Note 1345 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
The MS. adds:
Behold the rabbit's fortress in the sands, The beaver's storied house not made with hands.
A rabbit-burrow has no resemblance to a military fortress, and Pope prudently omitted the incongruous comparison. Martial, Lib. xiii. Ep. 60, had used the illustration in a directly opposite sense, and said that rabbits, by teaching the art of mining, had shown the enemy how fortresses could be taken.