THE ESSAY ON MAN.
It is a relief to turn from this miserable record of Pope's petty or
malicious deceptions to the history of his legitimate career. I go back
to the period when he was still in full power. Having finished the
Dunciad, he was soon employed on a more ambitious task. Pope resembled
one of the inferior bodies of the solar system, whose orbit is dependent
upon that of some more massive planet; and having been a satellite of
Swift, he was now swept into the train of the more imposing Bolingbroke.
He had been originally introduced to Bolingbroke by Swift, but had
probably seen little of the brilliant minister who, in the first years
of their acquaintance, had too many occupations to give much time to the
rising poet. Bolingbroke, however, had been suffering a long eclipse,
whilst Pope was gathering fresh splendour. In his exile, Bolingbroke,
though never really weaned from political ambition, had amused himself
with superficial philosophical studies. In political life it was his
special glory to extemporize statesmanship without sacrificing pleasure.
He could be at once the most reckless of rakes and the leading spirit in
the Cabinet or the House of Commons. He seems to have thought that
philosophical eminence was obtainable in the same offhand fashion, and
that a brilliant style would justify a man in laying down the law to
metaphysicians as well as to diplomatists and politicians. His
philosophical writings are equally superficial and arrogant, though they
show here and there the practised debater's power of making a good point
against his antagonist without really grasping the real problems at
issue.
Bolingbroke received a pardon in 1723, and returned to England, crossing
Atterbury, who had just been convicted of treasonable practices. In 1725
Bolingbroke settled at Dawley, near Uxbridge, and for the next ten years
he was alternately amusing himself in playing the retired philosopher,
and endeavouring, with more serious purpose, to animate the opposition
to Walpole. Pope, who was his frequent guest, sympathized with his
schemes, and was completely dazzled by his eminence. He spoke of him
with bated breath, as a being almost superior to humanity. "It looks,"
said Pope once, "as if that great man had been placed here by mistake.
When the comet appeared a month or two ago," he added, "I sometimes
fancied that it might be come to carry him home, as a coach comes to
one's door for other visitors." Of all the graceful compliments in
Pope's poetry, none are more ardent or more obviously sincere than those
addressed to this "guide, philosopher, and friend." He delighted to bask
in the sunshine of the great man's presence. Writing to Swift in 1728,
he (Pope) says that he is holding the pen "for my Lord Bolingbroke," who
is reading your letter between two haycocks, with his attention
occasionally distracted by a threatening shower. Bolingbroke is acting
the temperate recluse, having nothing for dinner but mutton-broth, beans
and bacon, and a barndoor fowl. Whilst his lordship is running after a
cart, Pope snatches a moment to tell how the day before this noble
farmer had engaged a painter for 200_l._ to give the correct
agricultural air to his country hall by ornamenting it with trophies of
spades, rakes, and prongs. Pope saw that the zeal for retirement was not
free from affectation, but he sat at the teacher's feet with profound
belief in the value of the lessons which flowed from his lips.
The connexion was to bear remarkable fruit. Under the direction of
Bolingbroke, Pope resolved to compose a great philosophical poem. "Does
Pope talk to you," says Bolingbroke to Swift in 1731, "of the noble work
which, at my instigation, he has begun in such a manner that he must be
convinced by this time I judged better of his talents than he did?" And
Bolingbroke proceeds to describe the Essay on Man, of which it seems
that three (out of four) epistles were now finished. The first of these
epistles appeared in 1733. Pope, being apparently nervous on his first
appearance as a philosopher, withheld his name. The other parts followed
in the course of 1733 and 1734, and the authorship was soon avowed. The
Essay on Man is Pope's most ambitious performance, and the one by which
he was best known beyond his own country. It has been frequently
translated, it was imitated both in France and Germany, and provoked a
controversy, not like others in Pope's history of the purely personal
kind.
The Essay on Man professes to be a theodicy. Pope, with an echo of the
Miltonic phrase, proposes to
Vindicate the ways of God to man.
He is thus attempting the greatest task to which poet or philosopher can
devote himself--the exhibition of an organic and harmonious view of the
universe. In a time when men's minds are dominated by a definite
religious creed, the poet may hope to achieve success in such an
undertaking without departing from his legitimate method. His vision
pierces to the world hidden from our senses, and realizes in the
transitory present a scene in the slow development of a divine drama. To
make us share his vision is to give his justification of Providence.
