The religion in which he lived and died was that of the church of Rome,
to which, in his correspondence with Racine, he professes himself a
sincere adherent. That he was not scrupulously pious in some part of his
life, is known by many idle and indecent applications of sentences taken
from the scriptures; a mode of merriment which a good man dreads for its
profaneness, and a witty man disdains for its easiness and vulgarity.
But to whatever levities he has been betrayed, it does not appear that
his principles were ever corrupted, or that he ever lost his belief of
revelation. The positions, which he transmitted from Bolingbroke, he
seems not to have understood; and was pleased with an interpretation,
that made them orthodox.

A man of such exalted superiority, and so little moderation, would
naturally have all his delinquencies observed and aggravated; those who
could not deny that he was excellent, would rejoice to find that he was
not perfect.

Perhaps it may be imputed to the unwillingness with which the same man
is allowed to possess many advantages, that his learning has been
depreciated. He certainly was, in his early life, a man of great
literary curiosity; and, when he wrote his Essay on Criticism, had, for
his age, a very wide acquaintance with books. When he entered into the
living world, it seems to have happened to him, as to many others, that
he was less attentive to dead masters; he studied in the academy of
Paracelsus, and made the universe his favourite volume. He gathered his
notions fresh from reality, not from the copies of authors, but the
originals of nature. Yet, there is no reason to believe, that literature
ever lost his esteem; he always professed to love reading; and Dobson,
who spent some time at his house, translating his Essay on Man, when I
asked him what learning he found him to possess, answered, "More than I
expected." His frequent references to history, his allusions to various
kinds of knowledge, and his images, selected from art and nature, with
his observations on the operations of the mind, and the modes of life,
show an intelligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and
diligent, eager to pursue knowledge, and attentive to retain it.

From this curiosity arose the desire of travelling, to which he alludes
in his verses to Jervas; and which, though he never found an opportunity
to gratify it, did not leave him till his life declined.

Of his intellectual character, t