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Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism was the first major poem written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688-1744). However, despite the title, the poem is not as much an original analysis as it is a compilation of Pope's various literary opinions. A reading of the poem makes it clear that he is addressing not so much the ingenuous reader as the intending writer. It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets.

The poem first appeared in 1711, but was apparently written in 1709; Pope attempted afterwards to assign its composition to an earlier date. It is a verse essay written in the Horatian mode and is primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice. It also represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.

Pope contends in the poem's opening couplets that bad criticism does greater harm than bad writing:

'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 mis-lead 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.

Despite the harmful effects of bad criticism, literature requires worthy criticism.

Pope delineates common faults of critics,e.g., settling for easy and cliché rhymes:

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;

Wher'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" . . . (347-353)

Throughout the poem, Pope refers to ancient writers such as Virgil, Homer, Aristotle, Horace and Longinus. This is a testament to his belief that the "Imitation of the ancients" is the ultimate standard for taste. Pope also says, "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance" (362-363), meaning poets are made, not born.

As is usual in Pope's poems, the "Essay" concludes with a reference to Pope himself. Walsh, the last of the critics mentioned, was a mentor and friend of Pope who had died in 1710.

An Essay on Criticism was famously and fiercely attacked by John Dennis, who is mentioned mockingly in the work. Consequently, Dennis also appears in Pope's later satire, the Dunciad.

Part II of An Essay on Criticism includes a famous couplet:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

in reference to the spring of Pieria in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses. Ironically, the first line of this couplet is often misquoted as "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," thus reinforcing the aptness of this very admonition, as the misquote betrays a certain want of learning.

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

An Essay on Criticism

• Full text of the Essay
• An Essay on Criticism, available at Project Gutenberg. (much punctuation is missing)
• A Study Guide for the Essay, by Walter Jackson Bate