He feared that this dubious language would be distasteful to Caryll, and thus wrote to him on March 8, 1733. "The town is now very full of a new poem, entitled an Essay on Man. It has merit, in my opinion, but not so much as they give it. At least, it is incorrect, and has some inaccuracies in the expressions,--one or two of an unhappy kind, for they may cause the author's sense to be turned, contrary to what I think his intention, a little unorthodoxically. Nothing is so plain, as that he quits his proper subject, this present world, to assert his belief of a future state, and, yet there is an _if_ instead of a _since_ that would overthrow his meaning."[774] Pope several times reprinted the poem with corrections, but never altered the word which misrepresented his creed on the question whether death was annihilation or immortality. He had a public version, which he adopted "out of complaisance to Bolingbroke," overborne by his showy rhetoric and imperious dogmatism, and a private version for his pious friend, to whom he professed that his conditional language was an "inaccuracy of expression which overthrew his meaning." Pope's private profession of his belief in a future state was his real conviction. He proceeded to belie his true opinions, by standing up for the christianity of the Essay on Man. "The author," he says, "uses the words 'God the soul of the world,' which, at the first glance, may be taken for heathenism, while his whole paragraph proves him quite christian in his system, from man up to seraphim." Caryll was not convinced, and on October 23 Pope wrote to reassure him. "I believe the author of the Essay on Man will end his poem in such a manner as will satisfy your scruple. I think it impossible for him, with any congruity to his confined and strictly philosophical subject, to mention our Saviour directly; but he may magnify the christian doctrine as the perfection of all moral; nay, and even, I fancy, quote the very words of the Gospel precept, that includes all the law and the precepts, _Thou shalt love God above all things_, &c., and I conclude that will remove all possible occasion of scandal." He wrote again to the same effect on January 1, 1734:--"To the best of my judgment the author shows himself a christian at last in the assertion, that all earthly happiness, as well as future felicity, depends upon the doctrine of the Gospel,--love of God and man,--and that the whole aim of our being is to attain happiness here and hereafter by the practice of universal charity to man, and entire resignation to God. More particular than this he could not be with any regard to the subject, or manner in which he treated it." From the next letter of the poet, on February 28, it would appear that the "scruple" of Caryll was removed, influenced, perhaps, by the discovery that the work was Pope's own production. "Your candid opinion," says Pope, "not only on the Essay on Man, but its author, pleases me truly. I