When Milton told the story of the war in heaven and the fall of man, he
gave implicitly his theory of the true relations of man to his Creator,
but the abstract doctrine was clothed in the flesh and blood of a
concrete mythology.
In Pope's day the traditional belief had lost its hold upon men's minds
too completely to be used for imaginative purposes. The story of Adam
and Eve would itself require to be justified or to be rationalized into
thin allegory. Nothing was left possessed of any vitality but a bare
skeleton of abstract theology, dependent upon argument instead of
tradition, and which might use or might dispense with a Christian
phraseology. Its deity was not a historical personage, but the name of a
metaphysical conception. For a revelation was substituted a
demonstration. To vindicate Providence meant no longer to stimulate
imagination by pure and sublime rendering of accepted truths, but to
solve certain philosophical problems, and especially the grand
difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with divine omnipotence
and benevolence.
Pope might conceivably have written a really great poem on these terms,
though deprived of the concrete imagery of a Dante or a Milton. If he
had fairly grasped some definite conception of the universe, whether
pantheistic or atheistic, optimist or pessimist, proclaiming a solution
of the mystery, or declaring all solutions to be impossible, he might
have given forcible expression to the corresponding emotions. He might
have uttered the melancholy resignation and the confident hope incited
in different minds by a contemplation of the mysterious world. He might
again conceivably have written an interesting work, though it would
hardly have been a poem--if he had versified the arguments by which a
coherent theory might be supported. Unluckily, he was quite unqualified
for either undertaking, and, at the same time, he more or less aimed at
both. Anything like sustained reasoning was beyond his reach. Pope felt
and thought by shocks and electric flashes. He could only obtain a
continuous effect when working clearly upon lines already provided for
him, or simulate one by fitting together fragments struck out at
intervals. The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour out of the question.
The laborious and patient meditation which brings a converging series of
arguments to bear upon a single point, was to him as impossible as the
power of devising an elaborate strategical combination to a dashing
Prince Rupert. The reasonings in the Essay are confused, contradictory,
and often childish. He was equally far from having assimilated any
definite system of thought. Brought up as a Catholic, he had gradually
swung into vague deistic belief. But he had never studied any philosophy
or theology whatever, and he accepts in perfect unconsciousness
fragments of the most heterogeneous systems.
Swift, in verses from which I have already quoted, describes his method
of composition, which is characteristic of Pope's habits of work.
Now backs of letters, though design'd
For those who more will need 'em,
Are fill'd with hints and interlined,
Himself can scarcely read 'em.
Each atom by some other struck
All turns and motions tries;
Till in a lump together stuck
Behold a poem rise!
It was strange enough that any poem should arise by such means; but it
would have been miraculous if a poem so constructed had been at once a
demonstration and an exposition of a harmonious philosophical system.
The confession which he made to Warburton will be a sufficient
indication of his qualifications as a student. He says (in 1739) that he
never in his life read a line of Leibnitz, nor knew, till he found it in
a confutation of his Essay, that there was such a term as
pre-established harmony. That is almost as if a modern reconciler of
faith and science were to say that he had never read a line of Mr.
Darwin, or heard of such a phrase as the struggle for existence. It was
to pronounce himself absolutely disqualified to speak as a philosopher.
How, then, could Pope obtain even an appearance of success? The problem
should puzzle no one at the present day. Every smart essayist knows how
to settle the most abstruse metaphysical puzzles after studies limited
to the pages of a monthly magazine; and Pope was much in the state of
mind of such extemporizing philosophers. He had dipped into the books
which everybody read; Locke's Essay, and Shaftesbury's Characteristics,
and Wollaston's Religion of Nature, and Clarke on the Attributes, and
Archbishop King on the Origin of Evil, had probably amused his spare
moments. They were all, we may suppose, in Bolingbroke's library; and if
that passing shower commemorated in Pope's letter drove them back to the
house, Bolingbroke might discourse from the page which happened to be
open, and Pope would try to versify it on the back of an envelope.[20]
Nor must we forget, like some of his commentators, that after all Pope
was an exceedingly clever man. His rapidly perceptive mind was fully
qualified to imbibe the crude versions of philosophic theories which
float upon the surface of ordinary talk, and are not always so inferior
to their prototypes in philosophic qualities, as philosophers would have
us believe. He could by snatches seize with admirable quickness the
general spirit of a doctrine, though unable to sustain himself at a high
intellectual level for any length of time. He was ready with abundance
of poetical illustrations, not, perhaps, very closely adapted to the
logic, but capable of being elaborated into effective passages; and,
finally, Pope had always a certain number of more or less appropriate
commonplaces or renderings into verse of some passages which had struck
him in Pascal, or Rochefoucauld, or Bacon, all of them favourite
authors, and which could be wrought into the structure at a slight cost
of coherence. By such means he could put together a poem, which was
certainly not an organic whole, but which might contain many striking
sayings and passages of great rhetorical effect.
