[1241] Shaftesbury's Moralists: "Is not both conjugal affection and natural affection to parents, love of a common city, community, or country, with the other duties and social parts of life, founded in these very wants?"—Warton.
[1242] Men, says Pope, are reconciled to death from growing weary of the "wants, frailties, and passions" of life. "The observation," says Warburton, "is new, and would in any place be extremely beautiful, but has here an infinite grace and propriety." This is one of the stock forms of Warburton's adulation. Pope's remark was stale, and from the nature of the case could not be new if, as he asserted, it was generally true, since all men in their declining years could not, through all time, have left unexpressed the feeling which made them all willing to die. What all men think many men will say.
[1243] The MS. adds this couplet:
What partly pleases, totally will shock;
Nor Ross would be Argyle, nor Toland
I question much if Toland would be Locke.
The Duke of Argyle and General Ross were both soldiers, both politicians, and both Scotchmen. Ross was a member of the House of Commons. Toland introduced metaphysics into his infidel works, and Pope signifies by his couplet that the inferior in a particular department would not desire on the whole to change characters with a superior in the same department.
[1244] MS.:
The learn'd are blessed such wonders to explore.
[1245] Buoyed up by the expectation that he would hit upon the secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold.
[1246] MS.:
The chemist's happy in his golden views,
Payn in his madness, Welsted in his muse.