Part II: An Essay on Criticism

This poem is an important work in English literary criticism, guiding critics into the modern era. It was published in 1711 when Pope was a remarkably young 21 years old. It is not an essay in the modern sense, but rather a long poem written in heroic couplets. Pope was aware of a general decline in the state of art and its appreciation in his time, and chose to address the failures of the poets and critics in one long, elegant poem.

This article is the second part of our analysis, covering Part Two the 744 line poem, which spans from line 201 to line 559. You can read the first part of our analysis here, which covers Part One of ‘An Essay on Criticism’, as well as Part Three that follows after this analysis.

In this section, Pope explores how artists develop their art, the various quirks that make or hinder the development of the artistic and critical sense, and the aspects of art worth considering in criticism. He also stresses the need to understand context to appreciate the classical poets fully, reveals how the masters understood when to flout their own rules to create better art, and praises the classical poets’ exemplary and timeless standards.

Part II: An Essay on Criticism
Alexander Pope

 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, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind; Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! 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; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, While from the bounded level of our mind, Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise New, distant scenes of endless science rise! So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try, 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 attain'd, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way, Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! 

       A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ, Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find, Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind; Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, 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, But the joint force and full result of all. Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome, (The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!' No single parts unequally surprise; All comes united to th' admiring eyes; No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear; 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. In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, 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. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, For not to know such trifles, is a praise. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, Still make the whole depend upon a part: They talk of principles, but notions prize, And all to one lov'd folly sacrifice. 

       Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say, A certain bard encount'ring on the way, Discours'd in terms as just, with looks as sage, As e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage; Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools, Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. Our author, happy in a judge so nice, Produc'd his play, and begg'd the knight's advice, Made him observe the subject and the plot, 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 Stagirite." "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." 

       Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice, Curious not knowing, not exact but nice, Form short ideas; and offend in arts (As most in manners) by a love to parts. 

       Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd, Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. For works may have more wit than does 'em good, As bodies perish through excess of blood. 

       Others for language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress: Their praise is still—"the style is excellent": The sense, they humbly take upon content. Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. 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, Clears, and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort, As several garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday! And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress'd. 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, Not 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: In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, 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. These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire, While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line, While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes. Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze", In the next line, it "whispers through the trees": If "crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep", The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep". Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigour of a line, Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. 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. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! 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: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now. 

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, Who still are pleas'd too little or too much. 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, For fools admire, but men of sense approve; As things seem large which we through mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify. 

       Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside. Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, And force that sun but on a part to shine; Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; (Though each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days.) 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, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, 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, 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 starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought! 

       The vulgar thus through imitation err; As oft the learn'd by being singular; So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong: So Schismatics the plain believers quit, And are but damn'd for having too much wit. 

       Some praise at morning what they blame at night; But always think the last opinion right. A Muse by these is like a mistress us'd, This hour she's idoliz'd, the next abus'd; While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. Ask them the cause; they're wiser still, they say; And still tomorrow's wiser than today. 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; Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read; Faith, Gospel, all, seem'd made to be disputed, And none had sense enough to be confuted: Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain, Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane. If Faith itself has different dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn? Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, The current folly proves the ready wit; And authors think their reputation safe 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. Parties in wit attend on those of state, And public faction doubles private hate. Pride, Malice, Folly, against Dryden rose, In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus; But sense surviv'd, when merry jests were past; For rising merit will buoy up at last. Might he return, and bless once more our eyes, New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise; Nay should great Homer lift his awful head, Zoilus again would start up from the dead. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true; For envied wit, like Sol eclips'd, makes known Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own. When first that sun too powerful beams displays, 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. 

       Be thou the first true merit to befriend; His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch wits surviv'd a thousand years: Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost, And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; Our sons their fathers' failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be. So when the faithful pencil has design'd Some bright idea of the master's mind, 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, And each bold figure just begins to live, The treacherous colours the fair art betray, And all the bright creation fades away! 

       Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things, Atones not for that envy which it brings. In youth alone its empty praise we boast, But soon the short-liv'd vanity is lost: Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies, That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies. What is this wit, which must our cares employ? The owner's wife, that other men enjoy; Then most our trouble still when most admir'd, And still the more we give, the more requir'd; Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease, Sure some to vex, but never all to please; '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! Of old, those met rewards who could excel, And such were prais'd who but endeavour'd well: Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due, Crowns were reserv'd to grace the soldiers too. Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown, Employ their pains to spurn some others down; 

       And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each ill author is as bad a friend. To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise! Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, Nor in the critic let the man be lost! Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine. 

