from the minister of the place, and I have preserved it, that the
praise of a good man, being made more credible, may be more solid.
Narrations of romantic and impracticable virtue will be read with
wonder, but that which is unattainable is recommended in vain; that
good may be endeavoured it must be shown to be possible. This is
the only piece in which the author has given a hint of his religion,
by ridiculing the ceremony of burning the Pope, and by mentioning
with some indignation the inscription on the Monument.

When this poem was first published, the dialogue having no letters
of direction was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written
with no very distinct idea, for he calls that an "Epistle to
Bathurst," in which Bathurst is introduced as speaking. He
afterwards (1734) inscribed to Lord Cobham his "Characters of Men,"
written with close attention to the operations of the mind and
modifications of life. In this poem he has endeavoured to establish
and exemplify his favourite theory of the RULING PASSION, by which
he means an original direction of desire to some particular object,
an innate affection which gives all action a determinate and
invariable tendency, and operates upon the whole system of life,
either openly, cut more secretly by the intervention of some
accidental or subordinate propension. Of any passion, thus innate
and irresistible, the existence may reasonably be doubted. Human
characters are by no means constant; men change by change of place,
of fortune, of acquaintance. He who is at one time a lover of
pleasure, is at another a lover of money. Those, indeed, who attain
any excellence commonly spend life in one pursuit, for excellence is
not often gained upon easier terms. But to the particular species
of excellence men are directed, not by an ascendant planet or
predominating humour, but by the first book which they read, some