Note 1578 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Pope professes to believe that all his poetry up to the Essay on Man was made up of "sounds" to the exclusion of "things," and was addressed as little "to the heart" as to the understanding. His change of subject, and his panegyrics on virtue, had at least not taught him that the manly simplicity of truth was to be preferred to insincere hyperboles.