ge seems to apply best to the
poems afterwards called the Ethic Epistles, though, at this time, Pope,
perhaps, had not a very clear plan in his head, and was working at
different parts simultaneously. The Essay on Man, his most distinct
scheme, was to form the opening book of his poem. Three others were to
treat of knowledge and its limits, of government--ecclesiastical and
civil--and of morality. The last book itself involved an elaborate plan.
There were to be three epistles about each cardinal virtue--one, for
example, upon avarice; another on the contrary extreme of prodigality;
and a third, upon the judicious mean of a moderate use of riches. Pope
told Spence that he had dropped the plan chiefly because his third book
would have provoked every Church on the face of the earth, and he did
not care for always being in boiling water. The scheme, however, was far
too wide and too systematic for Pope's powers. His spasmodic energy
enabled him only to fill up corners of the canvas, and from what he did,
it is sufficiently evident that his classification would have been
incoherent and his philosophy unequal to the task. Part of his work was
used for the fourth book of the Dunciad, and the remainder corresponds
to what are now called the Ethic Epistles. These, as they now stand,
include five poems. One of these has no real connexion with the others.
It is a poem addressed to Addison, "occasioned by his dialogue on
medals," written (according to Pope) in 1715, and first published in
Tickell's edition of Addison's works in 1721. The epistle to Burlington
on taste was afterwards called the Use of Riches, and appended to
another with the same title, thus filling a place in the ethical scheme,
though devoted to a very subsidiary branch of the subject. It appeared
in 1731. The epistle "of the use of riches" appeared in 1732, that of
the knowledge and characters of men in 1733, and that of the characters
of women in 1735. The last three are all that would seem to belong to
the wider treatise contemplated; but Pope composed so much in fragments
that it is difficult to say what bits he might have originally intended
for any given purpose.

Another distraction seems to have done more than his fear of boiling
water to arrest the progress of the elaborate plan. Bolingbroke coming
one day into his room, took up a Horace, and observed that the first
satire of the second book would suit Pope's style. Pope translated it in
a morning or two