[1424] "The common sense" and "common ease" of which all the world have an equal share, cannot exceed the measure of sense and ease which falls to the lot of the most foolish and suffering of mankind. This is the same sort of equality that there is between the income of a pauper and a millionaire, since both have half-a-crown a week.
[1425] The MS. adds:
In no extreme lies real happiness,
Not ev'n of good or wisdom in excess.
"Good" and "wisdom" in the last line might be supposed to mean something that was not true wisdom and goodness if Pope had not argued, ver. 259-268, that real wisdom was injurious to happiness. He would have the "right thinking" alloyed with error, and the "meaning well" with evil.
[1426] That is, all which can "justly" or rightly be termed happiness.
[1427] The image is drawn from a person leaning towards another, and listening to what he says. Pope took the expression from the simile of the compasses in Donne's Songs and Sonnets:
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
[1428] The MS. goes on thus:
'Tis not in self it can begin and end,
The bliss of one must with another blend:
The strongest, noblest pleasures of the mind
All hold of mutual converse with the kind.
Can sensual lust, or selfish rapine, know
Such as from bounty, love, or mercy flow?
Of human nature wit its worst may write,
We all revere it in our own despite.
[1429] This couplet follows in the MS.: