The accuracy on which Pope prided himself, and for which he is commended, was not accuracy of thought so much as of expression. But the supposition is that in the “Essay on Man” Pope did not know what he was writing himself. He was only the condenser and epigrammatizer of Bolingbroke--a fitting St. John for such a gospel. Or if he _did_ know, we can account for the contradictions by supposing that he threw in some of the commonplace moralities to conceal his real drift. Johnson asserts that Bolingbroke in private laughed at Pope’s having been made the mouthpiece of opinions which he did not hold. But this is hardly probable when we consider the relations between them. It is giving Pope altogether too little credit for intelligence to suppose that he did not understand the principles of his intimate friend. Dr. Warburton makes a rather lame attempt to ward off the charge of Spinozism from the “Essay on Man.” He would have found it harder to show that the acknowledgment of any divine revelation would not overthrow the greater part of its teachings. If Pope intended by his poem all that the Bishop takes for granted in his commentary, we must deny him what is usually claimed as his first merit--clearness. If we did _not_, we grant him clearness as a writer at the expense of sincerity as a man. Perhaps a more charitable solution of the difficulty is that Pope’s precision of thought was not equal to his polish of style. But it is in his “Moral Essays” and part of his “Satires” that Pope deserves the praise which he himself desired-- Happily to steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. Correct with spirit, eloquent with ease, Intent to reason, or polite to please. Here Pope must be allowed to have established a style of his own, in which he is without a rival. One can open upon wit and epigram at every page. In his epistle on the characters of woman, no one who has ever known a noble woman will find much to please him. The climax of his praise rather degrades than elevates: O blest in temper, whose unclouded ray Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day, She who can love a sister’s charms, or hear Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear, She who ne’er answers till a husband cools, Or if she rules him, never shows she rules, Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, Yet has her humor most when she obeys; Let fops or fortune fly which way they will, Disdains all loss of tickets, or codille, Spleen, vapors, or smallpox, above them all; And mistress of herself though china fall. The last line is very witty and pointed; but consider what an ideal of womanly nobleness he must have had who praises his heroine for not being jealous of her daughter.