expression. The reader will also observe in the notes how extensively he borrowed from the writings of his predecessors, and at the same time what freshness and point he added to the materials he thus appropriated. The various alterations made in the text during his lifetime have been noted, even when they are unimportant, because they illustrate his intellectual subtlety. With regard to the number and length of the notes, I know that a commentator is in danger of becoming trifling and tedious; but if I am chargeable with this crime, I would fain hope that something may be imputed to an anxiety to do justice to the meaning of my author.

I have only to add that the different editions collated with Warburton's text comprise the folios of the various poems separately published, the quarto edition of the collected Satires and Epistles published in 1735, and the numerous small octavo editions of the same, published between 1735 and 1743 by B. Lintot, H. Lintot, Gilliver, Clarke, Dodsley and Cooper. Of these Mr. Croker collected a very complete set. In transscribing the variations from so many quarters I must, I fear, have been guilty of sins both of omission and commission, but I trust that these have not been serious. The text of the Moral Essays, as it stood in the edition of 1743, is given in an Appendix, in order that the reader may have an opportunity of judging for himself of the extent of the alterations, and of the value of the transpositions, for which Warburton took to himself so much credit. The 'Sober Advice from Horace' is omitted in this edition, for though the authorship was avowed by Pope in private, and though it was printed in Dodsley's octavo edition of 1738, and in succeeding editions up to 1743, it does not appear in Warburton's edition, and it may, therefore, be inferred that Pope wished it to be suppressed.

THE following is the account given by Warburton of the relationship of the Moral Essays to the Essay on Man' :

"The 'Essay on Man' was intended to be comprised in four books: "The First of which, the author has given us under that title, in

four epistles.

"The Second was to have consisted of the same number: 1. Of the extent and limits of human reason. 2. Of those arts and sciences, and the parts of them which are useful, and therefore attainable; together with those which are unuseful, and therefore unattainable. 3. Of the nature, ends, use, and application of the different capacities of men. 4. Of the use of learning; of the science of the world; and of wit; concluding with a satire against the misapplication of them, illustrated by pictures, characters, and examples.

"The Third book regarded civil regimen, or the science of politics; in which the several forms of a Republic were to be examined and explained; together with the several modes of religious worship, so far forth as they affect society; between which the author always supposed there was the closest connection and the most interesting relation. So that this part would have treated of civil and religious society in their full extent.

"The Fourth and last book concerned private ethics, or practical morality; considered in all the circumstances, orders, professions, and stations of human life.

"The scheme of all this had been maturely digested, and communicated to L. Bolingbroke, Dr. Swift, and one or two more; and was intended for the only work of his riper years; but was, partly through ill health, partly through discouragements from the depravity of the times, and partly on prudential and other considerations, interrupted, postponed, and, lastly, in a manner laid aside.

"But as this was the author's favourite work, which more exactly reflected the image of his own strong and capacious mind, and as we can have but a very imperfect idea of it from the disjecta membra Poeta, which now remain, it may not be amiss to be a little more particular concerning each of these projected books.

"The First, as it treats of man in the abstract, and considers him in general, under every one of his relations, becomes the foundation, and furnishes out the subjects, of the three following; so that

"The Second Book was to take up again the first and second epistles of the first book; and to treat of man in his intellectual capacity at large, as has been explained above. Of this only a small part of the

conclusion (which, as we said, was to have contained a satire against the misapplication of wit and learning) may be found in the fourth book of the Dunciad; and up and down, occasionally, in the other three.

"The Third Book, in like manner, was to reassume the subject of the third epistle of the first, which treats of man in his social, political, and religious capacity. But this part the poet afterwards conceived might be best executed in an Epic Poem, as the Action would make it more animated, and the Fable less invidious; in which all the great principles of true and false governments and religions should be chiefly delivered in feigned examples.

"The Fourth and last book was to pursue the subject of the fourth epistle of the first, and to treat of Ethics, or practical morality; and would have consisted of many members, of which, the four following epistles are detached portions; the two first, on the Characters of Men and Women, being the introductory part of this concluding book."

