Alexande Pope
... Pope began writing the poem, however, including drafting and revising it, some two or three years earlier when he was twenty or twenty one years old. ... Pope described the poem, in a letter to his friend John Caryll, written on 19 July 1711, as “a treatise . ... ” What Pope seems to have meant by this is that the poem is more densely woven and subtly argued than appears at first glance. ... The poem is what its title says it is, an “essai”, or, as Pope calls it towards the end of the poem, a “short Excursion” (738), into a much debated and contentious, topical subject: the role and function of criticism. In An Essay on Criticism Pope attempts to reconcile the contemporary dispute between the proponents of ancient and modern learning. ... Pope was widely read in this “modern” criticism, as well, of course, as in the “ancient” criticism that preceded it, especially in Aristotle, Horace, Quintilian and Longinus. ... It comes closer, perhaps, to being a handbook, or guide, to the critics and poets art, very much in the style of Horaces Ars Poetica, or, to take the English models with which the young Pope was especially familiar, the Earl of Roscommons translation of Horace, The Art Of Poetry, (1680), and John Sheffields (the Duke of Buckinghams) Essay On Poetry, (1682). It is accordingly of great value to us today in understanding what Pope and many of his contemporaries saw as the main functions and justifications of criticism in early, eighteenth-century England. ... Pope moves across the stated demarcations, just as he moves backwards and forwards over ancient and modern criticism, offering a polished, conversational view of his conception of the critics function and duty. Pope opens by declaring that it is hard to say whether greater lack of skill is to be found in bad criticism or bad writing. ... Most men, says Pope, are born with the seeds of good judgement, and yet good sense is all too frequently spoilt by false education (19-27). ... The first great rule for true critics, therefore, is to “follow NATURE” (68-87), a priority that Pope emphasizes through the use of capitals, only repeated at four other points in the poem. ... Pope charges that more recent critics, however, have made a fetish of the rules, without understanding their source, and applied them mechanically, like apothecaries who prescribe drugs without understanding the bases of the science of healing. ... (245-6) Pope moves on to delineate a long list of causes hindering true judgement: being over-impressed with ornamental wit (289-304); being similarly over-impressed with words, style and false eloquence (305-36); judging purely by numbers [metre] (337-83); falling into extremes of response (384-93); being too partial to a particular sect (394-407); being too strongly influenced by fashion (408-23); striving for singularity (424-29); inconstancy (430-51); and showing too much party spirit (452-73).