[1473] MS.:
Can God be just if virtue be unfed?
Why, fool, is the reward of virtue bread?
'Tis his who labours, his who sows the plain,
'Tis his who threshes, or who grinds the grain.
[1474] The MS. has two readings:
Where madness fights for tyrants or for gain.
Where folly fights for kings or drowns for gain.
In the early editions Pope adopted the first version; in the later the second, with the change of "dives" for "drowns."
[1475] "Why no king?" is equivalent to "why is he not any king?" The proper form would be "why not a king?"
[1476] MS.:
Then give him this, and that, and everything:
Still the complaint subsists; he is no king.
Outward rewards for inward worth are odd:
Why then complain not that he is no god?
Ver. 162 in the text is inconsistent with ver. 161. Pope supposes the good to rise in their demands until they rebel against receiving external rewards for internal merits, and insist that man should be a god, and earth a heaven, which heaven is one of the externals they have just indignantly repudiated.
[1477] Pope is speaking of the good, and what good man ever did "ask and reason" according to Pope's representation?