An Essay on Criticism

By Alexander Pope

“An Essay on Criticism” is Alexander Pope’s 1711 poem in heroic couplets about how to judge literature well, and why most critics judge it badly. Its 744 lines, published when Pope was 22, gave English some of its most quoted proverbs, including “A little learning is a dang’rous thing” and “To err is human, to forgive, divine.”

Our reading: the poem is less a rulebook than a study of character. Pope blames bad criticism on pride rather than ignorance, treats good criticism as a matter of honesty and manners, and, writing at 22, makes the whole poem a demonstration that he deserves a fair hearing himself.

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Summary · Background · Analysis and Themes · Form and Technique · Notable Lines · Themes · FAQ · The Poem
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Summary

Part I (lines 1 to 200) argues that bad critics do more harm than bad poets, and that a critic’s standard should be nature, as the ancient writers, above all Homer and Virgil, understood it. Part II (lines 201 to 559) lists the causes of bad judgment, starting with pride and shallow learning and going on to fussing over details, loving ornament, judging only by smooth meter, following fashion, and envy. Part III (lines 560 to 744) describes the manners of a good critic, then surveys the great critics from Aristotle and Horace to Boileau, ending with a tribute to Pope’s mentor William Walsh.

The argument moves from taste, to the faults of the mind, to the conduct of the person. By the end, criticism has become a question of character. Read the full poem ›

Background

Pope, born in London on May 21, 1688, later said he wrote the poem in 1709, when he was about 21. As a Roman Catholic, he was barred from university, so his learning came from his own reading, and the poem draws on classical treatises he knew well: Horace’s Ars Poetica, Boileau’s L’Art poétique (1674), and English verse essays by the Earl of Roscommon and the Earl of Mulgrave, both of whom he praises near the end.

The poem was published anonymously by William Lewis in London and first advertised in The Spectator on May 15, 1711. Pope told his friend John Caryll that a thousand copies were printed. The critic John Dennis, mocked in line 270 and again as Appius in line 585, answered with a furious pamphlet that same year, while Joseph Addison praised the poem in The Spectator in December 1711. Pope kept revising the text for later collected editions.

Analysis and Themes

It is easy to read the poem as a list of rules. Read through to the end, though, it is really about the kind of person who can judge fairly. The sections below follow that argument as it develops, from nature to pride to manners, and end with the way Pope uses the poem to plead his own case.

The Rules Are Nature Written Down

Pope’s first command is “First follow nature” (line 68). He does not mean landscapes. Nature, for him, is the permanent order of things, including human nature, that good art reflects. The ancient rules, he says in lines 88 and 89, were “discovered, not devised”; they are “nature methodised.” That move lets him defend the classics without being a pedant. Virgil studied Homer and found that “Nature and Homer were, he found, the same” (line 135), so copying the ancients is a way of copying nature, not of obeying a schoolmaster.

He also leaves room for genius. Some beauties come from “a happiness as well as care,” and a great writer may “snatch a grace beyond the reach of art” (line 155). The rules matter, but they serve their purpose, and a lucky license that achieves that purpose “is a rule.”

Pride Is the Critic’s Real Problem

Part II opens by naming the main cause of bad judgment, and it is moral, not technical: pride, “the never-failing vice of fools” (line 204). Pride fills “the mighty void of sense” where wit is lacking. The famous lines on learning come next, and they belong to the same argument. Shallow learning is dangerous because it makes people proud; deep learning humbles them, as a climber who conquers the first ridge of the Alps sees “Alps on Alps arise.”

Every later fault in Part II grows from this root. The critic who fixates on details, worships fine language, follows fashion, sides with his own party, or envies success is putting himself ahead of the work. Pope’s cure is not more rules but less self-regard.

Judge the Whole, Not the Parts

A good judge reads “With the same spirit that its author writ” (line 234) and looks at the whole. Pope compares a great work to a well-proportioned dome, where no single part startles the eye because everything fits. His comic scene with Don Quixote (lines 267 to 284) makes the point. The knight praises a play for following every rule, then insists it must include a tournament with knights and horses, even if the stage has to be rebuilt in a field. A critic who loves one part more than the whole will wreck the work to protect it.

