Excerpt from Landmarks of English Literature

Its philosophy is poor, borrowed, and inadequate. Pope did not understand what he was writing about, and mixed up in congruous statements; but it has kept and will keep its place in literature owing to its masterly execution, its many felicitous phrases, and the great beauty of occasional passages. When the Essay' first appeared, many assailed it on account of its alleged heterodoxy. Pope was annoyed at the charge, and was therefore delighted when an unexpected auxiliary rushed to his aid in the person of William Warburton (1698 who afterwards rose to be Bishop of Gloucester, and whose very paradoxical work, The Divine Legation of Moses, is still remembered. By helping Pope in his difficulty, Warburton thought he saw an opportunity for advancing his own fame and fortune, and he therefore vindicated the orthodoxy of the Essay on Man in a series of articles which appeared in a monthly publication called T lae War/es of fire Learned. The substance of these articles was afterwards, at Pope's request, formed into a commentary - a very tedious and worthless production, it may be said in passing - and printed in the next edition of the Essay. Pope never ceased to be grateful to Warburton for the service he had done him, and on the death of the poet, which occurred in 1744, Warburton found he had been appointed his literary executor. He discharged the duties of his office arrogantly, carelessly, and dishonourably. The careful research of Pope's latest editors, and particu larly of Mr. Whitwell Elwin, if it has not materially altered the estimate of Pope's private character which may be derived from the perusal of Johnson's Life of him, with its curious undertone of latent scorn, has proved beyond all possibility of doubt that he was frequently guilty of treachery, falsehood, and hypocrisy. Anxious to have his letters printed in his life time, and desirous of an excuse for so unusual an act, he con trived that an alleged surreptitious edition of these should be published, so as to give him a colourable pretext for printing an authentic edition. Great allowances are to be made for a man like Pope, with his deformed figure and his weak health, which debarred him from many of the common pleasures of.

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