fter a
fashion, his religion had not emotional depth or logical coherence
enough to be pantheistic. Pope, doubtless, did not here quit his
master's guidance from any superiority in logical perception. But he did
occasionally feel the poetical value of the pantheistic conception of
the universe. Pantheism, in fact, is the only poetical form of the
metaphysical theology current in Pope's day. The old historical theology
of Dante, or even of Milton, was too faded for poetical purposes; and
the 'personal Deity,' whose existence and attributes were proved by the
elaborate reasonings of the apologists of that day, was unfitted for
poetical celebration by the very fact that his existence required proof.
Poetry deals with intuitions, not with remote inferences, and therefore
in his better moments Pope spoke not of the intelligent moral Governor
discovered by philosophical investigation, but of the Divine Essence
immanent in all nature, whose 'living raiment' is the world. The finest
passages in the 'Essay on Man,' like the finest passages in Wordsworth,
are an attempt to expound that view, though Pope falls back too quickly
into epigram, as Wordsworth into prose. It was reserved for Goethe to
show what a poet might learn from the philosophy of Spinoza. Meanwhile
Pope, uncertain as is his grasp of any philosophical conceptions, shows,
not merely in set phrases, but in the general colouring of his poem,
something of that width of sympathy which should result from the
pantheistic view. The tenderness, for example, with which he always
speaks of the brute creation is pleasant in a writer so little
distinguished as a rule by an interest in what we popularly call nature.
The 'scale of being' argument may be illogical, but we pardon it when it
is applied to strengthen our sympathies with our unfortunate dependants
on the lower steps of the ladder. The lamb who

Licks the hand just raised to shed his blood

is a second-hand lamb, and has, like so much of Pope's writing, acquired
a certain tinge of banality, which must limit quotation; and the same
must be said of the poor Indian, who

thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog will bear him company.

But the sentiment is as right as the language (in spite of its
familiarity we can still recognise the fact) is exquisite. Tolerance of
all forms of faith, from that of the poor Indian upwards, is so
characteristic of Pope as to have offended some modern critic