VII. A.D. 1725 to 1735. CHAP. dicted, might indeed go far to prove the innocence of Pope; but with the evidence of his concurrence which has been adduced, it can prove only that he trembled for the fate of his poem, and was eager to subscribe to any explanation which would avert from it the censure that was preparing against it. Should the evidence furnished by his letters and his strict intimacy with Bolingbroke be insufficient to prove this, other yet more indisputable remains. Whatever may be thought of these, the testimony of Mr. Jonathan Richardson must be decisive upon this point. "As to his Essay on Man, as I was witness to the whole conduct of it in writing, and actually have his original manuscripts for it, from the first scratches of the four books to the several finished copies, (of his own neat and elegant writing these last,) all which, the MS. of his Essay on Criticism, and several of his other works, he gave me himself, for the pains I took in collating the whole of his printed editions, at his request, on my having proposed to him the making an edition of his works in the manner of Boileau's ;-as to this noblest of his works, I know that he never dreamed of the scheme he afterwards adoptedperhaps for good reasons, for he had taken terror about the clergy, and Warburton himself, at the general alarm of its fatalism and deistical tendency; of which however we talked with him, my father and I, frequently at Twickenham, without his appear VII. ing to understand it otherwise, or even thinking to CHAP. alter those passages which we suggested as what might seem most exceptionable."* It is not improbable that Pope may afterwards have discarded the deistical tenets which he held when he versified the Essay on Man. We may hope that he did, and that he then gladly received any interpretation of it which took away the noxious tendency which he had before wilfully given to it. This view of the case is charitable to the poet, and not very inconsistent with probability. But whatever might have been his subsequent opinions, there is no ground for the odium which Pope's friends have thrown upon Bolingbroke for his share in the work. To deceive an unsuspecting friend as to his views upon the most important subject which can occupy the human mind, and then to abuse his confidence by making him the unconscious channel for the propagation of opinions he abhors, were a baseness of which Bolingbroke was incapable. The charge cannot be too fully disproved, nor its injustice too strongly censured. Bolingbroke has already too many faults which justly stain his me * Warton's Prefatory Remarks. Richardson's language, probably delivered in conversation, is not very perspicuous: but it is sufficiently clear that by "the scheme which he afterwards adopted," A. D. 1725 to 1735. VII. A. D. 1725 to 1735. CHAP. mory it is unpardonable to take advantage of the prejudice which these have raised against him, to attribute to him vices to which he was a stranger. The morality of Pope's work, so far as it goes, is excellent, and the design of that morality is undoubtedly Bolingbroke's. To him, therefore, is due the honour of having materially contributed to the performance upon which the fame of his friend must chiefly rest, and which, with all its imperfections, is the best ethical poem that has appeared either in ancient or modern times. Thus Bolingbroke, although he sunk below mediocrity when he attempted poetry himself, was eminently successful in directing the genius of others: he had a share in the completion of the two most considerable poems which appeared during his time. We have before related, that during his residence at his hermitage in France he received a visit from Voltaire, and furnished many hints and corrections for the "Henriade," which that poet was then occupied upon. Voltaire paid him another visit at Dawley. He had arrived in England to solicit subscriptions for the poem, which was now completed; and the friendly patronage of Bolingbroke forwarded the publication of the work, to the perfection of which his advice had contributed. Voltaire had not at this time manifested the violent opinions which afterwards so blackened his name. Among the English he was generally a favourite. The object VII. to 1735. of his journey was fully answered; and even the CHAP. King did not hesitate to give him substantial proofs of his bounty and approbation.* The visit of this A. D. 1725 extraordinary man, who yielded not even to his host in the brilliancy of his conversational talents, must have formed a pleasing event in the little-varying life which Bolingbroke led at Dawley. Voltaire left this country in 1728, and returned to France with a sum which, by judicious management, secured him an independence for the remainder of his life. *Upon his arrival in England, he found that the house upon which he had letters of credit had failed a few days before. The King, immediately upon hearing of his misfortune, sent him a sum fully sufficient to cover his loss. He afterwards lent his name to the subscription VIII. CHAPTER VIII. An Examination of Bolingbroke's Philosophical Works. CHAP. WE have already mentioned Bolingbroke's metaphysical essays as a production of this period; we come now to a more particular examination of them. A. D. 1725 to 1735. Lord Bolingbroke was a deist. He believed in the existence of a God-he denied that he had ever revealed his will to man. Like others of his caste, his first object was to destroy the fabric which had been raised upon the basis of Revelation; his second, to erect upon its ruins a system of his own. His attacks upon the authority of the grand proofs of Christianity are put forward without regard to any system of regularity, or any proposed line of argument. Having adopted the style and assumed the licence of an essayist, he thinks himself absolved from any obligation to observe method or continuity in his arguments. With the usual practice of those who have adopted his sentiments, he scatters objections in wild profusion; supports them now with sarcasm and irony, now with declamation and abuse. He draws, from the magazine which has been so long at the service of every dabbler in infi |