Note 1372 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Mr. Pope told us that of the number that had read these Epistles, he knew of no one that took the elegance, or even the true meaning of the word "enormous," except Lord Bolingbroke alone. I wonder at it. I am sure I never understood it otherwise than as "out of all rule," and I do not know how anybody could that had read Horace's "abnormis sapiens," and Milton's "enormous bliss." Mr. Pope added for that reason, against his rule of brevity, the two next lines to explain it, and accordingly I since saw them interlined in the original MS.—Richardson.

Milton's "enormous bliss" was bliss "wild, above rule or art." The persons who misunderstood the epithet in Pope's poem must have been those who read the MS.; for the explanatory couplet appeared in the first edition of the Epistle. He obviously meant by "enormous faith" that the faith was an enormity, and it is difficult to conjecture what other sense could be attached to his phrase.