IF it be a true observation, that for a poet to write happily and well, he must have seen and felt what he describes, and muft draw from living models alone; and if modern times, from their luxury and refinement, afford not manners that will bear to be described; it will then follow, that those species of poetry bid fairest to succeed at present, which deliver doctrines, not display events. Of this fort is didactic and defcriptive poetry. Accordingly the moderns have produced many excellent pieces of this kind. We may mention the Syphilis of Fracaftorius, the Silkworms and Chefs of Vida, the Ambra of Politian, the Agriculture of Alamanni, the Art of Poetry of Boileau, the Gardens of Rapin, the Cyder of Phillips, the Chafe of Somerville, the Plea fures of Imagination, the Art of preferving Health, the Fleece, the Religion of Racine the younger, the elegant Latin poem of Brown on the Immortality of the Soul, the Latin poems of Stay and Boscovick, and the philosophical poem before us; to which, if we may judge from fome beautiful fragments, we might have added Gray's didactic poem on Education and Government, had he lived to finish it: And the English Garden of Mr. Mason must not be omitted. Pope informs us, in his first preface to this Effay, "that he chofe this epiftolary way of writing, notwithstanding his subject was high, and of dignity, because of its being mixed with argument which of its nature approacheth to profe." He has not wandered into any ufelefs digreffions; has employed no fictions, no tale or story, and has relied chiefly on the poetry of his style for the purpose of interefting his readers. His ftyle is concife and figurative, forcible and elegant. He has many metaphors and images, artfully interspersed in the drieft paffages, which flood most in need of fuch ornaments. Nevertheless there are too many lines, in this performance, plain and profaic. The meaner the fubject is of a preceptive poem, the more ftriking appears the art of the poet: It is even of use, perhaps, to choose a low fubject. In this respect Virgil has the advantage over Lucretius; the latter, with all his vigour and fublimity of genius, could hardly satisfy and come up to the grandeur of his theme. Pope labours under the fame difficulty. If any beauty in this Effay be uncommonly tranfcendent B4 cendent and peculiar, it is brevity of diction; which, in a few instances, and those perhaps pardonable, has occafioned obfcurity. It is hardly to be imagined how much fenfe, how much thinking, how much obfervation on human life, is condensed together in a fmall compass. He was fo accustomed to confine his thoughts in rhyme, that he tells us he could express them more shortly this way than in profe itself. On its first publication Pope did not own it, and it was given by the public to Lord Paget, Dr. Young, Dr. Defaguliers, and others. Even Swift seems to have been deceived. There is a remarkable paffage in one of his letters: "I confess I did never imagine you were fo deep in morals, or that fo many and excellent rules could be produced fo advantageously and agreeably in that fcience, from any one head. I confefs in fome places I was forced to read twice. I believe I told you before what the Duke of D faid to me on that occafion; how a judge here, who knows you, told him, that, on the first reading thofe Effays, he was much pleased, but found fome lines a little dark: On the fecond, moft of them cleared up, and his pleasure increased: On the third, he had no doubt remaining, and then he admired the whole." The subject of this Effay is a vindication of Providence; in which the poet proposes to prove, That, of all poffible fyftems, Infinite Wisdom has formed the best: That in such a system, coherence, union, fubordination, are neceffary; and if fo, that appearances of evil, both moral and natural, are also neceffary and unavoidable: That the feeming defects and blemishes in the universe conspire to its general beauty: That as all parts in an animal are not eyes; and as in a city, comedy, or picture, all ranks, characters, and colours are not equal or alike; even so exceffes and contrary qualities contribute to the proportion and harmony of the universal fyftem: That it is not strange that we should not be able to discover perfection and order in every inftance; because, in an infinity of things mutually relative, a mind which fees not infinitely, can fee nothing fully. This doctrine was inculcated by Plato and the Stoics, but more amply and particularly by the later Platonists, and by Antoninus and Simplicius. In illuftrating his subject, Pope has been much more deeply indebted to the Theodicée of Leibnitz, to Archbishop King's Origin of Evil, and to the Moralifts of Lord Shaftesbury, (particularly to the laft,) than to the philofophers above mentioned. The late Lord Bathurst repeatedly affured me, that he had read the whole scheme of the Effay on Man, in the hand-writing of Bo lingbroke, lingbroke, and drawn up in a series of propofitions, which Pope was to amplify, verfify, and illuftrate. In doing which, our poet, it must be confeffed, left feveral paffages fo expreffed, as to be favourable to fatalism and neceffity, notwithstanding all the pains that can be taken, and the artful turns that can be given to those paffages, to place them on the fide of religion, and make them coincide with the fundamental doctrines of revelation. How could Pope, in the letter which he wrote to Racine, the son, 1742, venture to fay, that his opinions were exactly conformable to thofe of Pascal, who, throughout all his Thoughts, is inceffantly inculcating the abfolute neceffity of believing that man is in a fallen and degraded ftate; an opinion which is ftrongly denied in every line of the Essay on Man? And which opinion of Pope, Racine has justly stated in the following lines; La Religion, Chant. 