He commenced with some of the topics enumerated in the second book of his "index." "Bid Pope talk to you of the work he is about," wrote Bolingbroke to Swift, Nov. 19, 1729. "It is a fine one, and will be, in his hands, an original. His sole complaint is that he finds it too easy in the execution. This flatters his laziness. It flatters my judgment who always thought that, universal as his talents are, this is eminently and peculiarly his above all the writers I know, living or dead. I do not except Horace." "The work," adds Pope, "which Lord Bolingbroke speaks of with such abundant partiality is a system of ethics in the Horatian way." Bolingbroke's comparison of the work to Horace, and Pope's phrase "the Horatian way," show that they spoke of the Moral Essays, which, with the Essay on Man, were at first included under the general title of Ethic Epistles. The resemblance to Horace would not apply to the Essay on Man in substance or style,--not in style, for Pope says himself that the Essay was modelled on "the grave march of Lucretius" in contradistinction to the familiar "gaieties of Horace,"[743]; not in substance, for Horace did not write a philosophical poem on natural religion, nor could he have been placed by Bolingbroke at the head of a class of philosophical poets to which he in no way belonged. Neither could Bolingbroke have said of Pope that "the talent eminently and peculiarly his, above all writers living or dead," was the power of sounding the depths of philosophy. The praise was intended for the satiric sketches of men and manners which make up the Moral Essays. These are truly in the "Horatian way," and in a vein characteristic of the bent of Pope's mind.