The logical framework was, we may guess, supplied mainly by Bolingbroke.
Bathurst told Warton that Bolingbroke had given Pope the essay in prose,
and that Pope had only turned it into verse; and Mallet--a friend of
both--is said to have seen the very manuscript from which Pope worked.
Johnson, on hearing this from Boswell, remarked that it must be an
overstatement. Pope might have had from Bolingbroke the "philosophical
stamina" of the essay, but he must, at least, have contributed the
"poetical imagery," and have had more independent power than the story
implied. It is, indeed, impossible accurately to fix the relations of
the teacher and his disciple. Pope acknowledged in the strongest
possible terms his dependence upon Bolingbroke, and Bolingbroke claims
with equal distinctness the position of instigator and inspirer. His
more elaborate philosophical works are in the form of letters to Pope,
and profess to be a redaction of the conversations which they had had
together. These were not written till after the Essay on Man; but a
series of fragments appear to represent what he actually set down for
Pope's guidance. They are professedly addressed to Pope. "I write," he
says (fragment 65), "to you and for you, and you would think yourself
little obliged to me if I took the pains of explaining in prose what you
would not think it necessary to explain in verse,"--that is, the
free-will puzzle. The manuscripts seen by Mallet may probably have been
a commonplace book in which Bolingbroke had set down some of these
fragments, by way of instructing Pope, and preparing for his own more
systematic work. No reader of the fragments can, I think, doubt as to
the immediate source of Pope's inspiration. Most of the ideas expressed
were the common property of many contemporary writers, but Pope accepts
the particular modification presented by Bolingbroke.[21] Pope's
manipulation of these materials causes much of the Essay on Man to
resemble (as Mr. Pattison puts it) an exquisite mosaic work. A detailed
examination of his mode of transmutation would be a curious study in the
technical secrets of literary execution. A specimen or two will
sufficiently indicate the general character of Pope's method of
constructing his essay.
The forty-third fragment of Bolingbroke is virtually a prose version of
much of Pope's poetry. A few phrases will exhibit the relation:--
Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known,
'Tis ours to _trace Him only in our own_.
He who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds _compose one universe_,
Observe how _system into system runs_,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied being peoples every star,
May tell why Heaven has made us what we are.
But of this frame the bearings and _the ties_,
The strong _connexions_, nice _dependencies_,
_Gradations_ just, has thy pervading soul
Looked through, or can a part contain the whole?
"The universe," I quote only a few phrases from Bolingbroke, "is an
immense aggregate of systems. Every one of these, _if we may judge by
our own_, contains several, and every one of these again, _if we may
judge by our own_, is made up of a multitude of different modes of
being, animated and inanimated, thinking and unthinking ... but all
concurring in one common system.... Just so it is with respect to the
various systems and _systems of systems that compose the universe_. As
distant as they are, and as different as we may imagine them to be, they
are all _tied_ together by relations and _connexions_, _gradations_, and
_dependencies_." The verbal coincidence is here as marked as the
coincidence in argument. Warton refers to an eloquent passage in
Shaftesbury, which contains a similar thought; but one can hardly doubt
that Bolingbroke was in this case the immediate source. A quaint
passage a little farther on, in which Pope represents man as complaining
because he has not "the strength of bulls or the fur of bears," may be
traced with equal plausibility to Shaftesbury or to Sir Thomas Browne;
but I have not noticed it in Bolingbroke.