Pope Shows What He Means

The section on versification (lines 337 to 383) is a performance as much as an argument. When Pope mocks poets who pad lines with filler, he writes “While expletives their feeble aid do join,” using the empty “do” he is complaining about, then follows it with ten one-syllable words: “And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.” He scorns the “needless Alexandrine,” the twelve-syllable line that ends a couplet poem, in a twelve-syllable line that drags like the wounded snake it describes.

Then he states the principle, “The sound must seem an echo to the sense” (line 365), and proves it. The line about Ajax heaving a rock is clogged with consonants and moves slowly; the line about Camilla running over the corn is itself an Alexandrine, but light and quick. Pope is showing that he has earned the right to lay down rules.

A Young Poet Pleads His Own Case

Pope was a 22-year-old Catholic outsider with no university degree, publishing a poem that told established critics how to behave. Part III quietly asks those critics to treat him the way he describes: generously, honestly, and with “good-nature and good sense.” The closing tribute to Walsh, who had encouraged him as a teenager, ends with the poem’s own muse, “Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.” The last line is a self-portrait. Pope offers himself as exactly the kind of modest, teachable writer his ideal critic would welcome.

Form and Technique

The poem runs to 744 lines in three parts of 200, 359, and 185 lines. It is a verse essay, a form inherited from Horace’s Ars Poetica and Boileau, in which an argument is carried by poetry rather than prose.

Nearly every line is in heroic couplets: pairs of rhymed iambic pentameter lines, each with five beats, as in “a LITtle LEARNing IS a DANG’rous THING.” Pope occasionally adds a third rhyming line to make a triplet, and he uses a few Alexandrines (six-beat lines) for effect, including lines 357 and 373.

The couplet suits his purpose because it closes neatly. Each pair can stand alone as a maxim, which is why so many of them became proverbs. Pope sharpens them with balance and antithesis, setting two halves of a line against each other: “To err is human, to forgive, divine,” or “For fools admire, but men of sense approve.”

Notable Lines

These passages have outlived the poem’s argument and entered everyday English.

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

Lines 215 to 218

The first line is often misquoted as “a little knowledge.” The image of drinking explains it: a sip makes you drunk with confidence, and only a long drink brings you back to sober judgment.

True wit is nature to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;

Lines 297 to 298

Pope’s definition of good writing, and a fair description of his own. Wit does not invent new truths; it finds the best words for truths readers already recognize.

Good-nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine.

Lines 524 to 525

Now used about any kind of mistake, the line was written about critics. It asks them to remember that they, too, are human.

Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead;
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Lines 624 to 625

The bookish blockhead will lecture you even in church. The second line became one of the most borrowed proverbs in English.

Themes

Four ideas hold the poem together.

Nature as the standard. Good art and good judgment both answer to nature, the lasting order of things, and the classical rules are valued because they describe it.

Pride and humility. Pride is the root of bad criticism, and real learning cures it by showing how much remains unknown.

Wit and judgment. Pope treats inventive talent and the power to control it as partners “like man and wife,” often at strife but meant to help each other.

Criticism as conduct. By Part III, judging well depends on candor, modesty, tact, and courage, so the good critic is first of all a good person.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions readers most often ask about Pope’s poem.

What Is “An Essay on Criticism” About?

It is about how to judge poetry well and why so many critics judge it badly. Across 744 lines, Pope tells critics to take nature and the classical writers as their standard, blames most bad judgment on pride and half-learning, and ends with the manners a good critic needs, along with a short history of criticism from Aristotle to his own day.

How Old Was Pope When He Wrote “An Essay on Criticism”?

He was about 21 when he wrote it and 22 when it was published. Pope dated the poem to 1709, and it appeared in May 1711, a few days before his 23rd birthday on May 21.

What Does “A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing” Mean?

It means that shallow knowledge breeds overconfidence. In lines 215 to 218, Pope says a few sips from the Pierian spring of the Muses make the brain drunk, while drinking deeply sobers it, because real learning shows you how much you still don’t know.

Where Does “To Err Is Human, to Forgive, Divine” Come From?

It comes from line 525 of “An Essay on Criticism.” Pope uses it to tell critics that good nature must go with good sense, since every writer, including the critic, makes mistakes.

