tent from
Bentley, like the javelin of Priam.

All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as
useful when it rectifies errour and improves judgment; he that refines
the publick taste is a publick benefactor.

The beauties of this poem are well known; its chief fault is the
grossness of its images. Pope and Swift had an unnatural delight in
ideas physically impure, such as every other tongue utters with
unwillingness, and of which every ear shrinks from the mention.

But even this fault, offensive as it is, may be forgiven for the
excellence of other passages; such as the formation and dissolution of
Moore, the account of the traveller, the misfortune of the florist, and
the crowded thoughts and stately numbers which dignify the concluding
paragraph.

The alterations which have been made in the Dunciad, not always for the
better, require that it should be published, as in the present
collection, with all its variations.

The Essay on Man was a work of great labour and long consideration, but
certainly not the happiest of Pope's performances. The subject is,
perhaps, not very proper for poetry, and the poet was not sufficiently
master of his subject; metaphysical morality was to him a new study; he
was proud of his acquisitions, and, supposing himself master of great
secrets, was in haste to teach what he had not learned. Thus he tells
us, in the first epistle, that from the nature of the supreme being may
be deduced an order of beings such as mankind, because infinite
excellence can do only what is best. He finds out that these beings must
be "somewhere;" and that "all the question is, whether man be in a wrong
place." Surely if, according to the poet's Leibnitzian reasoning, we may
infer that man ought to be, only because he is, we may allow that his
place is the right place, because he has it. Supreme wisdom is not less
infallible in disposing than in creating. But what is meant by
"somewhere" and "place," and "wrong place," it had been vain to ask
Pope, who, probably, had never asked himself.

Having exalted himself into the chair of wisdom, he tells us much that
every man knows, and much that he does not know himself; that we see but
little, and that the order of the universe is beyond our comprehension;
an opinion not very uncommon: and that there is a chain of subordinate
beings "from infinite to nothing," of which himself and his readers are
equally ignorant. But he gives us one comfort