to have the specific Bolingbroke stamp.

[22] Perhaps the most curious example, too long for quotation, is a
passage near the end of the last epistle, in which he sums up his moral
system by a series of predicates for which it is impossible to find any
subject. One couplet runs--

Never elated whilst one man's depress'd, Never dejected whilst another's
blest.

It is impressive, but it is quite impossible to discover by the rules of
grammatical construction who is to be never elated and depressed.

[23] Spence, p. 364.

CHAPTER VIII.

EPISTLES AND SATIRES.

Pope had tried a considerable number of poetical experiments when the
Dunciad appeared, but he had not yet discovered in what direction his
talents could be most efficiently exerted. Bystanders are sometimes
acuter in detecting a man's true forte than the performer himself. In
1722 Atterbury had seen Pope's lines upon Addison, and reported that no
piece of his writing was ever so much sought after. "Since you now
know," he added, "in what direction your strength lies, I hope you will
not suffer that talent to be unemployed." Atterbury seems to have been
rather fond of giving advice to Pope, and puts on a decidedly pedagogic
air when writing to him. The present suggestion was more likely to fall
on willing ears than another made shortly before their final separation.
Atterbury then presented Pope with a Bible, and recommended him to study
its pages. If Pope had taken to heart some of St. Paul's exhortations to
Christian charity, he would scarcely have published his lines upon
Addison, and English literature would have lost some of its most
brilliant pages.

Satire of the kind represented by those lines was so obviously adapted
to Pope's peculiar talent, that we rather wonder at his having taken to
it seriously at a comparatively late period, and even then having
drifted into it by accident rather than by deliberate adoption. He had
aimed, as has been said, at being a philosophic and didactic poet. The
Essay on Man formed part of a much larger plan, of which two or three
fragmentary sketches are given by Spence.[24] Bolingbroke and Pope wrote
to Swift in November, 1729, about a scheme then in course of execution.
Bolingbroke declares that Pope is now exerting what was eminently and
peculiarly his talents, above all writers, living or dead, without
excepting Horace; whilst Pope explained that this was a "system of
ethics in the Horatian way." The langua