Note 1327 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
The MS. goes on thus:
She spake, and man her high behests obeyed; Harmless amidst his fellow-beasts he strayed; For pride was not; joint tenant of the shade He shared with beasts his table and his bed; No murder etc.
"He speaks," says M. Crousaz, "of what passed in the earliest ages of the world no less positively than an eye-witness." Pope followed the ancient fable which he may have read, among other places, in Montaigne's Essays, Book ii. Chap. 12: "Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn, reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communications with beasts, by which he acquired a very perfect intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do."