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. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1711), King On the Origin of Evil (1702), and particularly to 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 read merely by 'the town,' he must apply himself to the larger argument which absorbed the attention of all serious minds. No writer, who desires to be read by his cotemporaries, can neglect the topics in which his cotemporaries feel a paramount interest. Pope brooded many years over the scheme of an ethical work. 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

'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 philosophical 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, molisieur, 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

artist are one, the sphere of Plato and Greek tragedy, of Dante and of the Disputa, Pope does not enter. But he has a philosophy of his own, a philosophy derived from tact, and an ethics founded upon knowledge of the world. 'Pope and Addison are conspicuously men of the world in their modes of thought and forms of expression. It is in the school of a metropolis that they framed their studies of mankind. Pope is essentially the poet of capitals, and his knowledge of the world is rather to be called knowledge of the town.' (Lytton, Caxtoniana.)

The source of this prosaic view of philosophy and poetry is to be found in the circumstances of the time.

The Revolution of 1688, in creating, or affirming, parliamentary government, had amalgamated the political and the literary circles, which had previously remained two distinct castes. From that time forward literature and literary men essayed politics, and the political spirit of free debate invaded literature. The inevitable consequence was that literature was lowered to the level of debate. 'Le ménage d'un gouvernement constitutionel,' says Villemain, occupe trop l'esprit pour être fort utile au génie. Il ne lui donne ni les passions et la grandeur de la liberté républicaine, ni les loisirs d'une monarchie splendide et paisible.' (Villemain, Litt. Franç. i. 116.) The guild of literature, within which learned men had written for the learned, was broken up. The writer, like the parliamentary debater, addressed such arguments as occurred to his natural understanding to a general audience who had no more special information than himself. Philosophical debate became popular in its method and in its language, losing in depth as it spread itself in width. Addison expresses the aim of this popular philosophy.

'It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men. I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses. I would therefore in a very particular manner recommend my speculations to all well-regulated families that set apart an hour in every morning for tea and

bread-and-butter; and would earnestly advise them, for their good, to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.' (Spectator, No. 10.)

This impulse to be understood, and to attain intelligibility by saying only the obvious, extended itself to the writers in verse, as well as to those in prose. In truth, the only difference between poetry and prose in this age consisted in numbers and in rhyme, and not in the order of the ideas presented. Writers aspired to treat in verse every subject that could be treated in prose, from Religion to the 'Art of preserving Health.' Poetry, or rather verse, found itself quite equal to the task of exhibiting all the ideas which were admissible on any subject. Poetry became a rhymed rhetoric, confining itself to producing the general average notions belonging to the subject in hand. The poet seized upon those universal, limited truths, which are situated midway between the highest philosophical abstractions and the minor details, a class of truths with which the oratorical art deals, and which form what we call commonplaces. These they arranged in compartments; they developed them with method and symmetry; they organised them into regular processions to defile before the eye with magisterial dignity, and the precision of a disciplined body of troops. The ascendancy of this oratorical reason became so great, that at last it possessed itself of poetry. Buffon says in praise of some verses that they "are as fine as fine prose." Poetry thus became only more elaborate prose, subjected to the restraint of rhyme.' (Taine, Litterature Anglaise, 3. 384.) Special, or professional knowledge was not merely thought superfluous, but was excluded as bad taste. This phase of literature during which poetry, or versified rhetoric, supplanted science, was common to England, France and Germany, though the period of its duration was different in the three countries. (Schaefer, Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur, b. 6, c. 5.) The attempt as a whole was unsuccessful; lowering the tone of poetry by restricting it to what was common, and driving philosophy, in its abhorrence of the superficial, into an ungenial and illiterate jargon.