The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 (of 10)
by Alexander Pope · English · Gutenberg #43271 · 1,395,217 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 (of 10)
Author: Alexander Pope
Contributor: Whitwell Elwin
Release date: July 20, 2013 [eBook #43271]
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FRONTISPIECE TO POPE'S WORKS, VOL. II.
[Illustration: Frontispiece to the Essay on Man, designed by Pope
to represent the vanity of human glory.]
THE WORKS
OF
ALEXANDER POPE.
NEW EDITION.
INCLUDING
SEVERAL HUNDRED UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, AND OTHER
NEW MATERIALS.
COLLECTED IN PART BY THE LATE
RT. HON. JOHN WILSON CROKER.
WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES.
BY REV. WHITWELL ELWIN.
VOL. II.
POETRY.--VOL. II.
WITH PORTRAITS AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON:
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.
1871.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
* * * * *
AN
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1709.
* * * * *
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM,
4to.
----Si quid novisti rectius istis,
Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.--HORAT.
London: Printed for W. LEWIS, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden; and
sold by W. TAYLOR, at the Ship, in Pater-Noster-Row, T. OSBORN, in
Gray's-Inn, near the Walks, and J. GRAVES, in St. James's Street.
1711.
Warton says that the poem was "first advertised in the Spectator, No.
65, May 15th, 1711." Pope informed Caryll that a thousand copies were
printed. Lewis, the publisher, was a Roman Catholic, and an old
schoolfellow of the poet.
* * * * *
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Written by Mr. POPE.
The second edition, 8vo.
London: Printed for W. LEWIS, in Russel-Street, Covent Garden, 1713.
Though the date on the title page is 1713, Isaac Reed states that the
second edition was advertised in the Spectator on November 22, 1712. It
was a common practice to substitute the date of the coming, for that of
the expiring, year. A third and fourth edition in a smaller type and
size came out in 1713. In 1714, the poem was appended to the second
edition of Lintot's Miscellanies, by some arrangement with Lewis, whose
name appears upon the title page of that particular edition of the
Miscellanies as joint publisher. On July 17, 1716, Lintot purchased the
remainder of the copyright for £15, preparatory to inserting the piece
in the quarto of 1717. He brought out a sixth octavo edition of the
essay in 1719, and a seventh in 1722, and reprinted the poem in each of
the four editions of his Miscellanies which were published between 1720
and 1732.
* * * * *
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Written in the year 1709. With the Commentary and Notes of
W. WARBURTON, A.M. 4to.
The Essay on Criticism has no date, but on the title page of the "Essay
on Man," which appeared in the same volume is, "London: Printed by W.
BOWYER for M. COOPER, at the Globe in Pater-Noster Row. 1743." Pope,
writing to Warburton on October 7, 1743, says, "I have given Bowyer your
comment on the Essay on Criticism this week, and he shall lose no time
with the rest." On Jan. 12, 1744, he tells his commentator that the
publication had been delayed by the advice of Bowyer, and on Feb. 21, he
writes word that he shall keep it back till Warburton goes to town.
There is no doubt that the edition was printed in 1743, and published in
1744.
* * * * *
In the year 1709 was written the Essay on Criticism, a work which
displays such extent of comprehension, such nicety of distinction, such
acquaintance with mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern
learning, as are not often attained by the maturest age and longest
experience. It was published about two years afterwards, and being
praised by Addison in the Spectator, with sufficient liberality, met
with so much favour as enraged Dennis, "who," he says, "found himself
attacked without any manner of provocation on his side, and attacked in
his person, instead of his writings, by one who was wholly a stranger to
him, at a time when all the world knew he was persecuted by fortune; and
not only saw that this was attempted in a clandestine manner, with the
utmost falsehood and calumny, but found that all this was done by a
little affected hypocrite, who had nothing in his mouth at the same time
but truth, candour, friendship, goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity."
How the attack was clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his
person is depreciated; but he seems to have known something of Pope's
character, in whom may be discovered an appetite to talk too frequently
of his own virtues. Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis,
which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased.
Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him wantonly; but though he
always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very
often, that he felt his force or his venom.
Of this Essay Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick,
because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could
understand it." The gentlemen and the education of that time seem to
have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentioned a
thousand copies as a numerous impression. Dennis was not his only
censurer. The zealous papists thought the monks treated with too much
contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but to these objections he
had not much regard. The Essay has been translated into French by
Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grammont, whose version was never
printed; by Robotham, secretary to the king for Hanover, and by Resnel;
and commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and
connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by
the author. Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary
and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no
apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon
some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why
one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand,
whatever it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. "It is
possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction from any one truth,
all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous truths, at least of all
truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be
produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed such as,
when it is once shown, shall appear natural; but if this order be
reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or
made. Aristotle is praised for naming fortitude first of the cardinal
virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be
practised; but he might with equal propriety have placed prudence and
justice before it, since without prudence fortitude is mad, without
justice it is mischievous. As the end of method is perspicuity, that
series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity, and where there is
no obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method.
The Essay on Criticism is one of Pope's greatest works, and if he had
written nothing else, would have placed him among the first critics and
the first poets, as it exhibits every mode of excellence that can
embellish or dignify didactic composition--selection of matter, novelty
of arrangement, justness of precept, splendour of illustration, and
propriety of digression. I know not whether it be pleasing to consider
that he produced this piece at twenty, and never afterwards excelled it.
He that delights himself with observing that such powers may be soon
attained, cannot but grieve to think that life was ever after at a
stand. To mention the particular beauties of the essay, would be
unprofitably tedious; but I cannot forbear to observe that the
comparison of a student's progress in the sciences with the journey of a
traveller in the Alps, is perhaps the best that English poetry can show.
A simile, to be perfect, must both illustrate and ennoble the subject;
must show it to the understanding in a clearer view, and display it to
the fancy with greater dignity; but either of these qualities may be
sufficient to recommend it. In didactic poetry, of which the great
purpose is instruction, a simile may be praised which illustrates though
it does not ennoble; in heroics that may be admitted which ennobles,
though it does not illustrate. That it may be complete, it is required
to exhibit, independently of its references, a pleasing image; for a
simile is said to be a short episode. To this antiquity was so
attentive, that circumstances were sometimes added which, having no
parallels, served only to fill the imagination, and produced what
Perrault ludicrously called "comparisons with a long tail." In their
similes the greatest writers have sometimes failed. The ship race
compared with the chariot race, is neither illustrated nor aggrandised;
land and water make all the difference. When Apollo, running after
Daphne, is likened to a greyhound chasing a hare, there is nothing
gained; the ideas of pursuit and flight are too plain to be made
plainer, and a god and the daughter of a god, are not represented much
to their advantage by a hare and a dog. The simile of the Alps has no
useless parts, yet affords a striking picture by itself; it makes the
foregoing position better understood, and enables it to take faster hold
on the attention; it assists the apprehension, and elevates the fancy.
Let me likewise dwell a little on the celebrated paragraph in which it
is directed that the sound should seem an echo to the sense,--a precept
which Pope is allowed to have observed beyond any other English poet.
This notion of representative metre, and the desire of discovering
frequent adaptations of the sound to the sense, have produced, in my
opinion, many wild conceits and imaginary beauties. All that can furnish
this representation are the sounds of the words considered singly, and
the time in which they are pronounced. Every language has some words
framed to exhibit the noises which they express, as _thump_, _rattle_,
_growl_, _hiss_. These, however, are but few, and the poet cannot make
them more, nor can they be of any use but when sound is to be mentioned.
The time of pronunciation was in the dactylic measures of the learned
languages capable of considerable variety; but that variety could be
accommodated only to motion or duration, and different degrees of motion
were perhaps expressed by verses rapid or slow, without much attention
of the writer, when the image had full possession of his fancy; but our
language having little flexibility, our verses can differ very little in
their cadence. The fancied resemblances, I fear, arise sometimes merely
from the ambiguity of words; there is supposed to be some relation
between a _soft_ line and a _soft_ couch, or between _hard_ syllables
and _hard_ fortune. Motion, however, may be in some sort exemplified,
and yet it may be suspected that in such resemblances the mind often
governs the idea, and the sounds are estimated by their meaning. One of
their most successful attempts has been to describe the labour of
Sisyphus:
With many a weary step, and many a groan,
Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone;
The huge round stone, resulting with a bound,
Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
Who does not perceive the stone to move slowly upward, and roll
violently back? But set the same numbers to another sense:
While many a merry tale, and many a song,
Cheered the rough road, we wished the rough road long;
The rough road then, returning in a round,
Mocked our impatient steps, for all was fairy ground.
We have surely now lost much of the delay, and much of the rapidity. But
to show how little the greatest master of numbers can fix the principles
of representative harmony, it will be sufficient to remark that the poet
who tells us that
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;
when he had enjoyed for about thirty years the praise of Camilla's
lightness of foot, he tried another experiment upon _sound_ and _time_,
and produced this memorable triplet:
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Here are the swiftness of the rapid race, and the march of slow-paced
majesty, exhibited by the same poet in the same sequence of syllables,
except that the exact prosodist will find the line of swiftness by one
time longer than that of tardiness. Beauties of this kind are commonly
fancied, and when real are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected,
and not to be solicited.--JOHNSON.
The Essay on Criticism is a poem of that species for which our author's
genius was particularly turned,--the didactic and moral. It is
therefore, as might be expected, a master-piece in its kind. I have been
sometimes inclined to think that the praises Addison has bestowed on it
were a little partial and invidious. "The observations," says he,
"follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that
methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose
writer." It is, however, certain that the poem before us is by no means
destitute of a just integrity, and a lucid order.[1] Each of the
precepts and remarks naturally introduce the succeeding ones, so as to
form an entire whole. The Spectator adds, "The observations in this
Essay are _some_ of them _uncommon_." There is, I fear, a small mixture
of ill-nature in these words; for this Essay, though on a beaten
subject, abounds in many new remarks and original rules, as well as in
many happy and beautiful illustrations and applications of the old ones.
We are, indeed, amazed to find such a knowledge of the world, such a
maturity of judgment, and such a penetration into human nature, as are
here displayed, in so very young a writer as was Pope when he produced
this Essay, for he was not twenty years old. Correctness and a just
taste are usually not attained but by long practice and experience in
any art; but a clear head and strong sense were the characteristical
qualities of our author, and every man soonest displays his radical
excellences. If his predominant talent be warmth and vigour of
imagination it will break out in fanciful and luxuriant descriptions,
the colouring of which will perhaps be too rich and glowing. If his
chief force lies in the understanding rather than in the imagination, it
will soon appear by solid and manly observations on life or learning,
expressed in a more chaste and subdued style. The former will frequently
be hurried into obscurity or turgidity, and a false grandeur of diction;
the latter will seldom hazard a figure whose usage is not already
established, or an image beyond common life; will always be perspicuous
if not elevated; will never disgust if not transport his readers; will
avoid the grosser faults if not arrive at the greater beauties of
composition. When we consider the just taste, the strong sense, the
knowledge of men, books, and opinions that are so predominant in the
Essay on Criticism, we must readily agree to place the author among the
first critics, though not, as Dr. Johnson says, "among the first poets,"
on this account alone. As a poet he must rank much higher for his Eloïsa
and Rape of the Lock. The Essay, it is said, was first written in prose,
according to the precept of Vida, and the practice of Racine, who was
accustomed to draw out in plain prose, not only the subject of each of
the five acts, but of every scene, and every speech, that he might see
the conduct and coherence of the whole at one view, and would then say,
"My tragedy is finished."--WARTON.
Most of the observations in this Essay are just, and certainly evince
good sense, an extent of reading, and powers of comparison, considering
the age of the author, extraordinary. Johnson's praise however is
exaggerated.--BOWLES.
"Essay" in Pope's day was used in its now obsolete sense of an attempt.
Stephens in 1648 entitled his translation of the five first books of the
Thebais "an Essay upon Statius:" and Denham's "Essay on the second book
of Virgil's Æneis" is a version and not a dissertation. "I have
undertaken," Dryden wrote to Walsh, "to translate all Virgil; and as an
essay have already paraphrased the third Georgic as an example." Two
quotations in Johnson's Dictionary,--one from Dryden, the other from
Glanville,--show that the word was usually understood to imply
diffidence. Dryden, in his Epistle to Roscommon, says,
Yet modestly he does his work survey,
And calls a finished poem an essay;
and Glanville says, "This treatise prides itself in no higher a title
than that of an essay, or imperfect attempt at a subject." Locke named
his great and elaborate work an "Essay on the Human Understanding," from
the consciousness that it was an "imperfect attempt," and when hostile
critics refused him the benefit of his modest title, he answered that
they did his book an honour "in not suffering it to be an essay." Pope
borrowed both the word, and the plan of his poem, from some works which
enjoyed in his youth a credit far beyond their worth,--the Essay on
Translated Verse by the Earl of Roscommon, and the Essay on Satire, and
the Essay on Poetry by the Earl of Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of
Buckingham. These small productions had been suggested in their turn by
Horace's Art of Poetry, and its modern imitations. Roscommon and
Mulgrave, men of common-place minds, were incapable of originality, and
Pope, with the latent genius of a leader, was a follower in early years.
"The things that I have written fastest," said Pope to Spence, "have
always pleased the most. I wrote the Essay on Criticism fast; for I had
digested all the matter in prose before I began upon it in verse."[2]
This last circumstance was mentioned by Warton in his Essay on the
Writings and Genius of Pope, long before the Anecdotes of Spence were
published, and Johnson commented upon the statement in his review of
Warton's work. "There is nothing," he said, "improbable in the report,
nothing indeed but what is more likely than the contrary; yet I cannot
forbear to hint the danger and weakness of trusting too readily to
information. Nothing but experience could evince the frequency of false
information, or enable any man to conceive that so many groundless
reports should be propagated as every man of eminence may hear of
himself. Some men relate what they think as what they know; some men of
confused memories and habitual inaccuracy ascribe to one man what
belongs to another; and some talk on without thought or care. A few men
are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently
diffused by successive relators."[3] The caution was not intended to
discredit the evidence of Spence. Warton had suppressed his authority,
and Johnson had a proper mistrust of common hearsay.
On the title-page of the poem in the quarto of 1717, it is said, that it
was "written in the year 1709," to which Richardson has attached the
note, "Mr. Pope told me himself that the Essay on Criticism was, indeed,
written 1707, though said 1709 by mistake." The poet continued the
alleged mistake through all succeeding revisions. The quarto of 1743 was
the last edition he superintended, and 1709 appears as usual upon the
title-page, but Warburton announced in the final sentence of the
commentary, that the Essay was "the work of an author who had not
attained the twentieth year of his age," and as the author was born in
May, 1688, he must, according to this testimony, have completed his task
before May, 1708, which confirms the account of Richardson. Pope had
thus assigned one date to his piece on the first page of the quarto of
1743, and sanctioned the promulgation of a different date on the
concluding page. There is the same contradiction in his conversations
with Spence. "My Essay on Criticism," he said on one occasion, "was
written in 1709, and published in 1711, which is as little time as ever
I let anything of mine lay by me."[4] This agrees with the printed
title-page. "I showed Walsh," he said to Spence on another occasion, "my
Essay on Criticism in 1706. He died the year after."[5] This falls in
with the evidence of Richardson and Warburton; for Walsh died on March
15, 1708, and 1706 was an error for 1707. The double date reappears in a
note to the Pope Letters of 1735, solely through a change in the
punctuation. "Mr. Walsh," it was said in some copies, "died at 49 years
old, in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on
Criticism." "Mr. Walsh," it was said in other copies, "died at 49 years
old in the year 1708, the year after Mr. Pope writ the Essay on
Criticism." In the first version it is asserted that the poem was
written in 1709, or the year after Mr. Walsh died; in the second version
it is asserted that it was written in 1707, and that Mr. Walsh died the
year after. Such a series of conflicting statements could not all be
accidental. When Pope published the quarto edition of his Letters in
1737, he again altered the note. "Mr. Walsh," he then said, "died at 49
years old, in the year 1708, the year before the Essay on Criticism was
printed," which informs us of the new fact that it was printed a couple
of years before it was published, and since the poet assured Spence that
it was written two or three years before it was printed,[6] we have the
date of its composition once more thrown back to 1707. Pope forgot the
confession in the poem, ver. 735-740, that in consequence of having
"lost his guide" by the death of Walsh, he was afraid to attempt
ambitious themes, and selected the Essay on Criticism as a topic suited
to "low numbers." However fictitious may have been the reason he
assigned for the choice of his subject, he there admits that he did not
form the design till after the death of his friend in March 1708. In his
later statements he oscillated between the truth, and the desire to
magnify the precocity of his genius. He was always ambitious of the kind
of praise which Johnson bestows upon the Essay, when he calls it "the
stupendous performance of a youth not yet twenty." But at whatever
period the poem was first written, it did not appear till May, 1711, and
represents the capacity of Pope at twenty-three. He avowedly kept his
pieces long in manuscript for the purpose of maturing and polishing
them, and they were as good as he could make them at the period when
they finally left his hands.
