Note 90 — Chapter XVI · BRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Voltaire commented pointedly on Pope’s omission to make any reference to Shaftesbury, while vending his doctrine. (Lettres Philosophiques, xxii.) As a matter of fact Pope does in the Dunciad (iv, 488) refer maliciously to the Theocles of Shaftesbury’s Moralists as maintaining a Lucretian theism or virtual atheism. The explanation is that Shaftesbury had sharply criticized the political course of Bolingbroke, who in turn ignored him as a thinker. See the present writer’s introd. to Shaftesbury’s Characteristics, ed. 1900 (rep. in Pioneer Humanists); and cp. W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 1900, p. 101. ↑