[1478] In a work of so serious a cast surely such strokes of levity, of satire, of ridicule, as also lines 204, 223, 276, however poignant and witty, are ill-placed and disgusting, are violations of that propriety which Pope in general so strictly observed.—Warton.
[1479] MS.:
But come, for virtue the just payment fix,
For humble merit say a coach and six,
For justice a Lord Chancellor's awful gown, &c.
Pope showed his consciousness of the weakness of his cause by raising false issues. Virtue would not be rewarded by swords, gowns, and coaches, but is it rewarded by the cross, the stake, the rack, and the dungeon?
[1480] This sarcasm was directed against George II. When Prince of Wales he quarrelled with his father, and patronised the opposition. On his accession to the throne he abandoned the opposition, to which Pope's friends belonged, and retained the ministers of George I.
[1481] After ver. 172 in the MS.:
Say, what rewards this idle world imparts,
Or fit for searching heads or honest hearts.—Warburton.
[1482] Heaven in this line has either improperly the double sense of a person and a place,—the God of heaven, and the kingdom of the blessed—or else "there" is a clumsy tautological excrescence to furnish a rhyme.
[1483] These eight succeeding lines were not in former editions; and indeed none of them, especially lines 177 and 179, do any credit to the author.—Warton.
From Warton's note it would appear that the lines were first printed in his own edition in 1797, whereas they were published in Pope's edition of 1743. The poet had then renounced Bolingbroke for Warburton, and ventured to admit that there was a heaven reserved for man.