ABSTRACT
Pope never wrote the epic poem which had been his particular ambition from early adolescence, when he made his abortive attempt on Alcander. Leranbaum gives one of the few good accounts we have of the Brutus scheme, and of its relation to the projected philosophical poem which is the main subject of her book. Leranbaum also discusses those other 'completed' portions of the opus magnum, the four Moral Essays. She is extremely good in sorting out the tangled question of the relation of each of them to the others, to the Essay on Man, and to what can be reconstructed of the scheme of the 'ethic work' as a whole. The most famous passage from the Essay on Man is the opening of Epistle II: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man. Much earlier, in Windsor-Forest, Pope first displayed his delight in the larger-scale arrangements in nature.
