It may be questioned, whether the remarks on Pope's Essay on Man can be
received, without great caution. It has been already mentioned, that
Crousaz, a professor in Switzerland, eminent for his Treatise of Logic,
started up a professed enemy to that poem. Johnson says, "his mind was
one of those, in which philosophy and piety are happily united. He
looked, with distrust, upon all metaphysical systems of theology, and
was persuaded, that the positions of Pope were intended to draw mankind
away from revelation, and to represent the whole course of things, as a
necessary concatenation of indissoluble fatality." This is not the place
fur a controversy about the Leibnitzian system. Warburton, with all the
powers of his large and comprehensive mind, published a vindication of
Pope; and yet Johnson says, that, "in many passages, a religious eye may
easily discover expressions not very favourable to morals, or to
liberty." This sentence is severe, and, perhaps, dogmatical. Crousaz
wrote an Examen of the Essay on Man, and, afterwards, a commentary on
every remarkable passage; and, though it now appears, that Mrs.
Elizabeth Carter translated the foreign critic, yet it is certain, that
Johnson encouraged the work, and, perhaps, imbibed those early
prejudices, which adhered to him to the end of his life. He shuddered at
the idea of irreligion.
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