Note 1100 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
These are lines of a marvellous energy and closeness of expression.—Warton.
The concluding lines appear to be a false jingle of words which neutralise the whole of Pope's argument. If there is to Providence "no high, no low, no great, no small," the gradation of beings is a delusion. What things are in the sight of God, that they are in reality, and since no one thing in creation is superior or inferior to any other thing, Pope's language throughout this epistle is unmeaning. The final phrase of the couplet is bathos. God is not only the "equal" of "all" his works, he is immeasurably beyond them.