[1216] The MS. has two other versions of this line:
Check but its force or compass short of ill.
Turn but the bias from the side of ill.
[1217] But not by grafting temperance and humanity upon his ruling passions—sensuality and cruelty. He must have torn up his evil passions by the roots, and cultivated virtues in their stead.
[1218] Catiline hemmed in by superior forces died fighting with the courage of despair. Unless he was greatly maligned his conspiracies were prompted by profligate selfishness without any mixture of patriotism. Decius, instructed by a vision on the eve of the battle of Vesuvius, B.C. 340, that the general on the one side, and the army on the other was doomed, rushed into the thick of the fight to ensure by his own death the destruction of the enemy. The story of Decius may be fabulous, like that of Pope's next example, Curtius, who when informed, B.C. 362, that a chasm which had opened in the Roman forum could never be filled up till the basis of the Roman greatness had been committed to it, was alleged to have mounted on horseback clad in armour, and to have leaped into the gulf. Courage, the quality common to Catiline, Decius, and Curtius, is never a ruling passion, but is the effect of some antecedent motive, which may be vanity or duty, lofty patriotism or criminal ambition.
[1219] MS.:
And either makes a patriot or a knave.
[1220] MS.:
Divide, before the genius of the mind.
or,
'Tis reason's task to sep'rate in the mind.