and particularly to
Leibnitz, _Essais de Theodicee_ (1710).'

In admitting that Pope followed the impulse of a more powerful mind, Mr.
Pattison asserts as much perhaps as can be known with certainty as to
Bolingbroke's influence, but it is reasonable to believe that the close
intercourse of the two men did immensely sway the more impressionable,
and, so far as philosophy is concerned, the more ignorant of the two.
Mr. Pattison also overlooks the fact that Pope confessed to Warburton
that he had never read a line of Leibnitz in his life. That the poet
acknowledges his large debt to Bolingbroke, and that Bolingbroke
confesses it was due, is all that can be declared with certainty. That
which makes the _Essay_ worthy the reading is the fruit, not of the
argument but of the poetry, and for that Pope trusted to his own genius.

His attempt to 'vindicate the ways of God to man' is confused and
contradictory, and no modern reader, perplexed with the mystery of
existence, is likely to gain aid from Pope. Nominally a Roman Catholic,
and in reality a deist, apart from poetry he does not seem to have had
strong convictions on any subject, and was content to be swayed by the
opinions current in society. In undertaking to write an ethical work
like the _Essay_ his ambition was greater than his strength, yet if
Pope's philosophy does not 'find' us, to use Coleridge's phrase, it did
appeal to a large number of minds in his own day, and had not lost its
popularity at a later period. The poem has been frequently translated
into French, into Italian, and into German; it was pronounced by
Voltaire to be the most useful and sublime didactic poem ever written in
any language; it was admired by Kant and quoted in his lectures; and it
received high praise from the Scotch philosopher, Dugald Stewart. The
charm of poetical expression is lost or nearly lost in translations, and
while the sense may be retained the aroma of the verse is gone. The
popularity of the _Essay_ abroad is therefore not easily to be accounted
for, unless we accept the theory that the shallow creed on which it is
based suited an age less earnest than our own.[22]

Pope has no strong convictions in this poem, but he has many moods. On
one page he is a pantheist, on another he says what he probably did not
mean, that God inspires men to do evil, and on a third that 'all our
knowledge is ourselves to know.' Nowhere in the argument does Pope seem
to have a firm standing, an