[60] Between ver. 25 and 26 were these lines, since omitted by the author:
Many are spoiled by that pedantic throng,
Who with great pains teach youth to reason wrong.
Tutors, like virtuosos, oft inclined
By strange transfusion to improve the mind,
Draw off the sense we have, to pour in new;
Which yet, with all their skill, they ne'er could do. —Pope.
The transfusion spoken of in the fourth verse of this variation is the transfusion of one animal's blood into another.—Wakefield.
[61] "Nature," it is said in the Spectator, No. 404, "has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making, by applying his talents otherwise than nature designed." The idea is expressed more happily by Dryden in his Hind and Panther:
For fools are doubly fools endeav'ring to be wise.
Pope contradicts himself when he says in the text that the men made coxcombs by study were meant by nature but for fools, since they are among his instances of persons upon whom nature had bestowed the "seeds of judgment," and who possessed "good sense" till it was "defaced by false learning."
[62] Dryden's Medal:
The wretch turned loyal in his own defence.
[63] The couplet ran thus in the first edition, with less neatness and perspicuity:
Those hate as rivals all that write; and others
But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers.