e_.

To such oversights will the most vigorous mind be liable, when it is
employed at once upon argument and poetry.

The second and third epistles were published; and Pope was, I believe,
more and more suspected of writing them; at last, in 1734, he avowed the
fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

In the conclusion it is sufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of
the Essay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is said to have
ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having
adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the
consequence, and as blindly propagating opinions contrary to his own.
That those communications had been consolidated into a scheme regularly
drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed
from prose to verse, has been reported, but can hardly be true. The
essay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke supplied
could be only the first principles; the order, illustration, and
embellishments, must all be Pope's.

These principles it is not my business to clear from obscurity,
dogmatism, or falsehood; but they were not immediately examined;
philosophy and poetry have not often the same readers; and the essay
abounded in splendid amplifications, and sparkling sentences, which were
read and admired with no great attention to their ultimate purpose; its
flowers caught the eye, which did not see what the gay foliage
concealed, and, for a time, flourished in the sunshine of universal
approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as
innocence is unsuspicious, many read it for a manual of piety.

Its reputation soon invited a translator. It was first turned into
French prose, and afterwards, by Resnel, into verse. Both translations
fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in
prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's
version, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.

Crousaz was a professor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatise of
logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonisme; and, however little known or
regarded here, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of those in
which philosophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to
argument and disquisition, and, perhaps, was grown too desirous of
detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions
were solid, and his religion pure.

His incessant vigilance for the promotion o