MORAL ESSAYS.

[IT may be well to preface such introductory remarks as appear called for by he series of poems comprehended by Warburton under the general title of Moral Essays, by a statement of the chronological order in which they were originally given to the world. It will thus be seen at a glance, that their present arrangement was due solely to the editorial ingenuity of Pope's friend and commentator, to whose suggestions, as he informs us, the poet readily agreed.

The 5th Epistle of the Moral Essays (to Addison) was written in 1715, and first published, with the lines on Craggs added, in Tickell's edition of Addison's Works in 1720. The 4th Epistle of the Moral Essays (to the Earl of Burlington) was published in 1731, under the title of Taste, subsequently altered to Of False Taste, and ultimately to Of the Use of Riches. The 3rd Epistle (Of the Use of Riches, to Lord Bathurst) followed in 1732. In the same year appeared the first two Epistles of the Essay on Man, the third succeeding in 1733. In this year also came out the Epistle On the Knowledge and Characters of Men, addressed to Lord Cobham, now the first of the Moral Essays. The 4th Epistle of the Essay on Man was published in 1734, when the whole Essay on Man was also brought out in its present form. The Epistle (now the 2nd of the Moral Essays) to a Lady, On the Characters of Women, appeared in 1735; and finally the Universal Prayer, which now appropriately follows the Essay on Man, was not published till the year 1738. Pope died before the entire series had been published in its present order in the complete edition of his works.

From Pope's own statement with regard to the design of his work, repeated in various passages of his correspondence, it is certain that what he actually wrote only formed part of a great scheme which he had long carried about either on paper, or in his mind; but which he never accomplished in its fulness. So much it is impossible to doubt, without in the least degree falling in with the belief that the system as developed at length by Warburton, who in his Commentary, became a kind of moral sponsor to the Essay on Man, was ever clearly in Pope's head. Warburton states that the Essay was intended to have been comprised in four books: the first (which we have in the four Epistles bearing the general title) treating of man in the abstract and considering him under all his relations; the second taking up the subject of Ep. I. and II. of the first, and treating of man in his intellectual capacity at large (of this a part might be found in Bk. IV. of the Dunciad); the third resuming the subject of Ep. III. of the first, and discussing Man in his social, political and religious capacity (which Pope afterwards thought might best be done in the form of an Epic poem); the fourth pursuing the subject of Ep. IV. of the first, and treating of practical morality. Of this fourth and last book, he continues, the epistles, bearing the title of Moral Essays, were detached portions, the two first (on the Characters of Men and Women) forming its introductory part.

In any case, therefore, and even supposing the above scheme to have been Pope's own, the four Epistles which bear the title of the Essay on Man claim to be regarded as complete in themselves. The system which the Essay on Man (to restrict the application of that title in the remainder of these remarks to those four Epistles) developes, or purports to develope, was explained at great length in Warburton's Commentary. Pope's own words (in a letter to Warburton of April 11, 1739) are sufficient to shew the relation between the work and the exegesis: '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 still the same when 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 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.' It therefore becomes necessary to enquire in the first place, what is the system which the Essay on Man actually places before us; and secondly, from what sources the poet derived the philosophy which he has endeavoured to express. The following brief summary, founded chiefly on Aikin's Introduction, may supply an answer to the former question.

The first Epistle is especially occupied with Man, with respect to the place which he holds in the system of the Universe; and the principal topic is the refutation of all objections against the wisdom and benevolence of the Providence which placed man here, objections derived from the weakness and imperfection of his nature. The first principle of philosophical enquiry is reasoning from what we know to what we do not know. But if we are to inform ourselves as to man's place in the universe, we are hampered by our ignorance of the latter itself, of which we know only a small part, viz. our own earth. Observation, however, teaches that the Universe contains a scale of beings, rising in due gradation one above the other, and each endowed with the faculties necessary for its station. Those, who in their imperfect knowledge are fain to interfere with that scale, presumptuously demand to re-settle the Order of Heaven. It is this Pride which surveys the system of the Universe solely from its own point of view, assuming everything to exist for the benefit of the individual as he conceives it. Man cannot read the riddles of Providence; he must therefore accept the double truth that the Universe and all its several parts constitute a divine and perfect Order, but that this order is not visible or recognizable in its perfection to imperfect man. The second Epistle proceeds to lead up to the special truth illustrating the general truth enunciated by its predecessor, viz. that even in the passions and imperfections of man, the ends of Providence and its scheme of universal good are fulfilled. (It is this special part of the scheme of the universe which man is qualified to study; God he may not scan.) In human nature, two principles contend for mastery: selflove, which stimulates, and reason, which restrains. In both, although to us the one appears evil and the other good, the scheme of Creation is working out its beneficent ends. The third Epistle once more resumes the general proposition of which the second presented us with a special application, and insists that the end of divine government is the production of general good, although by means of which we are not always able to distinguish the correlation. The main argument of this Epistle tends to illustrate this, by proving that in the divine scheme self-love and social work to the same end. The fourth Epistle offers, so to speak, the practical application of the fundamental idea of the entire Essay. The scheme of the Universe being perfect, is of course designed for the happiness of all; all happiness therefore is general, and all particular happiness depends on general. It is therefore necessary, in order to estimate the happiness of the

individual at its true value, to estimate it, not according as it is felt by the individual, but as it finds its place in the general system. All men are equally happy who recognize the Order which assigns to them their place; and God has given to all that happiness which springs from taking the right means towards attaining to it. Thus the poem at its close recurs to its fundamental idea of the benevolent system of the Universe, in which every virtue, as well as every passion, has its object and end,

