An Essay on Criticism

As its name suggests, Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism is first and foremost a treatise directed at critics of art—particularly literature. Its central theme is thus The Causes of Poor Aesthetic Judgment, and its three-part structure loosely corresponds to the introduction, body, and conclusion of a typical prose essay. In Part 1, Pope lays out his thesis: that bad criticism is worse than bad art and that critics must understand the nature of art itself before making their critiques. In Part 2, he goes into detail about the various ways in which critical judgment may err. Lastly, in Part 3, he outlines what good criticism would look like.

However, that Pope wrote this essay in verse indicates that it is not merely meant to persuade readers of its core claim. For one, Pope’s use of poetic form and figurative language, including alliteration, extended metaphor, and simile, takes on increased prominence in light of his claims about the proper Balance Between Art and Nature. Pope warns writers and critics alike about mistaking stylistic flourishes for poetic quality, inevitably inviting scrutiny of his own choices. Of course, Pope does not claim that ornamental language is bad—merely that it must be used carefully to enhance rather than distract from the subject matter. This is in fact Pope’s stance on art and artistic convention broadly. The role of the artist is to represent the world faithfully, though this does not necessarily imply strict realism. Rather, Pope argues that the rules of literature derive from an order that is present in all things (a view of nature typical of the Enlightenment, of which Pope was an early figure): “Those RULES of old discovered, not devised, / Are Nature still, but Nature methodized” (Lines 88-89). There is thus nothing wrong with (for example) the use of rhyme, but it should serve a deeper purpose beyond itself, as in the following lines: “But true expression, like th’ unchanging sun, / Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon, / It gilds all objects, but it alters none” (Lines 317-19). Here, Pope breaks with his usual structure of rhyming couplets in favor of a rhyming (or near-rhyming) triplet, stylistically mirroring his claim that “true expression” does not “alter” nature but merely “improves” it.

Pope’s establishment of his own poetic credentials is particularly important in light of his claims about critics’ tendency to overreach. Part of respecting nature, Pope suggests, is understanding one’s own weaknesses: “Be sure your self and your own reach to know, / How far your genius, taste, and learning go” (Lines 48-49). Pope especially condemns critics who are also poets but good at neither art. He calls them “half-learned witlings” and “equivocal” and uses the simile of “heavy mules” that “are neither horse nor ass” and “unfinished things” or “half-formed insects” in the mud of the Nile (Lines 39-43). This connects to his discussion elsewhere of the balance between the part and the whole, as a focus on one part of something leads to the sense that it is incomplete. Critics who are preoccupied with one feature of a work, Pope argues, misunderstand the nature of art, which must be grasped in its totality. Similarly, a lack of constancy or too much attention to changing fashions leads to the sort of monstrous transformation he describes in his discussion of poets-turned-critics or critics-turned-poets.

In making his claims about what constitutes good art (and therefore what good critics should look for in a piece), Pope enters into the argument between so-called ancients and moderns that was taking place in his era (and had been since the late 17th century in France). As literary critic and historian Joseph M. Levine puts it, the question was “whether to go forward to something new and better, an advancement of learning and a material culture beyond anything hitherto known, or whether to continue to hanker after a golden age in the past” (Levine, Joseph M. The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age. Cornell University Press, 1991, p. 1). Overall, Pope’s sympathies are with the ancients, whom he credits not only with divining the proper rules of artistic expression, but also with establishing the correct, mutually beneficial relationship between artist and critic:

Just precepts thus from great examples given,

She [Greece] drew from them what they derived from Heav’n.

The generous critic fanned the poet’s fire,

And taught the world with reason to admire (Lines 98-101).

Pope elsewhere suggests that Rome exported these conventions to the lands they conquered, leading to a decline in artistic standards throughout Europe when the Roman Empire fell.

A similar lament underpins Pope’s discussion of the ephemeral nature of fame, which he develops via several similes and metaphors. Pope likens fame to a painting, saying, “The treacherous colours the fair art betray, / And all the bright creation fades away!” (Lines 494-95). The idea is that just as the painting reaches its maturity, its natural aging leads its true beauty to be lost. He compares this in turn to, “Some fair flower the early spring supplies, / That gaily blooms, but ev’n in blooming dies” and then furthers his use of figurative language by including a comparison of wit (or poetic genius) to “an owner’s wife, that other men enjoy; / Then most our trouble still when most admired” (Lines 498-99; 501-02). The simile suggests that a beautiful wife is both a blessing and a curse, as other men will admire her and perhaps win her affections; so too is a developed poetic talent a curse, as the admiration it brings is subject to change based on fashions and the pressure of success. However, Pope is clear that this changeability is a recent phenomenon: “No longer now that golden age appears, / When patriarch-wits survived a thousand years” (Lines 480-81). Pope does not quite specify the reasons for this change, but it is conceptually linked to the disdain for the past that he suggests also leads his contemporaries to neglect classical learning.

Nevertheless, Pope does not entirely discount modern literature. Rather, he suggests that modern writers and critics should draw on the classics for a sense of Literary History and National Identity—something he suggests Britain has largely failed to do. To underscore his point that modern art is not inevitably inferior to that of Greece and Rome, Pope at times rhetorically positions the two in parallel. For example, he notes that if Dryden returned to “bless once more our eyes” (Line 462), there would be new critics who would disagree with him; similarly, if Homer returned, his critic “Zoilus again would start up from the dead” (Line 465).

Pope is also deeply engaged with the societal concerns of his time. This is especially evident in his use of gendered images and metaphor. For example, Pope compares the poetic muse to a woman who is ill-used by men who praise her at one moment and disregard her the next: “A Muse by these is like a mistress used, / This hour she’s idolized, the next abused” (Lines 432-33). In the context of his arguments about inconstancy in art, Pope is sympathetic to the woman’s plight. However, the image of a woman defined only by her beauty, subject to the whims of men, and associated with fashion trends is consistent with 18th-century representations of women as objects defined by and in relation to men. Another place this assumption emerges is when the poem represents the reign of Charles II (1630-85) as one of inappropriate obscenity:

Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ;

Nay wits had pensions, and young lords had wit:

The fair sate panting at a courtier’s play,

And not a mask went unimproved away:

The modest fan was lifted up no more,

And virgins smiled at what they blushed before (Lines 538-43).

“Jilts” are women who cast off their lover after giving them hope of a conquest; they were therefore characterized as promiscuous in the early 18th century. Similarly, “the fair” is a metaphorical way of describing a beautiful woman of the upper classes (based only on her appearance). “The modest fan” stands in for the whole body of a modest woman, but since it is not “lifted up” to cover a woman’s blushes any longer, its absence means the absence of a modest woman (and her blush in the next line). According to Pope, this immodesty is the proper subject of satire—“Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!” (Line 555)—but he also warns that the poet or critic should not be too particular about criticizing vice, since “all seems infected that th’ infected spy, / As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye (Lines 558-59). In other words, one who finds immodesty in everything is likely immodest oneself. Pope’s advocacy of balance makes sense in relation to the poem as a whole, which in the end argues that the role of a critic must be tempered by an appropriate amount of modesty and goals that are not too lofty.