2. Quelque abftrait Raifonneur, qui ne fe plaint de rien, Pope has indeed inadvertently borrowed fome paffages from Pascal, but they have only ferved to make this fyftem more inconfiftent. For how can man be a " chaos of thought and passion all confus'd, and yet be as perfect a being as he ought to be?" The doctrine obviously intended to be inculcated in this Effay is, "That the difpenfations of Providence in the distribution of good and evil, in this life, ftand in no need of any hypothefis to justify them; all is adjusted in the moft perfect order; whatever is, is right; and we have no occafion to call in the notion of a future life to vindicate the ways of God to man, because they are fully and fufficiently benevolent and juft in the prefent." If we cannot fubfcribe, on one hand, to Dr. Warburton's opinion, " that these epiftles have a precifion, force, and clofenefs of connection rarely to be met with, even in the most formal treatises of philofophy;" yet neither can we affent to the fevere sentence that Dr. Johnson has passed on the other hand; namely, "that penury of knowledge, and vulgarity of fentiment, were never so happily disguised as in this Essay; the reader feels his mind full, though he learns nothing; and, when he meets it in his new array, no longer knows the talk of his mother and his nurfe." It has been alleged that Pope did not fully comprehend the drift of the fyftem communicated to him by Bolingbroke; but the following following remarkable words of his intimate friend, Mr. Jonathan Richardson, a man of known integrity and honour, clearly evince that he did: "As for this Effay on Man, as I was witness to the whole conduct of it in writing, and actually have his original manuscripts for it, from the first scratches of the four books, to the feveral finished copies (of his own neat and elegant writing these laft); all which, with the manufcript of his Effay on Criticism, and feveral of his other works, he gave me himfelf, for the pains I took in collating the whole with the printed editions, at his requeft, on my having proposed to him the making an edition of his works in the manner of Boileau's. As to this nobleft of his works, I know that he never dreamed of the scheme he afterwards adopted; perhaps for good reafons; for he had taken terror about the clergy, and Warburton himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism and deistical tendency; of which, however, we talked with him (my father and I) frequently at Twickenham, without his appearing to understand it otherwise, or even thinking to alter those paffages, which he suggested as what might seem the most exceptionable." To this teftimony of Richardfon, which is decifive, I will now add, that Lord Lyttelton, with his ufual frankness and ingenuity, affured me, that he had frequently talked with Pope on the subject, whose opinions were at that time conformable to his own; before he had written his Obfervations on the Conversion of St. Paul, when he and his friends (not excepting Mr. Gilbert Weft) were, as he most candidly confeffed, too much inclined to deism, but had fortunately become a moft ferious and earnest believer of Christianity. Is it not more probable and reasonable to suppose, that Pope might also change his opinion, though, at the time of writing the Effay on Man, he was tinctured with principles of another kind? and that he was equally in earnest when he was a difciple of Bolingbroke, as he afterwards was when he became a difciple of Warburton? It is incredible that he should not be acquainted with the objections that Bolingbroke held against revealed religion; which objections are perpetually repeated, and pervade all his works. But Pope might not indeed know the real opinions of his guide concerning a particular important topicthe moral attributes of the Deity. These two cafes are widely different; and there lies a vast space betwixt these two species of infidelity. A man may be unhappily and unjustly prejudiced against the Christian religion, and yet be fully and firmly perfuaded of the belief of a God, and his moral attributes. Mr. Harte more more than once affured me, that he had seen the preffing letter Dr. Young wrote to Pope, urging him to write fomething on the fide of revelation; to which he alluded in the firft Nightthought: “O had he prefs'd his theme, pursu'd the track Which opens out of darkness into day! O had he mounted on his wing of fire, Soar'd when I fink, and fung immortal man!” And when Harte frequently made the fame request, he used to answer, “No, no! you have already done it ;" alluding to Harte's Effay on Reason, which Harte thought a lame apology, and hardly ferious. With respect to what has just been mentioned, that Pope was not acquainted with the opinions of his philofophic guide, on the subject of the moral attributes of the Deity, it seems. rather ftrange and incredible that he should not understand the following, among many other paffages, to this purpose: "Clarke, after repeating over and over all the moral attributes, that they are the fame in God as they are in our ideas, and that he who denies them to be fo, may as well deny the divine physical attributes, infifts only on two of the former, on those of justice and goodness. He was much in the right to contract the generality of his affertion. The abfurdity of afcribing temperance, for inftance, or fortitude, to God, would have been too grofs and too rifible, even to eyes that prejudice had blinded the most. But that of afcribing juftice and goodnefs to him, according to our notions of them, might be better covered, and was enough for his purpose, though not lefs really abfurd." Vol. iv. p. 298. It is somewhat remarkable, that this very opinion, that we have no clear and adequate ideas of God's moral attributes, is ftrongly maintained by that excellent man and writer, Archbishop King, in his fermon on Divine Predeftination, 1709, which was answered by Anthony Collins, author of the Effay on Free-thinking. The person who wrote the spirited and elegant anonymous letter to Dr. Warburton on the fuppofed feverity with which he was thought to have treated Lord Bolingbroke in the View of his Philofophy, was the late Lord Mansfield; and this letter was anfwered by Dr. Warburton, with much force and apparent mortifi cation, in the Apology prefixed to the laft edition of this View. |