[1338] Pope probably meant that man was a "fiercer savage" than the animals of which he shed the blood, but as the "blood" only is mentioned, there is no proper positive to the comparative.
[1339] Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole delineation:
Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,
And after forged the sword to murder man.—Wakefield.
MS.:
While nature, strict the injury to scan,
Left man the only beast to prey on man.
[1340] MS.:
In early times when man aspired to art.
The lines from ver. 161 to 168 are parenthetical, and Pope now goes back to the primitive age in which uncorrupted man associated freely with the beasts, and profited by their teaching.
[1341] MS.:
'Twas then the voice of mighty nature spake.