Chapter XVIII: Canto II (3)

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns,
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
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,[578]
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.[579]
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[580] lies:
O write it not, my hand--the name appears
Already written[581]--wash it out, my tears![582]
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, 15
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.
Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains[583]
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks, which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns, shagged with horrid thorn![584] 20
Shrines! where their vigils pale-eyed virgins keep,[585]
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep![586]
Though cold like you, unmoved and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.[587]
All is not heaven's while Abelard has part;[588] 25
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.[589] 30
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear![590]
Still breathed in sighs, still ushered with a tear.[591]
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.[592]
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow, 35
Led through a sad variety of woe:[593]
Now warm in love, now with'ring in my bloom,[594]
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quenched th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.[595] 40
Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.[596]
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;[597]
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare; 45
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;[598]
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.[599]
Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief.[600] 50
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,[601]
Some banished 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, 55
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,[602]
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.[603]
Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,[604]
When love approached me under friendship's name;[605] 60
My fancy formed thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind,[606]
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry ray,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day;[607]
Guiltless I gazed; heav'n listened while you sung;[608] 65
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.[609]
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,[610]
Nor wished an angel whom I loved a man.[611] 70
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![612]
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, 75
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.[613]
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;[614]
Before true passion all those views remove;
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to love? 80
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.[615]
Should at my feet the world's great master fall, 85
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn them all;
Not Cæsar's empress would I deign to prove;[616]
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,[617]
More fond than mistress,[618] make me that to thee. 90
Oh! happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:[619]
All then is full, possessing and possessed,
No craving void left aching in the breast:[620]
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part, 95
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss, if bliss on earth there be,
And once the lot of Abelard and me.[621]
Alas, how changed! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies![622] 100
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had opposed the dire command.[623]
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke[624] restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.[625]
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppressed,[626] 105
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.[627]
Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon[628] altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?[629] 110
As with cold lips I kissed the sacred veil,[630]
The shrines all trembled, and the lamps grew pale:[631]
Heav'n scarce believed the conquest it surveyed,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew, 115
Not on the cross my eyes were fixed, but you;[632]
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;[633]
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.[634] 120
Still on that breast enamoured let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,[635]
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, 125
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
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,[636]
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r; 130
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.[637]
You raised these hallowed walls;[638] the desert smiled,
And Paradise was opened in the wild.[639]
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores 135
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors:[640]
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,[641]
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.[642] 140
In these lone walls (their day's eternal bound),
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crowned,
Where awful arches make a noon-day night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light,[643]
Thy eyes diffused a reconciling ray,[644] 145
And gleams of glory brightened all the day.[645]
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,[646]
O pious fraud of am'rous charity! 150
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?[647]
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah, let thy handmaid, sister, daughter, move,[648]
And all those tender names in one, thy love![649]
The darksome pines that, o'er yon rocks reclined,[650] 155
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,[651]
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,[652]
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,[653]
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,[654]
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;[655] 160
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.[656]
But o'er the twilight groves[657] and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws 165
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:[658]
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,[659]
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.[660] 170
Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey![661]
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain;[662]
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign, 175
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.[663]
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?[664] 180
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.[665]
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;[666]
I view my crime, but kindle at the view, 185
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;[667]
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![668] 190
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?[669]
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?[670]
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![671]
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain,--do all things but forget. 200
But let heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fired;
Not touched, but rapt; not wakened, but inspired![672]
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself--and you.[673]
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he 205
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.[674]
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot:[675]
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;"[676]
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,[677]
And melts in visions of eternal day.[678]
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![679] 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.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise;[680] 240
Alas, no more!--methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,[681]
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,[682] 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;[683]
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;[684]
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n, 255
And mild as op'ning gleams of promised heav'n.[685]
Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.[686]
Nature stands checked; religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold--yet Eloisa loves. 260
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.[687]
What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,[688] 265
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,[689]
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.[690] 270
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;[691]
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drowned, 275
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.[692]
While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
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: 280
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; 285
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![693]
No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;[694]
Rise alps between us! and whole oceans roll![695] 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;[696]
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks, (which yet I view!) 295
Long loved, adored ideas, all adieu!
Oh grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair![697]
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care![698]
Fresh-blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality![699] 300
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.[700]
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls, 305
And more than echoes talk along the walls.[701]
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).[702]
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away;[703] 310
"Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and prayed,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:[704]
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;[705]
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses every fear: 315
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."
I come, I come![706] 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: 320
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,[707]
And smooth my passage to the realms of day:[708]
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul![709]
Ah no--in sacred vestments may'st thou stand, 325
The hallowed taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.[710]
Ah then, thy once-loved Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me. 330
See from my cheek the transient roses fly![711]
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
'Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be loved no more.
Oh death all-eloquent! you only prove 335
What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.[712]
Then too, when fate shall thy fair fame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)[713]
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drowned,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round, 340
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,[714]
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er, 345
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;[715] 350
Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved,
"Oh may we never love as these have loved!"
From the full choir[716] when loud hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,[717]
Amid that scene if some relenting eye 355
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, 360
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;[718] 365
He best can paint them who shall feel them most.[719]

