The Close, Exeter, July 28. 1851.
"_The Right divine of Kings to govern wrong_" (Vol. iii., p. 494.).--The
same idea as that conveyed in this line is frequently expressed, though
not in precisely the same words, in Defoe's _Jure Divino_, a poem which
contains many vigorous and spirited passages; but I do not believe that
Pope gave the line as a quotation at all, or that it is other, as far as
he is concerned, than original. The inverted commas merely denote that
this line is the termination of the goddess's speech. The punctuation is
not very correct in any of the editions of the _Dunciad_; and sometimes
inverted commas occur at the end of the last line of a speech, and
sometimes both at the beginning and end of the line.