skill of this 
 wonderful man of method, in the foregoing notes, it is enough just to have 
 quoted this flourish of self-applause, and so to leave him to the laughter of 
 the world.
 
 NOTES. 
 
 NOTES ON EPISTLE I. 
 
 Ver. 7, 8. A wild, Or garden,'] The wild relates to the human passions, 
 productive, as he explains in the second epistle, both of good and evil. The 
 garden to human reason, so often tempting us to transgress the bounds God 
 has set to it, and wander in fruitless enquiries. 
 
 Ver. 12. Of all who blindly creep, <fcc.] i. e. Those who only follow the 
 blind guidance of their passions ; or those who leave behind them common 
 sense and sober reason, in their high flights through the regions of meta- 
 physics. Both which follies are exposed in the fourth Epistle, where the 
 popular and philosophical errors concerning happiness are detected. The 
 figure is taken from animal life. 
 
 Ver. 15. Laugh where we must, <kc.~\ Intimating, that human follies are so 
 strangely absurd, that it is not in the power of the most compassionate, on 
 some occasions, to restrain their mirth ; and that its crimes are so flagitious, 
 that the most candid have seldom an opportunity, on this subject, to exercise 
 their virtue. 
 
 Ver. 16. Vindicate the ways of God to man.} Milton's phrase, judiciously 
 altered, who says, justify the ways of God to man. Milton was addressing 
 himself to believers, and delivering reasons or explaining the ways of God ; 
 this idea, the word justify precisely conveys. Pope was addressing himself to 
 unbelievers, and exposing such of their objections whose ridicule and absurdity 
 arises from the judicial blindness of the objectors; he, therefore, more fitly 
 employs the word vindicate, which conveys the idea of a confutation attended 
 with punishment. Thus suscipere vindictam legis, to undertake the defence 
 of the law, implies punishing the violators of it. 
 
 Ver. 19, 20. Of man, what see we but his station here, 
 From which to reason, or to which refer ?] 
 
 The sense is, "we see nothing of man but as he stands at present in his 
 station here; from which station, all our reasonings on his nature and end 
 must be drawn; and to this station they must all be referred." The con- 
 sequence is, that cur reasonings on his nature and end must needs be very 
 imperfect. 
 
 Ver. 21. Through worlds unnumbered, <Sec.~\ Hunc cognoscimus solummodo 
 per proprietates suas et attributa, et per sapieiitissimas et optiinas reruin 
 structures et causas finales. Newtoni Princ. Schol. gen. sub. fin. 
 
 Ver. 30. The strong connexions, nice dependencies,'} The thought is very 
 uoble, and expressed with great beauty and philosophic exactness. The 
 system of the universe is a combination of natural and moral fitnesses, as the 
 human system is of body and spirit. By the strong connexions, therefore, 
 the poet alluded to the natural part; and by the nice dependencies, to the
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 497 
 
 moral. For the Essay on Man is not a system of naturalism, on the philo- 
 sophy of Bolingbroke, but a system of natural religion, on the philosophy of 
 Newton. Hence it is, that where he supposes disorders may tend to some 
 greater good in the natural world, he supposes they may tend likewise to 
 some greater good in the moral, as appears from these sublime images in the 
 following lines : 
 
 If plagues and earthquakes break not heav'n's design, 
 
 Why then a Borgia or a Catiline ? 
 
 Who knows, but he whose hand the lightning forma, 
 
 Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, 
 
 Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, 
 
 Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? 
 
 Ver. 35 to 42.] In these lines the poet has joined the beauty of argumen- 
 tation to the sublimity of thought ; where the similar instances, proposed 
 for his adversaries' examination, show as well the absurdity of their com- 
 plaints against order, as the fruitlessness of their inquiries into the arcana of 
 the Godhead. 
 
 Ver. 41. Or ask of yonder, <&c.] On these lines M. Voltaire thus descants : 
 "Pope dit que 1'homme ne peut savoir pourquoi les lunes de Jupiter sont 
 moins grandes que Jupiter. II se trompe en cela ; c'est une erreur pardon.- 
 nable. II n'y a point de mathematicien qui n'eut fait voir," &c. And so goes 
 on to show, like a great mathematician as he is, that it would be very incon- 
 venient for the page to be as big as his lord and master. It is pity all this 
 fine reasoning should proceed on a ridiculous blunder. The poet thus reproves 
 the impious complainer of the order of Providence : You are dissatisfied with 
 the weakness of your condition. But, in your situation, the nature of things 
 requires just such a creature as you are : in a different situation, it might have 
 required that you should be still weaker. And though you see not the reason 
 of this in your own case, yet, that reasons there are, you may see in the case 
 of other of God's creatures : 
 
 Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 
 Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade ; 
 Or ask of yonder argent fields above, 
 Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove. 
 
 Here, says the poet, the ridicule of the weeds' and the satellites' complaint, 
 had they the faculties of speech and reasoning, would be obvious to all; 
 because their very situation and office might have convinced them of their 
 folly. Your folly, says the poet to his complainers, is as great, though not 
 so evident, because the reason is more out of sight; but that a reason there 
 is, may be demonstrated from the attributes of the Deity. This is the poet's 
 clear and strong reasoning ; from whence, we see, he was so far from saying, 
 that man could not know the cause why Jove's satellites were less than Jove, 
 that all the force of his reasoning turns upon this, that man did see and know 
 it, and should from thence conclude, that there was a cause of this inferiority 
 as well in the rational as in the material creation. 
 
 Ver. 64. Egypfs God:] Called so, because the god Apis was worshipped 
 universally over the whole land of Egypt. 
 
 Ver. 87. Who sees with equal eye, <fcc.] Matt. x. 29. 
 
 Ver. 93. What future bliss, cfcc.] It hath been objected, that "the system 
 of the best weakens the other natural arguments for a future state ; because, 
 if the evils which good men suffer, promote the benefit of the whole, then 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. K K
 
 498 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 every thing is here in order, aiid nothing amiss that wants to be set right, 
 nor has the good man any reason to expect amends, when the evils he 
 suffered had such a tendency." To this it may be replied, 1. That the poet 
 tells us, Ep. iv. ver. 361, that God loves from whole to parts. Therefore, if, 
 in the beginning and progress of the moral system, the good of the whole be 
 principally consulted, yet, on the completion of it, the good of particulars 
 will be equally provided for. 2. The system of the best is so far from 
 weakening those natural arguments, that it strengthens and supports them. 
 For if those evils, to which good men are subject, be mere disorders, without 
 any tendency to the greater good of the whole, then, though we must, indeed, 
 conclude that they will hereafter be set right, yet this view of things, repre- 
 senting God as suffering disorders for no other end than to set them right, 
 gives us too low an idea o the divine wisdom. But if those evils (according 
 to the system of the best) contribute to the greater perfection of the whole, 
 such a reason may be then given for their permission, as supports our idea of 
 divine wisdom to the highest religious purposes. Then, as to the good man's 
 hopes of retribution, these still remain in their original force : for our idea of 
 God's justice, and how far that justice is engaged to a retribution, is exactly 
 and invariably the same on either hypothesis. For though the system of the 
 best supposes that the evils themselves will be fully compensated by the good 
 they produce to the whole, yet this is so far from supposing that particulars 
 shall suffer for a general good, that it is essential to this system, that, at the 
 completion of things, when the whole is arrived to the state of utmost 
 perfection, particular and universal good shall coincide ; 
 
 Such is the world's great harmony, that springs 
 
 From order, union, full consent of things : 
 
 Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made 
 
 To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade, &c. Ep. iiL ver. 295. 
 
 Which coincidence can never be, without a retribution to each good man for 
 the evils he has suffered here below. 
 
 Ver. 97. from fume,] The construction is, The soul, uneasy and confined, 
 being from home, expatiates, etc. By which words, it was the poet's purpose 
 to teach, that the present life is only a state of probation for another, more 
 suitable to the essence of the soul, and to the free exercise of its qualities. 
 
 Ver. 110. He asks no angeFs wing, no seraph's fire;] The French trans- 
 lator, M. 1'Abbe" du Resnel, has turned the line thus : 
 
 II ne de'sire point cette celeste flamme 
 
 Qui des purs Seraphins devore, et nourrit 1'ame. 
 
 i.e. The savage does not desire that heavenly flame, which at the same time 
 that it devours the souls of pure seraphim, nourishes them. On which 
 M. de Crousaz (who, by the assistance of a translation abounding in these 
 absurdities, writ a Commentary on the Essay on Man, in which we find 
 nothing but greater absurdities) remarks, "Mr. Pope, in exalting the fire ot 
 his poetry by an antithesis, throws occasionally his ridicule on those heavenly 
 spirits. The Indian, says the poet, contents himself without any thing oi 
 that flame, which devours at the same time that it nourisheth." Comm. 
 p. 77. But the poet is clear of this imputation. Nothing can be more grave 
 or sober than his English, on this occasion ; nor, I dare say, to do the trans- 
 lator justice, did he aim to be ridiculous. It is the sober, solid theology of 
 the Sorbonne. Indeed, had such a writer as Mr. Pope used this school-
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 499 
 
 jargon, we might have suspected he was not so serious as he should be. The 
 reader, as lie goes along, will see more of this translator's peculiarities. And 
 the conclusion of the commentary on the fourth Epistle will show why I have 
 been so careful to preserve them. 
 
 Ver. 131. Ask for what end, <fce.] If there be any fault in these lines, it is 
 not in the general sentiment, but in the ill choice of instances made use of in 
 illustrating it. It is the highest absurdity to think that earth is man's foot- 
 stool, his canopy the skies, and the heavenly bodies lighted up principally for 
 his use ; yet surely, it is very excusable to suppose fruits and minerals given 
 for this end. 
 
 Ver. 150. Then Nature deviates ; &c.~\ " While comets move in very eccen- 
 tric orbs, in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the 
 planets move one and the same way in orbs concentric ; some inconsiderable 
 irregularities excepted, which may have risen from the mutual actions of 
 comets and planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till 
 this system wants a reformation." Sir Isaac Newton's Optics, Qucest. ult. 
 
 Ver. 155. If plagues, <fcc.] What hath misled M. de Crousaz in his 
 censure of this passage, is his supposing the comparison to be between the 
 effects of two things in this sublunary world ; when not only the elegancy, 
 but the justness of it, consists in its being between the effects of a thing in 
 the universe at large, and the familiar, known effects of one in this sublunary 
 world. For the position enforced in these lines is this, that partial evil tends 
 to the good of the whole : 
 
 Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 
 May, must be right, as relative to all. Ver. 51. 
 
 How does the poet enforce it ? If you will believe this critic, in illustrating 
 the effects of partial moral evil in a particular system, by that of partial 
 natural evil in the same system, and so he leaves his position in the lurch. But 
 the poet reasons at another rate. The way to prove his point, he knew, was 
 to illustrate the effect of partial moral evil in the universe, by partial natural 
 evil in a particular system. Whether partial moral evil tend to the good of 
 the universe, being a question which, by reason of our ignorance of many 
 parts of that universe, we cannot decide but from known effects, the rules of 
 good reasoning require that it be proved by analogy, i.e. setting it by, and 
 comparing it with, a thing clear and certain; and it is a thing clear and 
 certain, that partial natural evil tends to the good of our particular system. 
 
