The Project Gutenberg eBook, Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope, Edited by
Henry Morley

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Title: Essay on Man
Moral Essays and Satires

Author: Alexander Pope

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: August 20, 2007 [eBook #2428]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON MAN***

Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by Les Bowler.

AN ESSAY ON MAN.
MORAL ESSAYS AND SATIRES

BY
ALEXANDER POPE.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS & MELBOURNE_.
1891.

INTRODUCTION.

Pope's life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough
to the three reigns in which he worked. Under Queen Anne he was an
original poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he
was chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the French-
classical taste with versions of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Under George
I. he also edited Shakespeare, but with little profit to himself; for
Shakespeare was but a Philistine in the eyes of the French-classical
critics. But as the eighteenth century grew slowly to its work, signs of
a deepening interest in the real issues of life distracted men's
attention from the culture of the snuff-box and the fan. As Pope's
genius ripened, the best part of the world in which he worked was
pressing forward, as a mariner who will no longer hug the coast but
crowds all sail to cross the storms of a wide unknown sea. Pope's poetry
thus deepened with the course of time, and the third period of his life,
which fell within the reign of George II., was that in which he produced
the "Essay on Man," the "Moral Essays," and the "Satires." These deal
wholly with aspects of human life and the great questions they raise,
according throughout with the doctrine of the poet, and of the reasoning
world about him in his latter day, that "the proper study of mankind is
Man."

Wrongs in high places, and the private infamy of many who enforced the
doctrines of the Church, had produced in earnest men a vigorous
antagonism. Tyranny and unreason of low-minded advocates had brought
religion itself into questio