d not love? Have you your doubts? Do
you find it difficult to make your own speculations, even your own
honest convictions, square with the popular superstitions? What were
your doubts, your inward contradictions, to those of a man who, bred
a Papist, and yet burning with the most intense scorn and hatred of
lies and shams, bigotries and priestcrafts, could write that "Essay
on Man"? Read that, young gentlemen of the Job's-wife school, who
fancy it a fine thing to tell your readers to curse God and die, or,
at least, to show the world in print how you could curse God by
divine right of genius, if you chose, and be ashamed of your cowardly
wailings.

Alexander Pope went through doubt, contradiction, confusion, to which
yours are simple and light; and conquered. He was a man of like
passions with yourselves; infected with the peculiar vices of his
day; narrow, for his age was narrow; shallow, for his age was
shallow; a bon-vivant, for his age was a gluttonous and drunken one;
bitter, furious, and personal, for men round him were such; foul-
mouthed often, and indecent, as the rest were. Nay, his very power,
when he abuses it for his own ends of selfish spite and injured
vanity, makes him, as all great men can be (in words at least, for in
life he was far better than the men around him), worse than his age.
He can out-rival Dennis in ferocity, and Congreve in filth. So much
the worse for him in that account which he has long ago rendered up.
But in all times and places, as far as we can judge, the man was
heart-whole, more and not less righteous than his fellows. With his
whole soul he hates what is evil, as far as he can recognise it.
With his whole soul he loves what is good, as far as he can recognise
that. With his soul believes that there is a righteous and good God,
whose order no human folly or crime can destroy; and he will say so;
and does say it, clearly, simply, valiantly, reverently, in his
"Essay on Man." His theodicy is narrow; shallow, as was the
philosophy of his age. But as far as it goes, it is sound--faithful
to God, and to what he sees and knows. Man is made in God's image.
Man's justice is God's justice; man's mercy is God's mercy; man's
science, man's critic taste, are insights into the laws of God
himself. He does not pretend to solve the great problem. But he
believes that it is solved from all eternity; that God knows, God
loves, and God rules; that the righteous and faithful man may