Note 1357 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
These two lines added since the first edition.—Pope.
The second line of the couplet had already appeared in the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, ver. 92, in connection with sentiments which leave no doubt of Pope's meaning. In the primitive and golden age he held that love had full liberty to obey its inclinations, or, as he expressed it in the passage of the MS. quoted by Warburton, "beauty could then be kind to all who loved." In other words there was a community of women regulated by no other law than natural impulse.