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An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
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An Essay on Man.

Moral essays and satires

by Alexander Pope.

INTRODUCTION.

Pope's life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough
to the three reigns in which he worked. Under Queen Anne he was an
original poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he was
chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the
French-classical taste with versions of the "Iliad" and "Odyssey." Under
George I. he also edited Shakespeare, but with little profit to himself;
for Shakespeare was but a Philistine in the eyes of the French-classical
critics. But as the eighteenth century grew slowly to its work, signs of a
deepening interest in the real issues of life distracted men's attention
from the culture of the snuff-box and the fan. As Pope's genius ripened,
the best part of the world in which he worked was pressing forward, as a
mariner who will no longer hug the coast but crowds all sail to cross the
storms of a wide unknown sea. Pope's poetry thus deepened with the course
of time, and the third period of his life, which fell within the reign of
George II., was that in which he produced the "Essay on Man," the "Moral