Gut Prof. 7.W Scott 12-16-30

INTRODUCTORY.

THE Essay on Man consists of four Epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke. It is but a portion of a large poem contemplated, but not completed. Hence the title imperfectly describes its contents. It is less a treatise on Man than on the moral order of the world of which man is a part. The Essay is a vindication of Providence. The appearances of evil in the world arise from our seeing only a part of the whole. Excesses and contrary qualities are means by which the harmony of the system is procured. The ends of Providence are answered even by our errors and imperfections. God designs happiness to be equal, but realises it through general laws. Virtue only constitutes a happiness which is universally attainable. This happiness through virtue is only reached in society, or social order, which is only a part of the general order. The perfection of virtue is a conformity to the order of Providence here, crowned by the hope of full satisfaction hereafter.

The argument of the Essay on Man is said to have been supplied to Pope by Bolingbroke. The source of this tradition is Lord Bathurst. Lord Bathurst, à Tory Peer, had lived with the Tory wits of Queen Anne; then with the Bolingbroke and Chesterfield opposition to Walpole; and having survived all his contemporaries, died in 1775, at the age of 91. We may believe that he was in the habit of stating that Bolingbroke had supplied the scheme of the Essay on Man in prose, and that Pope had done no more than put it into verse. This is reported by two

independent and trustworthy witnesses.

Joseph Warton states,

Pope's Works, vol. 3, p. 7, that Lord Bathurst had 'repeatedly assured' him of the fact. Dr. Hugh Blair, dining with Lord

Bathurst in 1763, was told by him in still stronger language 'that the Essay on Man was composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse.' Dr. Blair reported this at the time to Boswell, who repeated it to Johnson. Johnson's immediate remark was, '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, is Pope's own.' (Boswell, Life, vol. 7. p. 283.)

This extemporised judgment of Johnson probably is as near the truth as we can get. It was from Bolingbroke's conversation that the poet derived not only many of his ideas, but the impulse to meddle with speculations for which he was little fit. But the internal evidence alone is inconsistent with the supposition that Pope proceeded on the mechanical plan of versifying Lord Bolingbroke's prose. As to the MS. read by Lord Bathurst, I conceive it to have been the MS. of the 'Essays,' and 'Fragments or Minutes of Essays,' now included in Lord Bolingbroke's printed Works. These 'Fragments' were occasional scraps communicated to Pope as they were written. Single passages in these Fragments resemble passages in Pope's Essay. But even if the communication of the Fragments preceded the composition of the Essay on Man, they are far from containing the whole scheme of the Poem. Both the Essay on Man and Bolingbroke's Minutes derive their colouring from a common source.

The Essay on Man was composed at a time when the reading public, in this country, were occupied with an intense and eager curiosity by speculation on the first principles of Natural Religion. Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet, argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the constitution of the world, was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of his friend's more

powerful mind.

Thus much there was of special suggestion. ge But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to in books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's Characteristics

(1711), King On the Origin of Evil (1702), and particularly to it Leibnitz, Essais de Théodicée (1710). Pope's ambition as a poet led him to take up a subject which involved abstract considerations for which he had no aptitude. He had hitherto only treated social or personal themes. Unless he was to be content to be tread merely by 'the town,' he must apply himself to the larger e argument which absorbed the attention of all serious minds. No twriter, who desires to be read by his cotemporaries, can neglect

the topics in which his cotemporaries feel a paramount interest. r Pope brooded many years over the scheme of an ethical work. n The First Part, or Epistle, was published, anonymously, in 1732. The Fourth Part came out, with his name, in 1734. He never completed any more of the work; though in 1738 he had not relinquished the project of a continuation, as we see from the Epilogue to the Satires 2. 255

e

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'Alas, alas! pray end what you began,

And write next winter more Essays on Man.'

In selecting his subject, Pope was thus determined, against the bent of his own genius, by the direction in which the curiosity of his reading public happened to be exerted. Herein lay, to begin with, a source of weakness. To write on a thesis set by circumstances is to begin by wanting inspiration, which proceeds from the fullness of the heart. But when the thesis prescribed is also one which lies beyond the scope of the mental habits of the writer, the difficulties to be overcome are great indeed. The feeblest of Boileau's poems is his Épître sur l'amour de Dieu, which he was drawn in to write because the Quietist controversy, in which he had no interest, was raging at court.

The subject of the Essay on Man is not, considered in itself, one unfit for poetry. Had Pope had a genius for philosophy, there was no reason why he should not have selected a philosophical subject. Didactic poetry is a mistake, if not a contra

diction in terms. But poetry is not necessarily didactic because its subject is philosophical. And the highest phase of the phi- || losophical imagination is tentative, not dogmatic. Philosophy cannot be presented as a system of truths for defence or proof. It offers considerations for meditation, and not fixed verities. It is an attempt to elevate the whole mind towards the contemplation of the phænomena of the world from their ideal side. Hence there is a close affinity between the mental state of the philosopher and the poet. Plato's Dialogues, though not in verse, address the same faculty of imagination to which poetry appeals. Poetry, philosophy, and art, in their highest condition, meet on the same footing-that of suggestion, not of affirmation. The possibility of presenting the Christian ideas in a poetical garb had been shewn by Milton. There seems no reason why those of natural religion should not be offered for contemplation in a suitable form. We may adopt the words in which Madame d'Épinay rebuked the cynicism of Saint-Lambert: 'Vous, monsieur, qui êtes poète, vous conviendrez avec moi que l'existence d'un Être éternel, tout puissant, souverainement intelligent, est le germe d'un plus bel enthousiasme.'

But it is not enough that a given subject should be in itself adapted for poetry; the poet who undertakes it should be in sympathy with his theme. Pope, as the popular writer of his day, suffered a subject to be imposed upon him, because it interested others, not himself. It followed, as a necessary consequence, that his treatment of the subject was also dictated by the taste of the public, whom it was necessary to please.

In the level on which he treats his theme we find Pope to be the man of his age. The age was one that seemed to have no sense for transcendental ideas in religion, in metaphysics, or in poetry. It was an age of common sense, and the experience of life as it is. To this common sense Pope appeals throughout. He conceived poetry only as an expression of this 'common sense,' as is indicated by his criticism on Young (Dr. Edward Young, died 1765), that ‘he had much of a sublime genius without common sense.' Into the highest ideal sphere in which the poet and