 Ver. 157. Who knows but He, <fcc.] The sublimity with which the great 
 Author of Nature is here characterized, is but the second beauty of this fine 
 passage. The greatest is the making the very dispensation objected to, the 
 periphrasis of his title. 
 
 Ver. 174. And little less than angels, tfcc.] "Thou hast made him a little 
 lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour." Psalm 
 viii. 5. 
 
 Ver. 202. And stunned him, <&c.] This instance is poetical, and even 
 sublime, but misplaced. He is arguing philosophically in a case that required 
 him to employ the real objects of sense only : and, what is worse, he speaks 
 of this as a real object, If natiire thundered, &c. The case is different where, 
 in ver. 253, he speaks of the motion of the heavenly bodies, under the 
 sublime conception of ruling angels : for whether there be ruling angels or no, 
 there is real motion, which was all his argument wanted ; but if there be no 
 
 K K 2
 
 COO AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 music of the spheres, there was no real sound, which his argument was obliged 
 to find. 
 
 Ver. 209. Mark hmv it mounts, to man's imperial race,] M. du Resnel has 
 turned the latter part of the line thus, 
 
 Jusqu'a I'homme, ce chef, ce roi de 1'univers. 
 
 "Even to man, this head, this king of the universe," which is so sad a 
 blunder, that it contradicts the poet's peculiar system ; who, although he 
 allows man to be king of this inferior world, yet he thinks it madness to make 
 him king of the universe. If the philosophy and argument of the poem could 
 not teach him this, yet methinks the poet's own words, in this very Epistle, 
 might have prevented his mistake : 
 
 So man, who here seems principal alone, 
 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown. 
 
 If the translator imagined that Mr. Pope was speaking ironically where he 
 talks of man's imperial race, and so would heighten the ridicule of the original 
 by ce roi de Tunivers, the mistake is still worse ; for the force of the argument 
 depends upon its being said seriously ; the poet being here speaking of a scale 
 from the highest to the lowest in the mundane system. 
 
 Ver. 224. For ever separate, <<;.] Near, by the similitude of the operation; 
 separate, by the immense difference in the nature of the powers. 
 
 Ver. 226. What thin partitions, &c.] So thin, that the atheistic philo- 
 sophers, as Protagoras, held that thought was only sense : and from thence 
 concluded, that every imagination or opinion of every man was true ; nS<ra 
 qiavTaaia. la-rlv a\.t}64\s. But the poet determines more philosophically that 
 they are really and essentially different, how thin soever the partition be by 
 which they are divided. Thus (to illustrate the truth of this observation) 
 when a geometer considers a triangle, in order to demonstrate the equality of 
 its three angles to two right ones, he has the picture or image of some sensible 
 triangle in his mind, which is sense ; yet, notwithstanding, he must needs 
 have the notion or idea of an intellectual triangle likewise, which is thought ; 
 for this plain reason, because every image or picture of a triangle must needs 
 be obtusangular, or rectangular, or acutangular ; but that which, in his mind, 
 is the subject of his proposition, is the ratio of a triangle, undetermined to 
 any of these species. On this account it was that Aristotle said, No^/wra rivi 
 Stoiffet, TOV ft.)] <t>avTd(rfnara fit/at, ^ ovSe ravra <f>avTa(T/j.aTa, aAA* OVK &vfv 
 <t>avraarfj.aT(av. " The conceptions of the mind differ somewhat from sensible 
 images ; they are not sensible images, and yet not quite free or disengaged 
 from sensible images." 
 
 Ver. 243. Or in the full creation leave a void, <tc.] This is only an illus- 
 trating allusion to the Aristotelian doctrines of plenum and vacuum, the full 
 and void here meant relating not to matter but to life. 
 
 Ver. 247. And if each system in gradation roll,] Alluding to the motion 
 of the planetary bodies of each system, and to the figures described by that 
 motion. 
 
 Ver. 251. Let earth unbalanced] i.e. Being no longer kept within its orbit 
 by the different directions of its progressive and attractive motions, which, 
 like equal weights in a balance, keep it in an equilibre. 
 
 Ver. 253. Let ruling angels, <bc.] The poet, throughout this work, has, 
 with great art, used an advantage which bis employing a Platonic principle 
 for the foundation of his Essay, had afforded him ; and that is, the expressing
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 501 
 
 nimself, as here, in Platonic language, which, luckily for his purpose, is 
 highly poetical, at the same time that it adds a grace to the uniformity of his 
 reasoning. 
 
 Ver. 259. What if the foot, <c.] This fine illustration in defence of the 
 system of nature, is taken from St. Paul, who employed it to defend the 
 system of grace. 
 
 Ver. 266. The great directing MIND, <fcc.] "Venerainur autem et colimus 
 ob dominium. Deus enim sine dominio, providentia, et causis finalibus, 
 nihil aliud est quam fatum et natura." Newtoni Princip. Schol. gener. sub 
 finem. 
 
 Ver. 268. Whose body nature is, <kc,] M. de Crousaz remarks, on this 
 line, that "A Spinozist would express himself in this manner." I believe he 
 would ; for so the infamous Toland has done, in his atheist's liturgy, called 
 Pantheisticon. But so would St. Paul likewise, who, writing on this subject, 
 the omnipresence of God in his Providence, and in his Substance, says, in the 
 words of a pantheistical Greek poet, In him we live, and move, and have our 
 being; i.e. we are parts of him, his offspring : And the reason is, because a 
 religious theist and an impious pantheist both profess to believe the omni- 
 presence of God. But would Spinoza, as Mr. Pope does, call God the great 
 directing mind of all, who hath intentionally created a perfect universe ? Or 
 would a Spinozist have told us, 
 
 The workman from the work distinct was known? 
 
 a line that overturns all Spinozism from its very foundations. But this 
 sublime description of the Godhead contains not only the divinity of St. Paul; 
 but, if that will not satisfy the men he writes against, the philosophy likewise 
 of Sir Isaac Newton. The poet says, 
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; &c. 
 
 The philosopher: "In ipso continentur et moventur uni versa, sed absque 
 mutua passione. Deus nihil patitur ex corporum motibus ; ilia nullam 
 sentiunt resistentiam ex omniprsesentia Dei. Corpore omni et figur& cor- 
 porea destituitur. Omuia regit et omnia cognoscit. Cum unaquseque spatii 
 particula sit semper, et unumquodque durationis indivisibile momentum, 
 ubique certe rerum omnium Fabricator ac Dominus non erit nunquam, 
 nusquam." 
 Mr. Pope : 
 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part. 
 
 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
 
 As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns, 
 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : 
 
 To him, no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
 
 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton: "Annon ex phsenomenis constat esse entem incor- 
 poreum, viventem, intelligentem, omnipraesentem, qui in spatio infinite, 
 tanquam sensorio suo, res ipsas intiine cernat, penitusque perspiciat, totasque 
 intra se prsesens prcesentes complectatur ? " 
 
 But now, admitting there were an ambiguity in these expressions, so great 
 that a Spinozist might employ them to express his own particular principles ; 
 and such a thing might well be, because the Spinozists, in order to hide the 
 impiety of their principle, are wont to express the omnipresence of God in
 
 502 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 terms that any religious theist might employ ; in this case, I say, how are w 
 to judge of the poet's meaning ? Surely by the whole tenor of his argument. 
 Now, take the words in the sense of the Spinozists, and he is made, in the 
 conclusion of the epistle, to overthrow all he had been advancing throughout 
 the body of it : for Spinozism is the destruction of an universe, where every 
 thing tends, by a foreseen contrivance in all its parts, to the perfection of the 
 whole. But allow him to employ the passage in the sense of St. Paul, That 
 we, and all creatures, live, and move, and have our being in God ; and then 
 it will be seen to be the most logical support of all that had preceded. For 
 the poet, having, as we say, laboured through his epistle to prove, that 
 every thing in the universe tends, by a foreseen contrivance, and a present 
 direction of all its parts, to the perfection of the whole, it might be objected, 
 that such a disposition of things, implying in God a painful, operose, and 
 inconceivable extent of Providence, it could not be supposed that such care 
 extended to all, but was confined to the more noble parts of the creation. 
 This gross conception of the First Cause the poet exposes, by showing that 
 God is equally and intimately present to every particle of matter, to every 
 sort of substance, and in every instant of being. 
 
 Ver. 277. As full, as perfect, <fcc.] "Which M. du Resnel translates thus, 
 
 Dans un homme ignore" sous une humble chaumiere, 
 Que dans le se"raphin, rayonnant de lumiere. 
 
 i.e. " As well in the ignorant man, who inhabits a humble cottage, as in the 
 seraph encompassed with rays of light." The translator, in good earnest 
 thought, that a vile man that mourned could be no other than some poor 
 country cottager. Which has betrayed M. de Crousaz into this important 
 remark : " For all that, we sometimes find in persons of the lowest rank, a 
 fund of probity and resignation which preserves them from contempt ; their 
 minds are, indeed, but narrow, yet fitted to their station," &c. Comm. p. 120. 
 But Mr. Pope had no such childish idea in his head. He was here opposing 
 the human species to the angelic ; and so spoke of the first, when compared 
 to the latter, as vile and disconsolate. The force and beauty of the reflection 
 depend upon this sense ; and, what is more, the propriety of it. 
 
 Ver. 278. As the rapt seraph, <fcc.] Alluding to the name seraphim, signifying 
 burners. 
 
 Ver. 294. One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.] It will be difficult to 
 think any caviller should have objected to this conclusion ; especially when 
 the author, in this very epistle, has himself thus explained it : 
 
 Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 
 May, must be right, as relative to all. 
 80 man, who here seems principal alone, 
 Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown ; 
 Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal : 
 "Pis but a part we see, and not a whole. 
 
 But without any regard to the evidence of this illustration, M. de Crousaz 
 exclaims : "See the general conclusion, All that is, is right. So that at the 
 sight of Charles the First losing his head on the scaffold, we must have said, 
 this is right ; at the sight too of his judges condemning him, we must have 
 said, this is right ; at the sight of some of these judges, taken and condemned 
 for the action which he had owned to be right, we must have cried out, this 
 is doubly right." Never was any thing more amazing than that the ab- 
 surdities arising from the sense in which this critic takes the great principle,
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 503 
 
 of whatever is, is right, did not show him his mistake. For could any one 
 in his senses employ a proposition in a meaning from whence such evident 
 absurdities immediately arise ? I have observed, that this conclusion, what- 
 ever is, is right, is a consequence of these premises, that partial evil tends to 
 universal good ; which the author employs as a principle to Iramble the pride 
 of man, who would impiously make God accountable for his creation. What 
 then does common sense teach us to understand by whatever is, is right ? 
 Did the poet mean right with regard to man, or right with regard to God ; 
 right with regard to itself, or right with regard to its ultimate tendency ? 
 Surely with regard to God ; for he tells us his design is to vindicate the ways 
 of God to man. Surely with regard to its ultimate tendency ; for he tells us 
 again, all partial ill is universal good. Ver. 291. Now is this any encourage- 
 ment to vice ? Or does it take off from the crime of him who commits it, 
 that God providentially produces good out of evil ? Had Mr. Pope abruptly 
 said in his conclusion, the result of all is, that whatever is, is right, the 
 objector had even then been inexcusable for putting so absurd a sense upon 
 the words, when he might have seen that it was a conclusion from the 
 general principle above-mentioned ; and therefore must necessarily have 
 another meaning. But what must we think of him, when the poet, to 
 prevent mistakes, had delivered, in this very place, the principle itself, 
 together with this conclusion as the consequence of it ? 
 
