[1170] The stoic aimed at inner perfection, and trusted to the serenity of virtue to sustain him in all the trials of life. Pope erroneously imagined that stoics were selfish and inactive because they were calm and self-contained. Seneca, De Ot. i. 4, says, they insisted that we must never cease labouring for the common good, and Cicero, De Fin. iii. 19, says they placed their force of character at the service of mankind, and thought it their duty to live, and if need were to die, for the benefit of the public.
[1171] A couplet is added in the MS.:
Virtue dispassioned naked meets the fight,
Comes without arms, and conquers but by flight.
[1172] MS.:
Passions like tempests put in act the soul.
[1173] Spectator, June 18, 1712. No. 408: "Passions are to the mind as winds to a ship; they only can move it, and they too often destroy it. Reason must then take the place of pilot, and can never fail of securing her charge if she be not wanting to herself."
[1174] Tate's paraphrase from Simonides, Dryden's Miscellanies, vol. v. p. 55:
On life's wide ocean diversely launched out,
Our minds alike are tossed on waves of doubt,
Holding no steady course, or constant sail,
But shift and tack with ev'ry veering gale.—Wakefield.
[1175] In the mariner's compass the paper on which the points of the compass are marked is called "the card."
[1176] Carew's Poems: