[979] MS.:
He who can all the flaming limits pierce,
Of worlds on worlds that form one universe.
[980] "And what" was the reading of all editions till that of 1743. Wollaston's Religion of Nature, ed. 1750, p. 143: "The fixed stars are so many other suns with their several sets of planets about them."
[981] MS.:
What other habitants in ev'ry star.
[982] This was the reading of the first edition which Pope ultimately restored, but in the edition of 1735 the line stands thus:
May tell why heav'n made all things as they are.
Pope's assertion in the text that it is impossible for us to "tell why heaven has made us as we are," unless we had a complete insight into the plan of universal creation, contradicts ver. 48, where he says that "it is plain there must be somewhere such a rank as man."
[983] First edition: "And centres."
[984] Bolingbroke, Fragment 43: "As distant as are the various systems, and systems of systems that compose the universe, and different as we may imagine them to be, they are all tied together by relations and connections, by gradations and dependencies."—Wakefield.