Apedia

Pope Essay Criticism Written Dang'rous Verse Pope's Bad

Front Essay on criticism
Back Poem
Heroic coupletes
1711
Didactic
A descriotion of the rules of taste and the principles by which a critic should be guided

An Essay on Criticism is one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope (1688–1744). It is the source of the famous quotations "To err is human, to forgive divine", "A little learning is a dang'rous thing" (frequently misquoted as "A little knowledge is a dang'rous thing"), and "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread".

The first fragmentary drafts of the work were written in Abberley 1707. It was first published in May 1711. Many of the poem's ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706. Composed in heroic couplets (pairs of adjacent rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) and written in the Horatian mode of satire, it is a verse essay 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, and represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.

Structure and themes
The verse "essay" was not an uncommon form in eighteenth century poetry, deriving ultimately from classical forebears including Horace's Ars Poetica and Lucretius' De rerum natura.

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. ... (1–8)
Despite the harmful effects of bad criticism, literature requires worthy criticism.

Pope delineates common faults of poets, e.g., settling for easy and clichéd 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. William Walsh, the last of the critics mentioned, was a mentor and friend of Pope who had died in 1708.

Learn with these flashcards. Click next, previous, or up to navigate to more flashcards for this subject.

Next card: Man essay poem pope epistles published god voltaire

Previous card: Drama english dryden essay french dramatic rhyme dialogue

Up to card list: Wordsworth companion to literature by Bahman Moradi