Note 1528 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
To a person that was praising Dr. Balguy's admirable discourses on the Vanity and Vexation of our Pursuits after Knowledge, he replied, "I borrowed the whole from ten lines of the Essay on Man, ver. 259-268, and I only enlarged upon what the poet had expressed with such marvellous conciseness, penetration, and precision." He particularly admired ver. 266.—Warton.
The exclamation "painful pre-eminence," is from Addison's Cato, Act iii. Sc. 5, where Cato applies the phrase to his own situation.