Note 189 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

This was directed against Pope's co-religionists, and greatly annoyed them. The offence was not that he had misrepresented their views, but that he had denounced a doctrine which all zealous papists maintained. "Nothing," he said, when writing in vindication of the passage to Caryll, "has been so much a scarecrow to our opponents as that too peremptory and uncharitable assertion of an utter impossibility of salvation to all but ourselves. I own to you I was glad of any opportunity to express my dislike of so shocking a sentiment as those of the religion I profess are commonly charged with, and I hoped a slight insinuation, introduced by a casual similitude only, could never have given offence, but on the contrary, must needs have done good in a nation wherein we are the smaller party, and consequently most misrepresented, and most in need of vindication." The Roman Catholics took to themselves the couplet "Meanly they seek," which followed the simile, but Pope pointed out that the plural "some," and not the singular "each man," was the antecedent to "they." The comparison was not kept up throughout the paragraph, and the lines after ver. 397 refer solely to the critics.