Note 726 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES

The authority was Lord Bathurst. Dr. Hugh Blair dined with him in 1763, and says in a letter to Boswell, that "the conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us that the Essay on Man was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own handwriting, and remembered well that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse." Boswell read the account to Johnson, who replied, "Depend upon it, sir, this is too strongly stated. Pope may have had from Bolingbroke the philosophic stamina of his Essay, and admitting this to be true, Lord Bathurst did not intentionally falsify. But the thing is not true in the latitude that Blair seems to imagine; we are sure that the poetical imagery, which makes a great part of the poem, was Pope's own."