The Essay on Criticism was published anonymously. Warton was informed by
Lewis the bookseller, that "it laid many days in his shop unnoticed and
unread." Pope wrote word to Caryll, July 19, 1711, that he did not
expect it would ever arrive at a second edition. Piqued, said Lewis, at
the neglect, the poet one day directed copies to several great men, and
among others to Lord Lansdowne, and the Duke of Buckingham. These
presents caused the work to be talked about.[7] The name of the author,
which soon transpired, assisted the sale, and the paper of Addison in
the Spectator on December 20, 1711, brought the Essay under the notice
of the entire reading world, though it was still another twelvemonth
before the thousand copies were exhausted.
The notoriety, if not the sale, of the Essay on Criticism must have been
promoted by the angry pamphlet put forth by Dennis six months before the
laudatory paper of Addison appeared in the Spectator.[8] Dennis was the
only living writer who was openly abused in the poem, and there was an
asperity in the language which savoured of personal hostility. He and
Pope were slightly acquainted. "At his first coming to town," says
Dennis, "he was very importunate with the late Mr. Henry Cromwell to
introduce him to me. The recommendation of Mr. Cromwell engaged me to be
about thrice in company with him; after which I went into the country,
and neither saw him, nor thought of him, till I found myself insolently
attacked by him in his very superficial Essay on Criticism."[9] A
passage quoted by Bowles from Pope's Prologue to the Satires reveals the
cause of the enmity:
Soft were my numbers; who could take offence
While pure description held the place of sense?
Like gentle Fanny's was my flow'ry theme,
A painted mistress, or a purling stream.
Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;
I never answered,--I was not in debt.[10]
Here we learn that Dennis thought meanly of Pope's Pastorals. The
critic had enough taste for true poetry to despise the conventional
puerilities which, more than "pure description, held the place of sense"
in these juvenile effusions. He frequented the coffee-houses where
authors congregated, he indulged in professional talk, and his
unfavourable judgment was sure to get round to Pope. The irritation at
the time must have been great, since the censure continued to rankle in
the mind of the poet at the distance of five-and-twenty years. His
memory was less faithful when he claimed credit for not replying. He
found it convenient to forget that he had seized an early opportunity
for retaliating in the Essay on Criticism.
Dennis complained that "he was attacked in a clandestine manner in his
person instead of his writings." "How the attack," says Johnson, "was
clandestine is not easily perceived, nor how his person is depreciated."
Evidently Dennis termed the attack clandestine, because the Essay was
anonymous, and his assailant concealed. Pope, however, had not been
studious of secrecy among his acquaintances, and Dennis showed in his
pamphlet that he knew perfectly well with whom he had to deal. His
assertion, denied by Johnson, that he was attacked "in his person
instead of his writings" is clearly correct, unless, contrary to usage,
the word is restricted to what is indelible in a man's bodily make. To
say that he reddened at every word of objection, and stared tremendous
with a threatening eye, like the fierce tyrants depicted in old
tapestry, was to represent his personal bearing and appearance in an
offensive light. Pope himself disclaimed the personality. "I cannot
conceive," he wrote to Caryll, June 25, 1711, "what ground he has for so
excessive a resentment, nor imagine how those three lines can be called
a reflection on his person which only describe him subject to a little
colour and stare on some occasions, which are revolutions that happen
sometimes in the best and most regular faces in Christendom." The
description, in other words, was not a reflection upon the person of
Dennis, because some persons with handsome faces were liable to the same
infirmity, and no satire was personal which did not declare a man to be
radically ugly. That the resentment might seem the more unreasonable,
the stare tremendous and threatening eye, were softened down to a
"little stare." This was characteristic of Pope. He was not afraid to
strike, but when the blow was resented, he frequently made a hasty and
ignominious retreat. Either he pretended that the satire was not aimed
at the individuals who called him to account, or he gave a mitigated and
erroneous version of his lampoons.
Pope lashed Dennis for an intemperance of manner which could be
controlled at will. Dennis upbraided Pope with a deformity which he had
not caused and could not cure. "If you have a mind," said the infuriated
critic, "to enquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham, for a young,
squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral
madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love, you will be soon
directed to him. And pray, as soon as you have taken a survey of him,
tell me whether he is a proper author to make personal reflections on
others. This little author may extol the ancients as much, and as long
as he pleases, but he has reason to thank the good gods that he was born
a modern, for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by
consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been
no longer than that of one of his poems,--the life of half a day."[11]
There was a wide difference between ridiculing the distortions of
countenance which grew out of irascible vanity, and mocking at defects
which were a misfortune, and not a fault. But Pope's lines were
insulting, and a man of the world would have foreseen that Dennis would
repel insult by scurrility. The poet was as yet a novice in the coarse
personalities of that abusive age, and he had not anticipated such
brutal raillery. "The latter part of Mr. Dennis's book," he wrote to
Caryll, "is no way to be properly answered, but by a wooden weapon, and
I should perhaps have sent him a present from Windsor Forest of one of
the best and toughest oaken plants between Sunninghill and Oakingham if
he had not informed me in his preface that he is at this time persecuted
by fortune. This, I protest, I knew not the least of before; if I had,
his name had been spared in the Essay for that only reason."[12] Pope
could no more compete with Dennis in personal prowess, than Dennis could
compete in satire with Pope. His assigned reason for not executing his
empty vaunt was equally hollow. He was not wont to spare his enemies out
of consideration for their necessities, but taunted them with their
forlorn condition, and, true to his custom, the persecution of fortune,
which he said would have induced him to suppress his satire upon Dennis,
was made the ingredient of a fresh satire at a future day:
I never answered; I was not in debt.
The insinuation was unjust. Violent, and often wrong-headed, Dennis
spoke his genuine sentiments, and was not more a hireling than Pope, or
any other author who earns money by his pen. The poor debtor could not
have bartered his honour for a sorrier bribe. The pamphlet on the Essay
on Criticism consisted of thirty-two octavo pages of small print, with a
preface of five pages, and he received for it 2_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._
Dennis urged as an aggravation of the "falsehood and calumny" in the
Essay, that they proceeded from a "little affected hypocrite, who had
nothing in his mouth at the same time but truth, candour, friendship,
goodnature, humanity, and magnanimity." These are the qualities enforced
in the poem, and whether the description of Dennis, under the name of
Appius, was a faithful likeness or a caricature, the attack was at
variance with the precepts which accompanied it. Pope insisted that the
specification of faults, to be useful, must be delicate and courteous.
He laid down the proposition at ver. 573, that "blunt truths do more
mischief than nice falsehoods," and at ver. 576, that "without good
breeding truth is disapproved." At the interval of six lines he
exemplified the urbanity he enjoined by a derisive sketch which could
only be intended to injure and exasperate. The inconsistency did not
stop here. He prefaced the obnoxious passage by the maxim, "those best
can bear reproof who merit praise," and the sketch of Dennis is an
illustration of the opposite character. Was Pope a man who bore reproof
with the fortitude which entitled him to scoff at others for their
irritability? He certainly sometimes drew a flattering picture of his
own equanimity and forbearance. He assures us at ver. 741, that he was
"careless of censure." He told Spence, that "he never much minded what
his angry critics published against him,--only one or two things at
first." "When," he added, "I heard for the first time that Dennis had
written against me, it gave me some pain; but it was quite over as soon
as I came to look into his book, and found he was in such a
passion."[13] In the Prologue to the Satires, he represents himself to
have been a perfect model of candour and amiability, and says of the
objections of his correctors,
If wrong I smiled; if right I kissed the rod.[14]
But he could seldom keep long to one version of any subject, and the
truth comes out in his first Imitation of Horace:
Peace is my dear delight,--not Fleury's more,
But touch me, and no minister so sore.[15]
His works bear overwhelming testimony to the fact. His mind was like
inflamed flesh; the touch which a healthy constitution would have
disregarded, tortured and enraged him; his smile was a vindictive jeer;
and he used with acrimony the rod he professed to kiss. His soreness at
censure was the very cause of his charging the weakness upon Dennis. He
was angry at the disparagement of his Pastorals, and because he himself
was testy, he ridiculed the testiness of his critic. The accusation,
according to Dennis, was a malicious invention. "If a man," he said, "is
remarkable for the extraordinary deference which he pays to the opinions
and remonstrances of his friends, him he libels for his impatience
under reproof."[16] Though docility was not the virtue of Dennis, his
failing was probably overcharged in the Essay on Criticism, for
unmeasured exaggeration was a usual fault in the satire of Pope.
In retaining a grudge against those who wounded his self-esteem, Pope
did not disdain to profit by their spiteful censorship. "I will make my
enemy," he said to Caryll, "do me a kindness where he meant an injury,
and so serve instead of a friend," and he requested Trumbull to tell him
"where Dennis had hit any blots."[17] He cared too much for his works to
be influenced by the stubborn pride which cannot stoop to confess an
error. Where the criticism has not been inspired by malice, authors in
general have not been intolerant of their critics. Coleridge relates
that his thankfulness to the reviewers of his juvenile poems was
sincere, when they concurred in condemning his obscurity, turgid
language, and profusion of double epithets. Of the obscurity he was
unconscious, "and my mind," he says, "was not then sufficiently
disciplined to receive the authority of others as a substitute for my
own conviction." "The glitter both of thought and diction" he pruned
with an unsparing hand, "though, in truth," he adds, "these parasite
plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems
with such intricacy of union that I was often obliged to omit
disentangling the weed from the fear of snapping the flower."[18] The
candour and manliness are charming, but it must not be overlooked that
the magnanimity diminishes as the mental capacity increases. Wakefield
well remarks that one reason why those who merit praise can best bear
reproof is, that the reproof is either counterbalanced by praise, or by
the inward consciousness that the merit is great and will prevail.[19]
Inferior writers have not the same consolation. The chief advantage
after all which authors derive from the enumeration of their defects is,
that it teaches them modesty, and the true limits of their powers. They
are seldom able to mend. The qualities they lack are not within their
reach; for the mind cannot rise above itself, and has little pliancy
when once it has taken its bent.
The notice in the Spectator must have been doubly welcome to Pope after
the invective and cavils of Dennis. "In our own country," says Addison,
"a man seldom sets up for a poet without attacking the reputation of all
his brothers in the art. The ignorance of the moderns, the scribblers of
the age, the decay of poetry, are the topics of detraction with which he
makes his entrance into the world. I am sorry to find that an author,
who is very justly esteemed among the best judges, has admitted some
strokes of this nature into a very fine poem,--I mean the Art of
Criticism, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece
of its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's
Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been
requisite in a prose author. They are some of them uncommon, but such as
the reader must assent to, when he sees them explained with that
elegance and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As for those which
are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so
beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they
have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was
before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and
solidity. And here give me leave to mention what Monsieur Boileau has so
very well enlarged upon in the preface to his works, that wit and fine
writing do not consist so much in advancing things that are new, as in
giving things that are known an agreeable turn. It is impossible for us,
who live in the later ages of the world, to make observations in
criticism, morality, or in any art or science, which have not been
touched upon by others. We have little else left us but to represent the
common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon
lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry, he will find but
very few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and
which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His
way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what
we chiefly admire."[20] Pope was delighted. "Moderate praise," he said
to Steele, whom he erroneously supposed to have held the pen,
"encourages a young writer, but a great deal may injure him; and you
have been so lavish in this point that I almost hope,--not to call in
question your judgment in the piece--that it was some particular
inclination to the author which carried you so far." He accepted in good
part the admonition for disparaging his "brother moderns," and expressed
his willingness to omit the "strokes" in another edition.[21] He
detected none of the "ill-nature" which Warton saw lurking in the phrase
"that _some_ of the observations were _uncommon_." Addison was familiar
with the sources from which the Essay was compiled, and could hardly
have been ignorant that even the "some" was a generous license. He
pleaded more plausibly for the work when he contended that wit consisted
in presenting old thoughts in a better dress, and that the "known
truths" in the poem were "placed in so beautiful a light, that they had
all the graces of novelty." The charge brought later by Pope against
Addison, of viewing him with jealous eyes, suggested to Warton his
strained imputation, which is not warranted by the expression he quotes,
and is contradicted by the genial tone of the praise. Addison at the
time had no acquaintance with Pope. The eulogy on the Essay was
spontaneous, and an envious rival would never have adopted the suicidal
device of voluntarily publishing a strong panegyric in a periodical
which every one read, and of which the decisions were accepted for law.
The truth is, that Addison, by his encomiums and authority, brought into
vogue the exaggerated estimate entertained of the Essay. The authors of
the next generation read it in their boyhood, and were taught that it
was a model of its kind. Juvenile impressions retain their hold, and
upon no other supposition could we understand the preposterous opinion
of Johnson, that the work set Pope "among the first critics and the
first poets," and that he "never afterwards excelled it." Warton
disputed the rank assigned to the poet, and assented to the claim put
forth for the critic, which was equally untenable. He was misled by his
relish for platitudes. "I propose," he said, "to make some observations
on such passages and precepts in this Essay as, on account of their
utility, novelty, or elegance, deserve particular attention," and his
opening specimen of these merits is the line,
In poets as true genius is but rare.[22]
He selected for distinction several other remarks which were not more
exquisite in their form, or recondite in their substance. Hazlitt took
up the strain of Johnson and Warton. "The Rape of the Lock," he says,
"is a double-refined essence of wit and fancy, as the Essay on Criticism
is of wit and sense. The quantity of thought and observation in this
work, for so young a man as Pope was when he wrote it, is wonderful;
unless we adopt the supposition that most men of genius spend the rest
of their lives in teaching others what they themselves have learned
under twenty. The conciseness and felicity of the expression are equally
remarkable. Thus, in reasoning on the variety of men's opinions, he
says,
'Tis with our judgments, as our watches; none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Nothing can be more original and happy than the general remarks and
illustrations in the Essay: the critical rules laid down are too much
those of a school, and of a confined one."[23] De Quincey, a subtler and
sounder critic than Hazlitt, boldly challenged decisions which had
passed, but little questioned, from mouth to mouth. "The Essay on
Criticism," he says, "is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's
writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical
multiplication table, of common-places the most mouldy with which
criticism has baited its rat-traps. The maxims have no natural order or
logical dependency, are generally so vague as to mean nothing, and what
is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man as often as by
Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this very poem."[24] The matter
of the Essay is not rated, in this passage, below its value.
"I admired," said Lady Mary W. Montagu, "Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism
at first very much, because I had not then read any of the ancient
critics, and did not know that it was all stolen."[25] Pope had found
the bulk of his materials nearer home. He told Spence that in his youth
"he went through all the best critics," and specified Quintilian, Rapin,
and Bossu.[26] He states in his Essay, ver. 712, that "critic-learning,"
in modern times, "flourished most in France," and in fact the Rapins and
Bossus were his principal masters. They had been brought into credit
with our countrymen by Dryden. "Impartially speaking," he said, in his
Dedication to the Æneis, "the French are as much better critics than the
English as they are worse poets." He had a wonderful faith in the virtue
of their precepts. "Spenser," he said, "wanted only to have read the
rules of Bossu; for no man was ever born with a greater genius, or had
more knowledge to support it." He compared the French critics to
generals, and our celebrated poets to common soldiers; the poet executed
what the commanding mind of the critic planned.[27] The treatises which
would have perfected the genius of Spenser were shallow drowsy
productions, compounded of truisms, pedantic fallacies, and doctrines
borrowed from antiquity. Pope culled most of his maxims from these, and
other modern works. Many of his remarks were the common property of the
civilised world. A slight acquaintance with books and men is sufficient
to teach us that people are partial to their own judgment, that some
authors are not qualified to be poets, wits, or critics, and that
critics should not launch beyond their depth. Such profound reflections,
kept up throughout the Essay, owed their credit to the disguising
properties of verse. Along with the singular nicety of distinction, and
knowledge of mankind, Johnson detected a no less surprising range of
ancient and modern learning. Pope mentions Homer, Virgil, and half a
dozen Greek and Latin critics. He has characterised some of these
critics in a manner which betrays that he had never looked into their
works, and what he says of the rest only required that he should know
their writings by repute. All, and more than all, the classical
information embodied in the Essay, might have been picked up from his
French manuals in a single morning.
