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Title: An Essay on Criticism

Author: Alexander Pope

Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7409] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 25, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM ***

 

Produced by Ted Garvin, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

 

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.

BY

ALEXANDER POPE,

WITH INTRODUCTORY AND EXPLANATORY NOTES.

 

ALEXANDER POPE.

 

*

 

This eminent English poet was born in London, May 21, 1688. His parents were Roman Catholics, and to this faith the poet adhered, thus debarring himself from public office and employment. His father, a linen merchant, having saved a moderate competency, withdrew from business, and settled on a small estate he had purchased in Windsor Forest. He died at Chiswick, in 1717. His son shortly afterwards took a long lease of a house and five acres of land at Twickenham, on the banks of the Thames, whither he retired with his widowed mother, to whom he was tenderly attached and where he resided till death, cultivating his little domain with exquisite taste and skill, and embellishing it with a grotto, temple, wilderness, and other adjuncts poetical and picturesque. In this famous villa Pope was visited by the most celebrated wits, statesmen and beauties of the day, himself being the most popular and successful poet of his age. His early years were spent at Binfield, within the range of the Royal Forest. He received some education at little Catholic schools, but was his own instructor after his twelfth year. He never was a profound or accurate scholar, but he read Latin poets with ease and delight, and acquired some Greek, French, and Italian. He was a poet almost from infancy, he “lisped in numbers,” and when a mere youth surpassed all his contemporaries in metrical harmony and correctness. His pastorals and some translations appeared in 1709, but were written three or four years earlier. These were followed by the Essay on Criticism, 1711; Rape of the Lock (when completed, the most graceful, airy, and imaginative of his works), 1712-1714; Windsor Forest, 1713; Temple of Fame, 1715. In a collection of his works printed in 1717 he included the Epistle of Eloisa and Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, two poems inimitable for pathetic beauty and finished melodious versification.

From 1715 till 1726 Pope was chiefly engaged on his translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, which, though wanting in time Homeric simplicity, naturalness, and grandeur, are splendid poems. In 1728-29 he published his greatest satire—the Dunciad, an attack on all poetasters and pretended wits, and on all other persons against whom the sensitive poet had conceived any enmity. In 1737 he gave to the world a volume of his Literary Correspondence, containing some pleasant gossip and observations, with choice passages of description but it appears that the correspondence was manufactured for publication not composed of actual letters addressed to the parties whose names are given, and the collection was introduced to the public by means of an elaborate stratagem on the part of the scheming poet. Between the years 1731 and 1739 he issued a series of poetical essays moral and philosophical, with satires and imitations of Horace, all admirable for sense, wit, spirit and brilliancy of these delightful productions, the most celebrated is the Essay on Man to which Bolingbroke is believed to have contributed the spurious philosophy and false sentiment, but its merit consists in detached passages, descriptions, and pictures. A fourth book to the Dunciad, containing many beautiful and striking lines and a general revision of his works, closed the poet’s literary cares and toils. He died on the 30th of May, 1744, and was buried in the church at Twickenham.

Pope was of very diminutive stature and deformed from his birth. His physical infirmity, susceptible temperament, and incessant study rendered his life one long disease. He was, as his friend Lord Chesterfield said, “the most irritable of all the genus irritabile vatum, offended with trifles and never forgetting or forgiving them.” His literary stratagems, disguises, assertions, denials, and (we must add) misrepresentations would fill volumes. Yet when no disturbing jealousy vanity, or rivalry intervened was generous and affectionate, and he had a manly, independent spirit. As a poet he was deficient in originality and creative power, and thus was inferior to his prototype, Dryden, but as a literary artist, and brilliant declaimer satirist and moralizer in verse he is still unrivaled. He is the English Horace, and will as surely descend with honors to the latest posterity.

 

AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM,

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709

 

[The title, An Essay on Criticism hardly indicates all

that is included in the poem. It would have been impossible to

give a full and exact idea of the art of poetical criticism

without entering into the consideration of the art of poetry.

Accordingly Pope has interwoven the precepts of both throughout

the poem which might more properly have been styled an essay on

the Art of Criticism and of Poetry.]

 

*

 

PART I.

 

‘Tis hard to say if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill,

But of the two less dangerous is the offense

To tire our patience than mislead our sense

Some few in that but numbers err in this,

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss,

A fool might once himself alone expose,

Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

 

‘Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own

In poets as true genius is but rare

True taste as seldom is the critic share

Both must alike from Heaven derive their light,

These born to judge as well as those to write

Let such teach others who themselves excel,

And censure freely, who have written well

Authors are partial to their wit, ‘tis true [17]

But are not critics to their judgment too?

 

Yet if we look more closely we shall find

Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind

Nature affords at least a glimmering light

The lines though touched but faintly are drawn right,

But as the slightest sketch if justly traced

Is by ill coloring but the more disgraced

So by false learning is good sense defaced

Some are bewildered in the maze of schools [26]

And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools

In search of wit these lose their common sense

And then turn critics in their own defense

Each burns alike who can or cannot write

Or with a rival’s or an eunuch’s spite

All fools have still an itching to deride

And fain would be upon the laughing side

If Maevius scribble in Apollo’s spite [34]

There are who judge still worse than he can write.

 

Some have at first for wits then poets passed

Turned critics next and proved plain fools at last

Some neither can for wits nor critics pass

As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.

Those half-learned witlings, numerous in our isle,

As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile

Unfinished things one knows not what to call

Their generation is so equivocal

To tell them would a hundred tongues require,

Or one vain wits that might a hundred tire.

 

But you who seek to give and merit fame,

And justly bear a critic’s noble name,

Be sure yourself and your own reach to know

How far your genius taste and learning go.

Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet

And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

 

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit

And wisely curbed proud man’s pretending wit.

As on the land while here the ocean gains.

In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains

Thus in the soul while memory prevails,

The solid power of understanding fails

Where beams of warm imagination play,

The memory’s soft figures melt away

One science only will one genius fit,

So vast is art, so narrow human wit

Not only bounded to peculiar arts,

But oft in those confined to single parts

Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,

By vain ambition still to make them more

Each might his several province well command,

Would all but stoop to what they understand.

 

First follow nature and your judgment frame

By her just standard, which is still the same.

Unerring nature still divinely bright,

One clear, unchanged and universal light,

Life force and beauty, must to all impart,

At once the source and end and test of art

Art from that fund each just supply provides,

Works without show and without pomp presides

In some fair body thus the informing soul

With spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole,

Each motion guides and every nerve sustains,

Itself unseen, but in the effects remains.

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse, [80]

Want as much more, to turn it to its use;

For wit and judgment often are at strife,

Though meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.

‘Tis more to guide, than spur the muse’s steed,

Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed,

The winged courser, like a generous horse, [86]

Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

 

Those rules, of old discovered, not devised,

Are nature still, but nature methodized;

Nature, like liberty, is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.

 

Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites,

When to repress and when indulge our flights.

High on Parnassus’ top her sons she showed, [94]

And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;

Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize,

And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. [97]

Just precepts thus from great examples given,

She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.

The generous critic fanned the poet’s fire,

And taught the world with reason to admire.

Then criticism the muse’s handmaid proved,

To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:

But following wits from that intention strayed

Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid

Against the poets their own arms they turned

Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned

So modern pothecaries taught the art

By doctors bills to play the doctor’s part.

Bold