AN

ESSAY ON MAN,

IN FOUR EPISTLES

TO

HENRY 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 published 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 50_l_. 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 incorporated 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 EPISTLES 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 publication of the fourth Epistle about the middle of January, 1734. 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. BOWYER for M. COOPER, at the Globe, in
Paternoster-Row, 1743. 4to.

This is the first edition with Warburton'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 was not published till 1744.

Warburton 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 these 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 be 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 MSS. 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, without his appearing to understand it otherwise, or ever thinking to alter those passages, which we suggested as what might seem the most exceptionable.[720]--RICHARDSON.

The Essay on Man was at first given, as Mr. Pope told me, to Dr. Young, to Dr. Desaguliers,[721] to Lord Bolingbroke, to Lord Paget,[722] 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 understand it,[723] 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.--WARBURTON.

[In 1733] Pope published the first part of what he persuaded 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,[724] had been eight years under his consideration, 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,[725] 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, condemned 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 considered 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 increased, 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, as 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 returned only transformed from prose to verse, has been reported, but hardly can be true.[726] 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 concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of universal approbation. 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 translations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's version with particular remarks upon every paragraph.[727] 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 vigilance for the promotion of piety disposed him to look with distrust upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and all schemes of virtue 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 undeniable 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 opposition 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 presented themselves; his diction is coarse and impure, and his sentences are unmeasured. He had in the early part of his life pleased himself 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, borrows 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.[728] 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 therefore it may be supposed that his union with Pope was censured as hypocritical inconstancy; but surely 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 questions of greater importance? Warburton, whatever was his motive, 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 vindication of the Essay on Man in the literary journal of that time, called The Republic of Letters.[729] 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][730] two more of
your letters. It is in the greatest hurry imaginable that I write
this; but I cannot help thanking 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,[731]
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 misunderstood him. Bolingbroke hated Warburton, who had drawn his pupil from him; and a little before Pope's death they had a dispute from which they parted with mutual aversion.[732] 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,[733] and, by Benson's invitation, undertook the longer task of Paradise Lost. Pope then desired his friend[734] 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 consideration, but certainly not the happiest of Pope's performances. 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: that we 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 he meets it in its new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurse. When these wonder-working sounds sink 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 existence--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 world be made for man, it may be said that man was made for geese.[735] 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 illustrations, and sometimes the dignity, sometimes the softness of the verse, enchain philosophy, suspend criticism, and oppress judgment 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 his 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 occasioned 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 Richardson, a man of known integrity and honour, clearly evince that he did. To the testimony of Richardson, 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:

O! had he pressed his theme, pursued the track
Which opens out of darkness into day!
O! 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 Reason, 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 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 controversy was raised, thought of the doctrines, but a thousand must have been warmed by the pictures, the addresses, the sublime interspersions 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;[736] but every eye read a thousand times, and every lip, perhaps, repeated, "Lo, the poor Indian," "The lamb thy riot," "Oh, happiness," and many other passages. All these illustrative and secondary images are painted from the source of genuine poetry; from nature, not from art. They therefore, independent of powers displayed in the versification, raise the Essay on Man, considered in the abstract, into genuine poetry, although the poetical part is subservient 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 philosophical 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 France. 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. He assumes a commanding superiority over his illustrious predecessors, 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 prejudices, 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 preparation 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?"[737] 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 knowledge 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 discordant 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."[738] 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.[739] 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 ecclesiastical and civil. The fourth would have been on morality in eight or nine of the most concerning branches of it, four of which would have been the two extremes to each of the cardinal virtues."[740] 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 Riches, and so of the rest."[741] 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.