Note 974 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
These metaphors, drawn from the field sports of setting and shooting, seem much below the dignity of the subject, and an unnatural mixture of the ludicrous and serious.—Warton.
They are the more so as Pope is not content with barely touching the metaphor of shooting en passant, but pursues it with so much minuteness. Let us "beat this ample field,"—"try what the covert yields,"—"eye nature's walks,"—"shoot folly." An illustration, if not at all dignified, or in correspondence with the theme, should not be pursued so minutely that the mind must perforce observe its meanness.—Bowles.