Bolingbroke furnished little or nothing to the Horatian epistles. His services commenced with the Essay on Man. Pope was revolving this part of the scheme in May, 1730, when he said to Spence, "The first epistle is to be to the whole work what a scale is to a book of maps; and in this, I reckon, lies my greatest difficulty: not only in settling and ranging the parts of it aright, but in making them agreeable enough to be read with pleasure."[744] A few months later Bolingbroke writes to Lord Bathurst, Oct. 8, 1730, that he and Pope "are at present deep in metaphysics." The matter intended for the first epistle was expanded into four epistles as the work proceeded, and in August, 1731, Bolingbroke announced to Swift that three of them were completed, and that the fourth was in hand. Eighteen months more elapsed before any portion of the poem was published; and Pope doubtless spent the interval in repeated revisions. It was not his habit to go straight forward in regular order, and leave no gaps or flaws as he went along. When he told Caryll in December, 1730, that he was "writing on life and manners, not exclusive of religious regards," he adds, "I have many fragments which I am beginning to put together, but nothing perfect or finished, nor in any condition to be shown, except to a friend at a fire-side." This system of composing disjointed fragments, and methodising them afterwards, was unfavourable to continuity and comprehension of thought, and did not help to diminish the want of connection in his arguments, and of consistency in his opinions.