He says (in 1739) that he never in his life read a line of Leibnitz, nor knew, till he found it in a confutation of his Essay, that there was such a term as pre-established harmony.

That is almost as if a modern reconciler of faith and science were to say that he had never read a line of Mr.
Darwin, or heard of such a phrase as the struggle for existence.

It was to pronounce himself absolutely disqualified to speak as a philosopher.
How, then, could Pope obtain even an appearance of success?
The problem should puzzle no one at the present day.

Every smart essayist knows how to settle the most abstruse metaphysical puzzles after studies limited to the pages of a monthly magazine; and Pope was much in the state of mind of such extemporizing philosophers.

He had dipped into the books which everybody read; Locke's Essay, and Shaftesbury's Characteristics, and Wollaston's Religion of Nature, and Clarke on the Attributes, and Archbishop King on the Origin of Evil, had probably amused his spare moments.