Note 1418 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Stoics.—Pope.
The true stoic did not, as Pope asserts, "confess virtue vain." He contended that it was all-sufficient. Till the edition of 1743 this couplet was as follows:
One grants his pleasure is but rest from pain; One doubts of all; one owns ev'n virtue vain.
The two lines which conclude the paragraph, and which first appeared in the edition of 1743, were written at Warburton's suggestion. The object of the addition was to represent the credulous man who trusted everything as equally deceived with the sceptic who trusted in nothing. Of the last line there is a second version:
One trusts the senses, and one doubts of all.