A didactic poet who draws his precepts from the truisms and current
publications of his day, could not at twenty-three deserve credit for
precocity of learning or thought. He might still manifest an early
maturity of judgment in sifting the insignificant from the important,
the true from the false. Pope did not avoid the trite, but he is said to
have evinced a rare capacity for discriminating the true. Bowles agrees
with Johnson and Warton that "the good sense in the Essay is
extraordinary considering the age of the author," and it is pronounced
"an uncommon effort of critical good sense" by Hallam, conspicuous
himself for sense and sobriety.[28] Whoever looks through the
speciousness of rhyme, and views the ideas in their naked meaning, will
be much more struck by the want of good sense in the principal critical
canons. They are not even "extraordinary for the age of the author;"
versed as he was in English literature they are below his years. They
are the narrow, erroneous dogmas of a youth fresh from school-boy
studies, who imagined that the Greeks and Romans had ransacked the
illimitable realms of genius and taste, and swept off the whole of the
spoils. He broadly asserted this doctrine in the poetical creed which he
prefixed to his works.[29] He was at least old enough then to know
better, from whence it is clear that the common statements respecting
him are the opposite of the truth. He did not display the ripe judgment
of manhood in his juvenile criticism; he remained a boy in criticism
when he was a man.
Follow nature, said Pope, in his Essay, but beware of taking nature at
first hand. Homer and nature are the same, and to copy nature is to copy
the rules deduced from his works. The ancients sometimes deviated into
excellence by throwing off their self-imposed shackles. The moderns must
not presume to be irregularly great. They must keep to the precepts, and
if they ever break a rule they must at least be able to quote a case
precisely parallel from a classical author.[30] The English had not
submitted to the wholesome restraint. They had been "fierce for the
liberties of wit," and Pope avows his conviction that the entire race of
English writers were therefore "uncivilised," with the exception of a
few who had "restored among us wit's fundamental laws." He names the
most illustrious of these reformers. They were three in number,--the
Duke of Buckingham, Lord Roscommon, and Walsh.[31] The absurdity could
not be exceeded. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton were
"uncivilised" writers; they not only fell into minor errors, but set at
nought the "_fundamental_ laws" of poetry, while the persons who taught
how English poetry was to be raised from its rude condition were a trio
of prosy mediocrities, whose works might have been annihilated without
leaving the smallest vacuum in literature. "The Duke of Buckingham,"
said Pope later, "was superficial in everything; even in poetry, which
was his forte."[32]
Pope seems to have been unconscious of the vast metamorphose which the
world had undergone since the close of the Greek and Roman eras.
Religion, institutions, usages, opinions, all had changed. Society was
in a ferment with new ideas; nations had been gathered out of new
elements; characters were moulded under new influences, and the play of
passions, interests, convictions, and policy had assumed new forms. This
altered order of things was reflected in our poetry. The mighty men of
genius who led the way could not have put aside their genuine thoughts
to mimic works which, noble in themselves, were musty and obsolete in
modern imitations. The vigorous races which had sprung up drew living
pictures from their own minds; they were inspired by national and
present sentiments; they stamped upon their verse the feelings, humours,
and beliefs of their age. They borrowed from the classics, and sometimes
with bad taste; but the extrinsic details they appropriated were not
permitted to cramp the masculine elasticity of their native fancy and
experience. The materials of the edifice, in the main, were no longer
the same, and neither was the shape they assumed. The difference was as
great as between a Grecian temple and a Gothic cathedral. The principles
which governed the ancients in their compositions were confined, and did
not give verge enough for that variety and picturesqueness among
ourselves which demanded to be embodied in written words. The
originality, which was our glory, appeared a vice to Pope. The
adaptation of the structure to its complex purposes he believed to be a
declension towards barbarism. He would have preferred that our
magnificent English literature, instinct with the freshness of nature,
and gathering into its huge circumference the growth of centuries,
should have been reduced to a stale and meagre counterfeit. The ancients
had the prerogative to make and break critical laws; the moderns must
not dare to think for themselves. Genius had been free in Greece, and
was to be altogether a slave in England. It cannot be urged in excuse
for this protest against the independence of our literature that Pope
had imbibed the prejudices of his generation. His doctrine was
hacknied, but not allowed. He admits that it had few disciples,[33] and
one of the three adherents he claimed did not belong to him. "Not only
all present poets," wrote Dryden to Walsh, in 1693, "but all who are to
come in England will thank you for freeing them from the too servile
imitation of the ancients."[34] The rules of Pope could never have
prevailed, for they were intrinsically false, and would have emasculated
every national literature. The thoughts, words, and deeds of the actual
world would not have been impressed upon its books; a gulf would have
separated the sympathies of the reader from the feeble, monotonous
unrealities of the author, and both author and reader would soon have
grown sick of this unnatural effort to be artificial and dull.
An exclusive partisan of classical poetry, Pope did not the less
denounce sectarians in wit, the contracted spirits "who the ancients
only or the moderns prize," and he exhorted critics "to regard not if
wit be old or new."[35] The contradiction in his principles was not
accompanied by a corresponding contradiction in his practice, for in no
part of his Essay did he rectify his injustice towards his countrymen.
He had not one word of commendation for any great English poet, with the
exception of Dryden, and him he chiefly extolled, in company with Denham
and Waller, for his metrical euphony. Nay, Pope limited the fame of our
most illustrious writers to barely threescore years, on the pretence
that their language became partially obsolete, which would yet leave
them an enormous advantage over dead tongues. Because "length of fame
(our second life) is lost," he exhorted the public in common fairness to
recognise merit betimes.[36] There was not a semblance of truth in his
premise, nor was the plea which he grounded upon it admissible in his
mouth. "How vain," he exclaimed, "that second life in other's
breath,"[37] and if posthumous fame was worthless there was no claim for
compensation. In reality the value is not in the posthumous fame, but in
the anticipation which converts it into an immediate possession, the
mind feasting in imagination upon plaudits to come. The successful
author adds them to the chorus of present praise, and the unsuccessful
creates for himself the fame he lacks. The parental partiality which
appeals from contemporaries to posterity may deceive, but it soothes and
sustains. "A reputation after death," said Jortin, "is like a favourable
wind after a shipwreck."[38] Rather the faith in a future reputation is
the preservative against shipwreck, unless when men are indifferent to
literary immortality.
The ancients, according to Pope, had a moral as well as an intellectual
superiority. Of old the poets "who but endeavoured well," were praised
by their brethren. Now those who reached the heights of Parnassus
"employed their pains in spurning down others." Of old again the
professional critic was "generous and fanned the poet's fire." Now
critics hated the poet, and all the more that they had learned from him
the art of criticism.[39] A freedom from jealousy, a liberality of
eulogy were universal with pagans; malice and envy reigned supreme in
Christendom. Upon this false pretext Pope had the luxury of indulging in
the vice he reprobated. He preached up "good-nature," he would suffer no
leaven of "spleen and sour disdain,"[40] and his Essay throughout is a
diatribe against English critics. The entire crew were spiteful
blockheads without sense or principle. The excessive rancour points to
some personal offence, and it is probable that his estimate of critics
was regulated by their low opinion of his Pastorals, which was the chief
work he had hitherto published. When he speaks of poets he keeps no
better to the leniency he advocates. He would "sometimes have censure
restrained, and would charitably let the dull be vain," upon the
uncharitable allegation that the more they were corrected the worse they
grew. He engrafts upon his recommendation of a "charitable silence," an
invective against the inferior versifiers who, in their old age, have
not discovered that they are superannuated. For this inability to detect
the decay of their faculties he calls them "shameless bards,
impenitently bold."[41] No error of judgment had a stronger claim to be
treated with tenderness, and the bitterness of the passage was the less
excusable that it was certainly directed against his former friend
Wycherley.
There are other contradictions in the Essay, and several of the minor
positions are glaringly erroneous. Dennis was within the truth when he
said of the whole that it was "very superficial." There remains the
question whether the poem is remarkable for the beauty of expression
signalised by Addison and Hazlitt. Pope intended his work to be a
combination of highly wrought passages, and of that more easy style
described by Dryden, when he says--
And this unpolished, rugged verse I chose,
As fittest for discourse, and nearest prose.[42]
The parts of the Essay which are pitched in the highest key, are far the
best, and where Pope borrowed the imagery, as in the simile of the
traveller ascending the Alps, the lines owe their splendour to his
improvements. The similes designed to be witty are less happy. One or
two only are good; the rest have little point or appropriateness.
Anxious to string together as many smart comparisons as possible, Pope
was careless of consistency. Speaking of the futility of abusing paltry
versifiers, he says,
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.[43]
The meaning of the first couplet seems to be that bad poets become
callous by castigation, and indifferent to censure; the meaning of the
second that failure stimulated them to improvement. In the first couplet
they proceed from drowsiness to slumber; in the second their false steps
stir them up to mend their pace. They are first represented as
proceeding from bad to worse, and then from bad to better. The attempt
in the Essay to turn common prose into rhyme is only partially
successful. Dryden and Byron, the greatest masters in different ways of
the familiar style, pour out words in their natural order with a
marvellous vigour and facility. The merit is in this unforced idiomatic
flow of the language, unimpeded by the shackles of rhymes. Almost
anybody may convert ordinary prose into defective verse, and much of the
verse in the Essay on Criticism is of a low order. The phraseology is
frequently mean and slovenly, the construction inverted and
ungrammatical, the ellipses harsh, the expletives feeble, the metre
inharmonious, the rhymes imperfect. Striving to be poetical, Pope fell
below bald and slip-shod prose. Examples lie thick, and a couple of
specimens will be enough:
But when t'examine ev'ry part he came.
Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.
The transposition of the verb for the sake of the rhyme was the rule
with Pope. He habitually succumbed to the difficulty of preserving the
legitimate arrangement of words; yet it is an anomaly in literature that
with his powers and patient industry he could tolerate such despicable
examples of the licence, and this in enunciating hacknied precepts, only
to be raised above insipidity by the perfection with which they were
moulded into verse. Where the plain portions of the poem are not
positively bad, they are seldom of any peculiar excellence. Mediocrity,
relieved by occasional well-wrought passages, forms the staple of the
work, and Hazlitt must surely have given loose to one of his wilful
paradoxes when he contended that the general characteristics of the
Essay were originality, thought, strength, terseness, wit, felicitous
expression, and brilliant illustration.
In its metrical qualities the Essay on Criticism is the worst of Pope's
poems. One blemish is a want of variety in his final words. "There are,"
says Hazlitt, "no less than half a score couplets rhyming to _sense_.
This appears almost incredible without giving the instances, and no less
so when they are given."
But of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.--lines 3, 4.
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence.--l. 28, 29.
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.--l. 209, 10.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense.--l. 324, 5.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.--l. 364, 5.
At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense.--l. 386, 7.
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence.--l. 566, 7.
Be niggards of advice on no pretence:
For the worst avarice is that of sense.--l. 578, 9.
Strain out the last dull droppings of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.--l. 608, 9.
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And without method talks us into sense.--l. 653, 4.
The corresponding word which forms the rhyme is not always varied.
"Offence" is used three times, and "defence" and "pretence" are each
employed twice.
Hazlitt might have remarked, that _wit_ was even more favoured than
_sense_, and was used with greater laxity. A wit, in the reign of Queen
Anne was not only a jester, but any author of distinction; and wit,
besides its special signification, was still sometimes employed as
synonymous with mind. The ordinary generic and specific meanings,
already confusing and fruitful in ambiguities, were not sufficient for
Pope. A wit with him was now a jester, now an author, now a poet, and
now, again, was contradistinguished from poets. Wit was the intellect,
the judgment, the antithesis to judgment, a joke, and poetry. The word
does duty, with a perplexing want of precision, throughout the essay,
and furnishes a dozen rhymes alone:
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.--lines 52, 3.
One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit.--l. 60, 1.
A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.--l. 233, 4.
Nor lose for that malignant dull delight,
The gen'rous pleasure to be charmed with wit.--l. 237, 8.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T'avoid great errors, must the less commit.--l. 259, 60.
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.--l. 291, 2.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.--l. 301, 2.
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.--l. 428, 9.
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit.--l. 448, 9.
Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ:
Nay, wits had pensions, and young lords had wit.--l. 538, 9.
Received his laws; and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.--l. 651, 2.
He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.--l. 657, 8.
In these twelve instances "wit" rhymes five times to "fit," and three
times to "writ." The monotony extends much farther. "Art," in the
singular or plural, terminates eight lines, and in every case rhymes to
"part," "parts," or "imparts."
Imperfect rhymes abound. The examples which follow occur in the order in
which they are set down. "None, own--showed, trod--proved,
beloved--steer, character--esteem, them--full, rule--take, track--rise,
precipice--thoughts, faults--joined, mankind--delight, wit--appear,
regular--caprice, nice--light, wit--good, blood--glass, place--sun,
upon--still, suitable--ear, repair--join, line--line, join--Jove,
love--own, town--fault, thought--worn, turn--safe, laugh--lost,
boast--boast, lost (_bis_)--join, divine--prove, love--ease,
increase--care, war--join, shine--disapproved, beloved--take,
speak--fool, dull--satires, dedicators--read, head--speaks,
makes--extreme, phlegm--find, joined--joined, mind--revive,
live--chased, passed--good, blood--desert, heart--receive, give." In
numerous instances, "the weight of the rhyme," as Johnson expresses it,
when speaking of Denham, "is laid upon a word too feeble to sustain it."
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always _so_;
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us _so_.
Several lines are not metrical unless pronounced with a wrong emphasis,
as
False eloquēnce like thē prismatic glass,
which only ceases to be prose when "the," and the last syllable of
"eloquence," are accentuated, and it is then no longer English. Examples
like
Atones not fōr that envy which it brings;
That in̄ proud dullness joins with quality;
That not alone what tō your sense is due;
are not much better. Many of the verses, and this last is a specimen,
offend the ear by the succession of "low" and "creeping words." Pope
belonged to the class of kings he mentions in his poem, who freely
dispensed with the laws they had made.
Johnson, commenting on Pope's attempt to adapt the sound to the sense,
thinks it a contradiction, that he employed an Alexandrine to describe
the swiftness of Camilla, and thirty years afterwards used the same
measure to denote "the march of slow-paced majesty." There was no need
to look for an instance at the interval of thirty years. It would have
been found at an interval of half thirty lines in the Essay on
Criticism, where an Alexandrine is introduced to portray the dragging
progress of the wounded snake. The juxtaposition was doubtless
deliberate for the purpose of illustrating the opposite movements of
sluggishness and celerity. Johnson misunderstood the theory. The
Alexandrine was not supposed to represent speed, but space. Thus when
Pope describes the wound of Menelaus, in his translation of the Iliad,
he says in a note, "Homer is very particular here in giving the picture
of the blood running in a long trace, lower and lower. The author's
design being only to image the streaming of the blood, it seemed
equivalent to make it trickle through the length of an Alexandrine
line."
As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.
A long line being presumed to suggest the motion of a long distance, the
retarded or accelerated motion was intended to be expressed by the slow
or rapid syllables of which the line was composed. The end was not
answered, because, as Johnson remarks, the break in the middle of the
Alexandrine is antagonistic to haste, and he has equally shown that Pope
was not happy in the application of his mistaken rule. The slow march
outstrips the swift Camilla, who is even left behind by the wounded
snake in the first half of the line. Had the examples been a complete
illustration of the theory, the gain would have been nothing.
Representative metre, in the strict sense of the term, though sanctioned
by eminent names, would degrade poetry. There cannot be a paltrier
poetic effect than to mimic the roll of stones, the trickling of blood,
and the dragging motion of wounded snakes.
