and Pope finding himself put in possession of principles which seemed to explain the different relations of human life, proceeded to illustrate and adorn these with all the resources of his art. Subsequently, he wrote to Swift, March 25th, 1736: "If ever I write more Epistles in verse, one of them shall be addressed to you. I have long concerted it, and begun it, but I would make what bears your name as finished as my last work ought to be, that is to say, more finished than any of the rest. The subject is large, and will divide into four Epistles, which naturally follow the Essay on Man, viz. 1. Of the extent and limits of human reason and science. 2. A view of the useful and therefore attainable, and of the unuseful and therefore unattainable, arts. 3. Of the nature, ends, and application, and use of different capacities. 4. Of the use of learning, of the science of the world, and of wit. It will conclude with a satire against the misapplication of all these, exemplified by pictures, characters, and examples." Here, it is evident, we have a partial description of the design reported by Warburton; but it will be found to differ from the latter in some very important particulars. In the first place, though Pope speaks of the four contemplated Epistles as forming the natural sequel to the Essay on Man,' he does not suggest that they are added to that work as the Second Book of a connected poem; indeed, as has been already said, it was only a year before that he had published what are now called the 'Moral Essays' and other poems, as the Second Book of his Ethic Epistles.' In the next

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place, the scheme makes no mention of the Third or Fourth Books of the Greater Essay on Man,' in the latter of which, according to Warburton's account, the Moral Essays would have found a place.

We find, then, evidence of two distinct stages in the conception of the 'Great Essay on Man,'-the first, or what is now called the Essay on Man,' originally suggested to Pope by Bolingbroke; the second the scheme of the sequel to the Essay described in the letter to Swift. A third stage was afterwards reached in the design for the Third and Fourth Books, confided to Warburton and Spence. Unsuited for sustained philosophical labours, the poet's genius shrank from the execution of his floating ideas; but when he had collected the short and independent poems, in which he excelled, into one volume, being anxious to have it believed that they were only fragments of one vast fabric of thought, he gave out that the Moral Essays were an integral portion of the Greater Essay on Man.' It need hardly be said that this method of poetical architecture was entirely agreeable to the genius of Warburton, who delighted in darkening knowledge with metaphysics, and who had already proved to Pope by his Commentary on the Essay on Man,' how easily plain sense might be disguised by ingenious verbosity. Encouraged by his sympathy, Pope, in all probability, threw his philosophical ideas into the final form which Warburton has reported, and perhaps succeeded in persuading himself, and his

hearers, that he had conceived by a single effort of meditation what was really the growth of separate periods of thought.

The arrangement of the poems in this volume follows the edition of 1743, the last published during Pope's lifetime. I have not ventured to discard the title of Moral Essays,' which Pope adopted no doubt on Warburton's suggestion; but for the sake of convenient classification I have grouped together again all the Epistles to Several Persons,' departing in this from the order of Warburton and succeeding editors, who place several of these Epistles among the miscellaneous poems.

EPISTLE I.

"WHOEVER compares this with the former editions of the Epistle, will observe that the order and disposition of the several parts are entirely changed and reversed; though with hardly the alteration of a single word. When the Editor, at the Author's desire, first examined this Epistle, he was surprised to find it contain a number of exquisite observations, without order, connection, or dependence: but much more so, when, on an attentive review, he saw that if the Epistle were put into a different form, on an idea he had then conceived, it would have all the clearness of method and force of connected reasoning. The Author appeared as much struck with the thing as the Editor, and agreed to put the poem into the present order; which has given it all the justness of a true composition. The introduction to the Epistle on Riches was in the same condition, and underwent the same reform."-WARBURTON.

"In this poem Pope has endeavoured to establish and exemplify his favourite theory of the ruling passion, by which he means an original direction of desire to some particular object, an innate affection which gives all action a determinate and invariable tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life, either openly, or more secretly by the intervention of some accidental or subordinate propension. This doctrine is in itself pernicious as well as false: its tendency is to produce the belief of a kind of moral predestination, or overruling principle which cannot be resisted; he that admits it is prepared to comply with every desire that caprice or opportunity shall excite, and to flatter himself that he submits only to the lawful dominion of nature, in obeying the resistless authority of the ruling passion."JOHNSON.

