In 1729, the poet, by Lord Bolingbroke’s advice, turned his pen to moral subjects; and, with the assistance of his friend, set to work upon the ‘Essay on Man.’ Bolingbroke writes thus to Swift: “Bid Pope talk to you of the work he is about, I hope in good earnest; it is a fine one, and will be, in his hands, an original.” Pope tells the dean, in his next letter, what this work was. “The work Lord Bolingbroke speaks of with such abundant partiality, is a system of ethics, in the Horatian way.” In another letter, written probably at the beginning of the following year, we trace the general aim which he at all events wished the public to attribute to this work. “I am just now writing, or rather planning, a book to bring mankind to look upon this life with comfort and pleasure, and put morality in good humour.” This subject was well suited to his genius. He found the performance more easy than he had expected, and employed his leisure by following up the design in his Ethic Epistles, which came out separately in the course of the two following years. The fourth, addressed to the Earl of Burlington, did no good to the author’s character, in consequence of the violent attack supposed to be made on the Duke of Chandos, a beneficent and esteemed nobleman, under the name of Timon. Pope loudly asserted that in drawing Timon’s character he had not the Duke in view: but his denials have not obtained credence; and he has thus incurred the charge of equivocation and falsehood, without exculpating himself from that of ingratitude and wanton insolence. The vexation caused by this business was somewhat softened by the rapid and lucrative sale of the epistle, which very soon went through the press a third time. In a letter to Lord Bolingbroke he says, “Certainly the writer deserved more candour, even in those who knew him not, than to promote a report, which, in regard to that noble person, was impertinent; in regard to me, villainous. I have taken an opportunity of the third edition, to declare his belief not only of my innocence, but of their malignity; of the former of which my heart is as conscious as I fear some of theirs must be of the latter. His humanity feels a concern for the injury done to me, while his greatness of mind can bear with indifference the insult offered to himself.” He concludes with a threat of using real instead of fictitious names in his future works. How far he carried that menace into effect will presently be seen. The complaints made against the epistle in question by secret enemies provoked him to write satire, in which he ventured to attack the characters of some persons in high life: the affront was of course resented, and he retaliated by renewing his invective against them, both in prose and verse. In the imitation of the first satire of the second book of Horace, he had described Lord Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montague so characteristically, under the names of Lord Fanny and