Pope echoes these words, and quotes the last line as the Be it thy task to set the wanderer right, As angels once, so now we mortals bold The opinion of the clever hunting squire by whom these lines were written may not in itself be sufficient to establish that Pope had proposed to himself any such lofty object; but it clearly shows that the Essay was regarded by some intelligent readers of his time as worthily accomplishing the high purpose which the author of it had laid down-the vindication of a Divine providence overruling all human affairs. It is not within the scope of this chapter to enter closely into the real character of the Essay on Man. There is the less reason for doing so, as the subject has been ably discussed by some of the best writers of our day. It must not, however, be passed over entirely. Pope's Essay met the taste of the age. The principles of natural religion were being discussed by men of all views in every educated circle-it may be rather said, in every place of public resort where men conversed and reasoned. Fundamental questions relating 1 Essay on Man, canto 16. 2 W. Somerville's Poems: To the Author of the Essay on Man.' to the nature of the Divine attributes, the origin and cause of evil, the objects of human society, were exciting profound attention among all who advanced any pretensions to serious thought. In the great controversy between Deists and the defenders of revealed religion they were being perpetually recurred to. A philosophical poem, therefore, on these subjects, proceeding from a poet whose talents were held in universal honour, was received with the most cordial welcome. But before the chorus of applause which greeted its first appearance had yet died away, the question was already asked, how far it redeemed the lofty promise of its exordium. Was not its tendency rather a downward than an upward one? Did not its conclusions lead rather to scepticism, or to fatalism, than to a secure and reasonable faith? Pope was startled and disturbed to find that such an interpretation could be put upon his poem, and gladly availed himself of the powerful championship of Warburton. The truth is, he had entered upon a task unfitted to his genius, and far too deep for him. He had intended, in a train of reasoning none the less philosophical for its poetical form, to grapple with difficulties which are as old as the reason of mankind, and, in doing so, to smooth the way of religion, and strengthen the foundations of morality. His labours had resulted in a poem, rich indeed in brilliant passages, and fascinating by the polished condensation of its periods; but essentially vague and superficial, and open to very different constructions, according as the mind of the reader filled up for itself the gaps and deficiencies in the thought of the writer. Pope,' says Taine, ‘is a poet if read in fragments.'2 Much the same may be said of his philosophy. Where each separate idea is stated so effectively, it is at first difficult to realise that the solidity of the whole reasoning does not in any way correspond with the pointed impressiveness of the details. 1 See Pattison's Introduction to his ed. of the Essay on Man, p. 4. 2 H. Taine's Hist. de la Litt. Anglaise, Bk. III. chap. vii. 4. ... Yet the poem might have been a very noble one, if Pope had had the will and the power to carry out in a religious and meditative spirit the plan originally suggested to him. Bolingbroke seems to have pressed him to write an essay in verse upon the objects and destinies of human life, but to have advised that he should treat the subject not so much from an argumentative as from a poetical and imaginative point of view. 'The business,' he said, 'of the philosopher is to dilate, . . . to press, to prove, to convince: and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart.'1 But Pope had far too much in common with his 'guide, philosopher, and friend' to carry out the project with success. Although a steady believer in the grand truths of Revelation,2 yet, as Hazlitt remarks, ' he was in poetry what the sceptic was in religion.' He was critical and wholly unimpassioned; he lacked enthusiasm ; there is no depth of feeling; no grandeur of sentiment; no imaginative power in anything he ever wrote. special talents were great, but they were not of the kind which the task proposed to him specially demanded. The sound common sense, the keen observation of manners and character, the epigrammatic wit, the finished style, the harmonious flow of numbers, were all insufficient for such an undertaking. To all appearance he scarcely knew in what consisted the less obvious. difficulties of his subject, what fires of world-old controversies lay smouldering under the ground over which he lightly trod, or what unsuspected conclusions might be drawn from the argument by which, with satisfaction to himself, he established the optimism of nature. poem, even in its religious aspect, must not be unduly disparaged. There must have been very considerable merits in a work which was not only widely accept His His 1 'Bolingbroke to Swift,' quoted by J. Conington, in Oxford Essays, (1858), p. 44. 2 Q. Rev. xxxii. p. 310. 3 W. Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets, 94. able at a time when a too prudential system of religion generally prevailed, but which Kant and Dugald Stewart praised,1 and which Toplady, most Calvinistic of the Evangelicals, quoted with the utmost approbation. Only it was insufficient,3 like much else that Pope wrote, both on its theoretic and on its emotional side.1 Before the end of the eighteenth century, the time had come when this was felt, not only by those who had been brought up in that more meditative school of thought, of which men like Coleridge and Wordsworth were representatives, but by thousands who could have given little reason for the distaste into which Pope's poems had fallen, except the practical one that they were not what they wanted. People still go to see Pope's house at Twickenham,' said Chateaubriand, of the years 1792-1800, and pick sprays of the weeping-willow which he planted; but his renown, like his willow, is a good deal decayed.'5 In our day his merits and his defects alike are probably far more justly appreciated than they were either in his own age, or in that which immediately preceded our own. Gay wrote one or two short poems on semi-sacred subjects, a Night Contemplation and a Thought on Eternity; but they are scarcely worthy of further notice. They are written stiffly. He was far more at home in writing fables to pleasant, easy verse. The elegy on Addison by Thomas Tickell (16861740) has been very highly praised by Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, and others. The following are a few lines from it on the disembodied spirit: In what new region, to the just assign'd, What new employment please th' unbody'd mind? 1 Pattison, II. 2 Toplady's Works, 1825: Christian and Philos. Necessity Asserted,' vol. vi. p. 84. 3 Yet a writer in the Quarterly Review remarks fairly enough, 'For the contradictions and semi-sophistries of these striking essays the amazing difficulties of the subject should be rather held accountable than the poet. -Quarterly Review, July 1862, 154. 4 Pattison, 9. 5 Essai sur la Litt. Angl., ii. 273. A wingéd virtue, through th' eternal sky, Of heaven's decrees where wondering angels gaze. William Broome (1687-1745), a clergyman in the eastern counties, left a few poems on Scriptural subjects, which may be found with his other works in the collections of English poetry. There are lines in his Thoughts on the Death of my dear Friend, Elijah Fenton, which would well deserve to be quoted, if the whole piece had not been obviously framed upon the general model of Tickell's elegy. In truth, he was too much of an imitator ever to emerge from the lower ranks of the minor poets. His paraphrase, however, of Habakkuk iii. is by no means wanting in vigour. The following verses form part of it : But why, ah! why, O Sion, reigns Vengeance is loose, and wrath from God! Like an unruly deluge rushes on ! Yet though the fig-tree should no burthen bear, For ever praise Thy name, Thee everlasting God, the mighty King of kings.1 1 British Poets, vol. viii. p. 752. Y |