Note 8 — SPRING:
Reading edition
The expression in this verse is philosophically just. True wisdom is the knowledge of ourselves, which terminates in a conviction of our absolute insignificancy with respect to God, and our relative inferiority in many instances to the accomplishments of our own species: and power is encompassed with such a multiplicity of dangerous temptations as to be almost incompatible with virtue. A passage in Lucan, viii. 493, is very apposite:
exeat aula Qui vult esse pius. Virtus et summa potestas Non coëunt. He who would spotless live from courts must go: No union power supreme and virtue know.—Wakefield.