There is an earlier form of the last couplet:
He waits for bliss in a remoter sphere
Nor proudly claims it when he will and where.
[1023] So in Homer, at the funeral of Patroclus, xxiii. 212, of our poet's translation:
Of nine large dogs, domestic at his board,
Fall two, selected to attend their lord.—Wakefield.
[1024] "Sense" is put for "the senses," and Pope exclaims against the folly of censuring the government of God on the strength of the imperfect information which the senses supply.
[1025] Bolingbroke, Fragment 25: "This is to weigh his own opinion against Providence." Pope adduces the contented faith of the savage to rebuke the dissatisfaction of certain civilised men. The contrast completely fails. The contentment and dissatisfaction are applied by Pope to different objects, the contentment of the savage being limited to his idea of a future life, whereas the dissatisfaction of civilised man is said to be chiefly with his present condition, about which the savage is often dissatisfied likewise. The imperfect information of missionaries is not even sufficient warrant for asserting that all Indians believed in a future state, and if there were dissentients among them their case did not differ from that of civilised men. Above all the contentment of the Indian is the result of grovelling views, and uninquiring ignorance, and whatever may be the errors of infidels among ourselves they cannot be remedied by an appeal to those blind conceptions of the savage, which Pope supposed to be false. "Our flattering ourselves here," he said to Spence, "with the thoughts of enjoying the company of our friends when in the other world may be but too like the Indians thinking that they shall have their dogs and horses there."
[1026] First edition:
Pronounce He acts too little or too much.
[1027] "Gust," or the relish for anything, is the opposite of "disgust," and is applied by Pope to the pleasures of the palate. The word is found in Dryden, and several other writers, but never came into general use.
[1028] MS.: