is sufficiently proved, by the universality of tradition; that the testimony of Moses cannot be reputed an historical testimony, if we give no more credit to him than we should give to any other historian; and that we cannot admit his testimony for divine, without absurdity and blasphemy. LETTERS, OR ESSAYS, ADDRESSED TO ALEXANDER POPE, ESQ. DEAR SIR, THE INTRODUCTION. SINCE you have begun, at my request, the me. work which I have wished long that you would undertake, it is but reasonable, that I submit to the task you impose upon me. Mere compliance with any thing you desire is a pleasure to On the present occasion, however, this compliance is a little interested; and that I may not assume more merit with you than I really have, I will own, that in performing this act of friendship, for such you are willing to esteem it, the purity of my motive is corrupted by some regard to my private utility. In short, I suspect you to be guilty of a very friendly fraud, and to mean my service, while you seem to mean your own. In leading me to discourse, as you have done often, and in pressing me to write, as you do now, on certain subjects, you may propose to draw me back to those trains of thought, which are, above all others, worthy to employ the human mind, F 4 and and I thank you for it. They have been often interrupted by the business and dissipations of the world; but they were never so more grievously to me, nor less usefully to the public, than since royal seduction prevailed on me to abandon the quiet and leisure of the retreat I had chosen abroad, and to neglect the example of Rutilius; for I might have imitated him in this at least, who fled further from his country when he was invited home. It You have begun your Ethic Epistles in a masterly manner. You have copied no other writer, nor will you, I think, be copied by any one. is with genius as it is with beauty; there are a thousand pretty things that charm alike; but superior genius, like superior beauty, has always something particular, something that belongs to itself alone. It is always distinguishable, not only from those who have no claim to excellence, but even from those who excel, when any such there are. I am pleased, you may be sure, to find your satire turn in the very beginning of these Epistles, against the principal cause, for such you Know that I think it, of all the errours, all the contradictions, and all the disputes which have arisen among those who impose themselves on their fellow-creatures for great masters, and almost sole proprietors, of a gift of God, which is common to the whole species. This gift is reason, a faculty, or rather an aggregate of faculties, that is bestowed, in different degrees, and not |