 All discord, harmony not understood ; 
 All partial evil, universal good ; 
 And, spite of prido, in erring reason's spite, 
 One truth is clear, whatever is, is right. 
 
 He could not have told his reader plainer that his conclusion was the con- 
 sequence of that principle, unless he had written therefore in great church 
 letters. 
 
 NOTES ON EPISTLE II. 
 
 Ver. 3. Placed on this isthmus, <fcc.] As the poet hath given us this sublime 
 description of man for the very contrary purpose to what sceptics are wont to 
 employ such kind of paintings, namely, not to deter men from the search, 
 but to excite them to the discovery of truth ; he hath, with great judgment, 
 represented men as doubting and wavering between the right and wrong 
 object ; from which state it is allowable to hope he maybe relieved by a careful 
 and circumspect use of reason. On the contrary, had he supposed man so 
 blind as to be busied in choosing, or doubtful in his choice, between two 
 objects equally wrong, the case had appeared desperate, and all study of man 
 had been effectually discouraged. But M. du Kesnel, not seeing the reason 
 and beauty of this conduct, hath run into the very absurdity, which I have 
 here shown Mr. Pope so artfully avoided. Of which the learned reader may 
 take the following proofs. The poet says, 
 
 Man hangs between ; in doubt to act, or rest. 
 
 Now he tells us it is man's duty to act, not rest, as the stoics thought ; and,
 
 504 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 to this their priuciple, the latter word alludes, whose virtue, as he says 
 afterwards, is 
 
 Fixed as in a frost, 
 
 Contracted all, retiring to the breast : 
 
 But strength of mind is exercise, not rest. 
 
 Now hear the translator, who is not for mincing matters : 
 
 Seroit-il en naissant au travail condamne' ? 
 Aux douceurs du re'pos seroifc-il destine ? 
 
 and these are both wrong, for man is neither condemned to slavish toil and 
 labour, nor yet indulged in the luxury of repose. The poet says, 
 
 In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast. 
 
 i.e. He doubts, as appears from the very next line, whether his soul be mortal 
 or immortal ; one of which is the truth, namely, its immortality, as the poet 
 himself teaches, when he speaks of the omnipresence of God : 
 
 Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part. Epist. i. 275. 
 
 The translator, as we say, unconscious of the poet's purpose, rambles as 
 
 before : 
 
 Tantot de son esprit admiraiit 1'excellence, 
 n pense qu'il est Dieu, qu'il en a la puissance ; 
 Et tantot gemissant des besoins de son corps, 
 II croit que de la brute, il n'a one les ressnrta 
 
 Here his head, turned to a sceptical view, was running on the different 
 extravagances of Plato in his theology, and of Descartes in his physiology. 
 Sometimes, says he, man believes himself a real God ; and sometimes again, 
 a mere machine : things quite out of the poet's thought in this place. Again, 
 the poet, in a beautiful allusion to Scripture sentiments, breaks out into this 
 just and moral reflection on man's condition here, 
 
 Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err. 
 
 The translator turns this fine and sober thought into the most outrageous 
 scepticism : 
 
 Ce n'est que pour mourir, qu'il est no", qu'il respire ; 
 
 Et toute sa raison n'est presque qu'un d(51ire. 
 
 and so make his author directly contradict himself, where he says of man, 
 that he hath 
 
 Too much knowledge for the sceptic side. 
 
 Ver. 10. Born but to die, <fcc.] The author's meaning is, that as we are 
 born to die, and yet do enjoy some small portion of life, so, though we 
 reason to err, yet we comprehend some few truths. This is the weak state 
 of reason, in which error mixes itself with all its true conclusions concerning 
 man's nature. 
 
 Ver. 11. Alike in ignorance, <fcc.] i.e. The proper sphere of his reason ia 
 so narrow, and the exercise of it so nice, that the too immoderate use of it 
 is attended with the same ignorance that proceeds from the not using it at 
 all. Yet though, in both these cases, he is abused by himself, he has it still 
 in his own power to disabuse himself, in making his passions subservient to 
 the means, and regulating his reason by the end of life.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 505 
 
 Ycr. 12. Whether he thinks too little or too much:] It is so true, that 
 ignorance arises as well from pushing our inquiries too far, as from not 
 carrying them far enough, that we may observe, when speculations, even 
 in science, are carried beyond a certain point, that point where use is 
 reasonably supposed to end, and mere curiosity to begin, they conclude in 
 the most extravagant and senseless inferences, such as the unreality of 
 matter ; the reality of space ; the servility of the will, &c. The cause of 
 this sudden fall out of full light into utter darkness, seems not to arise from 
 the natural condition of things, but to be the aibitrary decree of infinite 
 wisdom and goodness, which imposed a barrier to the extravagances of its 
 giddy, lawless creature, always inclined to pursue truths of less importance 
 too far, and to neglect those which are more necessary for his improvement 
 in his station here. 
 
 Ver. 17. Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurled ;] Some have imagined 
 that the author, by, in endless error hurled, meant, cast into endless error, or 
 into the regions of endless error, and therefore have taken notice of it as an 
 incongruity of speech. But they neither understood the poet's language, nor 
 his sense. To hurl and cast are not synonymous ; but related only as the 
 genus and species ; for to hurl signifies not simply to cast, but to cast back- 
 ward and forward, and is taken from the rural game called hurling. So that, 
 into endless error hurled, as these critics would have it, would have been a 
 barbarism. His words therefore signify tossed about in endless error ; and 
 this he intended they should signify, as appears from the antithesis, sole 
 judge of truth. So that the sense of the whole is, "Though, as sole judge 
 of truth, he is now fixed and stable ; yet, as involved in endless error, 
 he is now again hurled, or tossed up and down in it." This shows us how 
 cautious we ought to be in censuring the expressions of a writer, one of 
 whose characteristic qualities was correctness of expression and propriety of 
 sentiment. 
 
 Ver. 20. Go, measure earth, &c. ] Alluding to the noble and useful labours 
 of the modern mathematicians, in measuring a degree at the equator and the 
 polar circle, in order to determine the true figure of the earth ; of great 
 importance to astronomy and navigation ; and which proved of equal honour 
 to the wonderful sagacity of Newton. 
 
 Ver. 22. Correct old Time, <frc.] This alludes to Newton's Grecian Chrono- 
 logy, which he reformed on those two sublime conceptions, the difference 
 between the reigns of kings, and the generations of men ; and the position of 
 the colures of the equinoxes and solstices at the time of the Argonautic 
 expedition. 
 
 Ver. 29, 30. Go, teach Eternal Wisdom, <tc.] These two lines are a con- 
 clusion from all that had been said from ver. 18 to this effect : "Go now, 
 vain man, elated with thy acquirements in real science, and imaginary inti- 
 macy with God ; go, and run into all the extravagances I have exploded in 
 the first Epistle, where thou pretendest to teacli Providence how to govern ; 
 then drop into the obscurities of thy own nature, and thereby manifest thy 
 ignorance and folly." 
 
 Ver. 31. Superior beings, <fcc.] In these lines the poet speaks to this 
 effect : " But to make you fully sensible of the difficulty of this study, I 
 shall instance ia the great Newton himself, whom, when superior beings, 
 not long since, saw capable of unfolding the whole law of nature, they were 
 in doubt whether the owner of such prodigious sagacity should not be 
 reckoned of their order, just as men, when they see the surprising marks
 
 508 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 of reason in an ape, are almost tempted to rank him with their own kind." 
 And yet this wondrous man could go no further in the knowledge of himsslf 
 than the generality of his species. M. du Resnel, who understood nothing 
 of all this, translates these four celebrated lines thus : 
 
 Des celestes esprits la vive intelligence 
 
 Regarde avec piti notre foible science ; 
 
 Newton, le grand Newton, que nous admirons tous, 
 
 Est peat-Sire pour eux, ce qu'un singe est pour nous. 
 
 But it is not the pity, but the admiration of the celestial spirits which is here 
 spoken of. And it was for no slight cause they admired ; it was, to see a 
 mortal man unfold the whole law of nature. By which we see it was not 
 Mr. Pope's intention to bring any of the ape's qualities, but its sagacity, into 
 the comparison. But why the ape's, it may be said, rather than the sagacity 
 of some more decent animal, particularly the half-reasoning elephant, as the 
 poet calls it ; which, as well on account of this its excellence, as for its 
 having no ridiculous side, like the ape, on which it could be viewed, seems 
 better to have deserved this honour ? I reply, because, as a shape resembling 
 human (which only the ape has) must be joined with great sagacity, to raise 
 a suspicion that the animal, thus endowed, is related to man, so the 
 spirituality, which Newton had in common with angels, joined to a penetra- 
 tion superior to man, made those beings suspect he might be one of their 
 order. On this ground of relation, we see the whole beauty of the thought 
 depends. And here let me take notice of a new species of the sublime, of 
 which our poet may be justly said to be the maker ; so new, that we have 
 yet no name for it, though of a nature distinct from every other known beauty 
 of poetry. The two great perfections in works of genius are wit and sub- 
 limity. Many writers have been witty ; some have been sublime ; and a few 
 have even possessed both these qualities separately. But none, that I know 
 of, besides our poet, hath had the art to incorporate them ; of which he hath 
 given many examples, both in this Essay, and his other poems ; one of the 
 noblest being the passage in question. This seems to be the last effort of 
 the imagination to poetical perfection ; and in this compounded excellence, the 
 wit receives a dignity from the sublime, and the sublime a splendour from 
 the wit, which, in their state of separate existence, they neither of them had. 
 Yet a late critic, who writes with the decision of a Lord of Session on Par- 
 nassus, thinks otherwise : " It may be gathered," says he, "from what is said 
 above, that wit and ridicule make not an agreeable mixture with grandeur. 
 Dissimilar emotions have a fine effect in a slow succession ; but in a rapid 
 succession which approaches to co-existence, they will not be relished." 1 
 What pity is it, that the poet should here confute the critic, by doing what 
 the critic, with his rules, teaches us cannot be done. Boileau, who was both 
 poet and critic, had a clear view of this excellence in idea ; while the mere 
 critic had no idea of what had been clearly set before his eyes. 
 
