and if
that passing shower commemorated in Pope's letter drove them back to the
house, Bolingbroke might discourse from the page which happened to be
open, and Pope would try to versify it on the back of an envelope.[20]
Nor must we forget, like some of his commentators, that after all Pope
was an exceedingly clever man. His rapidly perceptive mind was fully
qualified to imbibe the crude versions of philosophic theories which
float upon the surface of ordinary talk, and are not always so inferior
to their prototypes in philosophic qualities, as philosophers would have
us believe. He could by snatches seize with admirable quickness the
general spirit of a doctrine, though unable to sustain himself at a high
intellectual level for any length of time. He was ready with abundance
of poetical illustrations, not, perhaps, very closely adapted to the
logic, but capable of being elaborated into effective passages; and,
finally, Pope had always a certain number of more or less appropriate
commonplaces or renderings into verse of some passages which had struck
him in Pascal, or Rochefoucauld, or Bacon, all of them favourite
authors, and which could be wrought into the structure at a slight cost
of coherence. By such means he could put together a poem, which was
certainly not an organic whole, but which might contain many striking
sayings and passages of great rhetorical effect.

The logical framework was, we may guess, supplied mainly by Bolingbroke.
Bathurst told Warton that Bolingbroke had given Pope the essay in prose,
and that Pope had only turned it into verse; and Mallet--a friend of
both--is said to have seen the very manuscript from which Pope worked.
Johnson, on hearing this from Boswell, remarked that it must be an
overstatement. Pope might have had from Bolingbroke the "philosophical
stamina" of the essay, but he must, at least, have contributed the
"poetical imagery," and have had more independent power than the story
implied. It is, indeed, impossible accurately to fix the relations of
the teacher and his disciple. Pope acknowledged in the strongest
possible terms his dependence upon Bolingbroke, and Bolingbroke claims
with equal distinctness the position of instigator and inspirer. His
more elaborate philosophical works are in the form of letters to Pope,
and profess to be a redaction of the conversations which they had had
together. These were not written till after the Essay on Man; but a
series of fragments appe