An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
"An Essay on Criticism" is a seminal poem by Alexander Pope, written in the early 18th century when he was just twenty-two years old. This work stands as one of the most recognized discussions of literary criticism in English literature, notable for its epigrams that resonate with many readers. Structured in three main parts, the essay explores the qualities and responsibilities of critics, the principles guiding their judgments, and the characteristics of an ideal critic. Pope emphasizes the importance of innate judgment and the role of nature as a standard, arguing that true criticism stems from understanding both oneself and the literary works being evaluated. He critiques the shortcomings of contemporary critics who stray from established principles and who may allow personal biases to influence their assessments. The poem also reflects on the historical context of criticism, linking it with ancient literary traditions. Despite being at times seen as reiterating classical ideas, Pope's work is recognized for its innovative approach to criticism as a form of art that evaluates the value of literature. Overall, "An Essay on Criticism" offers a framework for understanding the complex relationship between literature and its critics, making it a crucial reference for those interested in literary theory and evaluation.
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An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
First published: 1711
Type of work: Poetry
The Work:
Published when Alexander Pope was twenty-two years of age, An Essay on Criticism remains one of the best known discussions of literary criticism, of its ends and means, in the English language. It is the source of numerous familiar epigrams known to the reading public. Pope was young when he wrote the work; existing evidence points to 1708 or 1709 as the probable period of composition. Pope wrote of its composition: “The things that I have written fastest, 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.”
Although Pope may seem to rely too heavily upon the authority of the ancient authors as literary masters, he recognizes, as many readers fail to note, the “grace beyond the reach of art” that no model can teach. True genius and judgment are innate gifts of heaven, as Pope says, but many people possess the seeds of taste and judgment that, with proper training, may flourish. The genius of the ancients cannot be imitated, but their principles may be.
The poem is structured in three parts: the general qualities of a critic; the particular laws by which a critic judges a work; and the ideal character of a critic. Part 1 opens with Pope’s indictment of the false critic. He remarks that as poets may be prejudiced about their own merits, so critics can be partial to their own judgment. Judgment, or “true taste,” derives from nature, as does the poet’s genius; nature provides everyone with some taste, which, if not perverted by a poor education or other defects, may enable the critic to judge properly. To be a critic, one’s first job is to know oneself, one’s own judgment, tastes, abilities; in short, to know one’s personal limitations.
The second task of the critic is to know nature, which is the critic’s standard as it is the poet’s. Nature is defined ambiguously as
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
Nature thus becomes a universal or cosmic force, an ideal sought by poet and critic alike in the general scheme, things universally approved throughout history by all persons. This ideal must be apprehended through the critic’s judicious balance of wit and judgment, of imaginative invention and deliberative reason.
The rules of literary criticism may best be located in those works that have stood the test of time and universal approbation, the works of antiquity. From the ancient authors, critics have derived rules of art that are not self-imposed at the whim of the critic but are discovered justly operating in the writings of the best authors. Such rules are “Nature still, but Nature methodized.”
Formerly, critics restricted themselves to discovering rules in classical literature; in Pope’s time, however, critics had strayed from the principles of these earlier critics whose motive was solely to make art “more beloved,” and prescribed their own rules, which are pedantic, unimaginative, and basely critical of literature. What was once a subordinate sister to creative art has replaced or turned against its superior, assuming a higher place in the order of things. Criticism, once destined to teach the “world . . . to admire” the poet’s art, now presumes to be master.
The true critic must learn thoroughly the ancients, particularly Homer and Vergil, for “To copy nature is to copy them.” There are beauties of art that cannot be taught by rules; these intangible beauties are the “nameless graces which no methods teach/ And which a master-hand alone can reach.” Modern writers should avoid transcending, unless rarely, the rules of art first established by the great artists of the past.