One more passage will be sufficient. Pope asks whether we are to demand
the suspension of laws of nature whenever they might produce a
mischievous result? Is Etna to cease an eruption to spare a sage, or
should "new motions be impressed upon sea and air" for the advantage of
blameless Bethel?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging-wall?
Chartres is Pope's typical villain. This is a terse version, with
concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of
gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special
Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be
precipitated. The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from
falling, whilst innocent men lived in it or passed under it, and the
fall of it must be as miraculously determined to crush the guilty
inhabitant or passenger." Here, again, we have the alternative of
Wollaston, who uses a similar illustration, and in one phrase comes
nearer to Pope. He speaks of "new motions being impressed upon the
atmosphere." We may suppose that the two friends had been dipping into
Wollaston together. Elsewhere Pope seems to have stolen for himself. In
the beginning of the second epistle, Pope, in describing man as "the
glory, jest, and riddle of the world," is simply versifying Pascal; and
a little farther on, when he speaks of reason as the wind and passion
as the gale on life's vast ocean, he is adapting his comparison from
Locke's treatise on government.
If all such cases were adduced, we should have nearly picked the
argumentative part of the essay to pieces; but Bolingbroke supplies
throughout the most characteristic element. The fragments cohere by
external cement, not by an internal unity of thought; and Pope too often
descends to the level of mere satire, or indulges in a quaint conceit or
palpable sophistry. Yet it would be very unjust to ignore the high
qualities which are to be found in this incongruous whole. The style is
often admirable. When Pope is at his best every word tells. His
precision and firmness of touch enables him to get the greatest possible
meaning into a narrow compass. He uses only one epithet, but it is the
right one, and never boggles and patches or, in his own phrase,
"blunders round about a meaning." Warton gives, as a specimen of this
power, the lines:--
But errs not nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?
And Mr. Pattison reinforces the criticism by quoting Voltaire's feeble
imitation:--
Quand des vents du midi les funestes haleines
De semence de mort ont inondé nos plaines,
Direz-vous que jamais le ciel en son courroux
Ne laissa la santé séjourner parmi nous?
It is true that in the effort to be compressed, Pope has here and there
cut to the quick and suppressed essential parts of speech, till the
lines can only be construed by our independent knowledge of their
meaning. The famous line--
Man never is but always to be blest,
is an example of defective construction, though his language is often
tortured by more elliptical phrases.[22] This power of charging lines
with great fulness of meaning enables Pope to soar for brief periods
into genuine and impressive poetry. Whatever his philosophical weakness
and his moral obliquity, he is often moved by genuine emotion. He has a
vein of generous sympathy for human sufferings and of righteous
indignation against bigots, and if he only half understands his own
optimism, that "whatever is is right," the vision, rather poetical than
philosophical, of a harmonious universe lifts him at times into a region
loftier than that of frigid and pedantic platitude. The most popular
passages were certain purple patches, not arising very spontaneously or
with much relevance, but also showing something more than the practised
rhetorician. The "poor Indian" in one of the most highly-polished
paragraphs--
Who thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company,
intrudes rather at the expense of logic, and is a decidedly conventional
person. But this passage has a certain glow of fine humanity and is
touched with real pathos. A further passage or two may sufficiently
indicate his higher qualities. In the end of the third epistle Pope is
discussing the origin of government and the state of nature, and
discussing them in such a way as to show conclusively that he does not
in the least understand the theories in question or their application.
His state of Nature is a sham reproduction of the golden age of poets,
made to do duty in a scientific speculation. A flimsy hypothesis learnt
from Bolingbroke is not improved when overlaid with Pope's conventional
ornamentation. The imaginary history proceeds to relate the growth of
superstition, which destroys the primeval innocence; but why or when
does not very clearly appear; yet, though the general theory is
incoherent, he catches a distinct view of one aspect of the question and
expresses a tolerably trite view of the question with singular
terseness. Who, he asks,--
First taught souls enslaved and realms undone,
The enormous faith of many made for one?
He replies,--
Force first made conquest and that conquest law;
Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conquerors, slaves of subjects made;
She, 'mid the lightning's blaze and thunder's sound,
When rock'd the mountains and when groan'd the ground--
She taught the weak to trust, the proud to pray
To Power unseen and mightier far than they;
She from the rending earth and bursting skies
Saw gods descend and fiends infernal rise;
There fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, framed like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
If the test of poetry were the power of expressing a theory more closely
and pointedly than prose, such writing would take a very high place.
