More loved, more praised, more envied in his doom,
Than Cæsar trampling on the rights of Rome.—Wakefield.
[1523] "Superior parts" are ranked by Pope among "external goods," which is a palpable error. Nothing can be less external to a man than his mind.
[1524] Which does not hinder our advancing with delight from truth to truth, nor are we depressed because, to quote Pope's language, Epist. i. ver. 71, "our knowledge is measured to our state and place."
[1525] In the interests of charity, humility, and self-improvement, it were to be wished that this was the universal result of superior intelligence.
[1526] Pope objects that wise men are "condemned to drudge," which is not an evil peculiar to the tasks of wise men, and so immensely does the pleasure of mental exercise preponderate over the weariness, that a taste for philosophy, letters, and science is one of the surest preservatives against the tedium of life. He objects that the wise have no one to second or judge them rightly, which never happens. The most neglected genius wins disciples from the beginning, who make up in weight what they want in number, and were the adherents fewer, the capacity which conceives important truths would be self-sustained from the consciousness that truth is mighty and will prevail.
[1527] The allusion is to Bolingbroke's patriotic pretensions, and political impotence. The cause of his want of success is reversed by Pope. He was understood well enough, and nobody trusted him in consequence. His selfish, unprincipled ambition was too transparent.
[1528] To a person that was praising Dr. Balguy's admirable discourses on the Vanity and Vexation of our Pursuits after Knowledge, he replied, "I borrowed the whole from ten lines of the Essay on Man, ver. 259-268, and I only enlarged upon what the poet had expressed with such marvellous conciseness, penetration, and precision." He particularly admired ver. 266.—Warton.
The exclamation "painful pre-eminence," is from Addison's Cato, Act iii. Sc. 5, where Cato applies the phrase to his own situation.
[1529] This line is inconsistent with ver. 261-2. A man who feels painfully his own ignorance and faults is not "above life's weakness." The line is also inconsistent with ver. 310. No one can be above life's weakness who is not transcendent in virtue, and then he cannot be above "life's comfort," since Pope says, that "virtue alone is happiness below." The melancholy picture, again, which the passage presents of the species of martyrdom endured by Bolingbroke from his intellectual pre-eminence, is inconsistent with ver. 18, where Pope says that perfect happiness has fled from kings to dwell with St. John.
[1530] "Call" for "call forth."