Satire of the kind represented by those lines was so obviously adapted
to Pope's peculiar talent, that we rather wonder at his having taken to
it seriously at a comparatively late period, and even then having
drifted into it by accident rather than by deliberate adoption. He had
aimed, as has been said, at being a philosophic and didactic poet. The
Essay on Man formed part of a much larger plan, of which two or three
fragmentary sketches are given by Spence.[24] Bolingbroke and Pope wrote
to Swift in November, 1729, about a scheme then in course of execution.
Bolingbroke declares that Pope is now exerting what was eminently and
peculiarly his talents, above all writers, living or dead, without
excepting Horace; whilst Pope explained that this was a "system of
ethics in the Horatian way." The language seems to apply best to the
poems afterwards called the Ethic Epistles, though, at this time, Pope,
perhaps, had not a very clear plan in his head, and was working at
different parts simultaneously. The Essay on Man, his most distinct
scheme, was to form the opening book of his poem. Three others were to
treat of knowledge and its limits, of government--ecclesiastical and
civil--and of morality. The last book itself involved an elaborate plan.
There were to be three epistles about each cardinal virtue--one, for
example, upon avarice; another on the contrary extreme of prodigality;
and a third, upon the judicious mean of a moderate use of riches. Pope
told Spence that he had dropped the plan chiefly because his third book
would have provoked every Church on the face of the earth, and he did
not care for always being in boiling water.
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