 On peut Stre a la fois et pompeux et plaisant ; 
 Et je hais un sublime ennuyeux et pcsant. 
 
 Ver. 37. Who saw its fires here rise, <fcc.] Sir Isaac Newton, in calculating 
 the velocity of a comet's motion, and the course it describes, when it becomes 
 visible in its descent to, and ascent from, the sun, conjectured, with the 
 
 1 Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism, vol. i. p. 377.
 
 AN" ESSAY ON MAN. 507 
 
 highest appearance of truth, that comets revolve perpetually round the sun, 
 in ellipses vastly eccentrical, and very nearly approaching to paraholas. In 
 which he was greatly confirmed, in observing between two comets a coin- 
 cidence in their perihelions, and a perfect agreement in their velocities. 
 
 Ver. 45. vanity, or dress,] These are the first parts of what the poet, in 
 the preceding line, calls the scholar's equipage of pride. By vanity, is 
 meant that luxuriancy of thought and expression in which a writer indulges 
 himself, to show the fruitfulness of his fancy or invention. By dress, is to 
 be understood a lower degree of that practice, in amplification of thought 
 and ornamental expression, to give force to what the writer would convey : 
 but even this, the poet, in a severe search after truth, condemns ; and with 
 great judgment, conciseness of thought, and simplicity of expression, being 
 as well the best instruments, as the best vehicles of truth. Shakespeare 
 touches upon this latter advantage with great force and humour. The 
 flatterer says to Timon in distress, " I cannot cover the monstrous bulk of 
 their ingratitude with any size of words." The other replies, "Let it go 
 naked ; men may see't the better." 
 
 Ver. 46. Or learning's luxury, or idleness ,-] The luxury of learning consists 
 in dressing up and disguising old notions in a new way, so as to make them 
 more fashionable and palatable ; instead of examining and scrutinizing their 
 truth. As this is often done for pomp and show, it is called luxury ; as it is 
 often done too to save pains and labour, it is called idleness. 
 
 Ver. 47. Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,"] Such as the 
 mathematical demonstration concerning the small quantity of matter ; the 
 endless divisibility of it, &c. 
 
 Ver. 48. Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;] i.e. when admiration 
 has set the mind on the rack. 
 
 Ver. 49. Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts 
 
 Of all our vices have created arts ;] 
 
 i. e. Those parts of Natural Philosophy, Logic, Rhetoric, Poetry, &c., which 
 administer to luxury, deceit, ambition, effeminacy, &c. 
 
 Ver. 74. Reason, the future, &c.] i. e. by experience, reason collects the 
 future ; and by argumentation, the consequence. 
 
 Ver. 109. Nor God alone, &c. 
 
 The translator turns it thus : 
 
 Dieu lui-mSme, Dieu sort de son profond repos. 
 
 And so, makes an epicurean God, of the Governor of the universe. M. de 
 Crousaz does not spare this expression of God's coming out of his profound 
 repose. "It is," says he, "excessively poetical, and presents us with ideas 
 which we ought not to dwell upon," &c. and then, as usual, blames the 
 author for the blunder of his translator. Comm. p. 158. 
 
 Ver. 109. Nor God alone, <fcc.] These words are only a simple affirmation 
 in the poetic dress of a similitude, to this purpose : " Good is not only pro- 
 duced by the subdual of the passions, but by the turbulent exercise of them," 
 a truth conveyed under the most sublime imagery that poetry could con- 
 ceive or paint. For the author is here only showing the providential issue 
 of the passions, and how, by God's gracious disposition, they are turned away 
 from their natural destructive bias, to promote the happiness of mankind. 
 As to the method in which they are to be treated by man, in whom they are 
 found, all that he contends for, in favour of them, is only this, that they
 
 508 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 should not be quite rooted up and destroyed, as the stoics, and their followers, 
 in all religions, foolishly attempted. For the rest, he constantly repeats this 
 advice, 
 
 The action of the stronger to suspend, 
 Reason still use, to reason still attend. 
 
 Ver. 133. As man, perhaps, <fcc.] "Antipater Sidonius Poeta omnibus annis 
 uno die natali tantum ccrripiebatur febre, et eo consumptus est satis longa 
 senecta." Plin. 1. vii. N. H. This Antipater was in the times of Crassus, 
 and is celebrated for the quickness of his parts by Cicero. 
 
 Ver. 147. Reason itself, <fcc.] The Poet, in some other of his epistles, gives 
 examples of the doctrines and precepts here delivered. Thus, in that Of the 
 Use of Eiches, he has illustrated this truth in the character of Cotta : 
 
 Old Cotta shamed his fortune and his birth, 
 Yet was not Cotta void of wit or worth. 
 What though (the use of barb'rous spits forgot) 
 His kitchen vied in coolness with his grot ? 
 If Cotta lived on pulse, it was no more 
 Than bramins, saints, and sages did before. 
 
 Ver. 149. We, wretched subjects, &c.\ St. Paul himself did not choose to 
 employ other arguments, when disposed to give us the highest idea of the 
 usefulness of Christianity (Rom. vii. ) But it may be, the poet finds a remedy 
 in natural religion. Far from it. He here leaves reason unrelieved. What 
 is this, then, but an intimation that we ought to seek for a cure in that 
 religion, which only dares profess to give it ? 
 
 Ver. 163. 'Tis hers to rectify, <fcc.] The meaning of this precept is, That as 
 the ruling passion is implanted by nature, it is reason's office to regulate, 
 direct, and restrain, but not to overthrow it. To reform the passion of 
 avarice, for instance, into a parsimonious dispensation of the public revenues : 
 to direct the passion of love, whose object is worth and beauty, 
 
 To the first good, first perfect, and first fair, 
 
 the T& /coA.Jj' T' aya.Obi', as his master Plato advises ; and to restrain spleen to a 
 contempt and hatred of vice. This is what the poet meant, and what every 
 unprejudiced man could not but see he must needs mean, by rectifying the 
 master passion, though he had not confined us to this sense, in the reason he 
 gives of his precept in these words : 
 
 A. mightier pow'r the strong direction sends, 
 And several men impels to several ends ; 
 
 for what ends are they which God impels to, but the ends of virtue ? 
 
 Ver. 175. TK eternal art, <fcc.] The author has, throughout these epistles, 
 explained his meaning to be that vice is, in its own nature, the greatest of 
 evils, and produced through the abuse of man's free will : 
 
 What makes all physical and moral ill ? 
 There deviates nature, and here wanders will : 
 
 but that God in his infinite goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its 
 malignity to the advancement of human happiness. A doctrine very different 
 from the Fable of the Bees, which impiously and foolishly supposes it to have 
 that natural tendency.
 
 AiN" ESSAY ON MAN. 509 
 
 Ver. 204. The god iinthin the mind.] A Platonic phrase for conscience; 
 and here employed with great judgment and propriety. For conscience either 
 signifies, speculatively, the judgment we pass of things upon whatever prin- 
 ciples we chance to have, and then it is only opinion, a very unable judge 
 and divider; or else it signifies, practically, the application of the eternal 
 rule of right (received by us as the law of God) to the regulation of our 
 actions; and then it is properly conscience, the god (or the law of God) 
 within the mind, of power to divide the light from the darkness in this Chaos 
 of the passions. 
 
 Ver. 253. Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally 
 The common interest, <L-c.] 
 
 As these lines have been misunderstood, I shall give the reader their plain 
 and obvious meaning. To these frailties, says he, we owe all the endearments 
 of private life ; yet when we come to that age, which generally disposes men 
 to think more seriously of the true value of things, and consequently of their 
 provision for a future state, the consideration, that the grounds of those joys, 
 loves, and friendships, are wants, frailties, and passions, proves the best 
 expedient to wean us from the world ; a disengagement so friendly to that 
 provision we are now making for another state. The observation is new, and 
 would in any place be extremely beautiful, but has here an infinite grace and 
 propriety, as it so well confirms, by an instance of great moment, the general 
 thesis, that God makes ill, at every step, productive of good. 
 
 Ver. 270. the poet in his muse.] The author having said, that no one could 
 change his own profession or views for those of another, intended to carry his, 
 observations still further, and show that men were unwilling to exchange 
 their own acquirements even for those of the same kind, confessedly larger^ 
 and infinitely more eminent in another. To this end he wrote, 
 
 What partly pleases, totally will shock : 
 I question much, if Toland would be Locke. 
 
 But wanting another proper instance of this truth, he reserved the lines 
 above for some following edition of this Essay, which he did not live to give. 
 
 Ver. 280. And beads and pray'r-books are the toys of age .-] A satire on 
 what is called, in popery, the Opus operatum. As this is a description of the 
 circle of human life returning into itself by a second childhood, the poet has 
 with great elegance concluded his description with the same image with which 
 he set out, " And life's poor play is o'er." 
 
 Ver. 286. And each vacuity of sense by pride .] An eminent casuist, Father 
 Francis Garasse, in his Somme The'ologique, has drawn a very charitable con- 
 clusion from this principle, which he hath well illustrated : " Selon la 
 justice," says this equitable divine, "tout travail honnete doit Stre recom- 
 pense de louange on de satisfaction. Quand les bons esprits font un ouvrage 
 excellent, ils sont justement recompenses par les suffrages du public. Quand 
 un pauvre esprit travaille beaucoup, pour faire un mauvais ouvrage, il n'est 
 pas juste ni raisonnable, qu'il attende des louanges publiques ; car elles ne lui 
 sont pas dues. Mais afin que ses travaux ne demenrent pas sans recompense, 
 Dieu lui donne une satisfaction personelle, qtie personne ne lui peut envier 
 sans une injustice plus que barbare ; tout ainsi que Dieu, qui est juste, donne 
 de la satisfaction aux grenouilles de leur chant. Autrement la blame public^ 
 joint a leur mecontentement, seroit suffisant pour les reduire au desespoir."
 
 510 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 NOTES ON EPISTLE III. 
 
 Ver. 3. superfluous health,] Immoderate labour and immoderate study are 
 equally the impairers of health. They whose station sets them above both, 
 must needs have an abundance of it, which not being employed in the 
 common service, but wasted in luxury and folly, the post properly calls a 
 superfluity. 
 
 Ver. 4. impudence of wealth,] Because wealth pretends to be wisdom, wit, 
 learning, honesty, and, in short, all the virtues in their turns. 
 
 Ver. 3 6.] M. du Resnel, not seeing into the admirable purpose of the 
 caution contained in these four lines, hath quite dropped the most material 
 circumstances contained in the last of them ; and what is worse, for the sake 
 of a foolish antithesis, hath destroyed the whole propriety of the thought in 
 the two first ; and so, between both, hath left his author neither sense nor 
 system. 
 
 Dans le sein du bonheur, ou de 1'adversite". 
 
 Now, of all men, those in adversity have least needs of this caution, as being 
 least apt to forget, that God consults the good of the whole, and provides for 
 it by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants ; it being seen 
 that such who yet retain the smart of any fresh calamity, are most compas- 
 sionate to others labouring under distresses, and most prompt and ready to 
 relieve them. 
 
