Note 1339 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Dryden in his version of the speech of Pythagoras in Ovid, Met. Book xv., which our poet doubtless had in view through this whole delineation:
Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began, And after forged the sword to murder man.—Wakefield.
MS.:
While nature, strict the injury to scan, Left man the only beast to prey on man.