The idea was suggested by a sentence in Sprat's Account of Cowley: "His fancy flowed with great speed, and therefore it was very fortunate to him that his judgment was equal to manage it." Pope gave a false sparkle to his couplet by first using "wit" in one sense and then in another. "Wit to manage wit," says the author of the Supplement to the Profound, "is full as good as one tongue's tiring another. Any one may perceive that the writer meant that judgment should manage wit; but as it stands it is pert." Warburton observes that Pope's later version magnified the contradiction; for he who had already "a profusion of wit," was the last person to need more.
[83] "Ever are at strife," was the reading till the quarto of 1743.
[84] We shall destroy the beauty of the passage by introducing a most insipid parallel of perfect sameness, if we understand the word "like" as introducing a simile. It is merely as if he had said: "Pegasus, as a generous horse is accustomed to do, shows his spirit most under restraint." Our author might have in view a couplet of Waller's, in his verses on Roscommon's Poetry:
Direct us how to back the winged horse,
Favour his flight, and moderate his force.—Wakefield.
[85] Dryden's preface to Troilus and Cressida: "If the rules be well considered, we shall find them to be made only to reduce nature into method."
[86] It was "monarchy" until the edition of 1743.
[87] Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry, by Dryden and Soame:
And afar off hold up the glorious prize.—Wakefield.
[88] Nec enim artibus editis factum est ut argumenta inveniremus, sed dicta sunt omnia antequam præciperentur; mox ea scriptores observata et collecta ediderunt. Quintil.—Pope.
[89] This seems to have been suggested by a couplet in the Court Prospect of Hopkins: