Note 1213 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
After ver. 194 in the MS.:
How oft with passion, virtue points her charms! Then shines the hero, then the patriot warms. Peleus' great son, or Brutus who had known Had Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none? But virtues opposite to make agree, That, reason, is thy task, and worthy thee. Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak, "Make it a point, dear Marquess, or a pique. Once for a whim, persuade yourself to pay A debt to reason, like a debt at play. For right or wrong have mortals suffered more? B[lount] for his prince, or B** for his whore? Whose self-denials nature most control? His who would save a sixpence, or his soul. Web for his health, a Chartreux for his sin, Contend they not which soonest shall grow thin? What we resolve we can: but here's the fault, We ne'er resolve to do the thing we ought."—Warburton.
There is another version of the last couplet but one in the MS.:
Which will become more exemplary thin, W[eb] for his health, De Rancé for his sin?
Web may have been the General Webb who got considerable reputation for his defeat of the French at Wynendale in 1708. Swift in his Journal to Stella, April 19, 1711, speaks of him as "going with a crutch and a stick." Rancé was born at Paris in 1626, and died in 1700. In 1662 he assumed the government of the monastery of La Trappe, and was noted for the austerities he imposed and practised. Mr. Croker thinks that "B." who "suffered for his prince" was Edward Blount, the Roman Catholic Devonshire squire. He went into voluntary exile after the rebellion of 1715, but did not remain abroad many years.