 Ver. 9. See plastic nature, <fcc.] M. du Resnel mistook this description of 
 the preservation of the material universe, by the quality of attraction, for a 
 description of its creation ; and so translates it 
 
 Vois du sein du Chaos Plater la lumiere, 
 
 Chaque atome eTsrante courlr pour s'embrasser, etc. 
 
 This destroys the poet's fine analogical argument, by which he proves, from 
 the circumstance of mutual attraction in matter, that mau, while he seeks 
 society, and thereby promotes the good of his species, co-operates with God's 
 general dispensation ; whereas the circumstance of a creation proves nothing 
 hut a Creator. 
 
 Ver. 12. Formed and impelled, (fee.] Formed and impelled are not words 
 of a loose, undistinguishable meaning thrown in to fill up the verse. This is 
 not our author's way ; they are full of sense, and of the most philosophical 
 precision. For to make matter so cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by 
 its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts is as necessary as 
 that quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called attraction. 
 To express the first part of this thought, our author says formed; and to 
 express the latter, impelled. 
 
 Ver. 19, 20. Like bubbles, tfcc.] M. du Resnel translates these two lines 
 thus: 
 
 Sort du nant, y rentre, et reparoit au jour. 
 
 He is here, indeed, consistently wrong : for having, as we said, mistaken the 
 poet's account of the preservation of matter for the creation of it, he commits
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 511 
 
 the very same mistake with, regard to the vegetable and animal systems ; and 
 so talks now, though with the latest, of the production of things out of 
 nothing. Indeed, by his speaking of their returning into nothing, he has 
 subjected his author to M. de Crousaz's censure : " Mr. Pope descends to the 
 most vulgar prejudices, when he tells us that each being returns to nothing : 
 the vulgar think that what disappears is annihilated," &c. Comm. p. 221. 
 
 Ver. 22. One all-extending, all-preserving soul,} Which, in the language of 
 Sir Isaac Newton, is " Deus omnipraesens est, non per virtutem solam, sed 
 etiam per substantiam : nam virtus sine substantia subsistere non potest." 
 Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. sub fin. 
 
 Ver. 23. greatest icith the. least ;] As acting more strongly and immediately 
 in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason ; which made an old 
 school-man say, with great elegance, " Deus est anima brutorum :" 
 
 In this 'tis God directs. 
 
 Ver. 45. See all things for my use /] On the contrary, the wise man hath 
 said, "The Lord hath made all things for himself." Prov. xvi. 4. 
 
 Ver. 50. Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole .-] Alluding to the witty 
 system of that philosopher, ' which made animals mere machines, insensible of 
 pain or pleasure ; and so encouraged men in the exercise of that tyranny over 
 their fellow-creatures, consequent on such a principle. 
 
 Ver. 152. Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade;] The poet still 
 takes his imagery from Platonic ideas, for the reason given above. Plato had 
 said, from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of 
 Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beasts. 
 Moral instructors took advantage of the popular sense of this tradition, to 
 convey their precepts under those fables which gave speech to the whole brute 
 creation. The naturalists understood the tradition in the contrary sense, to 
 signify, that, in the first ages, men used inarticulate sounds, like beasts, to 
 express their wants and sensations ; and that it was by slow degrees they came 
 to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, 
 Diodorus Sic., and Gregory of Nyss. 
 
 Ver. 156. All vocal beings, <frc.] This may be well explained by a sublime 
 passage of the Psalmist, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of 
 
 the great ideas of those 
 
 Chains of love 
 
 Combining all below and all above, 
 Which to one point, and to one centre bring, 
 Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king ; 
 
 breaks out into this rapturous and divine apostrophe, to call back the devious 
 creation to its pristine rectitude ; that very state our author describes above : 
 ' ' Praise the Lord, all his angels ; praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye 
 him, sun and moon ; praise him, all ye stars of light, " &c. Psalm cxlviii. 
 
 Ver. 158. Unbribed, unbloody, <fcc.] i.e. the state described from ver. 263 to 
 269 was not yet arrived. For then, when superstition was become so extreme 
 as to bribe the gods with human sacrifices, tyranny became necessitated to 
 woo the priest for a favourable answer. 
 
 Ver. 159. Heav'ris attribute, &c.] The poet supposetn the truth of the 
 Scripture account, that man was created lord of this inferior world (Ep. i. 
 
 ver. 230). 
 
 Subjected these to those, and all to thee. 
 
 1 Descartes.
 
 512 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 What hath misled some to imagine that our author hath here fallen into a 
 contradiction, was, I suppose, such passages as these, ' Ask for what end the 
 heav'nly bodies shine," &c. ; and again, " Has God, thou fool ! worked solely 
 for thy good," &c. But, in truth, this is so far from contradicting what he 
 had said of man's prerogative, that it greatly confirms it, and the Scripture 
 account concerning it. And because the licentious manner in which this 
 subject has been treated, has made some readers jealous and mistrustful of the 
 author's sober meaning, I shall endeavour to explain it. Scripture says, that 
 man was made lord of this sublunary world. But intoxicated with pride, the 
 common effect of sovereignty, he erected himself, like little partial monarchs, 
 into a tyrant. And as tyranny consists in supposing all made for the use of 
 one, he took those freedoms with all, which are the consequence of such a 
 principle. He soon began to consider the whole animal creation as his slaves 
 rather than his subjects, as created for no use of their own, but for his use 
 only, and therefore treated them with the utmost cruelty ; and not content, 
 to add insult to his cruelty, he endeavoured to philosophize himself into an 
 opinion that these animals were mere machines, insensible of pain or pleasure. 
 Thus man affected to be the wit as well as tyrant of the whole. So that it 
 became one who adhered to the Scripture account of man's dominion to 
 reprove this abuse of it, and to show that 
 
 Heav'n's attribute was universal care, 
 And man's prerogative to rule, but spare. 
 
 Ver. 171. Thus then to man, ttc.] 
 
 M. du Resnel has translated the lines thus : 
 
 La nature indigne'e alors se fit entendre ; 
 
 Va, malheureux mortel, va, hii dit-elle, apprendre ; 
 
 One would wonder what should make the translator represent nature in such 
 a passion with man, and calling him names, at a time when Mr. Pope sup- 
 posed her in her best good-humour. But what led him into this mistake was 
 another as gross. His author having described the state of innocence which 
 ends at these lines, 
 
 HeavVs attribute was universal care, 
 
 And man's prerogative to rule, but spare, 
 
 turns from those times, to a view of these latter ages, and breaks out into this 
 tender and humane complaint, 
 
 Ah ! how unlike the man of times to come, 
 Of half that live the butcher and the tomb, &c. 
 
 Unluckily, M. du Resnel took this man of times to come for the corrupter of 
 that first age, and so imagined the poet had introduced nature only to set 
 things right : he then supposed, of course, she was to be very angry ; and not 
 finding the author had represented her in any great emotion, he was willing 
 to improve upon his original. 
 
 Ver. 174. Learn from the beasts, etc.] See Pliny's Nat. Hist. 1. viii. c. 27, 
 where several instances are given of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy 
 of herbs, by their own use of them ; and pointing out to some operations in 
 the art of healing, by their own practice. 
 
 Ver. 199. observant men obeyed;] The epithet is beautiful, as signifying 
 both obedience to the voice of nature, and attention to the lessons of the 
 animal creation. But M. TAbbS, who has a strange fatality of contradicting
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 513 
 
 his original, whenever he attempts to paraphrase, as he calls it, the sense, 
 turns the lines in this manner : 
 
 Par ces mots la nature excita 1'industrie, 
 Et de 1'homme feroce enchaina la furie. 
 
 "Chained up the fury of savage man" ; and so contradicts the author's whole 
 system of benevolence, and goes over to the atheist's, who supposes the 
 state of nature to he a state of war. What seems to have misled him was 
 these lines : 
 
 What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, 
 
 And he returned a friend who came a foe. 
 
 But M. du Resnel should have considered, that though the author holds a 
 state of nature to be a state of peace, yet he never imagined it impossible that 
 there should be quarrels in it. He had said, 
 
 So drives self-love through just and through unjust. 
 
 He pushes no system to an extravagance, but steers (as he says in his preface) 
 through doctrines seemingly opposite, or, in other words, follows truth uni- 
 formly throughout. 
 
 Ver. 208. When love was liberty,'] i. e. "When men had no need to guard 
 their native liberty from their governors by civil pactions, the love which each 
 master of a family had for those under his care being their best security. 
 
 Ver. 211. 'Twos virtue only, <kc.~] Our author hath good authority for 
 this account of the origin of kingship. Aristotle assures us, that it was 
 virtue only, or in arts or arms : Kadiararai /3a<riAei/s c TUV eirieuctiSv xaff 
 virepoxfti' apfTrjs, %\ irpdfcoi> vcov atrb TTJS dperTjs, ^ icaf? vwepoxyv TIHOVTOV yevovs. 
 
 Ver. 219. He from (he woncCring furrow, <fcc.] i. e. He subdued the in- 
 tractibility of all the four elements, and made them subservient to the use 
 of man. 
 
 Ver. 225. Then, looking up, <fcc.] The poet here maketh their more serious 
 attention to religion to have arisen, not from their gratitude amidst abundance, 
 but from their inability in distress, by showing that, in prosperity, they rested 
 in second causes, the immediate authors of their blessings, whom they revered 
 as God ; but that, in adversity, they reasoned up to the First : 
 
 Then, looking up from sire to sire, &c. 
 
 This, I am afraid, is but too true a representation of humanity. 
 
 Ver. 225 to 240.] M. du Resnel, not apprehending that the poet was here 
 returned to finish his description of the state of nature, has fallen into one of 
 the grossest errors that ever was committed. He has mistaken this account 
 of true religion for an account of the origin of idolatry, and thus he fatally 
 embellishes his own blunder : 
 
 Jaloux d'en conserver les traits et la figure, 
 Leur zele industrieux inventa la peiiituro. 
 Leurs neveux, attentifs a ces hommes fameux, 
 Qui par le droit du sang avoient rggne" sur eux, 
 Trouvent-ils dans leur suite un grand, un premier pere, 
 Leur aveugle respect 1'adore et le revere. 
 
 Here you have one of the finest pieces of reasoning turned at once into a 
 heap of nonsense. The unlucky term of " Great first Father," was mistaken 
 by our translator to signify a "great grandfather." But he should have 
 
 VOL. II. POETRY. L L
 
 514 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 considered, that Mr. Pope always represents God under the idea of a Father. 
 He should have observed, that the poet is here describing those men who 
 
 To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod, 
 
 And owned a" father, where they own'd a God 1 
 
 Ver. 231. Ere wit oblique, <kc.] A beautiful allusion to the effects of the 
 prismatic glass on the rays of light. 
 