"Mr. Walsh used to tell me," says Pope, "that there was one way left of
excelling; for though we had several great poets, we never had any one
great poet that was correct, and he desired me to make that my study and
aim."[44] Warton calls this "very important advice,"[45] and both he and
Pope seem to assume that it had been effectual. The notion has been
generally accepted. "To distinguish this triumvirate from each other,"
says Young, "Swift is a singular wit, Pope a correct poet, Addison a
great author."[46] "He is the most perfect of our poets," said Byron;
"the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach."[47]
Hazlitt took the opposite side. "Those critics who are bigoted idolisers
of our author, chiefly on the score of his correctness, seem to be of
opinion that there is but one perfect writer, even Pope. This is,
however, a mistake; his excellence is by no means faultlessness. If he
had no great faults, he is full of little errors. His grammatical
construction is often lame and imperfect. His rhymes are constantly
defective, being rhymes to the eye instead of the ear; and this to a
greater degree, not only than in later, but than in preceding, writers.
The praise of his versification must be confined to its uniform
smoothness and harmony. In the translation of the Iliad, which has been
considered as his masterpiece in style and execution, he continually
changes the tenses in the same sentence for the purposes of the rhyme,
which shows either a want of technical resources, or great inattention
to punctilious exactness."[48] De Quincey confirms Hazlitt; but, with
his profounder knowledge of the characteristics of Pope's poetry, he saw
that the incorrectness was spread wider, and went deeper. "Let us ask,"
he says, "what is meant by correctness? Correctness in developing the
thought? In connecting it, or effecting the transitions? In the use of
words? In the grammar? In the metre?" In all these points he maintains
that Pope, "by comparison with other great poets, was conspicuously
deficient."[49] For an example of incorrectness in developing the
thought De Quincey refers to the character of Addison:
Who would not laugh, if such a man there be?
Who but must weep if Atticus were he?
"Why must we laugh? Because we find a grotesque assembly of noble and
ignoble qualities. Very well; but why, then, must we weep? Because this
assemblage is found actually existing in an eminent man of genius. Well,
that is a good reason for weeping; we weep for the degradation of human
nature. But then revolves the question, Why must we laugh? Because, if
the belonging to a man of genius were a sufficient reason for weeping,
so much we know from the very first. The very first line says,
Peace to all such: but were there one whose fires
_True genius kindles_, and fair fame aspires.
Thus falls to the ground the whole antithesis of this famous character.
We are to change our mood from laughter to tears upon a sudden discovery
that the character belonged to a man of genius; and this we had already
known from the beginning. Match us this prodigious oversight in
Shakspeare."[50] Pope was still more deficient in logical correctness,
in the power of preserving consistency, and coherency between
congregated ideas. "Of all poets," says De Quincey, "that have practised
reasoning in verse he is the one most inconsequential in the deduction
of his thoughts, and the most severely distressed in any effort to
effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are not ten
consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. All his thinking
proceeded by insulated and discontinuous jets, and the only resource for
him, or chance of even seeming correctness, lay in the liberty of
stringing his aphoristic thoughts, like pearls, having no relation to
each other but that of contiguity."[51] Many of his arguments are
capable of a double construction; absolute contradictions are not
uncommon; and when we try to get a connected view of his principles we
are irritated by their discordance, indefiniteness, and obscurity. As
little will his grammar bear the test of correctness. "His syntax," says
De Quincey, "is so bad as to darken his meaning at times, and at other
times to defeat it. Preterites and participles he constantly confounds,
and registers this class of blunders for ever by the cast-iron index of
rhymes that never _can_ mend." Another defect of language was, in De
Quincey's opinion, "almost peculiar to Pope." "The language does not
realise the idea: it simply suggests or hints it. Thus, to give a single
illustration:
Know God and Nature only are the same;
In man the judgment shoots at flying game.
The first line one would naturally construe into this: that God and
Nature were in harmony, whilst all other objects were scattered into
incoherency by difference and disunion. Not at all; it means nothing of
the kind; but that God and Nature only are exempted from the infirmities
of change. This _might_ mislead many readers; but the second line _must_
do so: for who would not understand the syntax to be, that the judgment,
as it exists in man, shoots at flying game? But, in fact, the meaning
is, that the judgment in aiming its calculations at man, aims at an
object that is still on the wing, and never for a moment
stationary."[52] This, De Quincey contends, is the worst of all possible
faults in diction, since perspicuity, ungrammatical and inelegant, is
preferable to conundrums of which the solution is difficult, and often
doubtful. He says that there are endless varieties of the vice in Pope,
and that "he sought relief for himself from half an hour's labour at the
price of utter darkness to his reader." De Quincey was in error when he
imputed the imperfections to indolence. There never was a more
painstaking poet than Pope. His works were slowly elaborated, and
diligently revised. "I corrected," he says, "because it was as pleasant
to me to correct as to write,"[53] and his manuscripts attest his
untiring efforts to mend his composition. Language and not industry
failed him. Happy in a multitude of phrases, lines, couplets, and
passages, his vocabulary and turns of expression were often unequal to
the exactions of verse. Not even rhymes, dearly purchased by violations
of grammar and a false order of words, nor the imperfection of the
rhymes themselves, could always enable him to satisfy the double
requirement of metre and clearness. Most of his usual deviations from
correctness are especially prominent in the Essay on Criticism, and any
one who reads it with common attention might be tempted to think that
the claim which Warton and others set up for Pope, was an insidious
device to injure his reputation by diverting attention from his merits,
and basing his fame upon a foundation too unstable to support it. The
advice of Walsh was foolish. A poet who believed originality to be
exhausted, and who merely aspired to echo his predecessors, with no
distinguishing quality of his own beyond some additional correctness,
might have spared his pains. The correct imitator would be intolerable
by the side of the fresh and vigorous genius he copied. The assumption
that the domain of poetic thought had been traversed in every direction,
and that no untrodden paths were left for future explorers, was itself a
delusion, soon to be refuted by Pope's own Rape of the Lock. Many
immortal works have since belied the shallow doctrine of Walsh, who made
his dim perceptions the measure of intellectual possibilities. The
aspects under which the world, animate and inanimate, may be regarded by
the poet are practically endless. The latent truths of science do not
offer to the philosopher a more unbounded field of novelty.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
INTRODUCTION: That it is as great a fault to judge ill, as to write ill,
and a more dangerous one to the public, ver. 1--That a true taste is
as rare to be found as a true genius, ver. 9 to 18--That most men
are born with some taste, but spoiled by false education, ver. 19 to
25--The multitude of critics, and causes of them, ver. 26 to
45--That we are to study our own taste, and know the limits of it,
ver. 46 to 67--Nature the best guide of judgment, ver. 68 to
87--Improved by art and rules, which are but methodised nature, ver.
88--Rules derived from the practice of the ancient poets, ver. 88 to
110--That therefore the ancients are necessary to be studied by a
critic, particularly Homer and Virgil, ver. 120 to 138--Of licenses,
and the use of them by the ancients, ver. 142 to 180--Reverence due
to the ancients, and praise of them, ver. 181, &c.
PART II. VER. 201, &C.
Causes hindering a true judgment--1. Pride, ver. 208--2. Imperfect
learning, ver. 215--3. Judging by parts, and not by the whole, ver.
233 to 288--Critics in wit, language, versification, only, ver. 288,
305, 339, &c.--4. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire,
ver. 384--5. Partiality, too much love to a sect, to the ancients or
moderns, ver. 394--6. Prejudice or prevention, ver. 408--7.
Singularity, ver. 424--8. Inconstancy, ver. 430--9. Party spirit,
ver. 452, &c.--10. Envy, ver. 466--Against envy and in praise of
good nature, ver. 508, &c.--When severity is chiefly to be used by
critics, ver. 526, &c.
PART III. VER. 560, &C.
Rules for the conduct of manners in a critic--1. Candour, ver.
563--Modesty, ver. 566--Good breeding, ver. 572--Sincerity and
freedom of advice, ver. 578--2. When one's counsel is to be
restrained, ver. 584--Character of an incorrigible poet, ver.
600--And of an impertinent critic, ver. 610--Character of a good
critic, ver. 629--The history of criticism, and characters of the
best critics, Aristotle, ver. 645--Horace, ver. 653--Dionysius, ver.
665--Petronius, ver. 667--Quintilian, ver. 670--Longinus, ver.
675--Of the decay of criticism, and its revival. Erasmus, ver.
693--Vida, ver. 705--Boileau, ver. 714--Lord Roscommon, &c. ver.
725--Conclusion.
AN
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
'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, 5
Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;
A fool might once himself alone expose,
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.[54]
'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own. 10
In poets as true genius is but rare,
True taste as seldom is the critic's share;[55]
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, 15
And censure freely, who have written well.[56]
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:[57] 20
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,[58] }
So by false learning is good sense defaced:[59] } 25
Some are bewildered in the maze of schools,[60]
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools.[61]
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:[62]
Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, 30
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.[63]
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.[64]
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,[65]
There are who judge still worse than he can write. 35
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.[66]
Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle, 40
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;[67]
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,[68]
Their generation's so equivocal:[69]
To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.[70] 45
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;[71]
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, 50
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; 55
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid pow'r of understanding fails;[72]
Where beams of warm imagination play,[73]
The memory's soft figures melt away.[74]
One science only will one genius fit; 60
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:[75]
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 65
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,[76] which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright, 70
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,[77]
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,[78]
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:[79] 75
In some fair body thus th' informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,[80]
Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains;
Itself unseen, but in th' effects remains.[81]
Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse, 80
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;[82]
For wit and judgment often are at strife,[83]
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; 85
The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse,[84]
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodised;[85]
Nature, like liberty,[86] is but restrained 90
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; 95
Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize,[87]
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,[88]
She drew from them what they derived from heav'n,[89]
The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire, 100
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;[90] 105
Against the poets their own arms they turned,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned.[91]
So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors' bills[92] to play the doctor's part,
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, 110
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled[93] so much as they;
Some dryly plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made; 115
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; 120
Religion, country, genius of his age:[94]
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may,[95] but never criticise.[96]
Be Homer's works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;[97] 125
Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the muses upward to their spring.[98]
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;[99]
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind 130
A work t' outlast[100] immortal Rome designed,[101]
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. 135
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design: }
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,[102] }
As if the Stagyrite[103] o'erlooked each line.[104] }
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
To copy nature is to copy them.[105] 140
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,[106] }
And which a master hand alone can reach. } 145
If, where the rules not far enough extend,[107]
(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, 150
May boldly deviate from the common track.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,[108]
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;[109]
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,[110] 155
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,[111] }
The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.[112] } 160
But though the ancients thus their[113] rules invade,
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made,[114])
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compelled by need; 165
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.[115] 170
Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped[116] appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.[117]
A prudent chief not always must display[118] 175
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,[119]
Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream.[120] 180
Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands;[121]
Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.[122]
See, from each clime, the learn'd their incense bring; 185
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.[123]
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days;[124]
Immortal heirs of universal praise! 190
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![125]
O may some spark of your celestial fire, 195
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! 200
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,[126] 205
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:[127]
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense. 210
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; 215
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:[128]
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the muse imparts,[129]
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,[130] 220
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;[131]
But more advanced, behold with strange surprise,
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the tow'ring Alps we try,[132] 225
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, 230
Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise![133]
A perfect judge will read each work of wit[134]
With the same spirit that its author writ:[135]
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find 235
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,[136]
Correctly cold,[137] and regularly low, 240
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, 245
But the joint force and full result of all.[138]
Thus when we view some well-proportioned dome,
(The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome![139])
No single parts unequally surprise,
All comes united to th' admiring eyes; 250
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length, appear;[140]
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.[141]
In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, 255
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.[142]
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: 260
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,[143]
For not to know some trifles is a praise.[144]
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize, 265
And all to one loved folly sacrifice.
Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say,[145]
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;[146] 270
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, 275
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. 280
"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."[147]
Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 285
Curious not knowing,[148] not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts,
As most in manners, by a love to parts.[149]
Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; 290
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, 295
And hide with ornaments their want of art.[150]
True wit is nature[151] to advantage dressed;
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed;[152]
Something, whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind. 300
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,[153]
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;[154]
For works may have more wit than does 'em good,[155]
As bodies perish through excess of blood.
Others for language all their care express, 305
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still,--the style is excellent;
The sense, they humbly take upon content.[156]
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found: 310
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, } 315
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon, }
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.[157] }
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent,[158] as more suitable:[159]
A vile conceit in pompous words expressed 320
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,[160]
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; 325
Such laboured nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,[161] }
These sparks with awkward vanity display }
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday; } 330
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,[162] 335
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:[163]
In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; 340
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.[164] }
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire;[165] 345
While expletives their feeble aid do join;[166]
And ten low words[167] oft creep in one dull line:[168]
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes;[169]
Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze," 350
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:"[170]
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 355
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.[171]
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes,[172] and know
What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise[173] the easy vigour of a line, 360
Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join.[174]
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,[175]
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.[176] 365
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,[177]
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,[178]
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,[179] 370
The line too labours, and the words move slow:[180]
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn,[181] and skims along the main.[182]
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,[183]
And bid alternate passions fall and rise![184] 375
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:[185]
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, 380
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.[186]
Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleased too little or too much. 385
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; 390
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:[187]
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.
Some foreign writers,[188] some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 395
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.[189]
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine,
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, 400
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which, from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights[190] the present, and shall warm the last;
Though each may feel increases and decays,[191]
And see now clearer and now darker days: 405
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,[192]
But catch the spreading notion of the town:
They reason and conclude by precedent, 410
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,[193] 415
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![194]
But let a lord once own the happy lines, 420
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; 425
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
So schismatics the plain believers quit,[196]
And are but damned for having too much wit.
Some praise at morning what they blame at night; 430
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.[197] 435
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; 440
Who knew most Sentences,[198] was deepest read;
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists,[199] now, in peace remain,
Amidst their kindred cobwebs[200] in Duck-lane.[201] 445
If faith itself has diff'rent dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?[202]
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe, 450
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. 455
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.[203]
Pride, malice, folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of parsons, critics, beaus;[204]
But sense survived when merry jests were past; 460
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,[205]
New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise:[206]
Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus[207] again would start up from the dead. 465
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, 470
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.[208]
Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. 475
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, 480
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;[209]
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, 485
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, 490
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treach'rous colours the fair art betray,[210]
And all the bright creation fades away!
Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,[211]
Atones not for that envy which it brings. 495
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,[212]
But soon the short-lived vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies,[213]
That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ?[214] 500
The owner's wife,[215] that other men enjoy;
Then most our trouble still when most admired,
And still the more we give, the more required;[216]
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,[217]
Sure some to vex, but never all to please; 505
'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![218]
Of old, those met rewards who could excel, 510
And such were praised who but endeavour'd well:[219]
Though, triumphs were to gen'rals only due,
Crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.
Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown,[220]
Employ their pains to spurn some others down; 515
And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:[221]
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.[222]
To what base ends, and by what abject ways, 520
Are mortals urged through sacred lust of praise![223]
Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast,[224]
Nor in the critic let the man be lost.
Good-nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human, to forgive, divine. 525
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,[225] 530
Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;[226]
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,[227] and thrived with large increase: 535
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,[228] and young lords had wit;[229]
The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, 540
And not a mask[230] went unimproved away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,[231]
And virgins smiled at what they blushed before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;[232] 545
Then unbelieving priests reformed the nation,[233]
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;[234]
Where heaven's free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, 550
And vice admired to find a flatt'rer there![235]
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! 555
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.[236]
III.
Learn then what morals critics ought to show, 560
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. 565
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence:[237]
Some positive, persisting fops we know,
Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so;
But you with pleasure own your errors past, 570
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. 575
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, 580
Nor be so civil as to prove unjust.[238]
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[239] at each word you speak, 585
And stares, tremendous, with a threat'ning eye,
Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.[240]
Fear most to tax an Honourable fool,
Whose right it is, uncensured, to be dull;
Such, without wit, are poets when they please, 590
As without learning they can take degrees.[241]
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. 595
'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain,
And charitably let the dull be vain:[242]
Your silence there is better than your spite,
For who can rail so long as they can write?[243]
Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, 600
And lashed so long, like tops, are lashed asleep.[244]
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, 605
Still run on poets in a raging vein,
Ev'n to the dregs and squeezing of the brain,
Strain out the last dull droppings[245] of their sense,
And rhyme with all the rage of impotence.