Is “An Essay on Criticism” a Poem or an Essay?

It is a poem. Pope called it an essay in the older sense of an attempt or trial, but he wrote it entirely in rhymed couplets, following the verse treatises of Horace and Boileau.

The Poem

The text below follows Whitwell Elwin’s edition in The Works of Alexander Pope, volume 2 (London: John Murray, 1871), which prints Pope’s final revised version. The part headings follow Pope’s own divisions, and the Latin motto from Horace appeared on the 1711 title page.

Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.
    Horace

Part I

’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offence
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’s share;
Both must alike from heav’n 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,
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 glimm’ring light,
The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right;
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced,
Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,
So by false learning is good sense defaced:
Some are bewildered in the maze of schools,
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:
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 Mævius scribble in Apollo’s spite,
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, num’rous in our isle,
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation’s so equivocal:
To tell ’em would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit’s, 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 dulness 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 pow’r 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 sev’ral 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 th’ informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and ev’ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th’ effects remains.
Some, to whom heav’n in wit has been profuse,
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 gen’rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.

Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodised;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.

Hear how learn’d Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress, and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus’ top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th’ immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv’n,
She drew from them what they derived from heav’n,
The gen’rous 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 in the practice of mistaken rules,
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e’er spoiled so much as they;
Some dryly plain, without invention’s aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made;
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.

You then whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each ancient’s proper character;
His fable, subject, scope in ev’ry page;
Religion, country, genius of his age:
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.
Be Homer’s works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.

When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t’ outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic’s law,
And but from nature’s fountain scorned to draw:
But when t’ examine ev’ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design:
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,
As if the Stagyrite o’erlooked each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.

Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there’s a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry; in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend,
(Since rules were made but to promote their end,)
Some lucky licence answer to the full
Th’ intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
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.
In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of nature’s common order rise,
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
But though the ancients thus their rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,)
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne’er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compelled by need;
And have, at least, their precedent to plead.
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.

I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
Those freer beauties, ev’n in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His pow’rs in equal rank, and fair array,
But with th’ occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.

Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;
Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See, from each clime, the learn’d their incense bring;
Hear, in all tongues consenting Pæans ring!
In praise so just let ev’ry voice be joined,
And fill the gen’ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud, that must not yet be found!
O may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes,)
To teach vain wits a science little known,
T’ admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

Part II

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev’ry friend and ev’ry foe.

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow’ring Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th’ eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th’ increasing prospect tires our wand’ring eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ:
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen’rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That, shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep,
We cannot blame indeed, but we may sleep.
In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts
Is not th’ exactness of peculiar parts;
’Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,
(The world’s just wonder, and ev’n thine, O Rome!)
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th’ admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.
In ev’ry work regard the writer’s end,
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit:
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some trifles is a praise.
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha’s knight, they say,
A certain bard encount’ring on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e’er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desp’rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle’s rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produced his play, and begged the knight’s advice;
Made him observe the subject, and the plot,
The manners, passions, unities, what not,
All which, exact to rule, were brought about,
Were but a combat in the lists left out.
“What! leave the combat out!” exclaims the knight;
Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.
“Not so, by heav’n!” he answers in a rage,
“Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage.”
So vast a throng the stage can ne’er contain.
“Then build a new, or act it in a plain.”

Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts,
As most in manners, by a love to parts.

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at ev’ry line;
Pleased with a work where nothing’s just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature, and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev’ry 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.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;
For works may have more wit than does ’em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,—the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found:
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on ev’ry place;
The face of nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like th’ unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate’er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
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 diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort,
As sev’ral garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,
These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires, in their doublets drest.
In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold;
Alike fantastic, if too new, or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

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.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho’ oft the ear the open vowels tire;
While expletives their feeble aid do join;
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line:
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;
Where’er you find “the cooling western breeze,”
In the next line, it “whispers through the trees:”
If crystal streams “with pleasing murmurs creep,”
The reader’s threatened, not in vain, with “sleep:”
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What’s roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,
Where Denham’s strength, and Waller’s sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
’Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow:
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
While at each change, the son of Libyan Jove
Now burns with glory, and then melts with love;
Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow,
Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world’s victor stood subdued by sound!
The pow’r of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleased too little or too much.
At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense:
Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best,
Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest.
Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move;
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which, from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days:
Regard not then if wit be old or new,
But blame the false, and value still the true.

