This is the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his religion, by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the pope, and by mentioning with fome indignation the infcription on the Monument.

When this poem was firft published, the dialogue, having no letters of direction, was perplexed and obfcure. Pope feems to have written with no very dif tinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which Bathurst is introduced as speaking.

He afterwards (1734) infcribed to Lord Cobham his Characters of Men, written with clofe attention to the operations of the mind and modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured

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voured to establish and exemplify his favourite theory of the Ruling Paffion, by which he means an original direction of defire to fome particular object, an innate affection which gives all action a determinate and invariable tendency, and operates upon the whole fyftem of life, either openly, or more fecretly by the intervention of fome accidental or fubordinate propenfion.

Of any paffion, thus innate and irrefiftible, the existence may reasonably be doubted. Human characters are by no means conftant men change by change of place, of fortune, of acquaintance; he who is at one time a lover of pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those indeed who attain any excel

lence, commonly spend life in one purfuit; for excellence is not often gained upon eafier terms. But to the particular fpecies of excellence men are directed, not by an afcendant planet or predominating humour, but by the firft book which they read, fome early converfation which they heard, or fome accident which excited ardour and emulation.

It must be at least allowed that this ruling Paffion, antecedent to reafon and obfervation, muft have an object independent on human contrivance; for there can be no natural defire of artificial good. No man therefore can be born, in the ftrict acceptation, a lover of money; for he may be born where mo

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ney does not exift; nor can he be born, in a moral sense, a lover of his country; for fociety, politically regulated, is a state contradiftinguished from a ftate of nature; and any attention to that coalition of interefts which makes the happiness of a country, is poffible only to thofe whom enquiry and reflection have enabled to comprehend it..

This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as falfe: its tendency is to producé the belief of a kind of moral predefti nation, or over-ruling principle which cannot be refifted; he that admits it is prepared to comply with every defire that caprice or opportunity fhall excite, and to flatter himself that he fubmits only to the lawful dominion of Nature,

in obeying the refiftless authority of his

ruling Paffion.

Pope has formed his theory with fo little skill, that, in the examples by which he illuftrates and confirms it, he has confounded paffions, appetites, and habits.

To the Charallers of Men he added foon after, in an Epiftle fuppofed to have been addreffed to Martha Blount, but which the laft edition has taken from her, the Characters of Women. This poem, which was laboured with great diligence, and in the author's opinion with great fuccefs, was neglected at its first publication, as the commentator fuppofes, because the publick was informed by an advertisement, that it

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