Some popular philosophers would make a sounding chapter out of those
sixteen lines.
The Essay on Man brought Pope into difficulties. The central thesis,
"whatever is is right," might be understood in various senses, and in
some sense it would be accepted by every theist. But, in Bolingbroke's
teaching, it received a heterodox application, and in Pope's imperfect
version of Bolingbroke the taint was not removed. The logical outcome of
the rationalistic theory of the time was some form of pantheism, and the
tendency is still more marked in a poetical statement, where it was
difficult to state the refined distinctions by which the conclusion is
averted. When theology is regarded as demonstrable by reason, the need
of a revelation ceases to be obvious. The optimistic view which sees the
proof of divine order in the vast harmony of the whole visible world,
throws into the background the darker side of the universe reflected in
the theological doctrines of human corruption, and the consequent need
of a future judgment in separation of good from evil. I need not inquire
whether any optimistic theory is really tenable; but the popular version
of the creed involved the attempt to ignore the evils under which all
creation groans, and produced in different minds the powerful retort of
Butler's Analogy, and the biting sarcasm of Voltaire's Candide. Pope,
accepting the doctrine without any perception of these difficulties,
unintentionally fell into sheer pantheism. He was not yielding to the
logical instinct which carries out a theory to its legitimate
development; but obeying the imaginative impulse which cannot stop to
listen to the usual qualifications and safeguards of the orthodox
reasoner. The best passages in the essay are those in which he is
frankly pantheistic, and is swept, like Shaftesbury, into enthusiastic
assertion of the universal harmony of things.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;
That changed thro' all and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him, no high, no low, no great, no small,
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
In spite of some awkward phrases (hair and heart is a vile antithesis!),
the passage is eloquent but can hardly be called orthodox. And it was
still worse when Pope undertook to show that even evil passions and
vices were part of the harmony; that "a Borgia and a Cataline" were as
much a part of the divine order as a plague or an earthquake, and that
self-love and lust were essential to social welfare.
Pope's own religious position is characteristic and easily definable. If
it is not quite defensible on the strictest principles of plain
speaking, it is also certain that we could not condemn him without
condemning many of the best and most catholic-spirited of men. The
dogmatic system in which he had presumably been educated had softened
under the influence of the cultivated thought of the day. Pope, as the
member of a persecuted sect, had learnt to share that righteous hatred
of bigotry which is the honourable characteristic of his best
contemporaries. He considered the persecuting spirit of his own church
to be its worst fault.[23] In the early Essay on Criticism he offended
some of his own sect by a vigorous denunciation of the doctrine which
promotes persecution by limiting salvation to a particular creed. His
charitable conviction that a divine element is to be found in all
creeds, from that of the "poor Indian" upwards, animates the highest
passages in his works. But though he sympathizes with a generous
toleration, and the specific dogmas of his creed sat very loosely on his
mind, he did not consider that an open secession was necessary or even
honourable. He called himself a true Catholic, though rather as
respectfully sympathizing with the spirit of Fénelon than as holding to
any dogmatic system. The most dignified letter that he ever wrote was in
answer to a suggestion from Atterbury (1717), that he might change his
religion upon the death of his father. Pope replies that his worldly
interests would be promoted by such a step; and, in fact, it cannot be
doubted that Pope might have had a share in the good things then
obtainable by successful writers, if he had qualified by taking the
oaths. But he adds, that such a change would hurt his mother's feelings,
and that he was more certain of his duty to promote her happiness than
of any speculative tenet whatever. He was sure that he could mean as
well in the religion he now professed as in any other; and that being
so, he thought that a change even to an equally good religion could not
be justified. A similar statement appears in a letter to Swift, in 1729.
"I am of the religion of Erasmus, a Catholic. So I live, so shall I die,
and hope one day to meet you, Bishop Atterbury, the younger Craggs, Dr.
Garth, Dean Berkeley, and Mr. Hutchison in that place to which God of
his infinite mercy bring us and everybody." To these Protestants he
would doubtless have joined the freethinking Bolingbroke. At a later
period he told Warburton, in less elevated language, that the change of
his creed would bring him many enemies and do no good to any one.
