There were errors enough in Pope's doctrine without the misinterpretations of Voltaire, who has falsified the views of the poet, as he had previously misstated the profounder system of Leibnitz. "Those," says Voltaire, "who exclaim that all is good are charlatans. Shaftesbury, who brought the fable into fashion, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke devoured with chagrin and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put the mockery into verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known,--deformed in body, unequal in his temper, always ill, a burthen to himself, and harassed by a hundred enemies to his dying hour. Quote me at least some happy men who say that all is good. Any one who had seen the beautiful Ann Boleyn, and the still more beautiful Mary Stuart, in their youth, would have said that is good, but would he have said it when he saw them perish by the hand of the executioner? would he have said it when he saw the grandson of the beautiful Mary die the same death in the midst of his capital? would he have said it when he saw the great-grandson more unfortunate still, since he lived longer?"[824] Pope, in his imperfect theory, did not deny the existence of sorrow, but asserted, or implied, that the sorrow was an advantage either to the sufferer or others. Voltaire looked singly at the misery without heeding the gain. Mary Queen of Scots at the block was superior to the radiant beauty who was starting on a profligate career. Charles I., penitent for his murderous abandonment of Strafford, and, perhaps, for his creed that duplicity is a virtue when employed by kings to circumvent subjects, was a vastly better man on the scaffold than on the throne. James II. was in a more advantageous position with the inducement to repentance which his long exile supplied than if he had succeeded in his fraudulent attempts to subvert the English church and constitution. The rage of Bolingbroke, and Pope's fretful temper, were certainly inexplicable on the pretence that they were poured into the mind by the Deity. They did not militate against the truer optimism which saw in them self-imposed vice and pain, rendered possible by the free-will which is a privilege to mankind.