"In my opinion this is the worst of Pope's Epistles: it is founded upon an absurd and unphilosophical principle; and though it is enlivened by humorous and accurate touches of character, it neither

VOL. III.-POETRY.

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exhibits much extent of thought, or superior happiness of fancy."BOWLES.

"The object of this Epistle is to pursue still further a subject which the author had already started in the Essay on Man, and on which this may be considered as a further comment. This subject is The Ruling Passion'; an idea which though not originally his own, he seems to have delighted to expand and contemplate under every appearance of which it is capable. It is not therefore surprising that some of these views should appear inconsistent with or contradictory to others; or that they should have led to misapprehensions which it requires some degree of attention to explain. For want of this his true meaning has been greatly misunderstood, and he has been accused of inculcating opinions, not only doubtful and uncertain, but which, if assented to, would lead to consequences highly injurious. It is evident that the poet considered the ruling passion merely as the rudder of the mind, upon the due management of which the success and happiness of life essentially depends.". ROSCOE.

The reader who compares the text of the Epistle as it stood in all the editions published in Pope's lifetime (see Appendix I.), and with the text as it now stands, will scarcely be inclined to acknowledge the debt of gratitude which Warburton thinks is due to himself as the chief author of the alterations. It is true that the poem in its first form wanted method and sequence. Pope was never a steady or systematic thinker; his gift was power of expression; and the merit of the Moral Epistles consists almost entirely in the epigrams and illustrations with which he illustrates well-worn themes. Warburton, on the other hand, an ingenious theorist but a diffuse writer, seems to have looked rather to the didactic than the poetical qualities of the composition, and to have induced Pope to transpose his verses in the hope of improving his philosophy. It cannot however be said that the commentator's ingenuity has given the Epistle more 'clearness of method and force of connected reasoning' than it originally possessed. No doubt at first sight it appears to be more regularly constructed. It is divided into three sections, which are supposed to mark the different stages of the argument. But a similar, though not the same, order of thought may readily be found in the old version of the Essay, showing that Pope had by no means put down his exquisite observations' without a preconcerted plan. The poet, in all the editions of the Epistle published during his lifetime, starts with a statement of the difficulties which beset the study of character, some of which he finds to be inherent in the subject matter, and others in the mind of the enquirer. He next shows that the nature of individual men is not to be discovered either inductively from their actions-for one action may be ascribed to many

motives or deductively from character, because what is taken for a man's character is often really nothing but his circumstances; because circumstances themselves form and transform character; and because human nature is inconsistent with itself. Having then arrived at the conclusion that nothing is certain but the nature of God, and that the nature of man cannot be divined from his Actions, Passions, or Affections, he decides that, in judging of character, we must look to the Ruling Passion which affords the clue to the real nature of the man, as being the mainspring of all his actions. No doubt Pope put down his observations under the different heads of his argument in a somewhat aphoristic fashion, but, in the original form of the poem, this does not produce a disagreeable effect. Warburton's transpositions are certainly very ingenious; one or two are fortunate, especially that of the couplet which now concludes the second section; but generally speaking they have only resulted in giving the Essay a laboured air; and in one place (ver. 38) they have left the text ungrammatical as well as obscure.

His officiousness is the more to be regretted, as the observations of the poet taken separately are often striking, and are expressed with great point and terseness; whereas in the present version the reader, being obliged to follow the course of an apparently symmetrical, but really inconsecutive, argument, is irritated by the difficulties he encounters, and is rather inclined to take notice of defects of thought than of beauties of expression. It will be generally felt that Bowles is right in classing this as 'the worst of Pope's Epistles'; its philosophy, in which Pope was weak, predominates over its poetry, in which he was strong; and the style is harsh and elliptical, as in the 'Essay on Man,' without rising to the elevation and fancy which so often relieve us in our travels through that poem.

The Epistle is registered at Stationers' Hall, Feb. 5, 1733, under the title of The Knowledge and Characters of Men,' Lawton Gilliver being the owner of the copyright.