Pope could feel nobly and act honourably when his morbid vanity did not
expose him to some temptation; and I think that in this matter his
attitude was in every way creditable. He showed, indeed, the prejudice
entertained by many of the rationalist divines for the freethinkers who
were a little more outspoken than himself. The deist whose creed was
varnished with Christian phrases, was often bitter against the deist who
rejected the varnish; and Pope put Toland and Tindal into the Dunciad as
scandalous assailants of all religion. From his point of view it was as
wicked to attack any creed as to regard any creed as exclusively true;
and certainly Pope was not disposed to join any party which was hated
and maligned by the mass of the respectable world. For it must be
remembered that, in spite of much that has been said to the contrary,
and in spite of the true tendency of much so-called orthodoxy, the
profession of open dissent from Christian doctrine was then regarded
with extreme disapproval. It might be a fashion, as Butler and others
declare, to talk infidelity in cultivated circles; but a public
promulgation of unbelief was condemned as criminal, and worthy only of
the Grub-street faction. Pope, therefore, was terribly shocked when he
found himself accused of heterodoxy. His poem was at once translated,
and, we are told, spread rapidly in France, where Voltaire and many
inferior writers were introducing the contagion of English freethinking.
A solid Swiss pastor and professor of philosophy, Jean Pierre Crousaz
(1663-1750), undertook the task of refutation, and published an
examination of Pope's philosophy in 1737 and 1738. A serious examination
of this bundle of half-digested opinions was in itself absurd. Some
years afterwards (1751) Pope came under a more powerful critic. The
Berlin Academy of Sciences offered a prize for a similar essay, and
Lessing published a short tract called _Pope ein Metaphysiker_! If any
one cares to see a demonstration that Pope did not understand the system
of Leibnitz, and that the bubble blown by a great philosopher has more
apparent cohesion than that of a half-read poet, he may find a
sufficient statement of the case in Lessing. But Lessing sensibly
protests from the start against the intrusion of such a work into
serious discussion; and that is the only ground which is worth taking in
the matter.
The most remarkable result of the Essay on Man, it may be
parenthetically noticed, was its effect upon Voltaire. In 1751 Voltaire
wrote a poem on Natural Law, which is a comparatively feeble application
of Pope's principles. It is addressed to Frederick instead of
Bolingbroke, and contains a warm eulogy of Pope's philosophy. But a few
years later the earthquake at Lisbon suggested certain doubts to
Voltaire as to the completeness of the optimist theory; and, in some of
the most impressive verses of the century, he issued an energetic
protest against the platitudes applied by Pope and his followers to
deaden our sense of the miseries under which the race suffers. Verbally,
indeed, Voltaire still makes his bow to the optimist theory, and the two
poems appeared together in 1756; but his noble outcry against the empty
and complacent deductions which it covers, led to his famous controversy
with Rousseau. The history of this conflict falls beyond my subject,
and I must be content with this brief reference, which proves, amongst
other things, the interest created by Pope's advocacy of the most
characteristic doctrines of his time on the minds of the greatest
leaders of the revolutionary movement.
Meanwhile, however, Crousaz was translated into English, and Pope was
terribly alarmed. His "guide, philosopher, and friend" had returned to
the Continent (in 1735), disgusted with his political failure, but was
again in England from June, 1738, to May, 1739. We know not what comfort
he may have given to his unlucky disciple, but an unexpected champion
suddenly arose. William Warburton (born 1698) was gradually pushing his
way to success. He had been an attorney's clerk, and had not received a
university education; but his multifarious reading was making him
conspicuous, helped by great energy, and by a quality which gave some
plausibility to the title bestowed on him by Mallet, "The most impudent
man living." In his humble days he had been intimate with Pope's
enemies, Concanen and Theobald, and had spoken scornfully of Pope,
saying, amongst other things, that he "borrowed for want of genius," as
Addison borrowed from modesty and Milton from pride. In 1736 he had
published his first important work, the Alliance between Church and
State, and in 1738 followed the first instalment of his principal
performance, the Divine Legation. During the following years he was the
most conspicuous theologian of the day, dreaded and hated by his
opponents, whom he unsparingly bullied, and dominating a small clique of
abject admirers. He is said to have condemned the Essay on Man when it
first appeared. He called it a collection of the worst passages of the
worst authors, and declared that it taught rank atheism. The appearance
of Crousaz's book suddenly induced him to make a complete change of
front. He declared that Pope spoke "truth uniformly throughout," and
complimented him on his strong and delicate reasoning.