If the above fairly represent the outline of the argument of this celebrated essay, it will be sufficient to add only a very few words, in order to shew where it halts. The optimistic conclusion of the first Epistle cannot be said to be logically drawn from its premises. The presumptuousness of attempting to judge the system, of the Universe from the peculiar point of view of Man, is incontestably demonstrated; but the perfection of the entire system is merely generalised out of a few phenomena, which man may misjudge as utterly as, according to the poet, he misjudges extraordinary occurrences which seem evils to him. And from an ethical point of view, the result, if logically followed out, is pure fatalism; and man, as completely as every other organic part of creation, reduced to a puppet. To avert this conclusion, Pope in the Universal Prayer addresses Providence as binding nature, i. e. the rest of nature, fast in fate, but leaving the human will free! With regard to the application of the general proposition to the special case of human nature in the second Epistle, it is obvious that the distinction drawn between self-love and reason, is wholly illogical; inasmuch as reason, being a power of the mind, may be employed by self-love for its own purposes, so that, as has been well pointed out, it depends upon the use of reason, not upon the direction given to self-love, what tendency the moral being of man will assume. The third Epistle, resuming the argument of the first, lands us in the same result. The theory that self-love and social are the same, amounts to nothing short of this: that civilisation is only the product of man's instinct of self-defence and selfadvancement, that the institutions of society are merely means adopted for satisfying in the most convenient manner the necessities of the individual; and that men are therefore, like Mandeville's bees, only being guided by another power to co-operate in a system of which they unconsciously form part. This view, which since Pope's day has reappeared in many forms, may be true or false; it is certain that it is not the view which Pope designed to enforce.

The truth is, that Pope endeavoured to develope a moral system which (whether perfect or imperfect in itself) was at all events imperfectly understood by him. The Essay on Man, even if the anecdote be untrustworthy according to which its scheme was originally drawn up in writing by Bolingbroke, was undoubtedly due, if not to the suggestion, at all events to the influence and conversation, of that nobleman upon Pope's receptive mind. The philosophic stamina of the Essay, to use Johnson's expression, belonged to Bolingbroke; and it was only with regard to the execution that the latter could have expressed to Swift (letter of November 19, 1729) that the work, 'in Pope's hands, would be an original.' Bolingbroke's most recent biographer, Mr Macknight, has therefore not said too much when he avers: There is no doubt whatever, but that Pope received from Bolingbroke the leading principles of his Essay on Man. Pope, indeed, acknowledges his obligations in the fullest sense at the beginning of the first, and the end of the fourth Book; and, notwithstanding Warburton's defence, the Essay on Man and the principles of Bolingbroke must be considered one and the same, though they are less openly expressed in the poem, and disguised with poetical ornament. It is impossible to find in any couplet any acknowledgment of revealed religion; but, on the contrary, all that admiration of nature, of looking upward

through nature to nature's God, which was Bolingbroke's main tenet.... The tendency' [of the leading sentiments of the Essay], 'so far as they have a tendency, is undoubtedly to that blind fatalism and naturalism, which Bolingbroke called pure theism. His condemnation of metaphysics really meant everything that is called theology.'

Even, therefore, if Pope (as had been concluded from certain passages which prove him to have been acquainted with parts at least of these works,) had read the Theodicée of Leibnitz, whose optimism is that of the first Epistle, Archbishop King's Origin of Evil, and other metaphysical treatises, it is in the Essays of Bolingbroke that the germ of Pope's argument is to be found. These Essays (which their author had not the courage to publish before his death) attempt to apply the inductive method to that part of philosophy which concerns the relations between God and man; and, assuming that all human knowledge is derived through the medium of the senses, to shew that it is only from a study of the works of God that a knowledge of his character is attainable by us. This is, in one word, the natural theology of Bolingbroke, which regards all other theology not only as superfluous, but as futile and vain.

Pope, as Bolingbroke on one occasion roundly said of him, though in a different connexion, was a very great wit, and a very indifferent philosopher.' The consequence is, that although as the development of a doubtful system by one who imperfectly understood it, the Essay on Man is without permanent value as a philosophical treatise, it has many unquestionable merits of its own. Beattie (see Forbes Life of B. vol. I. p. 120) appears to characterise it very justly in describing its sentiments' as 'noble and affecting'; 'its images and allusions' as 'apposite, beautiful and new'; its wit as 'transcendently excellent'; but the 'scientific part' as 'very exceptionable.' If the Essay on Man were shivered into fragments, it would not lose its value; for it is precisely its details which constitute its moral so well as literary beauties. Nowhere has Pope so abundantly displayed his incomparable talent of elevating truisms into proverbs, in his mastery over language and poetic form. It is particularly in the fourth Epistle, where the poet undertakes to prove the incontestable truth that all men may be happy, if they will take the right road to happiness, that he is thoroughly in his element; and demonstrates so palpable a truism by a brilliant series of arguments and illustrations which beguile the reader into a belief that he needed to be convinced.

