The ground of the Essay on Man is philosophy, not poetry. The poetry is only the colouring, if I may say so, and to the colouring the eye is chiefly attentive. We hardly think of the philosophy whether it is good or bad; whether it is profound or specious; whether it evinces deep thinking, or exhibits only in new and pompous array the "babble of the nurse." Scarcely any one, till a controversy was raised, thought of the doctrines, but a thousand must have been warmed by the pictures, the addresses, the sublime interspersions of description, and the nice and harmonious precision of every word, and of almost every line. Whether, as a system of philosophy, it inculcated fate or not, no one paused to inquire;[736] but every eye read a thousand times, and every lip, perhaps, repeated, "Lo, the poor Indian," "The lamb thy riot," "Oh, happiness," and many other passages. All these illustrative and secondary images are painted from the source of genuine poetry; from nature, not from art. They therefore, independent of powers displayed in the versification, raise the Essay on Man, considered in the abstract, into genuine poetry, although the poetical part is subservient to the philosophical. It must be confessed, unfair as Johnson's criticism is, it is not entirely destitute of truth. Many of Pope's conclusions in this Essay, after a vast deal of fine verbiage and apparent argument, are such as required very little proof,--"though man's a fool, yet God is wise,"--and many other axioms equally true. But can we say the whole exhibits only a train of tritenesses? "Materiam superabat opus," it is acknowledged; and possibly, had it been more recondite, it could not have been made the vehicle of so many acknowledged beauties of expression, of imagery, and of poetic illustration. The more it is read the more it will be relished, and the more will the nice precision of every word, and the general beauty of its structure, be acknowledged. Though the treasures of knowledge within be not, perhaps, either very rich or rare, yet, to say it contains no striking sentiments, no truths placed in a more advanced as well as a more pleasing light, would be a manifest and palpable injustice. After all, poetry is not a good vehicle for philosophy, but as a philosophical poem, take it altogether, it would not be very easy, with the exception of Lucretius, to find its equal.--BOWLES.