Part 2 traces the causes hindering good judgment—that chief virtue of a true critic. Pope advises critics to avoid the dangers of blindness caused by pride, the greatest source of poor judgment, by learning their own defects and by profiting even from the strictures of their enemies. Inadequate learning is another reason a critic errs: “A little learning is a dangerous thing;/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.” A critic who looks too closely at the parts of a poem may come to prefer a poem dull as a whole yet perfect in parts to one imperfect in part but pleasing as a whole. It is the unity of the many small parts in one whole that affects readers: “’Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call,/ But the joint force and full result of all.” Faultless art can never exist. Finally, a critic who condemns a work for failing to achieve that which its author never intended errs: One should “regard the writer’s End,/ Since none can compass more than they intend.”
As some critics deviate from nature in judging “by a love to parts,” others confine their attention to conceits, images, or metaphors. Poets who dissimulate their want of art with a wild profusion of imagery have not learned to control their imagination; they overvalue mere decoration and paint, not “the naked nature and the living grace,” but the external variables of nature. “True Wit,” Pope says, “is Nature to advantage dressed,/ What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.”
Other critics too highly praise style and language without respect for content; true eloquence clarifies and improves the thought, revealing nature at her finest, but false eloquence imposes a veil upon the face of nature, obscuring with its finery the truths of nature. Proper expression, in addition, should fit with the content; the poet should never attempt to lend false dignity by archaic words. Proper diction is neither too old nor too modern.
Most false critics judge by meter, criticizing according to the roughness or smoothness of the verse. Overfondness for metrics results in the dull clichés of poetry, such as “the cooling western breeze,” and the like. Pope avers that rough or smooth verse should not be the poet’s ideal; the poet should aim rather to fit the sound to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
Lines 344-383 of the poem constitute a digression by Pope to illustrate “representative meter.” The true critic generally abides by rules of tolerance and aloofness from extremes of fashion and personal taste. The critic who indulges in petty predilections for certain schools or kinds of poets sacrifices objectivity. Be a patron of no separate group, whether ancient or modern, foreign or native, Pope advises. The critic should be pledged to truth, not to passing cults. Nor should a critic fear to advance his or her own judgment merely because the public favors other poets and schools; no critic should echo fashion or be influenced by a writer’s name. Especially reprehensible is that critic who derives opinions about literature from lords of quality.
The final pitfall of the false critic is subjectivity, measuring by personal preferences. Private or public envy may distort one’s evaluation. The critic must put aside personal motives and praise according to less personal criteria. Nor should the critic be led astray by self-love: “Good-nature and good-sense must ever join.” A critic may justly attack more worthy targets, of which many exist in “these flagitious times.” Obscenity, dullness, immodesty—all should concern the critic and be exposed. The vices of an age, however, should not infect a critic’s judgment on other matters.
Part 3 outlines the ideal character of a critic. It lists rules for a critic’s manners and contrasts the ideal critic with the“incorrigible poet” and “impertinent Critic,” concluding with a brief summary of literary criticism and the character of the best critics. It is not enough for the critic to know, Pope writes; a critic must also share the qualities of a good person, worthy of respect not only for intellect but also for character. Integrity stands at the head of a list of good qualities for a critic. Modesty that forbids both unseemly outspokenness and rigid adherence to erroneous opinion, tact that supports truth without alienating by bluntness, and courage to pursue truth despite censure are important attributes for the true critic. As some dull and foolish poets are best not maligned for fear of provoking them to greater folly, so the critic full of pedantry and impertinence should be ignored. Nothing is too sacred for the learned fool, who rushes in “where Angels fear to tread.” The true critic is one “Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know.” Such a person has knowledge both “of books and human kind.”
Having outlined the characteristics of true critics, Pope catalogs the most famous critics, “the happy few” of Greece and Rome: Aristotle, Horace, Dionysius, Quintilian, Longinus. Aristotle, “Who conquered Nature,” respected by the poets as the lawgiver; Horace, who “still charms with graceful negligence”; Quintilian’s “justest rules, and clearest method”: such are the true critics who flourished along with the great empires of their nations.
With the fall of the empire came the fall of learning, enslavement of mind and body. Desiderius Erasmus stemmed the barbarian’s reign of ignorance, and Nicolas Boileau of France signified the advancement of critical learning in Europe. England, however, almost entirely despises and remains untouched by the return to the “juster ancient cause.”
