are all _tied_ together by relations and _connexions_, _gradations_, and
_dependencies_." The verbal coincidence is here as marked as the
coincidence in argument. Warton refers to an eloquent passage in
Shaftesbury, which contains a similar thought; but one can hardly doubt
that Bolingbroke was in this case the immediate source. A quaint
passage a little farther on, in which Pope represents man as complaining
because he has not "the strength of bulls or the fur of bears," may be
traced with equal plausibility to Shaftesbury or to Sir Thomas Browne;
but I have not noticed it in Bolingbroke.

One more passage will be sufficient. Pope asks whether we are to demand
the suspension of laws of nature whenever they might produce a
mischievous result? Is Etna to cease an eruption to spare a sage, or
should "new motions be impressed upon sea and air" for the advantage of
blameless Bethel?

When the loose mountain trembles from on high
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging-wall?

Chartres is Pope's typical villain. This is a terse version, with
concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities. "The laws of
gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special
Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be
precipitated. The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from
falling, whilst innocent men lived in it or passed under it, and the
fall of it must be as miraculously determined to crush the guilty
inhabitant or passenger." Here, again, we have the alternative of
Wollaston, who uses a similar illustration, and in one phrase comes
nearer to Pope. He speaks of "new motions being impressed upon the
atmosphere." We may suppose that the two friends had been dipping into
Wollaston together. Elsewhere Pope seems to have stolen for himself. In
the beginning of the second epistle, Pope, in describing man as "the
glory, jest, and riddle of the world," is simply versifying Pascal; and
a little farther on, when he speaks of reason as the wind and passion
as the gale on life's vast ocean, he is adapting his comparison from
Locke's treatise on government.

If all such cases were adduced, we should have nearly picked the
argumentative part of the essay to pieces; but Bolingbroke supplies
throughout the most characteristic element. The fragments cohere by
external cement, not by an internal unity of thought; a