An Essay on Criticism

“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.”

Pope conveys a sense of interplay between imagination, reason, and the limits of human knowledge with a simile. The ebb and flow of human understanding is explained with a description of the balance between land and sea. He extends the language of the simile into the description of memory and understanding by using words like “solid power” to equate understanding to land and “memory’s soft figures” to suggest it is as changeable as the waves or shore. Ultimately, Pope’s argument is that critics ought to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and confine themselves to those areas where they excel, developing his claims about The Causes of Poor Aesthetic Judgment.

“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 doctor’s bills to play the doctor’s part,

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules,

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.”

This passage consists of two similes: a comparison of criticism to a handmaid of the muse of poetry and a comparison of wits to apothecaries who take on the role of doctors and then turn on them. The latter is a historical reference to the argument between apothecaries and doctors about a possible public dispensary that would take business away from the apothecaries and that apothecaries thus opposed. The former begins to sketch out Pope’s arguments about the decline of criticism in the modern era. As Pope will later claim, critics (particularly in the classical era) once served art, making it more beautiful in the same way that a maid might adorn her mistress. By contrast, modern critics, who Pope implies are often failed writers, attack poets out of spite.

“Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,

May boldly deviate from the common track.

Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,

And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;

From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,

And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,

Which without passing through the judgment, gains

The heart, and all its end at once attains.”

This quotation uses allusion and simile to describe how those who are especially talented may bypass some of the stylistic rules for which Pope has been advocating. Pegasus was a winged horse of Greek mythology who created a spring sacred to the muses; Pope’s use of Pegasus suggests that if a poet breaks the rules, they’d better have some of the supernatural ability of the winged horse about them. Ultimately, Pope argues, bending the rules must be done in the service of a greater goal—likely one that speaks to a deeper truth (the “heart”) even as it ignores the conventions that the intellect (the “judgment”) finds pleasing.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing:

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring;

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Pope furthers his theme of good education here with an allusion to the “Pierian spring,” which was associated with the nine muses of Greek mythology. He uses metaphor to suggest that a poet must be fully educated in poetry rather than only slightly: The contrasting alliteration of “little learning” and “drink deep” emphasizes that one must be fully educated in order to understand and comment on poetry. He reverses expectation in his metaphor by suggesting that drinking more from the spring will sober rather than intoxicate (i.e., delude a critic into believing they understand what they’re talking about), which is the opposite of what might happen with an alcoholic beverage.

“Poets like painters, thus, unskilled to trace

The naked nature and the living grace,

With gold and jewels cover every part,

And hide with ornaments their want of art.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;

Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,

That gives us back the image of our mind.”

Here, Pope criticizes those poets or rhetoricians who try too hard to be witty. He uses alliteration to draw attention to “naked nature” as it contrasts with the ornaments that “cover” and “hide.” The end-stopped rhymes “dressed” and “expressed” are also significant here, as they accentuate Pope’s point about appropriately displayed nature. As Pope’s own highly stylized and satirical verse makes clear, the point is not that “wit” is bad, but rather that it must respect the Balance Between Art and Nature.

“Expression is the dress of thought, and still

Appears more decent, as more suitable;

A vile conceit in pompous words expressed,

Is like a clown in regal purple dressed:

For different styles with different subjects sort,

As several garbs with country, town, and court.”

Developing his motif of dress, Pope uses a simile that relies on the relationship between dress and social class or milieu. He argues that a conceit, or overly extended metaphor, can make a poem seem like a clown that is dressed in a king’s clothing of “regal purple.” Instead, the simile advocates for the author to use a style that fits the poem, just as those in the countryside dress differently from those in town (the city of London) or at court (where dress would be the most ostentatious).

“But most by numbers judge a poet’s song,

And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong;

In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,

Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;

Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear,

Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,

Not for the doctrine, but the music there.”

This quotation relates to Pope’s advocacy for a balance between part and whole and for critics not to focus too much on one part of a poem over all others. Here, he references judgment “by numbers,” which refers to meter: A simile develops the critique of those who care only about sound and meter by comparing them to those who go to church not because they are religious but because they like the music. The comparison implies that those who are too focused on the sound of poetry are irreverent and misunderstand its true purpose, which is to convey important truths. To emphasize his point, Pope here breaks with his typical structure of heroic couplets, leaving “ear” unrhymed. The word does, however, closely resemble the rhymes that surround it—“conspire”/“admire” and “repair”/“there”—further suggesting that music can be misleading.

“Now, they who reach Parnassus’ lofty crown,

Employ their pains to spurn some others down;

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,

Contending wits become the sport of fools:

But still the worst with most regret commend,

For each ill author is as bad a friend.

To what base ends, and by what abject ways,

Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise!

Ah ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast,

Nor in the critic let the man be lost.

Good nature and good sense must ever join;

To err is human, to forgive, divine.”

This quotation ends with a famous line of Pope’s—“To err is human, to forgive, divine”—in which he advises critics never to lose sight of the influence they have on the life of another human being. He argues that good critics should not be happy to find fault in art but should criticize with regret instead of making enemies. He develops an image pattern that pits human desires and needs like “lust” and “thirst” against more spiritual images such as “sacred” and “glory.” However, he also combines the two, resulting in oxymoronic phrases like “sacred lust” that suggest humanity’s conflicting base and spiritual impulses.

“Fear not the anger of the wise to raise;

Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.

‘Twere well might critics still this freedom take;

But Appius reddens at each word you speak,

And stares, tremendous, with a threatening eye,

Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.”

This allusion to “Appius” in fact refers to John Dennis, a playwright and critic whom Pope annoyed with this reference. Dennis was known for a play titled Appius and Virginia (1709) and for saying the word “tremendous” a lot. Here, Pope uses simile to compare Appius to a figure in an “old tapestry,” thus aligning him with medieval art and history rather than with Pope’s present day. In suggesting that Dennis responds with anger to criticism, Pope categorizes him as someone who cannot “bear reproof” and is therefore not one of the wise or praiseworthy.

“’Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,

And charitably let the dull be vain:

Your silence there is better than your spite,

For who can rail so long as they can write?

Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep,

And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.”

This advice uses the image of a spinning top to develop a simile that compares it to a dull poet or critic who produces uninspiring work. He uses sound imagery to illustrate his simile, contrasting the critics’ “silence” and the writers’ “humming.” Pope suggests it is easier not to engage such authors, as they will wear themselves out on their own. This is in keeping with his overarching advice about exercising restraint; Pope implies that it is satisfying but not particularly useful to spend a lot of time criticizing bad art.

“No place so sacred from such fops is barred,

Nor is Paul’s church more safe than Paul’s church yard:

Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead:

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Pope uses allusion and religious metaphor to convey a message about how foolish people will not acknowledge boundaries to their wit. “Paul’s church” refers to St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, while “Paul’s church yard” was a place of meeting for those in the book trade. The implication is that those in the book trade have little respect for the sacred (religious or aesthetic); there is no escape—even inside the church—from those who lack sense.

“Our critics take a contrary extreme,

They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm.

Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations

By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.”

Pope compares a past ideal age of poetry and criticism to his current age, which he finds wanting. He argues that, rather than writing well themselves, modern critics find much wrong with poets. “With phlegm” is a metaphor that compares these critics’ works to an overabundance of mucus in the body, which early modern medicine associated with dullness or apathy. Pope’s assertion that Horace “suffers” at least as much from the misquotations of critics as he does from the poor translations of poets is in line with his thesis: Bad criticism is more damaging than bad writing.

“Such shameless bards we have, and yet ’tis true,

There are as mad, abandoned critics too.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,

With loads of learned lumber in his head,

With his own tongue still edifies his ears

And always listening to himself appears.”

This quotation uses alliteration and metaphor to draw a picture of a foolish critic who has read a lot but does not know anything because he does not pay attention. Pope draws attention to the “bookful blockhead” and “loads of learned lumber” with the repetition of the “b” and “l” sounds. Both of these phrases use metaphor to compare someone who has skimmed a lot of books to someone who has a piece of wood for a head (“blockhead”) and is therefore foolish.