ogated, disposed 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 inscribed, were in the first
editions carefully suppressed; and the poem, being of a new kind, was
ascribed 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 those admired it
who are willing to scatter 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 so much in danger from any former
rival.

To those authors whom he had personally offended, and to those whose
opinion the world considered as decisive, and whom he suspected of envy
or malevolence, he sent his essay 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 some time, a report that Pope was busy
upon a system of morality; but this design 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; some thought it a very
imperfect piece, though not without good lines. While the author was
unknown, some, as will always happen, favoured him as an adventurer, and
some censured him as an intruder; but all thought him above neglect;
the sale increased, and editions were multiplied[132]

The subsequent editions of the first epistle exhibited two memorable
corrections. At first, the poet and his friend,

Expatiate freely o'er this scene 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 were 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 discovered, or been shown, that the "truth" which
subsisted "in spite of reason" could not be very "clear," he
substituted,

And spite of pride, _in erring reason's spit