ng
together incoherent scraps of different systems. Some of his arguments
strike us as simply childish, as, for example, the quibble derived from
the Stoics, that

The blest to-day is as completely so
As who began a thousand years ago.

Nobody, we may safely say, was ever much comforted by that reflection.
Nor, though the celebrated argument about the scale of beings, which
Pope but half-understood, was then sanctioned by the most eminent
contemporary names, do we derive any deep consolation from the remark
that

in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,
There must be somewhere such a rank as man.

To say no more of these frigid conceits, as they now appear to us, Pope
does not maintain the serious temper which befits a man pondering upon
the deep mysteries of the universe. Religious meditation does not
harmonise with epigrammatical satire. Admitting the value of the
reflection that other beings besides man are fitting objects of the
Divine benevolence, we are jarred by such a discord as this:

While man exclaims, See all things for my use!
See man for mine! replies a pampered goose.

The goose is appropriate enough in Charron or Montaigne, but should be
kept out of poetry. Such a shock, too, follows when Pope talks about the
superior beings who

Showed a Newton as we show an ape.

Did anybody, again, ever complain that he wanted 'the strength of bulls,
the fur of bears?'[2] Or could it be worth while to meet his complaints
in a serious poem? Pope, in short, is not merely a bad reasoner, but he
wants that deep moral earnestness which gives a profound interest to
Johnson's satires--the best productions of his school--and the deeply
pathetic religious feeling of Cowper.

Admitting all this, however, and more, the 'Essay on Man' still contains
many passages which not only testify to the unequalled skill of this
great artist in words, but show a certain moral dignity. In the Essay,
more than in any of his other writings, we have the difficulty of
separating the solid bullion from the dross. Pope is here pre-eminently
parasitical, and it is possible to trace to other writers, such as
Montaigne, Pascal, Leibniz, Shaftesbury, Locke, and Wollaston, as well
as to the inspiration of Bolingbroke, nearly every argument which he
employs. He unfortunately worked up the rubbish as well as the gems.
When Mr. Ruskin says that his 'theology was two centuries in advance of
his time,' the phra