[1374] Wicked rulers, terrified by an evil conscience, became the dupe of impostors who professed to speak in the name of the invisible powers.
[1375] MS.:
Split the huge oak, and rocked the rending ground.
Wakefield points out that the lines, ver. 249-252, are from Lucretius, v. 1217.
[1376] MS.:
From op'ning earth showed fiends infernal nigh,
And gods supernal from the bursting sky.
[1377] Horace, Ode iii. bk. iii., translated by Addison:
An umpire, partial, and unjust,
And a lewd woman's impious lust.
[1378] Bolingbroke, Fragment 22: "Men made the Supreme Being after their own image. Fierce and cruel themselves they represented him hating without reason, revenging without provocation, and punishing without measure." Pope says that tyrants would believe such gods as were formed like tyrants. He meant that the tyrants would believe in the gods, but probably found the "in" unmanageable.
[1379] MS.: