c calls for aid on Sense!
See Mystery to Mathematics fly!
In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public Flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal Darkness buries All.'

The publication of the _Dunciad_ showed Pope where his main strength as
a poet lay. That the writers he had attacked, in many instances without
provocation, should resent the ungrateful notoriety conferred upon them
was inevitable. In self-defence, and to add to the provocation already
given, he started a paper called the _Grub Street Journal_, which
existed for eight years--Pope, who had no scruple in 'hazarding a lie,'
denying all the time that he had any connection with it.

His next work of significance, _The Essay on Man_, a professedly
philosophical poem by an author who knew little of philosophy, was
published in four epistles, in 1733-4. Bolingbroke's brilliant,
versatile, and shallow intellect had strongly impressed Swift, and had
also fascinated Pope. It has been commonly supposed that the _Essay_
owes its existence to his suggestion and guidance. The poet believed in
his philosophy, and had the loftiest estimate of his genius. In the last
and perhaps finest passage of the poem he calls Bolingbroke the 'master
of the poet and the song,' and draws a picture of the ambitious
statesman as beautiful as it is false. In Mark Pattison's Introduction
to _The Essay on Man_,[21] which every student of Pope will read, he
objects to the notion that the poet took the scheme of his work from
Bolingbroke, observing that both derived their views from a common
source.

'Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet,
argument on the origin of evil, on the goodness of God, and the
constitution of the world was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite
conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by
the bent of his native genius. Pope followed the example and impulse of
his friend's more powerful mind. Thus much there was of special
suggestion. But the arguments or topics of the poem are to be traced to
books in much vogue at the time; to Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_
(1711), King on the _Origin of Evil_ (1702),