Such shameless bards we have; and yet, 'tis true, 610
There are as mad, abandoned critics too.
The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read,
With loads of learned lumber in his head,[246]
With his own tongue still edifies his ears,
And always list'ning to himself appears. 615
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.[247]
Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, 620
Nay, showed his faults--but when would poets mend?
No place so sacred from such fops is barred,[248]
Nor is Paul's church[249] more safe than Paul's churchyard:[250]
Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead;
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.[251] 625
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks, }
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;[252] }
But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks, }
And never shocked, and never turned aside,
Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide. 630
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[253] severe; 636
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; 640
Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride;
And love to praise,[254] with reason on his side?
Such once were critics; such the happy few,
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.[255]
The mighty Stagyrite first left the shore, 645
Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore;[256]
He steered securely, and discovered far,[257]
Led by the light of the Mæonian star.[258]
Poets, a race long unconfined, and free,
Still fond and proud of savage liberty, 650
Received his laws;[259] and stood convinced 'twas fit,
Who conquered nature, should preside o'er wit.[260]
Horace still charms with graceful negligence,[261]
And without method talks us into sense;
Will, like a friend, familiarly convey 655
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,[262] though he sung with fire;
His precepts teach but what his works inspire. 660
Our critics take a contrary extreme,
They judge with fury, but they write with phlegm:[263]
Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations
By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.[264]
See Dionysius[265] Homer's thoughts refine, 665
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.[266]
In grave Quintilian's[267] copious work, we find
The justest rules, and clearest method joined: 670
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.[268]
Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,[269] 675
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.[270] 680
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[271] their doom, 685
And the same age saw learning fall and Rome.[272]
With tyranny, then superstition joined,
As that the body, this enslaved the mind;[273]
Much was believed, but little understood,[274]
And to be dull was construed to be good;[275] 690
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monks finished what the Goths begun.[276]
At length Erasmus, that great injured name,
(The glory of the priesthood and the shame!)[277]
Stemmed the wild torrent of a barb'rous age,[278] 695
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,[279]
Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head. 700
Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive;
Stones leaped to form, and rocks began to live;[280]
With sweeter notes each rising temple rung;[281]
A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.[282]
Immortal Vida: on whose honoured brow 705
The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow:[283]
Cremona now shall ever boast thy name,
As next in place to Mantua, next in fame![284]
But soon by impious arms from Latium chased,
Their ancient bounds the banished Muses passed.[285] 710
Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance,
But critic-learning flourished most in France;
The rules a nation, born to serve,[286] obeys;
And Boileau still in right of Horace sways.[287]
But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despised, 715
And kept unconquered, and uncivilized;
Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold,
We still defied the Romans, as of old.[288]
Yet some there were, among the sounder few
Of those who less presumed, and better knew, 720
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."[289]
Such was Roscommon, not more learn'd than good,[290] 725
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.[291]
Such late was Walsh,[292] the muse's judge and friend,
Who justly knew to blame or to commend: 730
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, 735
Prescribed her heights, and pruned her tender wing,
(Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise,
But in low numbers short excursions tries;[293]
Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view,
The learn'd reflect on what before they knew: 740
Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame;
Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame;[294]
Averse alike to flatter, or offend;
Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.[295]
APPENDIX.
Dr. Warburton, endeavouring to demonstrate, what Addison could not
discover, nor what Pope himself, according to the testimony of his
intimate friend, Richardson, ever thought of or intended, that this
Essay was written with a methodical and systematical regularity, has
accompanied the whole with a long and laboured commentary, in which he
has tortured many passages to support this groundless opinion. Warburton
had certainly wit, genius, and much miscellaneous learning; but was
perpetually dazzled and misled, by the eager desire of seeing everything
in a new light unobserved before, into perverse interpretations and
forced comments. It is painful to see such abilities wasted on such
unsubstantial objects. Accordingly his notes on Shakspeare have been
totally demolished by Edwards and Malone; and Gibbon has torn up by the
roots his fanciful and visionary interpretation of the sixth book of
Virgil. And but few readers, I believe, will be found that will
cordially subscribe to an opinion lately delivered,[296] that his notes
on Pope's Works are the very best ever given on any classic whatever.
For, to instance no other, surely the attempt to reconcile the doctrines
of the Essay on Man to the doctrines of revelation, is the rashest
adventure in which ever critic yet engaged. This is, in truth, to
divine, rather than to explain an author's meaning.--WARTON.
If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as
Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved
of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of
admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To
assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult
not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the
commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to
replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his
own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had
already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on
the subject. For these reasons I have thought it advisable, in this
edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only
been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious,
if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate
the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of
his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.--ROSCOE.
Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not
complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no
obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts,
was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to
ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The
second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression
that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the
sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's
Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make
him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if
Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly
inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges
that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his
meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another,
and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own
meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views
which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in
consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when
he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should
be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not
warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account
the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity,
though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren.
THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF
W. WARBURTON
ON THE
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
COMMENTARY.
_An Essay._] The poem is in one book, but divided into three principal
parts or members. The first, to ver. 201, gives rules for the study of
the art of criticism: the second, from thence to ver. 560, exposes the
causes of wrong judgment: and the third, from thence to the end, marks
out the morals of the critic.
In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be necessary to
observe, that though it be entitled simply An Essay on Criticism, yet
several of the precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to
the true judging of a poem. This is so far from violating the unity of
the subject, that it preserves and completes it: or from disordering the
regularity of the form, that it adds beauty to it, as will appear by the
following considerations: 1. It was impossible to give a full and exact
idea of the art of poetical criticism, without considering at the same
time the art of poetry; so far as poetry is an art. These therefore
being closely connected in nature, the author has, with much judgment,
interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally through his whole poem. 2.
As the rules of the ancient critics were taken from poets who copied
nature, this is another reason why every poet should be a critic:
therefore as the subject is poetical criticism, it is frequently
addressed to the critical poet. And 3dly, the art of criticism is as
properly, and much more usefully exercised in writing than in judging.
But readers have been misled by the modesty of the title, which only
promises an art of criticism, to expect little, where they will find a
great deal,--a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the art both of
criticism and poetry. This, and the not attending to the considerations
offered above, was what, perhaps misled a very candid writer, after
having given the Essay on Criticism all the praises on the side of
genius and poetry which his true taste could not refuse it, to say, that
"the observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of
Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been
requisite in a prose writer." Spect. No. 235. I do not see how method
can hurt any one grace of poetry: or what prerogative there is in verse
to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every part of it.
Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism, the reader will soon see, is a regular
piece, and a very learned critic has lately shown that Horace had the
same attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. Hurd's Comment on
the Epistle to the Pisos.[297]
Ver. 1. _'Tis hard to say, &c._] The poem opens, from ver. 1 to 9, with
showing the use and seasonableness of the subject. Its use, from the
greater mischief in wrong criticism than in ill poetry--this only
tiring, that misleading the reader. Its seasonableness, from the growing
number of bad critics, which now vastly exceeds that of bad poets.
Ver. 9. _'Tis with our judgments, &c._] The author having shown us the
expediency of his subject, the art of criticism, inquires next, from
ver. 8 to 15, into the proper qualities of a true critic, and observes
first, that judgment alone is not sufficient to constitute this
character, because judgment, like the artificial measures of time, goes
different, and yet each man relies upon his own. The reasoning is
conclusive, and the similitude extremely just. For judgment, when it is
alone, is generally regulated, or at least much influenced, by custom,
fashion, and habit; and never certain and constant but when founded upon
and accompanied by taste, which is in the critic, what in the poet we
call genius. Both are derived from heaven, and like the sun, the natural
measure of time, always constant and equable.
Judgment alone, it is allowed, will not make a poet; where is the wonder
then, that it will not make a critic in poetry? For on examination we
shall find, that genius and taste are but one and the same faculty,
differently exerting itself under different names, in the two
professions of poetry and criticism. The art of poetry consists in
selecting, out of all those images which present themselves to the
fancy, such of them as are truly beautiful; and the art of criticism in
discerning, and fully relishing what it finds so selected. The main
difference is, that in the poet, this faculty is eminently joined to a
bright imagination, and extensive comprehension, which provide stores
for the selection, and can form that selection, by proportioned parts,
into a regular whole: in the critic, it is joined to a solid judgment
and accurate discernment, which can penetrate into the causes of an
excellence, and display that excellence in all its variety of lights.
Longinus had taste in an eminent degree; therefore, this quality, which
all true critics have in common, our author makes his distinguishing
character:
Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
_i. e._ with taste, or genius.
Ver. 15. _Let such teach others, &c._] But it is not enough that the
critic hath these natural endowments of judgment and taste, to entitle
him to exercise his art; he should, as our author shows us, from ver. 14
to 19, in order to give a further test of his qualification, have put
them successfully into use. And this on two accounts: 1. Because the
office of a critic is an exercise of authority. 2. Because he being
naturally as partial to his judgment as the poet is to his wit, his
partiality would have nothing to correct it, as that of the person
judged hath by the very terms. Therefore some test is necessary; and the
best and most unexceptionable, is his having written well himself--an
approved remedy against critical partiality, and the surest means of so
maturing the judgment as to reap with glory what Longinus calls "the
last and most perfect fruits of much study and experience." Η γαρ των
λογων κρισις πολλης εστι πειρας τελευταιον επιγεννημα.
Ver. 19. _Yet, if we look, &c._] But the author having been thus free
with the fundamental quality of criticism, judgment, so as to charge it
with inconstancy and partiality, and to be often warped by custom and
affection, that he may not be misunderstood, he next explains, from ver.
18 to 36, the nature of judgment, and the accidents occasioning those
miscarriages before objected to it. He owns, that the seeds of judgment
are indeed sown in the minds of most men, but by ill culture, as it
springs up, it generally runs wild, either on the one hand, by false
learning, which pedants call philology, and by false reasoning, which
philosophers call school-learning, or, on the other, by false wit, which
is not regulated by sense, and by false politeness, which is solely
regulated by the fashion. Both these sorts, who have their judgment thus
doubly depraved, the poet observes, are naturally turned to censure and
abuse, only with this difference, that the learned dunce always affects
to be on the reasoning, and the unlearned fool on the laughing side. And
thus, at the same time, our author proves the truth of his introductory
observation, that the number of bad critics is vastly superior to that
of bad poets.
Ver. 36. _Some have at first for wits, &c._] The poet having enumerated,
in this account of the nature of judgment and its various depravations,
the several sorts of bad critics, and ranked them into two general
classes, as the first sort,--namely, the men spoiled by false
learning--are but few in comparison of the other, and likewise come less
within his main view (which is poetical criticism) but keep grovelling
at the bottom amongst words and syllables, he thought it enough for his
purpose here, just to have mentioned them, proposing to do them right
hereafter. But the men spoiled by false taste are innumerable, and these
are his proper concern. He therefore, from ver. 35 to 46, subdivides
them again into the two classes of the volatile and heavy. He describes,
in few words, the quick progression of the one through criticism, from
false wit to plain folly, where they end; and the fixed station of the
other, between the confines of both; who under the name of witlings,
have neither end nor measure. A kind of half-formed creature from the
equivocal generation of vivacity and dulness, like those on the banks of
Nile, from heat and mud.
Ver. 46. _But you who seek, &c._] Our author having thus far, by way of
introduction, explained the nature, use, and abuse of criticism, in a
figurative description of the qualities and characters of critics,
proceeds now to deliver the precepts of the art. The first of which,
from ver. 45 to 68, is, that he who sets up for a critic should
previously examine his own strength, and see how far he is qualified for
the exercise of his profession. He puts him in a way to make this
discovery, in that admirable direction given ver. 51.
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
He had shown above, that judgment, without taste or genius, is equally
incapable of making a critic or a poet. In whatsoever subject then the
critic's taste no longer accompanies his judgment, there he may be
assured he is going out of his depth. This our author finely calls,
that point where sense and dulness meet.
and immediately adds the reason of his precept, the author of nature
having so constituted the mental faculties, that one of them can never
greatly excel, but at the expense of another. From this state of
co-ordination in the mental faculties, and the influence and effects
they have upon one another, the poet draws this consequence, that no one
genius can excel in more than one art or science. The consequence shows
the necessity of the precept, just as the premises, from which the
consequence is drawn, show the reasonableness of it.
Ver. 68. _First follow nature, &c._] The critic observing the directions
before given, and now finding himself qualified for his office, is shown
next how to exercise it. And as he was to attend to nature for a call,
so he is first and principally to follow nature when called. And here
again in this, as in the foregoing precept, our poet, from ver. 67 to
88, shows both the fitness and necessity of it. I. Its fitness. 1.
Because nature is the source of poetic art, this art being only a
representation of nature, who is its great exemplar and original. 2.
Because nature is the end of art, the design of poetry being to convey
the knowledge of nature in the most agreeable manner. 3. Because nature
is the test of art, as she is unerring, constant, and still the same.
Hence the poet observes, that as nature is the source, she conveys life
to art; as she is the end, she conveys force to it, for the force of any
thing arises from its being directed to its end; and as she is the test,
she conveys beauty to it, for everything acquires beauty by its being
reduced to its true standard. Such is the sense of these two important
lines,
Life, force, and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
II. The necessity of the precept is seen from hence. The two constituent
qualities of a composition, as such, are art and wit; but neither of
these attains perfection, till the first be hid, and the other
judiciously restrained. This only happens when nature is exactly
followed; for then art never makes a parade; nor can wit commit an
extravagance. Art, while it adheres to nature, and has so large a fund
in the resources which nature supplies, disposes every thing with so
much ease and simplicity, that we see nothing but those natural images
it works with, while itself stands unobserved behind; but when art
leaves nature, misled either by the bold sallies of fancy, or the quaint
oddness of fashion, she is then obliged at every step to come forward,
in a painful or pompous ostentation, in order to cover, to soften, or to
regulate the shocking disproportion of unnatural images. In the first
case, our poet compares art to the soul within, informing a beauteous
body; but in the last, we are bid to consider it but as a mere outward
garb, fitted only to hide the defects of a misshapen one. As to wit, it
might perhaps be imagined that this needed only judgment to govern it;
but, as he well observes,
wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
They want therefore some friendly mediator; and this mediator is nature:
and in attending to nature, judgment will learn where he should comply
with the charms of wit; and wit how she ought to obey the sage
directions of judgment.
Ver. 88. _Those rules of old, &c._] Having thus, in his first precept,
to follow nature, settled criticism on its true foundation; he proceeds
to show, what assistance may be had from art. But lest this should be
thought to draw the critic from the ground where our poet had before
fixed him, he previously observes, from ver. 87 to 92, that these rules
of art, which he is now about to recommend to the critic's observance,
were not invented by abstract speculation; but discovered in the book of
nature; and that therefore, though they may seem to restrain nature by
laws, yet as they are laws of her own making, the critic is still
properly in the very liberty of nature. These rules the ancient critics
borrowed from the poets, who received them immediately from nature.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n,
These drew from them what they derived from heav'n,
so that both are to be well studied.
Ver. 92. _Hear how learn'd Greece, &c._] He speaks of the ancient
critics first, and with great judgment, as the previous knowledge of
them is necessary for reading the poets, with that fruit which the end
here proposed requires. But having, in the foregoing observation,
sufficiently explained the nature of ancient criticism, he enters on the
subject treated of from ver. 91 to 118, with a sublime description of
its end; which was to illustrate the beauties of the best writers, in
order to excite others to an emulation of their excellence. From the
raptures which these ideas inspire, the poet is brought back, by the
follies of modern criticism, now before his eyes, to reflect on its base
degeneracy. And as the restoring the art to its original purity and
splendour is the great purpose of this poem, he first takes notice of
those, who seem not to understand that nature is exhaustless; that new
models of good writing may be produced in every age; and consequently,
that new rules may be formed from these models, in the same manner as
the old critics formed theirs, which was, from the writings of the
ancient poets: but men wanting art and ability to form these new rules,
were content to receive and file up for use, the old ones of Aristotle,
Quintilian, Longinus, Horace, &c. with the same vanity and boldness that
apothecaries practise, with their doctors' bills: and then rashly
applying them to new originals (cases which they did not hit) it was no
more in their power, than in their inclination, to imitate the candid
practice of the ancients when
The gen'rous critic fanned the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
For, as ignorance, when joined with humility, produces stupid
admiration, on which account it is commonly observed to be the mother of
devotion and blind homage, so when joined with vanity (as it always is
in bad critics) it gives birth to every iniquity of impudent abuse and
slander. See an example (for want of a better) in a late ridiculous and
now forgotten thing, called the Life of Socrates;[298] where the head of
the author (as a man of wit observed) has just made a shift to do the
office of a _camera obscura_, and represent things in an inverted order,
himself above, and Sprat, Rollin, Voltaire, and every other writer of
reputation, below.
Ver. 118. _You then whose judgment, &c._] He comes next to the ancient
poets, the other and more intimate commentators of nature, and shows,
from ver. 117 to 141, that the study of these must indispensably follow
that of the ancient critics, as they furnish us with what the critics,
who only give us general rules, cannot supply, while the study of a
great original poet, in
His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page:
Religion, country, genius of his age;
will help us to those particular rules which only can conduct us safely
through every considerable work we undertake to examine; and without
which, we may cavil indeed, as the poet truly observes, but can never
criticise. We might as well suppose that Vitruvius's book alone would
make a perfect judge of architecture, without the knowledge of some
great master-piece of science, such as the rotunda at Rome, or the
temple of Minerva at Athens, as that Aristotle's should make a perfect
judge of wit, without the study of Homer and Virgil. These therefore he
principally recommends to complete the critic in his art. But as the
latter of these poets has, by superficial judges, been considered rather
as a copier of Homer, than an original from nature, our author obviates
that common error, and shows it to have arisen (as often error does)
from a truth, _viz._, that Homer and nature were the same; that the
ambitious young poet, though he scorned to stoop at anything short of
nature, when he came to understand this great truth, had the prudence to
contemplate nature in the place where she was seen to most advantage,
collected in all her charms in the clear mirror of Homer. Hence it would
follow, that though Virgil studied nature, yet the vulgar reader would
believe him to be a copier of Homer; and though he copied Homer, yet the
judicious reader would see him to be an imitator of nature, the finest
praise which any one, who came after Homer, could receive.
Ver. 141. _Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, &c._] Our author,
in these two general directions for studying nature and her
commentators, having considered poetry as it is, or may be reduced to
rule, lest this should be mistaken as sufficient to attain perfection
either in writing or judging, he proceeds from ver. 140 to 201, to point
up to those sublimer beauties which rules will never reach, nor enable
us either to execute or taste,--beauties, which rise so high above all
precept as not even to be described by it; but being entirely the gift
of heaven, art and reason have no further share in them than just to
regulate their operations. These sublimities of poetry (like the
mysteries of religion, some of which are above reason, and some contrary
to it) may be divided into two sorts, such as are above rules, and such
as are contrary to them.
Ver. 146. _If, where the rules, &c._] The first sort our author
describes from ver. 145 to 152, and shows that where a great beauty is
in the poet's view, which no stated rules will authorise him how to
reach, there, as the purpose of rules is only to attain an end like
this, a lucky licence will supply the place of them: nor can the critic
fairly object, since this licence, for the reason given above, has the
proper force and authority of a rule.
Ver. 152. _Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, &c._] He
describes next the second sort, the beauties against rule. And even
here, as he observes, from ver. 151 to 161, the offence is so glorious,
and the fault so sublime, that the true critic will not dare either to
censure or reform them. Yet still the poet is never to abandon himself
to his imagination. The rules laid down for his conduct in this respect
are these: 1. That though he transgress the letter of some one
particular precept, yet that he be still careful to adhere to the end or
spirit of them all, which end is the creation of one uniform perfect
whole. And 2. That he have, in each instance, the authority of the
dispensing power of the ancients to plead for him. These rules observed,
this licence will be seldom used, and only when he is compelled by need,
which will disarm the critic, and screen the offender from his laws.
Ver. 169. _I know there are, &c._] But as some modern critics have
pretended to say, that this last reason is only justifying one fault by
another, our author goes on, from ver. 168 to 181, to vindicate the
ancients; and to show that this presumptuous thought, as he calls it,
proceeds from mere ignorance,--as where their partiality will not let
them see that this licence is sometimes necessary for the symmetry and
proportion of a perfect whole, in the light, and from the point, wherein
it must be viewed; or where their haste will not give them time to
observe, that a deviation from rule is for the sake of attaining some
great and admirable purpose. These observations are further useful, as
they tend to give modern critics an humbler opinion of their own
abilities, and a higher of the authors they undertake to criticise. On
which account he concludes with a fine reproof of their use of that
common proverb perpetually in the mouths of the critics, "quandoque
bonus dormitat Homerus;" misunderstanding the sense of Horace, and
taking quandoque for aliquando:
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Ver. 181. _Still green with bays, &c._] But now fired with the name of
Homer, and transported with the contemplation of those beauties which a
cold critic can neither see nor conceive, the poet, from ver. 180 to
201, breaks out into a rapturous salutation of the rare felicity of
those few ancients who have risen superior over time and accidents; and
disdaining, as it were, any longer to reason with his critics, offers
this as the surest confutation of their censures. Then with the humility
of a suppliant at the shrine of immortals, and the sublimity of a poet
participating of their fire, he turns again to these ancient worthies,
and apostrophises their Manes:
Hail, bards triumphant! &c.
Ver. 200. _T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!_] This line
concludes the first division of the poem; in which we see the subject of
the first and second part, and likewise the connexion they have with one
another. It serves likewise to introduce the second. The effect of
studying the ancients, as here recommended, would be the admiration of
their superior sense, which, if it will not of itself dispose moderns to
a diffidence of their own (one of the great uses, as well as natural
fruits of that study), our author, to help forward their modesty, in his
second part shows them (in a regular deduction of the causes and
effects of wrong judgment) their own bright image and amiable turn of
mind.
Ver. 201. _Of all the causes, &c._] Having, in the first part, delivered
rules for perfecting the art of criticism, the second is employed in
explaining the impediments to it. The order of the two parts was well
adjusted. For the causes of wrong judgment being pride, superficial
learning, a bounded capacity, and partiality, they to whom this part is
principally addressed, would not readily be brought either to see the
malignity of the causes, or to own themselves concerned in the effects,
had not the author previously both enlightened and convinced them, by
the foregoing observations, on the vastness of art, and narrowness of
wit; the extensive study of human nature and antiquity; and the
characters of ancient poetry and criticism; the natural remedies to the
four epidemic disorders he is now endeavouring to redress.
Ver. 201. _Of all the causes, &c._] The first cause of wrong judgment is
pride. He judiciously begins with this, from ver. 200 to 215, as on
other accounts, so on this, that it is the very thing which gives modern
criticism its character, whose complexion is abuse and censure. He calls
it the vice of fools, by which term is not meant those to whom nature
has given no judgment (for he is here speaking of what misleads the
judgment), but those to whom learning and study have given more
erudition than taste, as appears from the happy similitude of an
ill-nourished body, where the same words which express the cause,
express likewise the nature of pride:
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find,
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind.
It is the business of reason, he tells us, to dispel the cloud in which
pride involves the mind: but the mischief is, that the rays of reason,
diverted by self-love, sometime gild this cloud, instead of dispelling
it. So that the judgment, by false lights reflected back upon itself, is
still apt to be a little dazzled, and to mistake its object. He
therefore advises to call in still more helps:
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of ev'ry friend and ev'ry foe.
Both the beginning and conclusion of this precept are remarkable. The
question is of the means to subdue pride. He directs the critic to begin
with a distrust of himself; and this is modesty, the first mortification
of pride: and then to seek the assistance of others, and make use even
of an enemy; and this is humility, the last mortification of pride: for
when a man can once bring himself to submit to profit by an enemy, he
has either already subdued his vanity, or is in a fair way of so doing.
Ver. 215. _A little learning, &c._] We must here remark the poet's skill
in his disposition of the causes obstructing true judgment. Each general
cause which is laid down first, has its own particular cause in that
which follows. Thus, the second cause of wrong judgment, superficial
learning, is what occasions that critical pride, which he places first.
Ver. 216. _Drink deep, &c._] Nature and learning are the pole-stars of
all true criticism: but pride obstructs the view of nature; and a
smattering of letters makes us insensible of our ignorance. To avoid
this ridiculous situation, the poet, from ver. 214 to 233, advises,
either to drink deep, or not to drink at all; for the least sip at this
fountain is enough to make a bad critic, while even a moderate draught
can never make a good one. And yet the labours and difficulties of
drinking deep are so great, that a young author, "fired with ideas of
fair Italy," and ambitious to snatch a palm from Rome, here engages in
an undertaking like that of Hannibal: finely illustrated by the
similitude of an inexperienced traveller penetrating through the Alps.
Ver. 233. _A perfect judge, &c._] The third cause of wrong judgment is a
narrow capacity; the natural cause of the foregoing defect, acquiescence
in superficial learning. This bounded capacity our author shows, from
ver. 232 to 384, betrays itself two ways: in its judgment both of the
matter, and the manner of the work criticised. Of the matter, in judging
by parts, or in having one favourite part to a neglect of all the rest.
Of the manner, in confining men's regard only to conceit, or language,
or numbers. This is our poet's order, and we shall follow him as it
leads us, only just observing one general beauty which runs through this
part of the poem; it is,--that under each of these heads of wrong
judgment, he has intermixed excellent precepts for the right. We shall
take notice of them as they occur.
He exposes the folly of judging by parts very artfully, not by a direct
description of that sort of critic, but of his opposite, a perfect
judge, &c. Nor is the elegance of this conversion less than the art; for
as, in poetical _style_, one word or figure is still put for another, in
order to catch new lights from distant images, and reflect them back
upon the subject in hand, so in poetical _matter_ one person or
description may be commodiously employed for another, with the same
advantage of representation. It is observable that our author makes it
almost the necessary consequence of judging by parts, to find fault: and
this not without much discernment: for the several parts of a complete
whole, when seen only singly, and known only independently, must always
have the appearance of irregularity,--often of deformity; because the
poet's design being to create a resultive beauty from the artful
assemblage of several various parts into one natural whole, those parts
must be fashioned with regard to their mutual relations in the stations
they occupy in that whole, from whence the beauty required is to arise;
but that regard will occasion so unreducible a form in each part, when
considered singly, as to present a very mis-shapen form.
Ver. 253. _Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see_,] He shows next,
from ver. 252 to 263, that to fix our censure on single parts, though
they happen to want an exactness consistent enough with their relation
to the rest, is even then very unjust: and for these reasons:--1.
Because it implies an expectation of a faultless piece, which is a vain
fancy. 2. Because no more is to be expected of any work than that it
fairly attains its end. But the end may be attained, and yet these
trivial faults committed: therefore, in spite of such faults, the work
will merit that praise that is due to everything which attains its end.
3. Because sometimes a great beauty is not to be procured, nor a
notorious blemish to be avoided, but by suffering one of these minute
and trivial errors. 4. And lastly, because the general neglect of them
is a praise, as it is the indication of a genius, attentive to greater
matters.
Ver 263. _Most critics, fond of some subservient art, &c._] II. The
second way in which a narrow capacity, as it relates to the matter,
shows itself, is judging by a favourite part. The author has placed
this, from ver. 262 to 285, after the other of judging by parts, with
great propriety, it being indeed a natural consequence of it. For when
men have once left the whole to turn their attention to the separate
parts, that regard and reverence due only to a whole is fondly
transferred to one or other of its parts. And thus we see, that heroes
themselves, as well as hero-makers, even kings, as well as poets and
critics, when they chance never to have had, or long to have lost the
idea of that which is the only legitimate object of their office, the
care and conservation of the whole, are wont to devote themselves to the
service of some favourite part, whether it be love of money, military
glory, despotic power, &c. And all, as our author says on this occasion,
to one loved folly sacrifice.
This general misconduct much recommends that maxim in good poetry and
politics, to give a principal attention to the whole,--a maxim which our
author has elsewhere shown to be equally true likewise in morals and
religion, as being founded in the order of things; for if we examine we
shall find the misconduct here complained of to arise from this
imbecility of our nature, that the mind must always have something to
rest upon, to which the passions and affections may be interestingly
directed. Nature prompts us to seek it in the most worthy objects; and
reason points us to a whole, or system: but the false lights which the
passions hold out confound and dazzle us: we stop short; and, before we
get to a whole, take up with some part, which thenceforth becomes our
favourite.
Ver. 285. _Thus critics of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas, &c._]
2. He concludes his observations on those two sorts of judges by parts,
with this general reflection:--The curious not knowing are the first
sort, who judge by parts, and with a microscopic sight (as he says
elsewhere) examine bit by bit. The not exact but nice, are the second,
who judge by a favourite part, and talk of a whole to cover their
fondness for a part, as philosophers do of principles, in order to
obtrude notions and opinions in their stead. But the fate common to both
is, to be governed by caprice and not by judgment, and consequently to
form short ideas, or to have ideas short of truth; though the latter
sort, through a fondness to their favourite part, imagine that it
comprehends the whole in epitome, as the famous hero of La Mancha,
mentioned just before, used to maintain, that knight errantry comprised
within itself the quintessence of all science, civil, military, and
religious.
Ver. 289. _Some to conceit alone, &c._] We come now to that second sort
of bounded capacity, which betrays itself in its judgment on the manner
of the work criticised. And this our author prosecutes from ver. 288 to
384. These are again subdivided into divers classes.
Ver. 289. _Some to conceit alone, &c._] The first, from ver. 288 to 305,
are those who confine their attention solely to conceit or wit. And here
again the critic by parts, offends doubly in the manner, just as he did
in the matter; for he not only confines his attention to a part, when it
should be extended to the whole, but he likewise judges falsely of that
part. And this, as the other, is unavoidable, the parts in the manner
bearing the same close relation to the whole, that the parts in the
matter do; to which whole, the ideas of this critic have never yet
extended. Hence it is, that our author, speaking here of those who
confine their attention solely to conceit or wit, describes the distinct
species of true and false wit, because they not only mistake a wrong
disposition of true wit for a right, but likewise false wit for true. He
describes false wit first, from ver. 288 to 297,
Some to conceit alone, &c.,
where the reader may observe our author's address in representing, in a
description of false wit, the false disposition of the true; as the
critic by parts is apt to fall into both these errors.
He next describes true wit, from ver. 296 to 305,
True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c.
And here again the reader may observe the same beauty; not only an
explanation of true wit, but likewise of the right disposition of it,
which the poet illustrates, as he did the wrong, by ideas taken from the
art of painting, in the theory of which he was exquisitely skilled.
Ver. 305. _Others for language, &c._] He proceeds secondly to those
contracted critics, whose whole concern turns upon language, and shows,
from ver. 304 to 337, that this quality, where it holds the principal
place in a work, deserves no commendation:--1. Because it excludes
qualities more essential. And when the abounding verbiage has choked and
suffocated the sense, the writer will be obliged to varnish over the
mischief with all the false colouring of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because
the critic who busies himself with this quality alone, is unable to make
a right judgment of it; because true expression is only the dress of
thought, and so must be perpetually varied according to the subject, and
manner of treating it. But those who never concern themselves with the
sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the
language.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c.
Now as these critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole
judgment in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination
of single words; and generally those which are most to his taste, are
(for an obvious reason) such as smack most of antiquity, on which
account our author has bestowed a little raillery upon it; concluding
with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, so far as
regards their novelty and ancientry.
Ver. 337. _But most by numbers judge, &c._] The last sort are those,
from ver. 336 to 384, whose ears are attached only to the harmony of a
poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other
sort did of the eloquence, and for the same reason. Our author first
describes that false harmony with which they are so much captivated; and
shows that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: for
Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong.
He then describes the true: 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a
happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the
roughness and flatness of false harmony: and 2. As it is varied in
compliance to the subject, where the sound becomes an echo to the sense,
so far as is consistent with the preservation of numbers, in
contradiction to the monotony of false harmony. Of this he gives us, in
the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of smoothness,
roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this correspondence
of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter
and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is
to calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and
warm the beneficent, which he illustrates in the famous adventure of
Timotheus and Alexander, where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that
subject, he turns it to a high compliment on his favourite poet.
