All was believed, but nothing understood.—Pope.
[275] Between ver. 690 and 691, the author omitted these two:
Vain wits and critics were no more allowed,
When none but saints had licence to be proud.—Pope.
[276] Here he forms the tenses wrong.—Wakefield.
Pope told Caryll that he did not speak in this couplet "of learning in general, but of polite learning,—criticism, poetry, etc.—which was the only learning concerned in the subject of the Essay." He at the same time confessed his belief that the learning which the monks possessed "was barely kept alive by them." The explanation would not contribute to conciliate the offended catholics.
[277] The "glory" from his own greatness, the "shame" from the rancour with which some of his brother priests assailed him.—Croker.
Oldham in his Satire:
On Butler, who can think without just rage,
The glory and the scandal of the age.—Wakefield.
Pope avowed his conviction to Caryll that the priests had openly accused him of heterodoxy in other passages of his poem, because they were secretly exasperated at his eulogy upon Erasmus. "What in their own opinion," he said, "they are really angry at is that a man whom their tribe oppressed and persecuted should be vindicated after a whole age of obloquy by one of their own people, who is free and bold enough to utter a generous truth in behalf of the dead, whom no man sure will flatter, and few do justice to."