The Moral Essays, which at Warburton's suggestion were pressed into the service of the general scheme, appear to explain themselves. The idea of the Master-Passion, which swallows all the rest (Essay on Man, II. 131), if carried to its logical consequences, results, as Johnson points out, in a kind of moral predestination; if taken cum grano, is sufficiently trite and commonplace. As illustrated by the first and second of these Epistles, it resembles that which suggested the title and subject of Young's Universal Passion. Young, however, treats the Love of Fame as the Universal Passion in either sex. The third and fourth are on a subject familiar to all satirists, ancient and modern; the fifth is only perforce included in the series, although it may, in the place which it occupies, be regarded as a kind of corollary to the fourth, as Warburton desired.]

AN ESSAY ON MAN.

H

ΤΟ

H. ST JOHN LORD BOLINGBROKE1.

THE DESIGN.

AVING proposed to write some pieces on Human Life and Manners, such as (to use my Lord Bacon's expression2) come home to Men's Business and

[Henry St John, afterwards Viscount Boling broke, was born about the year 1678. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, he commenced a life of dissipation in the metropolis towards the close of the century, manifesting however literary tastes by poetical productions, which neither Swift nor Pope could ever bring themselves to praise. In 1701 he took his seat in Parliament, as member for the family borough of Wootton Bassett, which he afterwards exchanged for the family county of Wilts. In politics, he at once became a Tory of the Tories, and a High Churchman of the High Churchmen; soon raising himself by the fire of his oratory, the bitterness of his sarcasm, and the cruel unscrupulousness of his invective, to a distinguished position. Such different judges as Pitt and Brougham agree in concluding him to have been one of the most consummate orators of any age. In 1704 he became Secretary-at-war in the so-called Compromise ministry, and followed Harley out of office in 1708. Though he had, according to his avowal, done for ever with politics and ambition, he returned into office as Secretary of State, when the famous intrigue of 1710 brought the Tories into power. It was this ministry which resolved upon the termination of the war with France; and the famous Examiner contained no bitterer and more effective onslaughts upon Marlborough, than those written by his former protégé St John. He was at this time on intimate terms with Prior and Swift, with whom he founded the Brothers' Club; but at the same time this literary minister was one of the most determined enemies of the freedom of the press, and the author of the Stamp Act, from which, in the end, as might have been expected, the Tory publications suffered more than the Whig. In 1712, he was created Viscount Bolingbroke and Baron St John; and his rivalry with Harley (now Earl of Oxford) was fast rising into open enmity. They held out together long enough to ensure the conclusion of the peace of Utrecht in 1713, to further which Bolingbroke had in 1712 visited Paris, when he was reported to have had an interview with the Pretender. At all events, it is certain that with the latter Bolingbroke was, from 1713, engaged in secret intrigues; and had involved himself so deeply, that after the death of Queen Anne, a prosecution threatened him, from which he saved (himself by flight to Paris, in March 1715. In

his absence he was attainted of treason, and his name erased from the roll of peers. Before the attainder, he had accepted at the hands of the Pretender the seals of the Secretary of State. The death of Louis XIV. in September put an end to the Pretender's chances, and the rising in Scotland with which the the year closed, was undertaken against the express opinion of Bolingbroke. Scotch, Irish, Jesuit and female intrigues caused him to be rejected by the Pretender; and he remained a total exile from politics till 1725. In his retirement at La Source near Orleans, he composed his affected Reflexions on Exile, and his celebrated Letter to Sir William Windham (not published till 1753), the latter an elaborate vindication of his political conduct. He also occupied himself with the philosophical studies which resulted in the Essays published after his death by Mallet. In 1723, he obtained a pardon, but not a reversal of his attainder; in 1725, on his return to England, he recovered his property and was thus, to use his own expression, two-thirds restored. During the years from 1725 to 1735, he resided at Dawley near Uxbridge, in the immediate neighbourhood of Twickenham, the abode of his friend and admirer Pope. In the year 1727 he again commenced political writing, with the hope of overthrowing the influence of Walpole. But the death of George I. failing to overthrow that minister, Bolingbroke continued his hopeless attacks, in the vain hope of influencing the mind of the heir to the throne of George II., Frederick prince of Wales. His letters on the Spirit of Patriotism and the Idea of a Patriot King were political bids concealed under the pretence of a philosophy above parties. In 1744, after his father's death, he settled down for the remainder of his life in his ancestral home at Battersea, where he died in 1751, confident that posterity would do justice to his memory when acquainted with the fulness of his genius from his posthumous writings. Patriotism and philosophy were ideas with which he had been wont to make free throughout his life; selfishness, which is consonant with neither, was the motive of all his actions and the spirit which dictated all his works. The national instinct was sure enough to recognise his philosophy as dangerous, and his patriotism as rotten.]

2 [See Bacon's Dedication of his Essays to the Duke of Buckingham.]