nse in which Nature means the material
world. In one sense this is a natural corollary from the philosophy of
the time and of that religion of nature which it implied. Pope himself
gives one version of it in the _Essay on Man_; and can expatiate
eloquently upon the stars and upon the animal world. But the poem itself
is essentially constructed out of a philosophical theory too purely
argumentative to lend itself easily to poetry. A different, though
allied, way of dealing with the subject appears elsewhere. If Pope
learned mainly from Bolingbroke, he was also influenced by Shaftesbury
of the _Characteristics_. I note, but cannot here insist upon,
Shaftesbury's peculiar philosophical position. He inherited to some
extent the doctrine of the Cambridge Platonists and repudiated the
sensationalist doctrine of Locke and the metaphysical method of Clarke.
He had a marked influence on Hutcheson, Butler, and the common-sense
philosophers of his day. For us, it is enough to say that he worships
Nature but takes rather the aesthetic than the dialectical point of view.
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are all one, as he constantly
insists, and the universe impresses us not as a set of mechanical
contrivances but as an artistic embodiment of harmony. He therefore
restores the universal element which is apt to pass out of sight in
Pope's rhymed arguments. He indulges his philosophical enthusiasm in
what he calls _The Moralists, a Rhapsody_. It culminates in a prose hymn
to a 'glorious Nature, supremely fair and sovereignly good; all-loving
and all-lovely, all divine,' which ends by a survey of the different
climates, where even in the moonbeams and the shades of the forests we
find intimations of the mysterious being who pervades the universe. A
love of beauty was, in this sense, a thoroughly legitimate development
of the 'Religion of Nature.' Akenside in his philosophical poem _The
Pleasures of Imagination_, written a little later, professed himself to
be a disciple of Shaftesbury, and his version supplied many quotations
for Scottish professors of philosophy. Henry Brooke's _Universal
Beauty_, a kind of appendix to Pope's essay, is upon the same theme,
though he became rather mixed in physiological expositions, which
suggested, it is said, Darwin's _Botanic Garden_. The religious
sentiment embodied in his _Fool of Quality_ charmed Wesley and was
enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates
this curr