The couplet was not in the first edition.
[1200] The particular application of this to the several pursuits of men, and the general good resulting thence, falls also into the succeeding book.—Pope.
The "succeeding book" is the Moral Essays, which are almost entirely made up of satiric sketches. Pope dilated upon the evil resulting from "the mind's disease, the ruling passion," but barely touched upon "the general good."
[1201] Man can only be driven from passion to passion during the infancy of the ruling passion, which continues to grow, Pope tells us, till it has overspread the entire mind, and obliterated every subordinate desire.
[1202] From Rochefoucauld, Maxim 266: "It is a mistake to believe that none but the violent passions, such as ambition and love, are able to triumph over the other passions. Laziness, languid as it is, often gets the mastery of them all, usurps over all the designs and actions of life, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues."—Warton.
[1203] MS.:
Th' Eternal Art that mingles good with ill.
[1204] Caryll's Hypocrite in Dryden's Miscellanies, iv. p. 312:
Hypocrisy at last should enter in,
And fix this floating mercury of sin.—Wakefield.
[1205] MS.: