Note 1136 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
From the Zodiac of Palingenius:
Simia cœlicolum, risusque jocusque deorum est Tunc homo, cum temerè ingenio confidit, et audet Abdita naturæ scrutari, arcanaque divum.—Warton.
This image gives an air of burlesque to the passage, notwithstanding all that can be said. It is degrading to the subject, to the idea of the "superior beings," and to the character on whom it is meant as a panegyric.—Bowles.
The author of a Letter to Mr. Pope, 1735, says that the lines on Newton had been "generally admired and repeated." From this praise he justly dissents. Either the angels could not have "admired" Newton in the proper sense of the word, or they could not have "shown him as we show an ape," when he would have appeared a grotesque and ludicrous object. The idea is altogether a poor conceit, and was not worth borrowing. In the MS. an additional couplet followed ver. 34:
Ah, turn the glass! it shows thee all along As weak in conduct, as in science strong.