Some ne’er advance a judgment of their own,
But catch the spreading notion of the town:
They reason and conclude by precedent,
And own stale nonsense which they ne’er invent.
Some judge of authors’ names, not works, and then
Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Of all this servile herd, the worst is he
That in proud dulness joins with quality,
A constant critic at the great man’s board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.
What woeful stuff this madrigal would be,
In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies ev’ry fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!
The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learn’d by being singular;
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.
Some praise at morning what they blame at night;
But always think the last opinion right.
A muse by these is like a mistress used,
This hour she’s idolised, the next abused;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
’Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they’re wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow’s wiser than to-day.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
Once school divines this zealous isle o’erspread;
Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read;
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain,
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck-lane.
If faith itself has diff’rent dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe,
Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.

Some valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind:
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;
But sense survived when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:
Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue;
But like a shadow, proves the substance true:
For envied wit, like Sol eclipsed, makes known
Th’ opposing body’s grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too pow’rful beams displays,
It draws up vapours which obscure its rays;
But ev’n those clouds at last adorn its way,
Reflect new glories, and augment the day.

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,
And ’tis but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers’ failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has designed
Some bright idea of the master’s mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his command,
And ready nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;
When mellowing years their full perfection give,
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treach’rous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!

Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,
Atones not for that envy which it brings.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,
But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow’r the early spring supplies,
That gaily blooms, but ev’n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ?
The owner’s wife, that other men enjoy;
Then most our trouble still when most admired,
And still the more we give, the more required;
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,
Sure some to vex, but never all to please;
’Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun,
By fools ’tis hated, and by knaves undone!

If wit so much from ign’rance undergo,
Ah let not learning too commence its foe!
Of old, those met rewards who could excel,
And such were praised who but endeavour’d well:
Though, triumphs were to gen’rals only due,
Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.
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.

But if in noble minds some dregs remain
Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain;
Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes,
Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.
No pardon vile obscenity should find,
Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;
But dulness with obscenity must prove
As shameful sure as impotence in love.
In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease,
Sprung the rank weed, and thrived with large increase:
When love was all an easy monarch’s care;
Seldom at council, never in a war:
Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit;
The fair sat panting at a courtier’s play,
And not a mask went unimproved away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,
And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;
Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where heaven’s free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,
And vice admired to find a flatt’rer there!
Encouraged thus, wit’s Titans braved the skies,
And the press groaned with licensed blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!
Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice,
Will needs mistake an author into vice;
All seems infected that th’ infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

Part III

Learn then what morals critics ought to show,
For ’tis but half a judge’s task, to know.
’Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join;
In all you speak, let truth and candour shine,
That not alone what to your sense is due
All may allow, but seek your friendship too.

Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last.

’Tis not enough your counsel still be true;
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do;
Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
Without good-breeding truth is disapproved;
That only makes superior sense beloved.

Be niggards of advice on no pretence:
For the worst avarice is that of sense.
With mean complaisance ne’er betray your trust,
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.
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 threat’ning eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.
Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,
Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;
Such, without wit, are poets when they please,
As without learning they can take degrees.
Leave dang’rous truths to unsuccessful satires,
And flattery to fulsome dedicators,
Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more,
Than when they promise to give scribbling o’er.
’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.
False steps but help them to renew the race,
As, after stumbling, jades will mend their pace.
What crowds of these, impenitently bold,
In sounds and jingling syllables grown old,
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Ev’n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.

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 list’ning to himself appears.
All books he reads, and all he reads assails,
From Dryden’s Fables down to Durfey’s Tales.
With him most authors steal their works, or buy;
Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
Name a new play, and he’s the poet’s friend,
Nay, showed his faults—but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,
Nor is Paul’s church more safe than Paul’s churchyard:
Nay, fly to altars; there they’ll talk you dead;
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And never shocked, and never turned aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund’ring tide.

