[1230] MS.:
Ev'n those who dwell in Vice's very zone.
[1231] From moral insensibility, that is, they are either unconscious of their vice, or, being conscious, pretend ignorance.
[1232] Pope goes too far. The worst men acknowledge that some things are crimes.
[1233] Addison, Spectator, No. 183: "There was no person so vicious who had not some good in him, nor any person so virtuous who had not in him some evil."
[1234] This couplet follows ver. 234 in the MS.:
Some virtue in a lawyer has been known,
Nay in a minister, or on a throne.
[1235] Complete virtue, and complete vice, says Pope, are both hostile to self-interest, a plain confession that his selfish system was incompatible with thorough virtue. He assures us, Epist. iv. ver. 310, that "virtue alone is happiness below," but to be consistent he must have meant virtue seasoned with vice.
[1236] He is far from saying that good effects naturally rise from vice or folly, and affirms nothing but that God superintends the world in such a manner that they do not produce all those destructive consequences that might reasonably be expected from them.—Johnson.
MS.: