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Alexander PopeAn Essay on Criticism
Nonfiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1711A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Balance Between Art and Nature
Alexander Pope suggests that the best poetry (and criticism) aligns itself both with literary conventions and with nature, by which he does not mean simply the natural world but rather the existing order of things. In fact, human wit and judgment themselves work within limits that are naturally designed:
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 (Lines 54-59).
This is an argument about understanding human limits, which are imposed by nature (an idea Pope underscores through the use of natural imagery). Pope further explains this balance between art and nature when he suggests that poetic rules are not artificial but rather derive from the order and reason of the world itself: These rules are “Nature methodized” because “Nature, like liberty is but restrained / By the same laws which first herself ordained” (Lines 89-90). In this sense, he sees art as acting like a mirror of nature, supported by human imagination but not supplanted by it (which would be impossible anyway, as the human mind itself is an element of nature).
Pope uses music and dress as examples of how poetic form can best interpret nature for readers. For example, he notes that “Music resembles poetry, in each / Are nameless graces which no methods teach, / And which a master-hand alone can reach” (Lines 142-44). This suggests that even if the poet follows all the rules of poetic form, there is something that can only be expressed by experts who have “a grace beyond the reach of art” (Line 155). That “something” is presumably the truth of reality itself, which should be the ultimate aim of poetry. Artistry’s role is merely to facilitate the exploration, just as humans’ role is to interpret nature. Similarly, he uses a metaphor about proper or natural dress to argue that good poetry cannot rely so heavily on art that it is not natural-seeming:
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” (Lines 297-300).
In the metaphor here, “true wit” (or the ability to demonstrate knowledge and write poetry and literary criticism) is a combination of dress (art) and nature, heightening and accentuating the good qualities or truth of the latter by means of the former.
Pope argues that it is the unskilled who rely too heavily on ornament, which he compares to “gold and jewels” that “cover every part” (Line 295). Instead, he advocates for a balance in form and content, implicitly providing examples through his own use of language. Pope thus crafts his own work in line with his argument about the balance between art and nature, tailoring style to message as he prescribes.
The Causes of Poor Aesthetic Judgment
A major part of Pope’s project in An Essay on Criticism is to define good criticism, or judgment. In order to do so, he provides many examples of what makes for bad judgment, which he attributes to a variety of causes, including shallow education, preoccupation with fashion, obsequiousness, envy, and too-stringent definitions of good writing.
For example, Pope acknowledges that political alliance can influence judgment because people like those who mirror their own thoughts:
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 (Lines 452-57).
Similarly, Pope acknowledges that critics may be predisposed to praise or critique a particular writer for no reason other than who the writer is: “Of all this servile herd, the worst is he / That in proud dulness [sic] joins with quality” (Lines 414-15). By “quality” Pope means those of the upper classes who write poetry (but are not good at it); the “worst” critics flatter these writers because they do not feel comfortable criticizing those with power. He goes on to ask whether the same horrible poetry would be praised if it were written by “some starved hackney sonneteer, or me?” (Line 419), reminding the reader that he is not one of those upper-class poets.
Pope instead establishes his own voice alongside those he praises, implicitly claiming he is qualified to teach the reader about good taste and judgment. At the beginning of the poem he commands, “Let such teach others who themselves excel, / And censure freely who have written well” (Lines 15-16), and by the end he suggests that he hopes readers will have “learned to reflect on what before they knew” (Lines 739-40). Pope’s wording in this latter passage is ambiguous. In its immediate context, it most strongly relates to his contention that modern writers have abandoned classical precepts for good art; these precepts are what people “before […] knew.” However, the phrasing also evokes Pope’s consistent calls for self-reflection. It is important, he suggests, for critics to know their own strengths and limitations, not least because so many of the causes of poor judgment are common human foibles. For example, Pope compares the fashions of criticism to those not only of dress but also of religious faith: “If faith itself has different dresses worn, / What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?” (Lines 446-47). The closing rhetorical question implies that the influence of fashion in criticism is understandable, if not excusable, because it is simply human nature to be swayed by fads. This makes it all the more important for critics to examine what they know (or think they know) about the world and themselves; failure to recognize one’s own flaws (pride, servility, etc.) is at the heart of much, if not all, poor judgment.
Literary History and National Identity
Another important theme in Pope’s poem is the significance of literary history to British national identity. Pope looks back to the authors of Rome and Greece to define good taste in the early 18th-century British context. He also places himself in a lineage of British poets and critics who benefit from knowledge of ancient poets and philosophers, as well as that of British authors like Dryden and Chaucer.
Pope imagines the ideal critic starting at Line 631. Here, he argues that the best kind of critic should (among other things) offer good counsel, be happy to teach others, not be too proud or sure of themselves, aspire to impartiality and sincerity, be learned and well-bred, point out faults without spite, and have good taste and a generous spirit. After this long list of attributes, he says that critics of this sort existed in the classical world: “Such once were critics; such the happy few, / Athens and Rome in better ages knew” (Lines 643-44). Following these lines, the poem develops both a picture of the rise and fall of Roman learning and a contrast to British critics and poets of Pope’s current age, most of whom he suggests have abandoned classical precepts. In this, he also compares British art and criticism to that of France, arguing that the latter embraced the Renaissance revival of classical learning as Britain did not:
[C]ritic-learning flourished most in France.
The rules a nation born to serve, obeys,
[…]
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised,
And kept unconquered, and uncivilized” (Lines 714-18).
Pope here satirically compares Britain’s resistance to classical scholarship to its resistance to occupation during the Roman Empire; it would have been better, he suggests, to be a “nation born to serve.”
However, Pope does allow that there were some in Britain who “durst assert the juster ancient cause” (Line 721), including the Earl of Roscommon (1637-85) and his own patron, William Walsh (1663-1708). This lineage of good criticism furthers the poem’s argument that a knowledge of past authors is necessary for contemporaneous authors. Pope critiques the idea that each age should set themselves apart from the one before them and especially bemoans the fact that Dryden’s name was sullied by critics: “Pride, Malice, Folly, against Dryden rose, / […] But sense survived, when merry jests were past; / For rising merit will buoy up at last” (Lines 458-61). Here, Pope’s claims about national lineage intersect with his argument about good judgment, as one of the tendencies he warns against is the assumption that time’s passage necessarily entails improvement or greater amassed wisdom.
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