Note 962 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Pope's manuscript supplies various readings of this line:
puzzledto flattered
puzzlingto blustering
grovellinglow-thoughted
To working statesmen and ambitious kings.
In a letter to Swift, Dec. 19, 1734, Pope says that the couplet was a monitory, and ineffectual hint to Bolingbroke, to give up politics for philosophy. If the censure was directed against the party vices of the man the reproof is inconsistent with the eulogy on his patriotism, Epist. iv. ver. 265, and if against his pursuit in the abstract, it is folly to say that statesmanship is one of the "meaner things" which should be left to "low ambition," and empty "pride."