It is idle to seek motives for this proceeding. Warburton loved
paradoxes, and delighted in brandishing them in the most offensive
terms. He enjoyed the exercise of his own ingenuity, and therefore his
ponderous writings, though amusing by their audacity and width of
reading, are absolutely valueless for their ostensible purpose. The
exposition of Pope (the first part of which appeared in December, 1738)
is one of his most tiresome performances; nor need any human being at
the present day study the painful wire-drawings and sophistries by which
he tries to give logical cohesion and orthodox intention to the Essay on
Man.
If Warburton was simply practising his dialectical skill, the result was
a failure. But if he had an eye to certain lower ends, his success
surpassed his expectations. Pope was in ecstasies. He fell upon
Warburton's neck--or rather at his feet--and overwhelmed him with
professions of gratitude. He invited him to Twickenham; met him with
compliments which astonished a bystander, and wrote to him in terms of
surprising humility. "You understand me," he exclaims in his first
letter, "as well as I do myself; but you express me much better than I
could express myself." For the rest of his life Pope adopted the same
tone. He sheltered himself behind this burly defender, and could never
praise him enough. He declared Mr. Warburton to be the greatest general
critic he ever knew, and was glad to instal him in the position of
champion in ordinary. Warburton was consulted about new editions;
annotated Pope's poems; stood sponsor to the last Dunciad, and was
assured by his admiring friend that the comment would prolong the life
of the poetry. Pope left all his copyrights to this friend, whilst his
MSS. were given to Bolingbroke.
When the University of Oxford proposed to confer an honorary degree upon
Pope, he declined to receive the compliment, because the proposal to
confer a smaller honour upon Warburton had been at the same time thrown
out by the University. In fact, Pope looked up to Warburton with a
reverence almost equal to that which he felt for Bolingbroke. If such
admiration for such an idol was rather humiliating, we must remember
that Pope was unable to detect the charlatan in the pretentious but
really vigorous writer; and we may perhaps admit that there is something
pathetic in Pope's constant eagerness to be supported by some sturdier
arm. We find the same tendency throughout his life. The weak and
morbidly sensitive nature may be forgiven if its dependence leads to
excessive veneration.
Warburton derived advantages from the connexion, the prospect of which,
we may hope, was not the motive of his first advocacy. To be recognized
by the most eminent man of letters of the day was to receive a kind of
certificate of excellence, valuable to a man who had not the regular
university hall-mark. More definite results followed. Pope introduced
Warburton to Allen, and to Murray, afterwards Lord Mansfield. Through
Murray he was appointed preacher at Lincoln's Inn, and from Allen he
derived greater benefits--the hand of his niece and heiress, and an
introduction to Pitt, which gained for him the bishopric of Gloucester.
Pope's allegiance to Bolingbroke was not weakened by this new alliance.
He sought to bring the two together, when Bolingbroke again visited
England in 1743. The only result was an angry explosion, as, indeed,
might have been foreseen; for Bolingbroke was not likely to be
well-disposed to the clever parson whose dexterous sleight-of-hand had
transferred Pope to the orthodox camp; nor was it natural that
Warburton, the most combative and insulting of controversialists, should
talk on friendly terms to one of his natural antagonists--an antagonist,
moreover, who was not likely to have bishoprics in his gift. The
quarrel, as we shall see, broke out fiercely over Pope's grave.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] "No letter with an envelope could give him more delight," says
Swift.
[21] It would be out of place to discuss this in detail; but I may say
that Pope's crude theory of the state of nature, his psychology as to
reason and instinct, and self-love, and his doctrine of the scale of
beings, all seem to have the specific Bolingbroke stamp.
[22] Perhaps the most curious example, too long for quotation, is a
passage near the end of the last epistle, in which he sums up his moral
system by a series of predicates for which it is impossible to find any
subject. One couplet runs--
Never elated whilst one man's depress'd, Never dejected whilst another's
blest.
It is impressive, but it is quite impossible to discover by the rules of
grammatical construction who is to be never elated and depressed.
[23] Spence, p. 364.