POPE. 419 



Then follows immediately the passage about the poor 

 Indian, who, after all, it seems, is contented with merely 

 being, and whose soul, therefore, is an exception to the 

 general rule. And what have the "solar walk" (as he 

 calls it) and "milky way" to do with the affair 1 ? Does 

 our hope of heaven depend on our knowledge of astron 

 omy? Or does he mean that science and faith are neces 

 sarily hostile ? And, after being told that it is the " un 

 tutored mind" of the savage which "sees God in clouds 

 and hears him in the wind," we are rather surprised 

 to find that the lesson the poet intends to teach is that 



" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 

 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. 

 That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 

 Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame, 

 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 

 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees." 



So that we are no better off than the untutored Indian, 

 after the poet has tutored us. Dr. Warburton makes a 

 rather lame attempt to ward off the charge of Spinozism 

 from this last passage. He would have found it harder 

 to show that the acknowledgment of any divine revela 

 tion would not overturn the greater part of its teach 

 ings. If Pope intended by his poem all that the bishop 

 takes for granted in his commentary, we must deny him 

 what is usually claimed as his first merit, clearness. 

 If he did not, we grant him clearness as a writer at the 

 expense of sincerity as a man. Perhaps a more charita 

 ble solution of the difficulty would be, that Pope's pre 

 cision of thought was no match for the fluency of his 

 verse. 



Lord Byron goes so far as to say, in speaking of Pope, 

 that he who executes the best, no matter what his 

 department, will rank the highest. I think there aro 

 enough indications in these letters of Byron's, however, 

 that they were written rather more against Wordsworth 