The substance of these remarks is also to be found in a conversation between Pope and Spence recorded by the latter in his 'Anecdotes,' p. 315. It is, however, very doubtful whether Pope had formed this design, which, if irregular, is certainly extensive, before he began to write the Moral Essays. Looking to his ordinary methods of poetical conception, we are inclined to ask whether it is likely that he would have started on his philosophical journey with such a minute survey of a very intricate subject, as that which Warburton describes. The Moral Essays themselves present no indications of being integral parts of a single design. They are indeed superficially connected by the appearance in each of the theory of the Ruling Passion, but, even as they stand in the text, they proceed by no such gradations of reasoning as we find (for instance) in a didactic poem like the 'De Rerum Naturâ.' Besides, the order in which they were originally published precludes the notion that they were produced by a sustained effort of philosophic thought. The Epistle to Lord Burlington on False Taste (now called the second part of the Use of Riches,') in which the Ruling Passion is only mentioned incidentally, appeared in 1731; the Epistle to Lord Bathurst, being the first part of the Use of Riches,' in 1732; the Epistle to Lord Cobham, Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men,' which developes at length the theory of the Ruling Passion -in 1733; and the Epistle to a Lady, Of the Characters of Women,' in 1735. The poems thus separately issued seem to be the products of a mind taking a shrewd and consistent, but by no means a systematic view of the problems of existence. When, however, Pope collected them in the second volume of his. poetical works, published in quarto in 1735, he endeavoured to stamp them with the appearance of a regular unity of design. He there prints

6

the Essay on Man as the first book of his Ethic Epistles,' and in the second book he places the four Epistles now known as the Moral Essays, together with the Epistles to Addison, Oxford, and Arbuthnot. But this arrangement is quite inconsistent with the plan detailed by Warburton; and besides, it is certain that the three last-named poems did not, and could not, form part of a moral scheme, conceived in Pope's imagination when he began to meditate the Essay on Man,' in or about 1729. For the Epistle to Addison was written according to his own account in 1715, and was certainly published in 1721; the Epistle to Lord Oxford appeared in the same year, that is to say before he had come under Bolingbroke's influence; while the Epistle to Arbuthnot, as will be seen hereafter, was designed as an answer to the attack made on him by Lord Hervey and Lady M. W. Montagu, in consequence of the publication of his First Imitation of Horace, in 1733. In the small editions, published subsequently, he alters the arrangement of the quarto and prints the Essay on Man as the First Book of the Ethic Epistles'; the Moral Essays, and the Epistles to Lord Oxford, Craggs, Addison, Jervas, Miss Blount, and Dr. Arbuthnot, being grouped together, without any link of connection to the Essay on Man,' under the general title of Epistles to Several Persons.' As to the fourth book of the Dunciad,' while it is of course impossible to say that it might not have occupied an appropriate place in such a design as that sketched above, which might be entitled De Omnibus Rebus et Quibusdam Aliis,' it is difficult to see what relationship it bears to the Essay on Man,' and the Moral Essays.'

་

What seems likely is that the poet really meditated some extensive philosophical poem, and kept on adding to his original design at different periods. That he had conceived, and begun to execute, the scheme of the Essay on Man, of which the Moral Essays were really a part, as early as 1729, appears from the letter of Bolingbroke to Swift of Nov. 19th [or 27th], and from the letter of Pope to Swift of 28th Nov. in that year. Pope says: "The work le (Bolingbroke) speaks of with such abundant partiality is a system of ethics in the Horatian way." Bolingbroke writes: "Bid him (Pope) talk to you of the work he is about, I hope in good earnest. It is a fine one, and will be in his hands an original. His sole complaint is, that he finds it too easy of execution. This flatters his laziness. It flatters my judgment, who always thought that, universal as his talents are, this is eminently and peculiarly his above all the writers I know, living or dead; I do not except Horace."

These expressions become very intelligible when we remember that the matter of the Essay on Man' is Bolingbroke's. Pope sat at the feet of Bolingbroke as a master in philosophy. No doubt the two friends had often discussed the various questions of morals, taste, and politics which then engaged men's attention,