[1145] An allusion to the web of Penelope in Homer's Odyssey.—Wakefield.
[1146] That is, of all the studies which are dictated by the vices of pride and vanity. He followed Bolingbroke, who wrote long tirades against moralists, divines, and metaphysicians, for indulging, from hope of fame, in barren, chimerical speculations.
[1147] This paragraph first appeared in the edition of 1743. In the preceding paragraph, we are told that, in physical science, man "may rise unchecked from art to art." Unless, therefore, Pope reckoned physical science among the worthless departments of knowledge, there was, by his own statement, one vast and important scientific region which was destined to unlimited extension, and of which it was not correct to say that a "little sum" must serve the future, as it had served the past.
[1148] MS.:
Two different principles our nature move;
One spurs, one reins; this reason, that self-love.
Cicero's Offices, i. 28: "The powers of the mind are twofold; one consists in appetite, by the Greeks called ὁρμη (impulse), which hurries man hither and thither; the other in reason, which teaches and explains what we are to do, and what we are to avoid."
[1149] The MS. goes on thus:
Of good and evil gods what frighted fools,
Of good and evil, reason puzzled schools,
Deceived, deceiving taught, to these refer;
Know both must operate, or both must err.—Warburton.
[1150] "Still" is thrust in to supply a rhyme. "Ascribe" is "we ascribe" carried on from "we call" at ver. 55.
[1151] "Acts," in the signification of "incites to action" was formerly common. "Most men," says Barrow, "are greatly tainted with self-love; some are wholly possessed and acted by it."