Note 1208 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Pope probably alluded to Swift when he spoke of the "crops of wit and honesty" which were the product of "spleen, obstinacy, and hate." The spleen and hate engendered wit by prompting satiric effusions; but wit is not in itself a virtue, and when Pope inserted it in his catalogue he must have been thinking of the moral ends it might subserve.