 Ver. 242. TK enormous faith, <kc.~\ In this Aristotle placeth the difference 
 between a king and a tyrant, that the first supposeth himself made for the 
 people ; the other, that the people are made for him : BouAtreu 8' 6 &aari\fvs 
 flvcu. <f>v\a, farws ol per KfKTi)Hti>oi ras ov/rias fj.r]d^i> &8iKoi> irdffxvffiv, & Se 
 Sij/ios fji)i vfrpifrirai fir)6tv f] $ rvpavvis irpbs ovSev airo/3AeVei noiv'bv, fl ft,fy TT}S 
 5/as &<pt\ftas x^P lt> - FoL lib. v. cap. 10. 
 
 Ver. 245. Force first made conquest, <fcc.] All this is agreeable to fact, and 
 shows our author's knowledge of human nature. For that impotency of mind, 
 as the Latin writers call it, which gives birth to the enormous crimes neces- 
 sary to support a tyranny, naturally subjects its owner to all the vain, as well 
 as real, terrors of conscience. Hence the whole machinery of superstition. 
 It is true, the poet observes, that afterwards, when the tyrant's fright was 
 over, he had cunning enough, from the experience of the effect of superstition 
 upon himself, to turn it, by the assistance of the priest (who for his reward 
 went shares with him in the tyranny) against the justly dreaded resentment 
 of his subjects. For a tyrant naturally and reasonably supposeth all his slaves 
 to be his enemies. Having given the causes of superstition, he next describeth 
 its objects : 
 
 Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, <tc. 
 
 The ancient pagan gods are here very exactly described. This fact evinceth 
 the truth of that original, which the poet gives to superstition ; for if thesa 
 phantasms were first raised in the imagination of tyrants, they must needs 
 have the qualities here assigned to them. For force being the tyrant's virtue, 
 and luxury his happiness, the attributes of his god would of course be revenge 
 and lust ; in a word, the antitype of himself. But there was another, and 
 more substantial cause, of the resemblance between a tyrant and a pagan 
 god ; and that was the making gods of conquerors, as the poet says, and so 
 canonizing a tyrant's vices with his person. That these gods should suit a 
 people humbled to the stroke of a master will be no wonder, if we recollect a 
 generous saying of the ancients, "that day which sees a man a slave takes 
 away half his virtue. " 
 
 Ver. 262. and heav'n on pride.] This might be very well said of those times 
 when no one was content to go to heaven without being received there en the 
 footing of a god, with a ceremony of an ' Airo0fWis. 
 
 Ver. 283. 'Twos then, the studious head, <&c.] The poet seemeth here to 
 mean the polite and flourishing age of Greece; and those benefactors to 
 mankind, which he had principally in view, were Socrates and Aristotle; 
 who, of all the pagan world, spoke best of God, and wrote best of govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Ver. 295. Such is the world's great harmony, <tc.] A harmony very different 
 from the pre-established harmony of the celebrated Leibnitz, which intro- 
 duceth a fatality destructive of all religion and morality. Yet hath the 
 learned M. de Crousaz ventured to accuse our poet of espousing that dangerous 
 whimsy. The pre-established harmony was built upon, and is an outrageous
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 515 
 
 extension of a conception of Plato, who, combating the atheistical objections 
 about the origin of evil, employs this argument in defence of Providence : 
 "That amongst an infinite number of possible worlds in God's idea, this 
 which he hath created and brought into being, and which admits of a mixture 
 of evil, is the best. But if the best, then evil consequently is partial, com- 
 paratively small, and tendeth to the greater perfection of the whole." This 
 principle is espoused and supported by Mr. Pope with all the power of reason 
 and poetry. But neither was Plato a fatalist, nor is there any fatalism in the 
 argument. As to the truth of the notion, that is another question ; and how 
 far it cleareth up the very difficult controversy about the origin of evil, is still 
 another. That it is a full solution of the difficulty, I cannot think, for reasons 
 too long to be given in this place. Perhaps we shall never have a full solution 
 here, and it may be no great matter though we have not, as we are demon- 
 strably certain of the moral attributes of the Deity. Yet this will never 
 hinder writers from exposing themselves on this subject. A late author 1 thinks 
 he can account for the origin of evil, and therefore he will write : he thinks 
 too, that the clearing up this difficulty is necessary to secure the foundation 
 of religion, and therefore he will print. But he is doubly mistaken : he must 
 know little of philosophy to fancy that he has found the solution ; and still 
 less of religion, to imagine that the want of his solution can affect our belief 
 in God. Such writers 
 
 Amuse th' unlearn' d, and make the learned smile. 
 
 However, Mr. Pope may be justified in receiving and enforcing this Platonic 
 notion, as it hath been adopted by the most celebrated and orthodox divines 
 both of the ancient and modern church. This doctrine was taken up by 
 Leibnitz; but it was to ingraft upon it a most pernicious fatalism. Plato 
 said, God chose the best : Leibnitz said, he could not but choose the best, as 
 he could not act without, what this philosopher called, a sufficient reason. 
 Plato supposed freedom in God to choose one of two things equally good : 
 Leibnitz held the supposition to be absurd : but, however, admitting the caae, 
 he still held that God could not choose one of two things equally good. Thus 
 it appears, the first went on the system of freedom ; and that the latter, not- 
 withstanding the most artful disguises of his principles, in his Theodice'e, was 
 a thorough fatalist : for we cannot well suppose he would give that freedom to 
 man which he had taken away from God. The truth of the matter seems to 
 be this : he saw, on the one hand, the monstrous absurdity of supposing, with 
 Spinoza, that blind fate was the author of a coherent universe ; but yet, on 
 the other, he could not conceive with Plato, how God could foresee and con- 
 duct, according to an archetypal idea, a world, of all possible worlds the best, 
 inhabited by free agents. This difficulty, therefore, which made the socinians 
 take prescience from God, disposed Leibnitz to take free-will from man : and 
 thus he fashioned his fantastical hypothesis ; he supposed that when God 
 made the body, he impressed on his new-created machine a certain series or 
 suite of motions ; and that when he made the fellow soul, he impressed a 
 correspondent series of ideas ; whose operations, throughout the whole duration 
 of the union, were so exactly timed, that whenever an idea was excited, a 
 correspondent motion was ever ready to satisfy the volition. Thus, for in- 
 stance, when the mind had the will to raise the arm to the head, the body 
 
 1 Soame Jenyns, who published in 1757 a Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of 
 FviL 
 
 L L 2
 
 516 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 was so pre-eontrived, as to raise, at that very moment, the part required. 
 This he called the pre-established harmony ; and with this he promised to do 
 wonders. " Yet after all," says an excellent philosopher and best interpreter 
 of Newton, "he owned to his friends, that this extraordinary notion was only 
 a lusus ingenii (nn jeu d' esprit) to try his parts, and laugh at the credulity of 
 philosophers ; who are as fond of a new paradox, as enthusiasts of a new light. 
 If at other times he was so pleased with his own notions in his Theodicee, as 
 to defend them seriously against the learned Dr. Clarke, that shows only that 
 he angled for two different sorts of reputation, from the same performance ; 
 and unluckily he lost both. The subject was too serious to pass for a romance ; 
 and the principles too absurd to be admitted for truth." Mr. Baxter's Appen- 
 dix to the Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, p. 162. As this was 
 the case, none would have thought it amiss in M. Voltaire to oppose one 
 romance to another, had he rested there. But his tale of Candide, which 
 professes to ridicule the optimism of Leibnitz, was apparently composed in 
 favour of an irreligious naturalism, which he makes the solution of all the 
 difficulties in the story. 
 
 Ver. 303. For forms of government, ofcc.] Such as Harrington, Wildman, 
 Neville, 1 &c. about the several forms of a legitimate policy. These line lines 
 have been strangely misunderstood. The author, against his own express 
 words, against the plain sense of his system, hath been conceived to mean, 
 that all governments and all religions were, as to their forms and objects, 
 indifferent. But as this wrong judgment proceeded from ignorance of the 
 reason of the reproof, as explained above, 2 that explanation is alone sufficient 
 to rectify the mistake. However, not to leave him under the least suspicion 
 in a matter of so much importance, I shall justify the sense here given to this 
 passage, more at large : 
 
 I. And first, as to society : Let us consider the words themselves ; and 
 then compare this mistaken sense with the context. The poet, we may 
 observe, is here speaking, not of civil society at large, but of a just legiti- 
 mate policy : 
 
 Th" according music of a well-mixed state. 
 
 Now mixed states are of various kinds ; in some of which the democratic, in 
 others the aristocratic, and in others the monarchic form prevails. Now, as 
 each of these mixed forms is equally legitimate, as being founded on the prin- 
 ciples of natural liberty, that man is guilty of the highest folly, who chooseth 
 rather to employ himself in a speculative contest for the superior excellence of 
 one of these forms to the rest, than in promoting the good administration of 
 that settled form to which he is subject. And yet most of our warm disputes 
 about government have been of this kind. Again, if by forms of government 
 
 i All three were republicans who flourished at the period of the Great Rebellion. 
 Harrington published his political work, Oceana, in 1656, and Neville his Plato Redi- 
 vivus, or A Dialogue concerning Government, in 1681. Burnet says of Wildman that he 
 " had been a constant meddler on all occasions in everything that looked like sedition, 
 and seemed inclined to oppose everything that was uppermost." He served in the 
 Parliamentary army, and proved troublesome to Cromwell, who imprisoned him. His 
 restless republicanism was thought dangerous at the Restoration, and the government 
 kept him under lock and key for some years. He survived to take a share in the 
 Revolution of 1688, and was as hard to please as in his younger days. Pepys says in 1667, 
 that he had been "a false fellow to everybody." 
 
 * In the Commentary on ver. 303.
 
 AS ESSAY ON MAN. 517 
 
 must needs be meant legitimate government, because that is the subject under 
 debate, then by modes of faith, which is the correspondent idea, must needs 
 be meant the modes or explanations of the true faith, because the author is 
 here too on the subject of true religion : 
 
 Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new. 
 
 Besides, the very expression (than which nothing can be more precise) con- 
 fineth us to understand by modes of faith, those human explanations of 
 Christian mysteries, in contending about which zeal and ignorance have so 
 perpetually violated charity. Secondly, If we consider the context ; to sup- 
 pose him to mean, that all forms of government are indifferent, is making 
 him directly contradict the preceding paragraph, where he extols the patriot 
 for discriminating the true from the false modes of government. He, says 
 the poet, 
 
 Taught powVs due use to people and to kings, 
 
 Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings ; 
 
 The less, or greater, set so justly true, 
 
 That touching one must strike the other too ; 
 
 Till jarring interests of themselves create 
 
 Th' according music of a well-mixed state. 
 
 Here he recommendeth the true form of government, which is the mixed. 
 In another place he as strongly condemneth the false, or the absolute jure 
 divino form : 
 
 For nature knew no right divine in men. 
 
