Note 1458 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Warburton says that Pope alluded to Empedocles. The story ran that he pretended to be a divinity, and threw himself into the crater of Ætna, that nobody might know what had become of him, and might conclude that he had been carried up into heaven. All the circumstances of his death are doubtful, and whether he was a calumniated sage, or a conceited madman, legends are not a proper illustration of God's dealings with mankind. Pope had originally written,

At the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, Pliny, the naturalist, was commanding the Roman fleet in the Gulf of Naples. He made for the coast in the neighbourhood of the volcano, till checked by the falling stones and ashes, he sailed to Stabiæ, and landed. In a few hours the tottering of the houses, shaken by the earthquake, warned him to fly, and according to his nephew he was overtaken by flames and sulphurous vapours, and suffocated. Stabiæ is ten miles from Vesuvius, and the flame and vapour could hardly have been propelled from the mountain.