The weakness already conspicuous in the Essay on Man mars the effect of
the Ethic Epistles. His work tends to be rather an aggregation than an
organic whole. He was (if I may borrow a phrase from the philologists)
an agglutinative writer, and composed by sticking together independent
fragments. His mode of composition was natural to a mind incapable of
sustained and continuous thought. In the epistles, he professes to be
working on a plan. The first expounds his favourite theory (also treated
in the essay) of a "ruling passion." Each man has such a passion, if
only you can find it, which explains the apparent inconsistency of his
conduct. This theory, which has exposed him to a charge of fatalism
(especially from people who did not very well know what fatalism
means), is sufficiently striking for his purpose; but it rather turns up
at intervals than really binds the epistle into a whole. But the
arrangement of his portrait gallery is really unsystematic; the
affectation of system is rather in the way. The most striking characters
in the essay on women were inserted (whenever composed) some time after
its first appearance, and the construction is too loose to make any
interruption of the argument perceptible. The poems contain some of
Pope's most brilliant bits, but we can scarcely remember them as a
whole. The characters of Wharton and Villiers, of Atossa, of the Man of
Ross, and Sir Balaam, stand out as brilliant passages which would do
almost as well in any other setting.
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