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And fpite of pride, in erring reafon's fpite. To fuch overfights will the moft vigorous mind be liable, when it is employed at once upon argument and poetry.

. The fecond and third Epiftles were published; and Pope was, I believe, more and more fufpected of writing them; at laft, in 1734, he avowed the fourth, and claimed the honour of a moral poet.

In the conclufion it is fufficiently acknowledged, that the doctrine of the Effay on Man was received from Bolingbroke, who is faid to have ridiculed Pope, among those who enjoyed his confidence, as having adopted and advanced principles of which he did not perceive the confequence, and as blindly

propagating opinions contrary to his own. That thofe communications had been confolidated into a fcheme regularly drawn, and delivered to Pope, from whom it returned only transformed from profe to verfe, is reported, but hardly can be true. The Effay plainly appears the fabrick of a poet: what Bolingbroke fupplied could be only the first principles; the order, illuftration, and embellishments muft all be Pope's.

These principles it is not my bufinefs to clear from obfcurity, dogmatism, or falfehood; but they were not immediately examined; philofophy and poetry have not often the fame readers; and the Effay abounded in fplendid amplifications and sparkling fentences, which L

were

were read and admired, with no great attention to their ultimate purpofe; its flowers caught the eye, which did not fee what the gay foliage concealed, and for a time flourished in the sunshine of univerfal approbation. So little was any evil tendency discovered, that, as innocence is unfufpicious, many read it for a manual of piety.

Its reputation foon invited a tranfla tor. It was firft turned into French profe, and afterwards by Refnel into verfe. Both tranflations fell into the

hands of Croufaz, who firft, when he had the verfion in profe, wrote a general cenfure, and afterwards reprinted Refnel's verfion, with particular remarks upon every paragraph.

Crou

Croufaz was a profeffor of Switzerland, eminent for his treatife of Logick, and his Examen de Pyrrhonifme, and, however little known or regarded, was no mean antagonist. His mind was one of thofe in which philofophy and piety are happily united. He was accustomed to argument and difquifition, and perhaps was grown too defirous of detecting faults; but his intentions were always right, his opinions were folid, and his religion pure.

His inceffant vigilance for the promotion of picty difpofed him to look with diftruft upon all metaphyfical fyftems of Theology, and all fchemes of virtue and happinefs purely rational, and therefore it was not long before he

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was perfuaded that the pofitions of Pope, as they terminated for the most part in natural religion, were intended to draw mankind away from Revelation, and to reprefent the whole courfe of things as a neceffary concatenation of indiffoluble fatality; and it is undeniable, that in many paffages a religious eye may cafily discover expreffions not very favourable to morals, or to liberty.

About this time Warburton began to make his appearance in the first ranks of learning. He was a man of vigorous faculties, a mind fervid and vehement, fupplied by inceffant and unlimited enquiry, with wonderful extent and variety of knowledge, which yet

had

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