Many later critics, following the lead of their nineteenth century predecessors, dismissed An Essay on Criticism as a mere collection of well-worn epigrams and dated restatements of literary commonplaces. Ironically, Pope might agree in part with that assessment. An Essay on Criticism is not radical, in the way Percy Bysshe Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry (1840) is. It offers no clear statement of poetics that differs markedly from those of Pope’s contemporaries; it is, in one sense, little more than an eighteenth century updating of the precepts espoused by the Latin poet Horace in Ars poetica (c. 17 b.c.e.), a kind of handbook for writers and critics who might want to create art that pleases while it teaches.
Such a glib assessment, however, masks the major achievement of the poem. In An Essay on Criticism, Pope manages to use art as a means of commenting on it. Most significant, he provides a convincing, eloquent statement of what was then a new form of literary evaluation, a method that has been dubbed “the criticism of judgment.” Modeling his argument on the premises outlined by philosopher John Locke, Pope argues that judgment gives critics an objective, external standard that permits them to escape the hegemony of authority—slavish adherence to the rules derived from the writings of the ancients—while not succumbing to the anarchy inherent in accepting the vagaries of taste. Pope’s criteria for assessing the value of a literary work provide ways for critics to accept as great the works of writers as diverse as the French playwright Pierre Corneille and William Shakespeare.
Underlying Pope’s discussion of the nature of criticism is the belief that the function of the critic is essentially evaluative. Pope is concerned with establishing the overall value of a literary production, as were other seventeenth and eighteenth century critics. Not surprisingly, therefore, interpretation is, for him, a secondary activity; the chief role of the discerning reader is to determine if a work of art deserves the accolade of greatness, or if it should be relegated to the ranks of the merely amusing—or worse, to the literary trash heap. In this role, he stands with John Dryden and Samuel Johnson as one of the chief arbiters of his age.
Bibliography
Baines, Paul. Alexander Pope: A Sourcebook. New York: Routledge, 2000. Provides biographical information and historical and social context for Pope’s life and work. Offers analysis of An Essay on Criticism and other works, with suggestions for further reading about each one. Contains critical comment on Pope’s poetry, politics, and depiction of gender issues.
Barnard, John, ed. Pope: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. Contemporary reaction to An Essay on Criticism is showcased in six essays dating from 1711 to 1741; later responses to the whole of Pope’s writings are represented by essays dating to 1782. Includes a brief bibliography with helpful annotations.
Goldsmith, Netta Murray. Alexander Pope: The Evolution of a Poet. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Uses modern research on creativity to examine Pope’s poetry in relation to his intellectual peers and to explain why he enjoyed spectacular success as a poet in his lifetime.
Hotch, Ripley. “Pope Surveys His Kingdom: An Essay on Criticism.” In Critical Essays on Alexander Pope, edited by Wallace Jackson and R. Paul Yoder. New York: G. K. Hall, 1993. Reviews the structure and meaning of An Essay on Criticism. Argues that the work is less about criticism than about Pope himself; Pope offered the poem as a demonstration that he merits the throne of wit.
Isles, Duncan. “Pope and Criticism.” In Alexander Pope, edited by Peter Dixon. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1972. Connects An Essay on Criticism to its predecessors and to Pope’s later critical writings, following the development of Pope’s critical ideas in his writings and conversations.
Mack, Maynard, ed. Essential Articles for the Study of Alexander Pope. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964. Includes three important studies: “Pope on Wit: The Essay on Criticism” by Edward Niles Hooker,“Wit in the Essay on Criticism” by William Empson, and ”The Unity of Pope’s Essay on Criticism” by Arthur Fenner, Jr.
Morris, David B. Alexander Pope: The Genius of Sense. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984. Chapter 2 discusses the originality of Pope’s critical thinking and delineates the components of Pope’s critical theory.
Rogers, Pat, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Collection of critical essays on various aspects of Pope’s life and work, including several pieces about his poetry, as well as discussions of Pope and gender, money, and the book trade. The references to An Essay on Criticism are listed in the index.