Ver. 384. _Avoid extremes, &c._] Our author is now come to the last
cause of wrong judgment, partiality,--the parent of the immediately
preceding cause, a bounded capacity, nothing so much narrowing and
contracting the mind as prejudices entertained for or against things or
persons. This, therefore, as the main root of all the foregoing, he
prosecutes at large, from ver. 383 to 474. First, to ver. 394, he
previously exposes that capricious turn of mind, which, by running into
extremes, either of praise or dispraise, lays the foundation of an
habitual partiality. He cautions, therefore, both against one and the
other; and with reason; for excess of praise is the mark of a bad taste;
and excess of censure, of a bad digestion.
Ver. 394. _Some foreign writers, &c._] Having explained the disposition
of mind which produces an habitual partiality, he proceeds to expose
this partiality in all the shapes in which it appears both amongst the
unlearned and the learned.
I. In the unlearned it is seen, first, in an unreasonable fondness for,
or aversion to, our own or foreign, to ancient or modern writers. And as
it is the mob of unlearned readers he is here speaking of, he exposes
their folly in a very apposite similitude:
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damned beside.
But he shows, from ver. 396 to 408, that these critics have as wrong
notions of reason as those bigots have of God; for that genius is not
confined to times or climates; but, as the common gift of nature, is
extended throughout all ages and countries; that indeed this
intellectual light, like the material light of the sun, may not shine at
all times, and in every place with equal splendour, but be sometimes
clouded with popular ignorance, and sometimes again eclipsed by the
discountenance of the great; yet it shall still recover itself, and, by
breaking through the strongest of these impediments, manifest the
eternity of its nature.
Ver. 408. _Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own_,] A second
instance of unlearned partiality is (as he shows from ver. 407 to 424)
men's going always along with the cry, as having no fixed nor
well-grounded principles whereon to raise any judgment of their own. A
third is reverence for names, of which sort, as he well observes, the
worst and vilest are the idolizers of names of quality; whom therefore
he stigmatises as they deserve. Our author's temper as well as his
judgment is here seen, in throwing this species of partiality amongst
the unlearned critics. His affection for letters would not suffer him to
conceive, that any learned critic could ever fall into so low a
prostitution.
Ver. 424. _The vulgar thus--As oft the learned_--] II. He comes in the
second place, from ver. 423 to 452, to consider the instances of
partiality in the learned. 1. The first is singularity. For, as want of
principles, in the unlearned, necessitates them to rest on the common
judgment as always right, so adherence to false principles (that is, to
notions of their own) mislead the learned into the other extreme of
supposing the common judgment always wrong. And as, before, our author
compared those to bigots, who made true faith to consist in believing
after others, so he compares these to schismatics, who make it to
consist in believing as no one ever believed before, which folly he
marks with a lively stroke of humour in the turn of the thought:
So schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damned for having too much wit.
2. The second is novelty. And as this proceeds sometimes from fondness,
sometimes from vanity, he compares the one to the passion for a
mistress, and the other to the pride of being in fashion; but the excuse
common to both is, the daily improvement of their judgment:
Ask them the cause; they're wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow's wiser than to-day.
Now as this is a plausible pretence for their inconstancy, and our
author has himself afterwards approved of it, as a remedy against
obstinacy and pride, where he says, ver. 570,
But you with pleasure own your errors past,
And make each day a critique on the last,
he has been careful, by the turn of the expression in this place, to
show the difference between the pretence and the remedy. For time,
considered only as duration, vitiates as frequently as it improves.
Therefore to expect wisdom as the necessary attendant of length of days,
unrelated to long experience, is vain and delusive. This he illustrates
by a remarkable example, where we see time, instead of becoming wiser,
destroying good letters, to substitute school divinity in their place;
the genius of which kind of learning, the character of its professors,
and the fate, which, sooner or later, always attends whatsoever is wrong
or false, the poet sums up in those four lines:
Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed, &c.
And in conclusion he observes, that perhaps this mischief, from love of
novelty, might not be so great, did it not, along with the critic,
infect the writer likewise, who, when he finds his readers disposed to
take ready wit on the standard of current folly, never troubles himself
to think of better payment.
Ver. 452. _Some valuing those of their own side or mind, &c._] 3. The
third and last instance of partiality in the learned, is party and
faction, which is considered from ver. 451 to 474, where he shows how
men of this turn deceive themselves, when they load a writer of their
own side with commendation. They fancy they are paying tribute to merit,
when they are only sacrificing to self-love. But this is not the worst.
He further shows, that this party spirit has often very ill effects on
science itself, while, in support of faction, it labours to depress some
rising genius, that was, perhaps, raised by nature to enlighten his age
and country. By which he would insinuate, that all the baser and viler
passions seek refuge, and find support in party madness.
Ver. 474. _Be thou the first, &c._] The poet having now gone through the
last cause of wrong judgment, and the root of all the rest, partiality,
and ended his remarks upon it with a detection of the two rankest kinds,
those which arise out of party rage and envy, takes the occasion, which
this affords him, of closing his second division in the most graceful
manner, from ver. 473 to 560, by concluding from the premises, and
calling upon the true critic to be careful of his charge, which is the
protection and support of wit; for, the defence of it from malevolent
censure is its true protection, and the illustration of its beauties, is
its true support.
He first shows, the critic ought to do this service without loss of
time, and on these motives:--1. Out of regard to himself, for there is
some merit in giving the world notice of an excellence, but little or
none, in pointing, like an index, to the beaten road of admiration. 2.
Out of regard to the poem, for the short duration of modern works
requires that they should begin to live betimes. He compares the life of
modern wit (which in a changeable dialect, must soon pass away), and
that of the ancient (which survives in an universal language), to the
difference between the patriarchal age and our own, and observes, that
while the ancient writings live for ever, as it were, in brass and
marble, the modern are but like paintings, which, of how masterly a hand
soever, have no sooner gained their requisite perfection by the
softening and ripening of their tints, which they do in a very few
years, but they begin to fade and die away. 3. Lastly, our author shows
that the critic ought in justice to do this service out of regard to the
poet, when he considers the slender dowry the muse brings along with
her. In youth it is only a vain and short-lived pleasure; and in maturer
years, an accession of care and labour, in proportion to the weight of
reputation to be sustained, and of the increase of envy to be opposed:
and therefore, concludes his reasoning on this head with that pathetic
and insinuating address to the critic, from ver. 508 to 526.
Ah! let not learning, &c.
Ver. 526. _But if in noble minds some dregs remain, &c._] So far as to
what ought to be the true critic's principal study and employment. But
if the sour critical humour abounds, and must therefore needs have vent,
he directs to its proper object, and shows, from ver. 525 to 556, how it
may be innocently and usefully pointed. This is very observable; our
author had made spleen and disdain the characteristic of the false
critic, and yet here supposes them inherent in the true. But it is done
with judgment, and a knowledge of nature. For as bitterness and
astringency in unripe fruits of the best kind are the foundation and
capacity of that high spirit, race, and flavour which we find in them,
when perfectly concocted by the warmth and influence of the sun, and
which, without those qualities, would gain no more by that influence
than only a mellow insipidity, so spleen and disdain in the true critic,
when improved by long study and experience, ripen into an exactness of
judgment and an elegance of taste, although, in the false critic, lying
remote from the influence of good letters, they remain in all their
first offensive harshness and acerbity. The poet therefore shows how,
after the exaltation of these qualities into their state of perfection,
the very dregs (which, though precipitated, may possibly, on some
occasions, rise and ferment even in a noble mind) may be usefully
employed, that is to say, in branding obscenity and impiety. Of these,
he explains the rise and progress, in a beautiful picture of the
different geniuses of the two reigns of Charles II. and William III. The
former of which gave course to the most profligate luxury; the latter to
a licentious impiety. These are the crimes our author assigns over to
the caustic hand of the critic; but concludes however, from ver. 555 to
560, with this necessary admonition, to take care not to be misled into
unjust censure, either on the one hand, by a pharisaical niceness, or on
the other by a self-consciousness of guilt. And thus the second division
of his Essay ends: the judicious conduct of which is worthy our
observation. The subjects of it are the causes of wrong judgment. These
he derives upwards from cause to cause, till he brings them to their
source, an immoral partiality: for as he had, in the first part,
traced the Muses upward to their spring,
and shown them to be derived from heaven, and the offspring of virtue,
so hath he here pursued this enemy of the muses, the bad critic, to his
low original, in the arms of his nursing mother immorality. This order
naturally introduces, and at the same time shows the necessity of, the
subject of the third and last division, which is, on the morals of the
critic.
Ver. 560. _Learn then, &c._] We enter now on the third part, the morals
of the critic. There seemed a peculiar necessity of inculcating precepts
of this sort to the critic, by reason of that native acerbity so often
found in the profession; of which, a short memorial will soon convince
the reader, and at the same time inform him why our author has here
included all critical morals in candour, modesty, and good breeding.
When, in these latter ages, human learning reared its head in the West,
and its tail, verbal criticism, was of course to rise with it, the
madness of critics presently became so offensive, that the sober
stupidity of the monks might appear the more tolerable evil. J.
Argyropylus, a mercenary Greek, who came to teach school in Italy after
the sacking of Constantinople by the Turk, used to maintain that Cicero
understood neither philosophy nor Greek; while another of his
countrymen, J. Lascaris by name, threatened to demonstrate that Virgil
was no poet. However, these men raised in the west of Europe an appetite
for the Greek language. So that Hermolaus Barbarus, a noted critic and
most passionate admirer of it, used to boast that he had invoked and
raised the devil, about the meaning of the Aristotelian εντελεχεια. As
this man was famous for his enchantments, so one, whom Balzac speaks of,
was as useful to letters by his revelations, and was wont to say, that
the meaning of such a verse in Persius, no one knew but God and himself.
But they were not all so modest. The celebrated Pomponius Lætus, in
excess of veneration for antiquity, became a real pagan, raised altars
to Romulus, and sacrificed to the gods of Greece. But if the Greeks
cried down Cicero, the Italian critics knew how to support his credit.
Every one has heard of the childish excesses into which the fondness for
being thought Ciceronians carried the most celebrated Italians of this
time. They generally abstained from reading the scripture for fear of
spoiling their style, and Cardinal Bembo used to call the epistles of
St. Paul by the contemptuous name of epistolaccias,--great overgrown
epistles. But Erasmus cured this frenzy in that masterpiece of good
sense, entitled Ciceronianus, for which, as lunatics treat their
physicians, the elder Scaliger insulted him with all the brutal fury
peculiar to his family and profession. His son Joseph and Salmasius had
such endowments of art and nature as might have made them public
blessings; yet how did these savages tear and worry one another. The
choicest of Joseph's flowers of speech were _stercus diaboli_, and
_lutum stercore maceratum_. It is true these were strewn upon his
enemies. He treated his friends better; for in a letter to Thuanus,
speaking of two of them, Clavius and Lipsius, he calls the first "a
monster of ignorance," and the other "a slave to the Jesuits" and an
"idiot." But so great was his love of sacred amity, that he says, at the
same time, "I still keep up a correspondence with him, notwithstanding
his idiotry, for it is my principle to be constant in my
friendships.--Je ne reste de lui écrire nonobstant son idioterie,
d'autant que je suis constant en amitié." The character he gives of his
own work, in the same letter, is no less extraordinary: "Vous vous
pouvez assurer que nostre Eusebe sera un tresor des merveilles de la
doctrine chronologique." But this modest account of his chronology is a
trifle in comparison of the just esteem Salmasius conceived of himself,
as Mr. Colomies tells the story: This critic one day meeting two of his
brethren, Messrs. Gaulmin and Maussac, in the royal library at Paris,
Gaulmin, in a virtuous consciousness of their importance, told the
other two that he believed they three could make head against all the
learned in Europe. To which the great Salmasius fiercely replied, "Do
you and Mr. Maussac join yourselves to all that is learned in the world,
and you shall find that I alone am a match for you all." Vossius tells
us that, when Laur. Valla had snarled at every name of the first order
in antiquity, such as Aristotle, Cicero, and one whom I should have
thought this critic was likeliest to pass by, the redoubtable Priscian,
he impiously boasted that he had arms even against Christ himself. But
Codrus Urcæus went further, and actually used those arms the other only
threatened with. This man while he was preparing some trifling piece of
criticism for the press, had the misfortune to hear his papers were
burned, on which he is reported to have broke out, "Quodnam ego tantum
scelus concepi, O Christe; quem ego tuorum unquam læsi, ut ita
inexpiabili in me odio debaccheris? Audi ea, quæ tibi mentis compos et
ex animo dicam. Si forte, cum ad ultimam vitæ finem pervenero, supplex
accedam ad te oratum, neve audias, neve inter tuos accipias oro; cum
infernis Diis in æternum vitam agere decrevi." Whereupon, says my
author, he quitted the converse of men, threw himself into the thickest
of a forest, and there wore out the wretched remains of life in all the
agonies of despair.
But to return to the poem. This third and last part is in two divisions.
In the first of which, from ver. 559 to 631, our author inculcates the
morals by precept. In the second, from ver. 630 to the end, by example.
His first precept, from ver. 561 to 566, recommends candour, for its use
to the critic, and to the writer criticised.
2. The second, from ver. 565 to 572, recommends modesty, which manifests
itself in these four signs: 1. Silence where it doubts,
Be silent always when you doubt your sense;
2. A seeming diffidence where it knows,
And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence;
3. A free confession of error where wrong,
But you with pleasure own your errors past;
4. And a constant review and scrutiny even of those opinions which it
still thinks right.
And make each day a critique on the last.
3. The third, from ver. 571 to 584, recommends good-breeding, which will
not force truth dogmatically upon men, as ignorant of it, but gently
insinuates it to them, as not sufficiently attentive to it. But as men
of breeding are apt to fall into two extremes, he prudently cautions
against them. The one is a backwardness in communicating their
knowledge, out of a false delicacy, and for fear of being thought
pedants: the other, and much more common extreme, is a mean
complaisance, which those who are worthy of your advice do not need, to
make it acceptable; for such can best bear reproof in particular points,
who best deserve commendation in general.
Ver. 584. _'Twere well might critics, &c._] The poet having thus
recommended in his general rules of conduct for the judgment, these
three critical virtues to the heart, shows next, from ver. 583 to 631,
upon what three sorts of writers these virtues, together with the advice
conveyed under them, would be thrown away; and which is worse, be repaid
with obloquy and scorn. These are the false critic, the dull man of
quality, and the bad poet, each of which species of incorrigible writers
he hath very exactly painted. But having drawn the last of them at full
length, and being always attentive to the two main branches of his
subject, which are, of writing and judging well, he re-assumes the
character of the bad critic (whom he had touched upon before), to
contrast him with the other; and makes the characteristic common to
both, to be a never-ceasing repetition of their own impertinence.
_The poet_--still runs on in a raging vein, &c. ver. 606, &c.
_The critic_--with his own tongue still edifies his ears, 614, &c.
Than which there cannot be an observation more just, or more grounded on
experience.
Ver. 631. _But where's the man, &c._] II. The second division of this
last part, which we now come to, is of the morals of critics, by
example. For, having in the first, drawn a picture of the false critic,
at large, he breaks out into an apostrophe, containing an exact and
finished character of the true, which, at the same time, serves for an
easy and proper introduction to this second division. For having asked,
from ver. 630 to 643, _Where's the man, &c._, he answers, from ver. 642
to 681, that he was to be found in the happier ages of Greece and Rome;
in the characters of Aristotle and Horace, Dionysius and Petronius,
Quintilian and Longinus, whose several excellencies he has not only well
distinguished, but has contrasted them with a peculiar elegance. The
profound science and logical method of Aristotle is opposed to the plain
common sense of Horace, conveyed in a natural and familiar negligence;
the study and refinement of Dionysius, to the gay and courtly ease of
Petronius; and the gravity and minuteness of Quintilian, to the vivacity
and general topics of Longinus. Nor has the poet been less careful in
these examples, to point out their eminence in the several critical
virtues he so carefully inculcated in his precepts. Thus in Horace he
particularizes his candour; in Petronius, his good-breeding; in
Quintilian, his free and copious instruction; and in Longinus, his great
and noble spirit.
Ver. 681. _Thus long succeeding critics, &c._] The next period in which
the true critic, he tells us, appeared, was at the revival and
restoration of letters in the West. This occasions his giving a short
history, from ver. 682 to 709, of the decline and re-establishment of
arts and sciences in Italy. He shows that they both fell under the same
enemy, despotic power; and that when both had made some little efforts
to recover themselves, they were soon again overwhelmed by a second
deluge of another kind, namely, superstition; and a calm of dulness
finished upon Rome and letters what the rage of barbarism had begun:
A second deluge learning thus o'er-run,
And the monk finished what the Goth begun.
