This year, Crousaz, a Swiss professor of note, having
attacked (we think most justly) the "Essay on Man" as a mere Pagan
prolusion--a thin philosophical smile cast on the Gordian knot of the
mystery of the universe, instead of a _sword_ cutting, or trying to cut,
it in sunder--Warburton, a man of much talent and learning, but of more
astuteness and anxiety to exalt himself, came forward to the rescue,
and, with a mixture of casuistical cunning and real ingenuity, tried, as
some one has it, "to make Pope a Christian," although, even in
Warburton's hands, like the dying Donald Bane in "Waverley," he "makes
but a queer Christian after all;" and his system, essentially
Pantheistic, contrives to ignore the grand Scripture principles of a
Fall, of a Divine Redeemer, of a Future World, and the glorious light or
darkness which these and other Christian doctrines cast upon the Mystery
of Man. If, however, Warburton, with all his scholastic subtlety, failed
to make Pope a Christian, he made him a warm friend; Allen, Pope's
acquaintance, a rich father-in-law; and himself, by and by, the Bishop
of Gloucester. Sophistry has seldom, although sometimes, been thus
richly rewarded.
The last scene of Pope's tiny and tortured existence was now at hand.
But ere it closed, it must close like Dryden's, characteristically, with
an author's quarrel.
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