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that POPE spoke in his last illness to the same gentleman who communicated the foregoing anecdote :

Clarke; qui m'avoua quelque tems avant que de mourir après plusieurs conférences que j'avois eues avec lui, combien il se repentoit d'avoir fait imprimer son Ouvrage : je fus témoin il ý a douze ans, à Londres, des derniers sentimens de ce modeste & vertueux Docteur."

Euvres de Racine, tom. i. p. 233.

The manner in which Ramsay endeavours to explain the doctrine of the Essay is as follows.

"POPE is far from assert→

ing that the present state of man is his primitive state, (but see above, page 70,) and is conformable to order. His design is to shew that, since the Fall, all is proportioned with weight, mea、 sure, and harmony, to the condition of a degraded being, who suffers, and who deserves to suffer, and who cannot be restored but by sufferings; that physical evils are designed to cure mo→ ral evil; that the passions and the crimes of the most abandoned men, are confined, directed and governed by Infinite Wisdom in such a manner, as to make order emerge out of confusion, light out of darkness, and to call out innumerable advantages from the transitory inconveniencies of this life; that this so gracious Providence conducts all things to its own ends, without ever hurting the liberty of intelligent beings, and without either causing or approving the effects of their deliberate malice; that all is ordained in the physical order, as all is free in the moral: that these two orders are connected closely without fatality, and are not subject to that necessity which renders us virtuous without merit, and vicious without crime; that we see at present but a single wheel of the magnificent machine of the universe; but a small link of the great chain; and but an insignificant part of that immense plan which will one day be unfolded. Then will God fully justify all the incomprehensible

anecdote: "I am so certain of the soul's being immortal, that I seem even to feel it within me,

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comprehensible proceedings of his wisdom and goodness; and will vindicate himself, as Milton speaks, from the rash judg ment of mortals."

Lettre De M. De Ramsay,

A Pontoise le 28 April, 1742.

It will be proper to subjoin Bolingbroke's own account of this Essay, given in a letter to Swift, August 2, 1731.

"Does POPE talk to you of the noble work which, at my instigation, he has begun in such a manner, that he must be convinced, by this time, I judged better of his talents than he did. The first epistle, which considers man, and the habitation of man, relatively to the whole system of universal being. The second, which considers him in his own habitation, in himself, and relatively to his own particular system. And the third, which shews how an universal cause works to one end, but works by various laws: how man, and beast, and vegetable, are linked in a mutual dependency: parts necessary to each other, and necessary to the whole how human societies were formed; from what spring true religion and true policy are derived; how God has made our greatest interests and These three epistles,

our plainest duty indivisibly the same. I say, are finished, The fourth he is now intent upon. It is a noble subject: he pleads the cause of God. I use Seneca's expression against that famous charge which atheists in all ages have brought, the supposed unequal dispensations of Provis dence; a charge which I cannot heartily forgive your divines

for

as it were, by intuition." After such a declaration, and after writing so fervent and elevated a piece of devotion as the Universal Prayer, would it not be injustice, to accuse our author of libertinism and irreligion? Especially, as I am told he had inserted an address to Jesus Christ, in the Essay on Man, which he omitted at the instance of Bishop Berkeley, because the Christian dispensation did not come within the compass of his plan. Not that so pious and worthy a prelate could imagine, that this Platonic scheme of OPTIMISM, or the BEST, sufficiently accounts for the introduction of moral and physical evil into the world; which, in truth, nothing but revela

tion

for admitting. You admit it, indeed, for an extreme good purpose, and you build on this admission the necessity of a future state of rewards and punishments; but if you should find that this future state will not account for God's justice in the present state, which you give up, in opposition to the atheist, would it not have been better to defend God's justice in this world, against these daring men, by irrefragable reasons, and to have rested the other point on revelation? I do not like concessions made against demonstration, repair or supply them how you will. The epistles I have mentioned will compose a first book; the plan of the second is settled. You will not understand by what I have said, that POPE will go so deep into the argument, or carry it so far, as I have hinted."

tion can explain, and nothing but a future state

can compensate.*

SECTION

The Essay on Man was elegantly, but unfaithfully, translated into French verse by M. Du Resnel. It was more accurately rendered into French prose by M. de Silhouete; which translation has been often printed; at Paris 1736; at London 1741, in Quarto; at the Hague 1742. He has subjoined a defence of the doctrines of the Essay from Warburton's Letters; and has added a translation also, with a large commentary, of the four succeeding epistles of POPE.

Marmontel, in his Poetique Françoise, has passed a severe sentence on the obscurity and inconclusiveness of POPE's reasoning. Vol. ii. p. 536.

In the very last edition of Bishop Law's translation of the Origin of Evil, p. 17, is the following remarkable passage: "I had now the satisfaction of seeing that those very principles which had been maintained by Archbishop King, were adopted by Mr. Pope, in his Essay on Man; this I used to recollect, and sometimes relate, with pleasure, conceiving that such an account did no less honour to the Poet than to our Philosopher; but was soon made to understand, that any thing of that kind was taken highly amiss, by one (i. e. Bishop Warburton) who had once held the doctrine of that same Essay to be rank atheism, but afterwards turned a warm advocate for it, and thought proper to deny the account above-mentioned, with heavy menaces against those who presumed to insinuate that POPE borrowed any thing from any man whatsoever,"

SECTION X.

OF THE MORAL ESSAYS IN FIVE EPISTLES
TO SEVERAL PERSONS.

THE patrons and admirers of French literature, usually extol those authors of that nation who have treated of life and manners; and five of them particularly are esteemed to be unrivalled; namely, MONTAIGNE, CHARRON, LA ROCHEFOUCAULT, LA BRUYERE, and PASCAL. These are supposed to have penetrated deeply into the most secret recesses of the human heart, and to have discovered the various vices and vanities that lurk in it. I know not why the English should in this respect yield to their polite neighbours, more than in any other. BACON in his Essays and Advancement of Learning, HOBBES and HUME in their Treatises, PRIOR in his elegant and witty Alma, RICHARDSON in his Clarissa, and FIELD

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