When things had long remained in this condition, and all hopes of
recovery now seemed desperate, it was a critic, our author shows us, for
the honour of the art he here teaches, who at length broke the charm of
dulness, who dissipated the enchantment, and, like another Hercules,
drove those cowled and hooded serpents from the Hesperian tree of
knowledge, which they had so long guarded from human approach.
Ver. 697. _But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days_,] This presents us
with the second period in which the true critic appeared, of whom he has
given us a complete idea in the single example of Marcus Hieronymus
Vida; for his subject being poetical criticism, for the use principally
of a critical poet, his example is an eminent poetical critic, who had
written of the Art of Poetry in verse.
Ver. 709. _But soon by impious arms, &c._] This brings us to the third
period, after learning had travelled still further West, when the arms
of the Emperor, in the sack of Rome by the Duke of Bourbon, had driven
it out of Italy, and forced it to pass the mountains. The examples he
gives in this period, are of Boileau in France, and of the Lord
Roscommon and the Duke of Buckingham in England: and these were all
poets, as well as critics in verse. It is true, the last instance is of
one who was no eminent poet, the late Mr. Walsh. This small deviation
might be well overlooked, were it only for its being a pious office to
the memory of his friend. But it may be further justified, as it was an
homage paid in particular to the morals of the critic, nothing being
more amiable than the character here drawn of this excellent person. He
being our author's judge and censor, as well as friend, it gives him a
graceful opportunity to add himself to the number of the later critics;
and with a character of his own genius and temper sustained by that
modesty and dignity which it is so difficult to make consistent, this
performance concludes.
I have here given a short and plain account of the Essay on Criticism,
concerning which, I have but one thing more to say, that when the reader
considers the regularity of the plan, the masterly conduct of each part,
the penetration into nature, and the compass of learning so conspicuous
throughout, he should at the same time know, it was the work of an
author who had not attained the twentieth year of his age.
NOTES.
Ver. 28. _In search of wit, these lose their common sense_,] This
observation is extremely just. Search of wit is not only the occasion,
but the efficient cause of the loss of common sense; for wit consisting
in choosing out, and setting together such ideas from whose assemblage
pleasant pictures may be drawn on the fancy, the judgment, through an
habitual search of wit, loses, by degrees, its faculty of seeing the
true relation of things; in which consists the exercise of common sense.
Ver. 32. _All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would lie upon the laughing side._]
The sentiment is just, and if Hobbes's account of laughter be true, that
it arises from a silly pride, we see the reason of it. The expression
too is fine; it alludes to the condition of idiots and natural fools,
who are observed to be ever on the grin.
Ver. 43. _Their generation's so equivocal._] It is sufficient that a
principle of philosophy has been generally received, whether it be true
or false, to justify a poet's use of it to set off his wit. But to
recommend his argument, he should be cautious how he uses any but the
true; for falsehood, when it is set too near the truth, will tarnish
what it should brighten up. Besides, the analogy between natural and
moral truth makes the principles of true philosophy the fittest for this
use. Our poet has been pretty careful in observing this rule.
Ver. 51. _And mark that point where sense and dulness meet._] Besides
the peculiar sense explained in the comment, the words have still a more
general meaning, and caution us against going on, when our ideas begin
to grow obscure, as we are then most apt to do, though that obscurity be
an admonition that we should leave off, for it arises, either from our
small acquaintance with the subject, or the incomprehensibility of its
nature, in which circumstances a genius will always write as badly as a
dunce. An observation well worth the attention of all profound writers.
Ver. 56. _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._]
These observations are collected from an intimate knowledge of human
nature. The cause of that languor and heaviness in the understanding,
which is almost inseparable from a very strong and tenacious memory,
seems to be a want of the proper exercise of that faculty, the
understanding being in a great measure unactive, while the memory is
cultivating. As to the other appearance, the decay of memory by the
vigorous exercise of fancy, the poet himself seems to have intimated the
cause of it in the epithet he has given to the imagination. For if,
according to the atomic philosophy, the memory of things be preserved in
a chain of ideas, produced by the animal spirits moving in continued
trains, the force and rapidity of the imagination, breaking and
dissipating the links of this chain by forming new associations, must
necessarily weaken, and disorder the recollective faculties.
Ver. 67. _Would all but stoop to what they understand._] The expression
is delicate, and implies what is very true, that most men think it a
degradation of their genius to employ it in what lies level to their
comprehension, but had rather exercise their talents in the ambition of
subduing what is placed above it.
Ver. 80. _Some, to whom heaven, &c._] Here the poet (in a sense he was
not, at first, aware of) has given an example of the truth of his
observation, in the observation itself. The two lines stood originally
thus:
There are whom heav'n has blest with store of wit,
Yet want as much again to manage it.
In the first line, wit is used, in the modern sense, for the effort of
fancy; in the second line it is used in the ancient sense, for the
result of judgment. This trick, played the reader, he endeavoured to
keep out of sight, by altering the lines as they now stand,
Some, to whom heav'n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use.
For the words, "to manage it," as the lines were at first, too plainly
discovered the change put upon the reader, in the use of the word "wit."
This is now a little covered by the latter expression of "turn it to its
use." But then the alteration, in the preceding line, from "store of
wit," to "profuse," was an unlucky change. For though he who has "store
of wit" may want more, yet he to whom it was given in "profusion" could
hardly be said to want more. The truth is, the poet had said a lively
thing, and would, at all hazards, preserve the reputation of it, though
the very topic he is upon obliged him to detect the imposition, in the
very next lines, which show he meant two very different things, by the
very same term, in the two preceding:
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
Ver. 88. _Those rules of old, &c._] Cicero has, best of any one I know,
explained what that thing is which reduces the wild and scattered parts
of human knowledge into arts. "Nihil est quod ad artem redigi possit,
nisi ille prius, qui illa tenet, quorum artem instituere vult, habeat
illam scientiam, ut ex iis rebus, quarum ars nondum sit, artem efficere
possit.--Omnia fere, quæ sunt conclusa nunc artibus, dispersa et
dissipata quondam fuerunt, ut in musicis, &c. Adhibita est igitur ars
quædam extrinsecus ex alio genere quodam, quod sibi totum PHILOSOPHI
assumunt, quæ rem dissolutam divulsamque conglutinaret, et ratione
quadam constringeret." De Orat. l. i. c. 41, 42.
Ver. 112, 114. _Some on the leaves--Some dryly plain._] The first are
the apes of those learned Italian critics who at the restoration of
letters, having found the classic writers miserably deformed by the
hands of monkish librarians, very commendably employed their pains and
talents in restoring them to their native purity. The second, the
plagiarists from the French critics, who had made some admirable
commentaries on the ancient critics. But that acumen and taste, which
separately constitute the distinct value of those two species of Italian
and French criticism, make no part of the character of these paltry
mimics at home described by our poet in the following lines,
These leave the sense, their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.
Which species is the least hurtful, the poet has enabled us to determine
in the lines with which he opens his poem,
But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.
From whence we conclude that the Reverend Mr. Upton was much more
innocently employed, when he quibbled upon Epictetus, than when he
commented upon Shakespeare.[299]
Ver. 150. _Thus Pegasus, &c._] We have observed how the precepts for
writing and judging are interwoven throughout the whole poem. The
sublime flight of a poet is first described, soaring above all vulgar
bounds, to snatch a grace directly which lies beyond the reach of a
common adventurer; and afterwards, the effect of that grace upon the
true critic; whom it penetrates with an equal rapidity, going the
nearest way to his heart, without passing through his judgment. By which
is not meant that it could not stand the test of judgment; but that, as
it was a beauty uncommon, and above rule, and the judgment habituated to
determine only by rule, it makes its direct appeal to the heart, which,
when once gained, soon brings over the judgment, whose concurrence (it
being now enlarged and set above forms) is easily procured. That this is
the poet's sublime conception appears from the concluding words:
And all its end at once attains.
For poetry doth not attain all its end, till it hath gained the judgment
as well as heart.
Ver. 209. _Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense._]
A very sensible French writer makes the following remark on this species
of pride: "Un homme qui sçait plusieurs langues, qui entend les auteurs
grecs et latins, qui s'élève même jusqu'à la dignité de scholiaste; si
cet homme venoit à peser son véritable mérite, il trouveroit souvent
qu'il se réduit avoir eu des yeux et de la mémoire; il se garderoit bien
de donner le nom respectable de science à une érudition sans lumière. Il
y a une grande différence entre s'enrichir des mots ou des choses, entre
alléguer des autorités ou des raisons. Si un homme pouvoit se surprendre
à n'avoir que cette sorte de mérite, il en rougiroit plutôt que d'en
être vain."
Ver. 235. _Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find
Where Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind_;]
The second line, in apologizing for those faults which the first says
should be overlooked, gives the reason of the precept. For when a great
writer's attention is fixed on a general view of nature, and his
imagination becomes warmed with the contemplation of great ideas, it can
hardly be, but that there must be small irregularities in the
disposition both of matter and style, because the avoiding these
requires a coolness of recollection, which a writer so qualified and so
busied is not master of.
Ver. 248. _The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!_] The
Pantheon I would suppose; perhaps St. Peter's; no matter which; the
observation is true of both. There is something very Gothic in the taste
and judgment of a learned man, who despises the masterpiece of art, the
Pantheon, for those very qualities which deserve our admiration. "Nous
esmerveillons comme l'on fait si grand cas de ce Pantheon, veu que son
edifice n'est de si grande industrie comme l'on crie: car chaque petit
masson peut bien concevoir la maniere de sa façon tout en un instant:
car estant la base si massive, et les murailles si espaisses, ne nous a
semblé difficile d'y adjouster la vonte à claire voye."--Pierre Belon's
Observations, &c. The nature of the Gothic structures apparently led him
into this mistake of the architectonic art in general; that the
excellency of it consists in raising the greatest weight on the least
assignable support, so that the edifice should have strength without the
appearance of it, in order to excite admiration. But to a judicious eye
such a building would have a contrary effect, the appearance (as our
poet expresses it) of a monstrous height, or breadth, or length. Indeed,
did the just proportions in regular architecture take off from the
grandeur of a building, by all the single parts coming united to the
eye, as this learned traveller seems to insinuate, it would be a
reasonable objection to those rules on which this masterpiece of art was
constructed. But it is not so. The poet tells us truly,
The whole at once is bold, and regular.
Ver. 267. _Once on a time, &c._] This tale is so very apposite, that one
would naturally take it to be of the poet's own invention; and so much
in the spirit of Cervantes, that we might easily mistake it for one of
the chief beauties of that incomparable satire. Yet, in truth it is
neither; but a story taken by our author from the spurious Don Quixote,
which shows how proper an use may be made of general reading, when if
there be but one good thing in a book (as in that wretched performance
there scarce was more) it may be picked out, and employed to an
excellent purpose.
Ver. 285. _Thus critics, &c._] In these two lines the poet finely
describes the way in which bad writers are wont to imitate the qualities
of good ones. As true judgment generally draws men out of popular
opinions, so he who cannot get from the crowd by the assistance of this
guide, willingly follows caprice, which will be sure to lead him into
singularities. Again, true knowledge is the art of treasuring up only
that which, from its use in life, is worthy of being lodged in the
memory, and this makes the philosopher; but curiosity consists in a vain
attention to every thing out of the way, and which for its inutility the
world least regards, and this makes the antiquarian. Lastly, exactness
is the just proportion of parts to one another, and their harmony in a
whole; but he who has not extent of capacity for the exercise of this
quality, contents himself with nicety, which is a busying oneself about
points and syllables, and this makes the grammarian.
Ver. 297. _True wit is nature to advantage dressed, &c._] This
definition is very exact. Mr. Locke had defined wit to consist "in the
assemblage of ideas, and putting those together, with quickness and
variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, whereby to
make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy." But that
great philosopher, in separating wit from judgment, as he does in this
place, has given us (and he could therefore give us no other) only an
account of wit in general, in which false wit, though not every species
of it, is included. A striking image, therefore, of nature is, as Mr.
Locke observes, certainly wit; but this image may strike on several
other accounts, as well as for its truth and beauty, and the philosopher
has explained the manner how. But it never becomes that wit which is the
ornament of true poesy, whose end is to represent nature, but when it
dresses that nature to advantage, and presents her to us in the
brightest and most amiable light. And to know when the fancy has done
its office truly, the poet subjoins this admirable test, viz. When we
perceive that it gives us back the image of our mind. When it does that,
we may be sure it plays no tricks with us; for this image is the
creature of the judgment, and whenever wit corresponds with judgment, we
may safely pronounce it to be true.
Ver. 311. _False eloquence, &c._] This simile is beautiful. For the
false colouring given to objects by the prismatic glass is owing to its
untwisting, by its obliquities, those threads of light which nature had
put together, in order to spread over its work an ingenious and simple
candour, that should not hide but only heighten the native complexion of
the objects. And false expression is nothing else but the straining and
divaricating the parts of true expression; and then daubing them over
with what the rhetoricians very properly term colours, in lieu of that
candid light, now lost, which was reflected from them in their natural
state, while sincere and entire.
Ver. 364. _'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense._]
The judicious introduction of this precept is remarkable. The poets, and
even some of the best of them, have been so fond of the beauty arising
from this trivial observance, that their practice has violated the very
end of the precept, which is the increase of harmony; and so they could
but raise an echo, did not care whose ears they offended by its
dissonance. To remedy this abuse therefore, our poet, by the
introductory line, would insinuate, that harmony is always to be
presupposed as observed, though it may and ought to be perpetually
varied, so as to produce the effect here recommended.
Ver. 365. _The sound must seem an echo to the sense._] Lord Roscommon
says,
The sound is still a comment to the sense.
They are both well expressed, although so differently; for Lord
Roscommon is showing how the sense is assisted by the sound; Mr. Pope,
how the sound is assisted by the sense.
Ver. 402. _Which, from the first, &c._] Genius is the same in all ages;
but its fruits are various, and more or less excellent as they are
checked or matured by the influence of government or religion upon them.
Hence in some parts of literature the ancients excel; in others, the
moderns, just as those accidental circumstances occurred.
Ver. 444. _Scotists._] So denominated from Johannes Duns Scotus. Erasmus
tells us, an eminent Scotist assured him, that it was impossible to
understand one single proposition of this famous Duns, unless you had
his whole metaphysics by heart. This hero of incomprehensible fame
suffered a miserable reverse at Oxford in the time of Henry VIII. That
grave antiquary, Mr. Antony Wood (in the vindication of himself and his
writings from the reproaches of the Bishop of Salisbury), sadly laments
the deformation, as he calls it, of that university, by the King's
commissioners; and even records the blasphemous speeches of one of them,
in his own words: "We have set Duns in Boccardo, with all his blind
glossers, fast nailed up upon posts in all common houses of easement."
Upon which our venerable antiquary thus exclaims: "If so be, the
commissioners had such disrespect for that most famous author, J. Duns,
who was so much admired by our predecessors, and so difficult to be
understood, that the doctors of those times, namely, Dr. William Roper,
Dr. John Keynton, Dr. William Mowse, &c. professed that, in twenty-eight
years' study, they could not understand him rightly, what then had they
for others of inferior note?" What indeed! But if so be, that most
famous J. Duns was so difficult to be understood (for that this is a
most theologic proof of his great worth is past all doubt), I should
conceive our good old antiquary to be a little mistaken, and that the
nailing up this Proteus of the schools was done by the commissioners in
honour of the most famous Duns, there being no other way of catching the
sense of so slippery and dodging an author, who had eluded the pursuit
of three of their most renowned doctors in full cry after him, for eight
and twenty years together. And this Boccardo in which he was confined,
seemed very fit for the purpose, it being observed that men are never
more serious and thoughtful than in that place of retirement.--Scribl.
Ver. 444. _Thomists_,] From Thomas Aquinas, a truly great genius, who,
in those blind ages, was the same in theology, that our Friar Bacon was
in natural philosophy; less happy than our countryman in this, that he
soon became surrounded with a number of dark glossers, who never left
him till they had extinguished the radiance of that light, which had
pierced through the thickest night of monk
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