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found readers; but as the facts were minute, and the characters, being either private or literary, were little known, or little regarded, they awakened no popular kindness or refentment: the book never became much the fubject of converfation; fome read it as contemporary history, and fome perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but thofe who read it did not talk of it. Not much therefore was added by it to fame or envy; nor do I remember that it produced either publick praife, or publick cenfure.

It had however, in fome degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our language has few Letters, except those of statefinen. Howel indeed, about a century ago, publifhed his Letters, which are commended by Morhoff, and which alone of his hundred volumes continue his memory. Loveday's Letters were printed only once; thofe of Herbert and Suckling are hardly known. Mrs. Phillips's [Orinda's] are equally neglected; and those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never fent to any living mistress or friend. Pope's epiftolary excellence had an open field; he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is feen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary wits, and certainly fuffers no difgrace in the comparifon: but it must be remembered, that he had the power of favouring himfelf: he might have originally had publication in his mind, and have written with care, or have afterwards felected thofe which he had moft happily conceived, or most diligently laboured and I know not whether there does not appear fomething more studied and artificial in his productions than the reft, except one long Letter by Bolingbroke, compofed with all the skill and industry of

a pro

a profeffed author. It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation ftom habit; he that has once ftudiously formed a ftyle, rarely writes afterwards with complete eafe. Pope may be faid to write always with his reputation in his head; Swift perhaps like a man who remembered that he was writing to Pope; but Arbuthnot like one who lets thoughts drop from his pen as they rife into his mind.

Before these Letters appeared, he published the first part of what he perfuaded himself to think a fyftem of Ethicks, under the title of an Essay on Man; which, if his Letter to Swift (of Sept. 14, 1725) be rightly explained by the commentator, had been eight years under his confideration, and of which he feems to have defired the fuccefs with great folicitude. He had now many open and doubtlefs many fecret enemies. The Dunces were yet fmarting with the war; and the fuperiority which he publickly arrogated, difpofed the world to with his humiliation.

All this he knew, and against all this he provided. His own name, and that of his friend to whom the work is infcribed, were in the first editions carefully fuppreffed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was afcribed to one or another, as favour determined, or conjecture wandered; it was given, fays Warburton, to every man, except him only who could write it. Those who like only when they like the author, and who are under the dominion of a name, condemned it; and thofe admired it who are willing to fcatter praise at random, which while it is unappropriated excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were trufted with the fecret, went about lavishing honours on the new

born'

born poet, and hinting that Pope was never fo much in danger from any former rival:

To thofe authors whom he had perfonally offended, and to those whofe opinion the world confidered as decifive, and whom he fufpected of envy or malevolence, he fent his effay as a prefent before publication, that they might defeat their own enmity by präises, which they could not afterwards decently retract.

With these precautions, in 1733 was publifhed the first part of the Essay on Man. There had been for fome time a report that Pope was bufy upon a System of Morality; but this defign was not difcovered in the new poem, which had a form and a title with which its readers were unacquainted. Its reception was not uniform; fome thought it a very imperfect piece, though hot without good lines. While the author was unknown, fome, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and fome cenfured him as an intruder ; but all thought him above neglect; the fale increased, and editions were multiplied.

The subsequent editions of the first Epistle exhibited two memorable corrections. At first, the poet and his friend

Expatiate freely o'er this scene of man,
A mighty maze of walks without a plan.

For which he wrote afterwards,

A mighty maze, but not without a plan!

for, if there were no plan, it was in vain to defcribe or to trace the maze.

The other alteration was of thefe lines;

And spite of pride, and in thy reason's spite,
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right:

but

but having afterwards difcovered, or been fhewn, that the truth which subsisted in spite of reafon could not be very clear, he substituted

And spite of pride, in erring reason's fpite.

To fuch overfights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is employed at once upon argument and poetry.

The second and third Epiftles were published; and Pope was, I believe, more and more fufpected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

In the conclufion it is fufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of the Effay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is faid to have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the confequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his own. That thofe communications had been confolidated into a scheme regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed from profe to verfe, has been reported, but hardly can be true. The Effay plainly ap-t pears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke fupplied could be only the first principles; the order, illuftration, and embellishments, muft all be Pope's.

These principles it is not my bufinefs to clear from obfcurity, dogmatifm, or falfehood; but they were not immediately examined; philosophy and poetry have not often the fame readers; and the Effay abounded in fplendid amplifications and fparkling fentences, which were read and admired, with no great attention to their ultimate purpofe; its flowers caught the eye, VOL. IV. which

F

which did not fee what the gay foliage concealed, and for a time flourished in the funfhine of universal approbation. So little was any evil tendency difcovered, that, as innocence is unfufpicious, many read it for a manual of piety.

Its reputation foon invited a tranflator. It was first turned into French profe, and afterwards by Refnel into verfe. Both tranflations fell into the hands of Croufaz, who firft, when he had the verfion in profe, wrote a general cenfure, and afterwards reprinted Refnel's verfion, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.

Croufaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatife of Logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme, and, however little known or regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in which philofophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to argument and difquifition, and perhaps was grown too defirous of detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions were folid, and his religion pure.

His inceffant vigilance for the promotion of piety difpofed him to look with diftruft upon all metaphyfical fyftems of Theology, and all fchemes of virtue and happiness purely rational; and therefore it was not long before he was perfuaded that the pofitions of Pope, as they terminated for the most part in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind away from revelation, and to reprefent the whole courfe of things as a neceffary concatenation of indiffoluble fatality; and it is undeniable, that in many paffages a religious eye may easily discover expreffions not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.

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