es in the
transitory present a scene in the slow development of a divine drama. To
make us share his vision is to give his justification of Providence.
When Milton told the story of the war in heaven and the fall of man, he
gave implicitly his theory of the true relations of man to his Creator,
but the abstract doctrine was clothed in the flesh and blood of a
concrete mythology.

In Pope's day the traditional belief had lost its hold upon men's minds
too completely to be used for imaginative purposes. The story of Adam
and Eve would itself require to be justified or to be rationalized into
thin allegory. Nothing was left possessed of any vitality but a bare
skeleton of abstract theology, dependent upon argument instead of
tradition, and which might use or might dispense with a Christian
phraseology. Its deity was not a historical personage, but the name of a
metaphysical conception. For a revelation was substituted a
demonstration. To vindicate Providence meant no longer to stimulate
imagination by pure and sublime rendering of accepted truths, but to
solve certain philosophical problems, and especially the grand
difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with divine omnipotence
and benevolence.

Pope might conceivably have written a really great poem on these terms,
though deprived of the concrete imagery of a Dante or a Milton. If he
had fairly grasped some definite conception of the universe, whether
pantheistic or atheistic, optimist or pessimist, proclaiming a solution
of the mystery, or declaring all solutions to be impossible, he might
have given forcible expression to the corresponding emotions. He might
have uttered the melancholy resignation and the confident hope incited
in different minds by a contemplation of the mysterious world. He might
again conceivably have written an interesting work, though it would
hardly have been a poem--if he had versified the arguments by which a
coherent theory might be supported. Unluckily, he was quite unqualified
for either undertaking, and, at the same time, he more or less aimed at
both. Anything like sustained reasoning was beyond his reach. Pope felt
and thought by shocks and electric flashes. He could only obtain a
continuous effect when working clearly upon lines already provided for
him, or simulate one by fitting together fragments struck out at
intervals. The defect was aggravated or caused by the physical
infirmities which put sustained intellectual labour o