Essay on Man

Excerpt from Essay on Man

Bathurst in 1763, was told by him in still stronger language ' that the Essay on Man was composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse.' Dr. Blair reported this at the time to Boswell, who repeated it to Johnson. Johnson's immediate remark was, ' Depend upon it, sir, this is too strongly stated. Pope may have had from Bolingbroke the philosophic stamina of his Essay; and admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify. But the thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine. We are sure that the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the poem, is Pope's own.' (Boswell, Life, vol. 7. p. 283.)

This extemporised judgment of Johnson probably is as near the truth as we can get. It was from Bolingbroke's conversation that the poet derived not only many of his ideas, but the impulse to meddle with speculations for which he was little fit. But the internal evidence alone is inconsistent with the supposition that Pope proceeded on the mechanical plan of versifying Lord Bolingbroke's prose. As to the MS. read by Lord Bathurst, I conceive it to have been the MS. of the 'Essays,' and ' Fragments or Minutes of Essays,' now included in Lord Bolingbroke's printed Works. These 'Fragments' were occasional scraps communicated to Pope as they were written. Single passages in these Fragments resemble passages in Pope's Essay. But even if the communication of the Fragments preceded the composition of the Essay on Man, they are far from containing the whole scheme of the Poem. Both the Essay on Man and Bolingbroke's Minutes derive their colouring from a common source.

The Essay on Man was composed at a time when the reading public, in this country, were occupied with an intense and eager curiosity by speculation on the first principles of Natural Religion. Everywhere, in the pulpit, in the coffee-houses, in every pamphlet, argument on the ori|in of evil, on the goodness of God, and the constitution of the world, was rife. Into the prevailing topic of polite conversation Bolingbroke, who returned from exile in 1723, was drawn by the bent of his native genius.

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