men's stuff. There is
hardly anything in which men differ more enormously than in the degree in
which they possess this faculty of utilization. Pope's _Essay on
Criticism_, which brought him great fame, and was thought a miracle of
wit, was the result of much hasty reading, undertaken with the intention
of appropriation. Apart from the _limae labor_, which was enormous, and
was never grudged by Pope, there was not an hour's really hard work in
it. Dryden had begun the work of English criticism with his _Essay on
Dramatic Poesy_, and other well-known pieces. He had also translated
Boileau's _Art of Poetry_. Then there were the works of those noble
lords, Lord Sheffield, Lord Roscommon, Lord Granville, and the Duke of
Buckingham. Pope, who loved a brief, read all these books greedily, and
with an amazing quick eye for points. His orderly brain and brilliant
wit re-arranged and rendered resplendent the ill-placed and ill-set
thoughts of other men.

The same thing is noticeable in the most laboured production of his later
life, the celebrated _Essay on Man_. For this he was coached by Lord
Bolingbroke.

Pope was accustomed to talk with much solemnity of his ethical system, of
which the _Essay on Man_ is but a fragment, but we need not trouble
ourselves about it. Dr. Johnson said about _Clarissa Harlowe_ that the
man who read it for the story might hang himself; so we may say about the
poetry of Pope: the man who reads it for its critical or ethical
philosophy may hang himself. We read Pope for pleasure, but a bit of his
philosophy may be given:

'Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother Earth why oaks are made
Taller and stronger than the weeds they shade!
Or ask of yonder argent fields above
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove!'

To this latter interrogatory presumptuous science, speaking through the
mouth of Voltaire, was ready with an answer. If Jupiter were less than
his satellites they wouldn't go round him. Pope can make no claim to be
a philosopher, and had he been one, Verse would have been a most improper
vehicle to convey his speculations. No one willingly fights in handcuffs
or wrestles to music. For a man with novel truths to promulgate, or
grave moral laws to expound, to postpone doing so until he had h