they may be fuppofed to have 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 some perhaps as a model of epistolary language; but those 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 praise, or publick

cenfure.

It had however, in fome degree, the recommendation of novelty. Our language has few Letters, except those of statefmen. Howel indeed, about a century ago, published 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. Phillip's [Orinda's] are equally neglected; and those of Walsh seem written as exercises, and were never sent to any living mistress or friend. Pope's epiftolary excellence had an open

field; he had no English rival, living or dead.

Pope is seen in this collection as connected with the other contemporary wits, and certainly fuffers no difgrace in the comparison ; but it must be remembered, that he had the power of favouring himself: he might have originally had publication in his mind, and have writen with care, or have afterwards felected those which he had moft happily conceived, or most diligently laboured; and I know not whether there does not appear fomething more ftudied and artificial in his productions than the reft, except one long Letter by Bolingbroke, compofed with all the fkill and industry of a profeffed author. It is indeed not easy to diftinguish affectation from habit; he that has once ftudiously formed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease. 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

Before these Letters appeared, he published the first part of what he perfuaded himself to think a system of Ethicks, under the title of an Effay 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 wish 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 in fcribed, 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, says 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 scatter VOL. IV. H praise

praise at random, which while it is unappropriated excites no envy. Those friends of Pope, that were trusted with the secret, went about lavishing honours on the new-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 present before publication, that they might defeat their own enmity by praises, which they could not afterwards decently

retract.

With these precautions, in 1733 was published the first part of the Essay on Man. There had been for fome time a report that Pope was bufy upon a Syftem of Morality; but this defign was not discovered 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 not without good lines. While the author was unknown, fome, as willalways happen, favoured him as an adven

turer,

turer, 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 fcene 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 describe or to trace the maze.

The other alteration was of these lines;

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

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

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