It is, indeed, impossible accurately to fix the relations of
the teacher and his disciple. Pope acknowledged in the strongest
possible terms his dependence upon Bolingbroke, and Bolingbroke claims
with equal distinctness the position of instigator and inspirer. His
more elaborate philosophical works are in the form of letters to Pope,
and profess to be a redaction of the conversations which they had had
together. These were not written till after the Essay on Man; but a
series of fragments appear to represent what he actually set down for
Pope's guidance. They are professedly addressed to Pope. "I write," he
says (fragment 65), "to you and for you, and you would think yourself
little obliged to me if I took the pains of explaining in prose what you
would not think it necessary to explain in verse,"--that is, the
free-will puzzle. The manuscripts seen by Mallet may probably have been
a commonplace book in which Bolingbroke had set down some of these
fragments, by way of instructing Pope, and preparing for his own more
systematic work. No reader of the fragments can, I think, doubt as to
the immediate source of Pope's inspiration. Most of the ideas expressed
were the common property of many contemporary writers, but Pope accepts
the particular modification presented by Bolingbroke.[21] Pope's
manipulation of these materials causes much of the Essay on Man to
resemble (as Mr. Pattison puts it) an exquisite mosaic work. A detailed
examination of his mode of transmutation would be a curious study in the
technical secrets of literary execution.
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