 But the reader will not be displeased to see the poet's own apology, as I find 
 it written in the year 1740, in his own hand, in the margin of a pamphlet, 
 where he found these two celebrated lines very much misapplied: "The 
 author of these lines was far from meaning that no one form of government 
 is, in itself, better than another, (as, that mixed or limited monarchy, for 
 example, is not preferable to absolute), but that no form of government, 
 however excellent or preferable, in itself, can be sufficient to make a people 
 happy, unless it be administered with integrity. On the contrary, the best 
 sort of government, when the form of it is preserved, and the administration 
 corrupt, is most dangerous." 
 
 II. Again, to suppose the poet to mean, that all religions are indifferent, is 
 an equally wrong, as well as uncharitable suspicion. Mr. Pope, though his 
 subject, in this Essay on Man, confineth him to natural religion, his purpose 
 being to vindicate God's natural dispensations to mankind against the atheist, 
 yet he giveth frequent intimations of a more sublime dispensation, and even 
 of the necessity of it, particularly in his second Epistle, ver. 149, &c., where 
 he confesseth the weakness and insufficiency of human reason. And likewise 
 in his fourth Epistle, where, speaking of the good man, the favourite of heaven, 
 he saith, 
 
 For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, 
 
 And opens still, and opens on his soul : 
 
 Till, lengthened on to faith, and unconfined, 
 
 It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. 
 
 But natural religion never lengthened hope on to faith ; nor did any religion, 
 but the Christian, ever conceive that faith could fill the mind with happiness. 
 Lastly, In this very Epistle, and in this very place, speaking of the great
 
 518 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 restorers of the religion of nature, he intimates that they could only draw 
 God's shadow, not his image : 
 
 Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new, 
 If not God's image, yet his shadow drew : 
 
 as reverencing that truth, which telleth us, this discovery was reserved for the 
 "glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God." 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 
 Ver. 305. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ;~\ These latter ages 
 have seen so man}' scandalous contentions for modes of faith, to the violation 
 of Christian charity, and dishonour of sacred Scripture, that it is not at all 
 strange they should become the object of so benevolent and wise an author's 
 resentment. But that which he here seemed to have more particularly in his 
 eye, was the long and mischievous squabble between "Waterland and Jackson, 1 
 on a point confessedly above reason, and amongst those adorable mysteries, 
 which it is the honour of our religion to find unfathomable. In this, by the 
 weight of answers and replies, redoubled upon one another without mercy, 
 they made so profound a progress, that the one proved, nothing hindered in 
 nature, but that the Son might have been the Father ; and the other, that 
 nothing hindered in grace, but that the Son may be a mere creature. But if, 
 instead of throwing so many Greek Fathers at one another's heads, they had 
 but chanced to reflect on the sense of one Greek word, aireipia., that it signifies 
 both infinity and ignorance, this single equivocation might have saved them 
 ten thousand, which they expended in carrying on the controversy. However, 
 those mists that magnified the scene enlarged the character of the combatants, 
 and nobody expecting common sense on a subject where we have no ideas, the 
 defects of dulness disappeared, and its advantages (for, advantages it has) 
 were all provided for. The worst is, such kind of writers seldom know when 
 to have done. For writing themselves up into the same delusion with their 
 readers, they are apt to venture out into the more open paths of literature, 
 where their reputation, made out of that stuff which Lucian calls a/crfros 
 6\6xpoos, presently falls from them, and their nakedness appears. And thus 
 it fared with our two worthies. The world, which must have always some- 
 thing to amuse it, was now, and it was time, grown weary of its playthings ; 
 and catched at a new object, that promised them more agreeable entertain- 
 ment. Tindal, a kind of bastard Socrates, had brought our speculations 
 from heaven to earth, and, under the pretence of advancing the antiquity 
 of Christianity, laboured to undermine its original. This was a controversy 
 that required another management. Clear sense, severe reasoning, a thorough 
 knowledge of prophane and sacred antiquity, and an intimate acquaintance 
 with human nature, were the qualities proper for such as engaged in this 
 subject. A veiy unpromising adventure for these metaphysical nurslings, 
 bred up under the shade of chimeras. Yet they would needs venture out. 2 
 What they got by it was only to be once well laughed at, and then forgotten. 
 
 1 A false pretence. Waterlaud expressed his disapproval of Warburton's Divine 
 Legation, and Jackson wrote a formal refutation. Warburton, as sensitive as he was 
 abusive, never forgave them, and to revenge his wounded vanity, he thrust this forced 
 digression into the middle of Pope's works under the hollow plea that Pope seemed to 
 have had in his mind the controversy between Jackson and Waterland on the Trinity. 
 Jackson was an Arian clergyman, who defended the views of Samuel Clarke. 
 
 1 Tindal, who was a deist, published in 1730 his well-known work, Christianity as old 
 as the Creation. Waterland wrote an answer called Scripture Vindicated, and Jackson, 
 his Remarks on a book entitled, etc.
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 519 
 
 But one odd circumstance deserves to be remembered ; though they wrote not, 
 we may be sure, in concert, yet each attacked his adversary at the same time ; 
 fastened upon him in the same place ; and mumbled him with just the same 
 toothless rage. But the ill success of this escape soon brought them to them- 
 selves. The one made a fruitless effort to revive the old game, in a discourse 
 on The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity ; and the other has been 
 ever since rambling in Space, and Time. 1 This short history, as insignificant 
 as the subjects of it arc, may not be altogether unuseful to posterity. Divines 
 may learn by these examples to avoid the mischiefs done to religion and litera- 
 ture, through the affectation of being wise above what is written, and knowing 
 beyond what can be understood. 
 
 Ver. 318. And bade self-love and social be the same.] True self-love is an 
 appetite for that proper good, for the enjoyment of which we were made as we 
 are. Now that good is commensurate with all other good, and a part and 
 portion of universal good : it is, therefore, the same with social, which hath 
 these properties. 
 
 NOTES ON EPISTLE IV. 
 
 Ver. 6. Overlooked, seen double, <c.] O'erlooked by those who place happi- 
 ness in any thing exclusive of virtue ; seen double by those who admit 
 any thing else to have a share with virtue in procuring happiness, these 
 being the two general mistakes which this Epistle is employed to confute. 
 
 Ver. 21, 23. Some place the bliss in action, - 
 Some sunk to beasts, tkc.] 
 
 1. Those who place happiness, or the summum bonum, in pleasure, ' 
 such as the Cyrenaic sect, called, on that account, the Hedonic. 2. Those 
 who place it in a certain tranquillity or calmness of mind, which they 
 call Ei)0V|tua ; such as the Democritic sect. 3. The Epicurean. 4. The 
 Stoic. 5. The Protagorean, which held that Man was irdvrwv XP | 7A^ TW1 ' 
 (ifrpov, the measure of all things ; for that all things which appear to him, 
 are, and those things which appear not to any man, are not ; so that every 
 imagination or opinion of every man was true. 6. The Sceptic ; whose abso- 
 lute doubt is, with great judgment, said to be the effect of indolence, as well 
 as the absolute trust of the Protagorean. For the same dread of labour 
 attending the search of truth, which makes the Protagorean presume it is 
 always at hand, makes the Sceptic conclude it is never to be found. The 
 only difference is, that the laziness of the one is desponding, and the lazi- 
 ness of the other sanguine ; yet both can give it a good name, and call it 
 happiness. 
 
 Ver. 23. Some sunk to beasts, cfcc.] These four lines added in the last 
 edition, as necessary to complete the summary of the false pursuits after 
 happiness among the Greek philosophers. 
 
 1 Waterland published a sermon called, A familiar discourse upon the doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity, and the use and importance of it ; and Jackson, after publishing in 1734 
 his treatise On the Existence and Unity of God, followed it up in 1735, with A Defence of 
 the book entitled, On the Existence, etc. , in answer to Law's Enquiry into the Ideas of 
 Space, Time, etc. Wai-burton, in his discreditable rote, has not the candour to allude to 
 the real ground of his rancoiir against Jackson aud Waterland.
 
 520 AN ESSAY ON MAX. 
 
 Ver. 35. Remember, man, " the Universal Cause 
 
 11 Acts not by partial, but by general laws:"] 
 
 I reckon it for nothing that M. du Resuel saw none of the fine reasoning from 
 these two lines to ver. 73, in which the poet confutes both the philosophic and 
 popular errors concerning happiness. What I can least hear is his perverting 
 these two lines to a horrid and senseless fatalism, foreign to the argument in 
 hand, and directly contrary to the poet's general principles : 
 
 Une loi generale 
 Determine toujours la cause principale ; 
 
 i. . a general law always determines the first cause : which is the very Fate of 
 the ancient pagans ; who supposed that the destinies gave law to the father 
 of gods and men. The poet says again, soon after, ver. 49, "Order is heaven's 
 first law," i. e. the first law made by God relates to order, which is a beautiful 
 allusion to the Scripture history of the creation, when God first appeased the 
 disorders of chaos, and separated the light from the darkness. Let us now 
 hear his translator : 
 
 L'ordre, cet inflexible et grand legislateur, 
 Qui des decrets du ciel est le premier auteur. 
 
 Order, that inflexible and grand legislator, who is the first author of the law 
 of heaven. A proposition abominable in most senses ; absurd in all. 
 
 Ver. 79. Reason's whole pleasure, <fcc.] This is a beautiful periphrasis for 
 happiness ; for all we feel of good is by sensation and reflection. But the 
 translator, who seemed little to coucern himself with the poet's philosophy 
 or argument, mistook this description of happiness for a description of the 
 intellectual and sensitive faculties, opposed to one another, and therefore 
 turns it thus, 
 
 Le charme se'ducteur, dont s'enivrant les sens, 
 Les plaisirs de 1'esprit, encore plus ravissans; 
 
 And so, with the highest absurdity, not only makes the poet constitute 
 sensual excesses a part of human happiness, but likewise the product of virtue. 
 
 Ver. 82. And peace, <fcc.] Conscious innocence, says the poet, is the only 
 source of internal peace ; and known innocence, of external ; therefore, peace 
 is the sole issue of virtue, or, in his own emphatic words, peace is all thy 
 own ; a conclusive observation in his argument ; which stands thus : Is 
 happiness rightly placed in externals ? No ; for it consists in health, pence, 
 and competence ; health and competence are the product of temperance ; and 
 peace, of perfect innocence. 
 
 Ver. 100. See god-like Turenne] This epithet has a peculiar justness, the 
 great man to whom it is applied not being distinguished from other generals, 
 for any of his superior qualities, so much as for his providential care of those 
 whom he led to war, in which he was so intent, that his chief purpose in 
 taking on himself the command of armies, seems to have been the preserva- 
 tion of mankind. In this god-like care he was more remarkably employed 
 throughout the whole course of that famous campaign in which he lost his 
 life. 
 
 Ver. 110. Lent heart n a parent, efcc.j This last instance of the poet's illus- 
 tration of the ways of Providence, the reader sees has a peculiar elegance, where 
 a tribute of piety to a parent is paid in return of thanks to, aud made subser- 
 vient of his vindication of, the great Giver and Father of all things. The
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 521 
 
 mother of the author, a person of great piety and charity, died the year this 
 poem was finished, viz. 1733. 
 
