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Thanks in part to Alexander Pope's shrewdness in publishing his ambitious Essay on Man anonymously, so that his enemies were beguiled into praising the poem on its merits, there was a "chorus of approbation" for some years after its appearance in 1733-34.[1] On the Continent, however, after the publication in 1736 of a French prose translation by Etienne de Silhouette,[2] it aroused the suspicion of Jean Pierre de Crousaz (1663-1750), professor at Lausanne, mathematician, logician, and Protestant theologian. That Pope was a Roman Catholic may have had something to do with Crousaz's hostility, but his first attack, Examen de l'essai de monsieur Pope sur l'homme (1737), is chiefly directed at what Crousaz believed to be its Leibnitzian content. Being told that Silhouette misrepresented Pope, Crousaz, who knew no English, then turned to a new translation—more accurately, a translation-imitation—by the Abbé Jean-François du Bellay du Resnel (1737). For his poem Du Resnel rearranged the Essay on Man, omitting some sections but adding others to extend Pope's 1,300 lines to 2,000 in French Alexandrines.[3] Crousaz

reprinted the entire poem with remarks interspersed in his Commentaire sur la traduction en vers de Mr. l'abbé Du Resnel, de l'essai de M. Pope sur l'homme (1738).

Considerable confusion has surrounded Samuel Johnson's role in the translations into English of Crousaz's two attacks on Pope's Essay on Man. An Examination of Mr Pope's Essay on Man and A Commentary on Mr Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man were easily confused: both are projects of Edward Cave, publisher of the Gentleman's Magazine, and both are dated "M.DCC.XXXIX." and "Printed for A. DODD" (Anne Dodd was a mercury used by Cave as a trade publisher).[4] Once it was known that it was Elizabeth Carter who translated the Examen and Johnson who translated the Commentaire, Johnsonians ignored the Examination. J. D. Fleeman, however, in his forthcoming bibliography of the writings of Samuel Johnson, observes, "Several of the notes in the Examination have the tone and manner of SJ's comments in his own translation of the Commentary."[5] Taking as a starting point this observation, the following essay will trace the history of the confusion about Johnson's role in the Examination and Commentary, clear up problems surrounding their publication, show that both works are indebted to Charles Forman's translation of the first epistle of the Commentary, and demonstrate that Johnson had a larger role in preparing the Examination for publication than has hitherto been recognized, not only providing editorial assistance but writing two substantial footnotes.