But where’s the man, who counsel can bestow,
Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know?
Unbiassed, or by favour, or by spite;
Not dully prepossessed, nor blindly right;
Though learn’d, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere;
Modestly bold, and humanly severe;
Who to a friend his faults can freely show,
And gladly praise the merit of a foe?
Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined;
A knowledge both of books and human kind;
Gen’rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise, with reason on his side?

Such once were critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;
He steered securely, and discovered far,
Led by the light of the Mæonian star.
Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty,
Received his laws; and stood convinced ’twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o’er wit.

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense;
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey
The truest notions in the easiest way.
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judged with coolness, though he sung with fire;
His precepts teach but what his works inspire.
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.

See Dionysius Homer’s thoughts refine,
And call new beauties forth from ev’ry line!

Fancy and art in gay Petronius please,
The scholar’s learning, with the courtier’s ease.

In grave Quintilian’s copious work, we find
The justest rules, and clearest method joined:
Thus useful arms in magazines we place,
All ranged in order, and disposed with grace,
But less to please the eye, than arm the hand,
Still fit for use, and ready at command.

Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet’s fire.
An ardent judge, who, zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just:
Whose own example strengthens all his laws;
And is himself that great sublime he draws.

Thus long succeeding critics justly reigned,
Licence repressed, and useful laws ordained.
Learning and Rome alike in empire grew;
And arts still followed where her eagles flew;
From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom,
And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.
With tyranny, then superstition joined,
As that the body, this enslaved the mind;
Much was believed, but little understood,
And to be dull was construed to be good;
A second deluge learning thus o’er-run,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun.

At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb’rous age,
And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.

But see! each muse, in Leo’s golden days,
Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays,
Rome’s ancient genius, o’er its ruins spread,
Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev’rend head.
Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.
Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow
The poet’s bays and critic’s ivy grow:
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!

But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.
Thence arts o’er all the northern world advance,
But critic-learning flourished most in France;
The rules a nation, born to serve, obeys;
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presumed, and better knew,
Who durst assert the juster ancient cause,
And here restored wit’s fundamental laws.
Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell
“Nature’s chief master-piece is writing well.”
Such was Roscommon, not more learn’d than good,
With manners gen’rous as his noble blood;
To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known,
And ev’ry author’s merit, but his own.
Such late was Walsh, the muse’s judge and friend,
Who justly knew to blame or to commend:
To failings mild, but zealous for desert;
The clearest head, and the sincerest heart.
This humble praise, lamented shade! receive,
This praise at least a grateful muse may give:
The muse, whose early voice you taught to sing,
Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries;
Content, if hence th’ unlearn’d their wants may view,
The learn’d reflect on what before they knew:
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;
Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

Glossary

These names and terms may need explaining for modern readers.

• Mævius (line 34): A bad Roman poet mocked by Virgil, used as a type of the poetaster.
• Mantuan muse (line 129): Virgil, who was born near Mantua.
• Maro (line 130): Publius Vergilius Maro, Virgil.
• Stagyrite (line 138): Aristotle, born in Stagira, author of the Poetics.
• Homer nods (line 180): From Horace’s remark that even good Homer sometimes nods off.
• Pierian spring (line 216): The spring of the Muses in Pieria, a symbol of learning and poetry.
• Dennis (line 270): John Dennis, a critic devoted to classical rules, who attacked the poem in 1711.
• Alexandrine (line 356): A line of six iambic feet, twelve syllables long.
• Timotheus (line 374): The musician in Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast” whose songs swayed Alexander the Great.
• Duck-lane (line 445): A London street of secondhand booksellers.
• Zoilus (line 465): An ancient Greek critic remembered for his attacks on Homer.
• Paul’s churchyard (line 623): The area around St. Paul’s Cathedral, then the center of the London book trade.

Related Poems

These poems share Pope’s couplets, his targets, or his ideas about art.

• An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope: Pope’s later verse essay, which applies the same couplets and the same distrust of pride to humanity’s place in the universe.
• The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope: The mock-epic Pope published the following year, where his wit turns from critics to fashionable society.
• Mac Flecknoe by John Dryden: The satire on bad poets that Pope admired and later imitated in The Dunciad.
• Alexander’s Feast by John Dryden: The ode about Timotheus that Pope cites as proof of the power of sound.