 Ver. 121. Think we, like some weak prince, &c.} Agreeable hereunto, 
 Holy Scripture, in its account of things under the common Providence of 
 heaven, never represents miracles as wrought for the sake of him who is the 
 object of them, but in order to give credit to some of God's extraordinary 
 dispensations to mankind. 
 
 Ver. 123. Shall burning Etna, <L-c.] Alluding to the fate of those two 
 great naturalists, Empedocles and Pliny, who both perished by too near an 
 approach to Etna and Vesuvius, while they were exploring the cause of their 
 eruptions. 
 
 Ver. 142. After ver. 142 in some editions : 
 
 Give each a system, all must be at strife ; 
 What different systems for a man and wife ! 
 
 The joke, though lively, was ill placed, and therefore struck out of the text. 
 
 Ver. 177. Go, like the Indian, <fcc.] Alluding to the example of the Indian, 
 in Epist. i. ver. 99, which shows, that that example was not given to dis- 
 credit any rational hopes of future happiness, but only to reprove the folly of 
 separating them from charity, as when 
 
 Zeal, not charity, became the guide, 
 And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride. 
 
 Ver. 219. Heroes are, much the same, <fcc.] This character might have been 
 drawn with greater force ; and deserved the poet's care. But Milton supplies 
 what is here wanting. 
 
 They err who count it glorious to subdue 
 
 By conquest far and wide, to over-run 
 
 Large countries, and in field great battles win, 
 
 Great cities by assault. What do these worthies, 
 
 But rob and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave 
 
 Peaceable nations, neighb'ring or remote, 
 
 Made captive, yet deserving freedom more 
 
 Than those their conqu'rors ; who leave behind 
 
 Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove, 
 
 And all the flourishing works of peace destroy? 
 
 Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods ; 
 
 Till conqu'ror death discovers them scarce men, 
 
 Rolling in brutish vices and deformed, 
 
 Violent or shameful death their due reward. Par. Beg. b. iil. 
 
 Ver. 222. an enemy of all mankind /] Had all nations, with regard to 
 their heroes, been of the humour with the Normans, who called Eobert II., 
 the greatest of their Dukes, by the name of Robert the Devil, the races of 
 heroes might have been less numerous, or, however, less mischievous. 
 
 Ver. 267. Painful pre-eminence, fcc.] This, to his friend, nor does it at all 
 contradict what he had said to him concerning happiness, in the beginning 
 of the Epistle : 
 
 'Tis never to be bought, but always free, 
 
 And fled from monarchs, St. John ! dwells with thee. 
 
 For there he compliments his virtue ; here he estimates the value of his 
 politics, which he calls wisdom. He is now proving that nothing either 
 external to man, or what is not in man's power, and of his own acquire-
 
 522 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 ment, can make him happy here. The most plausible rival of virtue is 
 human wisdom : yet even this is so far from giving any degree of real 
 happiness, that it deprives us of those common comforts of life, which are a 
 kind of support, under the want of happiness. Such as the more innocent 
 of those delusions which he speaks of in the second Epistle, 
 
 Those painted clouds tha beautify our days, &c. 
 
 Now knowledge destroyeth all those comforts, by setting man above life's 
 weaknesses; so that in him, who thinketh to attain happiness by knowledge 
 alone, independent of virtue, the fable is reversed, and in a preposterous 
 attempt to gain the substance, he loseth even the shadow. This I take to be 
 the sense of this fine stroke of satire on the wrong pursuits after happiness. 
 
 Ver. 281, 283. If parts allure thee, 
 
 Or ravished with the whistling of a name,] 
 
 These two instances are chosen with great judgment. The world, perhaps, 
 doth not afford two such other. Bacon discovered and laid down those true 
 principles of science, by whose assistance Newton was enabled to unfold the 
 whole law of nature. He was no less eminent for the creative power of his 
 imagination, the brightness of his conceptions, and the force of his expression ; 
 yet being convicted on his own confession for bribery and corruption in the 
 administration of justice, while he presided in the supreme court of equity, 
 he endeavoured to repair his ruined fortunes by the most profligate flattery to 
 the court, which, indeed, from his very first entrance into it, he had accus- 
 tomed himself to practise with a prostitution that disgraceth the very pro- 
 fession of letters or of science. 
 
 Cromwell seemeth to be distinguished in the most eminent manner, with 
 regard to his abilities, from all other great and wicked men, who have over- 
 turned the liberties of their country. The times in which others have suc- 
 ceeded in this attempt, were such as saw the spirit of liberty suppressed and 
 stifled by a general luxury and venality ; but Cromwell subdued his country, 
 when this spirit was at its height, by a successful struggle against court- 
 oppression ; and while it was conducted and supported by a set of the 
 greatest geniuses for government the world ever saw embarked together in 
 one common cause. 
 
 Ver. 283. Or ravished with the whistling of a name,] And even this fan- 
 tastic glory sometimes suffers a terrible reverse. Sacheverel, in his Voyage 
 to Icolm-kill, describing the church there, tells us, that "in one corner is a 
 peculiar enclosure, in which were the monuments of the kings of many dif- 
 ferent nations, as Scotland, Ireland, Norway, and the Isle of Man. This 
 (said the person who showed me the place, pointing to a plain stone) was the 
 monument of the great Teague, king of Ireland. I had never heard of him, 
 and could not but reflect of how little value is greatness, that has barely left 
 a name scandalous to a nation, and a grave which the meanest of mankind 
 would never envy. " 
 
 Ver. 309. Know then this truth, enough for man to know, 
 "Virtue alone is happiness below."] 
 
 M. du Resnel translates the line thus 
 
 Apprend done, qu'il n'est point ici baa de bonheur, 
 Si la vertu ne rfegle et 1'eRprit et le cueur. 
 
 i.e. Learn then, that there is no happiness here below, unless virtue regulates 
 the heart and the understanding, which destroys all the force of his author's
 
 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 528 
 
 conclusion. He had proved, that happiness consists neither in external 
 goods, as the vulgar imagined, nor yet in the visions of the philosophers : lie 
 concludes, therefore, that it consists in virtue alone. His translator says, 
 that without virtue, there can be no happiness. And so say the men whom 
 his author is here confuting. For though they supposed external goods 
 requisite to happiness, it was when in conjunction with virtue. Mr. Pope 
 says, 
 
 Virtue alone is happiness below : 
 
 And so ought a faithful translator to have said after him. 
 Ver. 316. After ver. 316, in the MS. 
 
 Ev*n while it seems unequal to dispose, 
 
 And chequers all the good man's joys with woes, 
 
 "Tis but to teach him to support each state, 
 
 With patience this, with moderation that ; 
 
 And raise his base on that one solid joy, 
 
 Which conscience gives, and nothing can destroy. 
 
 These lines are extremely finished. In which there is such a soothing sweet- 
 ness in the melancholy harmony of the versification, as if the poet was then 
 in that tender office in which he was most officious, and in which all his soul 
 came out, the condoling with some good man in affliction. 
 
 Ver. 341. For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal, &c.~\ Plato, in his 
 first book of a Eepublic, hath a remarkable passage to this purpose : ' ' He 
 whose conscience does not reproach him, has cheerful hope for his companion, 
 and the support and comfort of his old age, according to Pindar. For this 
 great poet, Socrates, very elegantly says, That he who leads a just and holy 
 life, has always amiable hope for his companion, which fills his heart with 
 joy, and is the support and comfort of his old age. Hope, the most powerful 
 of the divinities, in governing the ever-changing and inconstant temper of 
 mortal men. " In the same manner Euripides speaks in his Hercules Furens : 
 ' ' He is the good man in whose breast hope springs eternally. But to be 
 without hope in the world, is the portion of the wicked." 
 
 Ver. 373. Come then, my friend I <fce.] This noble apostrophe, by which 
 the poet concludes the Essay in an address to his friend, will furnish a critic 
 with examples of every one of those five species of elocution, from which, as 
 from its sources, Longinus deduceth the sublime. 
 
 1. The first and chief is a grandeur and sublimity of conception : 
 
 Come then, my friend ! my genius ! come along ; 
 O master of the poet, and the song ! 
 And while the muse now stoops, and now ascends, 
 To man's low passions, or then- glorious ends. 
 
 2. The second, that pathetic enthusiasm, which, at the same time, melts 
 and inflames : 
 
 Teach me, like thee, in various nature wise, 
 To fall with dignity, with temper rise ; 
 Formed by thy converse, happily to steer 
 From grave to gay, from lively to severe ; 
 Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, 
 Intent to reason, or polite to please. 
 
 3. A certain elegant formation and ordonance of figures : 
 
 Oh ! while along the stream of time thy name 
 Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
 
 524 AN ESSAY ON MAN. 
 
 Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
 Pursue the triumph, and partake the gale ? 
 
 4. A splendid diction : 
 
 When statesmen, heroes, kings, in dust repose 
 Whose sons shall blush their fathers were thy foes, 
 Shall then this verse to future age pretend 
 Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend? 
 That urged by thee, I turned the tuneful art, 
 From sound's to things, from fancy to the heart ; 
 For wit's false mirror held up nature's light. 
 
 5. And fifthly, which includes in itself all the rest, a weight and dignity in 
 the composition : 
 
 Shew'd erring pride, whatever is, is right ; 
 That reason, passion, answer one great aim ; 
 That true self-love and social are the same ; 
 That virtue only makes our bliss below ; 
 And all our knowledge is, ourselves to know. 1 
 
 i Nothing was ever more unfortunate than these five examples of sublimity- ail o* 
 which, as Dr. Wai-ton observes, prove tbo contrary. BOWLES.
 
 NOTES OF W. WARBURTON ON THE 
 UNIYEBSAL PKAYEE. 
 
 Universal Prayer. ] It may be proper to observe, that some passages in the 
 preceding Essay, having been unjustly suspected of a tendency towards fate and 
 naturalism, the author composed this prayer as the sum of all, to show that 
 his system was founded in free-will, and terminated in piety ; that the First 
 Cause was as well the Lord and Governor of the Universe as the Creator of it ; 
 and that, by submission to his will (the great principle enforced throughout 
 the Essay), was not meant suffering ourselves to be carried along by a blind 
 determination, but resting in a religious acquiescence, and confidence full of 
 hope and immortality. To give all this the greater weight, the poet chose for 
 his model the Lord's Prayer, which, of all others, best deserves the title 
 prefixed to his paraphrase. 
 
 Ver. 29. If I am, right, thy grace impart, 
 If I am wrong, teach my heart] 
 
 As the imparting of grace, on the Christian system, is a stronger exertion of 
 the divine power than the natural illumination of the heart, one would expect 
 that right and wrong should change places, more aid being required to restore 
 men to right, than to keep them in it. But as it was the poet's purpose to 
 insinuate that revelation was the right, nothing could better express his 
 purpose, than making the right secured by the guards of grace. 
 
 END OP VOL. II. 
 
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