       But if in noble minds some dregs remain, Not yet purg'd 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, Though wit and art conspire to move your mind; 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, and thriv'd with large increase: 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, and young Lords had wit: The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, And not a mask went unimprov'd away: The modest fan was lifted up no more, And virgins smil'd at what they blush'd before. The following licence of a foreign reign Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain; Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation, And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; Where Heav'n's free subjects might their rights dispute, Lest God himself should seem too absolute: Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, And Vice admired to find a flatt'rer there! Encourag'd thus, wit's Titans brav'd the skies, And the press groan'd with licenc'd blasphemies. These monsters, critics! with your darts engage, Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage! 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 jaundic'd eye. 

Read the full text of 'An Essay on Criticism'.

Summary

In Part Two of ‘An Essay on Criticism’, Pope addresses how the artistic spirit grows, what traits serve the development of taste and wit, and aspects of art worth appreciating. He also defines how critics should approach art, when one can take and allow license with the rules, and he concludes with praise for the enduring legacy of the work of the classical poets.

The is a didactic poem written in heroic couplets that outlines principles for good literary criticism and poetry. In this second section, which covers lines 201 to 559, Pope discusses various aspects of making and judging art.

Pride blinds judgment and promotes ignorance, says Pope, but self-awareness and feedback make one wiser. A little knowledge is dangerous, and true understanding only comes with deep study. He urges critics to appreciate a work’s spirit and unity, not just its parts.

In appraising a work of art, he asserts that no art is flawless; critics should value intention and execution over perfection, avoiding obsession with petty rules or personal biases. Through satire, Pope mocks rigid critics who demand impractical adherence to rules.

Pope asserts that writers who rely on flashy ideas and ornamentation betray true wit, expressed in clarity and natural expression. Pope suggests that style should suit substance; valuing mere eloquence over meaning leads to forced, outdated, or mismatched writing. Good poetry unites sound and sense, and true artistry lies in matching rhythm and tone to meaning.

Further, Pope urges moderation on critical judgment and warns against shallow admiration. He condemns bias and criticism based on status, holding truth as the only universal standard. He also points out two contrasting but equally bad critical modes: blind imitation and being contrarian out of a sense of elitism.

Pope then turns his satire to unstable critics who chase trends and have no true inner conviction, describing them as lacking wisdom. He also exposes how envy attacks merit, without lasting success, but has nothing substantial to offer instead.

Focusing on the expression of talent in art, he laments the brevity of modern fame and the decay of an artist’s legacy. And even in the chance of little fame, wit’s gift is double-edged: it can be envied, burdensome, and often unrewarding.

Historical Context

This long poem was published in the early 18th century. This is known as the Augustan Age, a period shaped by the Enlightenment‘s emphasis on reason, order, and logic. Increased political stability, a rising middle class, and a flourishing public sphere (like coffeehouses and periodicals), which fuelled a demand for literature that reflected rational thought: the dominant value of the era.

Pope’s work is a hallmark of Neoclassicism, which was the epitome of artistic expression and cultural manifestation of the Enlightenment’s core ideals. This movement championed classical ideals (from Greco-Roman art) such as balance, restraint, and the “imitation of Nature,” an idealized form of nature, understood as universal truth and harmony. Pope draws extensively from and adapts ideas from classical texts, integrating them into his context.

Structure and Form

Part II of our analysis of ‘An Essay On Criticism‘ covers the full content of the poem’s Part Two (lines 201 to 559) of the 744-line poem. In this section, Pope explores the pitfalls of criticism and artistry, warning against pride, shallow learning, and obsession with rules. True critics grasp unity, judge with balance, and value substance over style. Wit must be clear, and poetry should harmonize sound and meaning. Superficial brilliance fades; only art true to life and Nature endures.

The poem is a verse essay, a reasoned didactic argument in poetic form, a formal and intellectual discourse packaged within the vehicle of poetry. It is composed almost entirely of heroic couplets (rhyming pairs of lines) and is written primarily in iambic pentameter. Pope employs Horatian satire, a gentler and more urban style of criticism, rather than the more acerbic Juvenalian satire. Instead of a vehement attack, he uses humour, irony, and wit to show the faults of critics and poets.

Literary Devices

Alexander Pope continues to rely on a rich array of literary devices in this section of ‘An Essay on Criticism,‘ using them to explore what hinders artistic and critical sense, and the right attitude to approach art, as creator and critic.

• Metaphors: Pope uses an extended metaphor about climbing, spanning 17 lines, to describe artistic pursuits. Here, Pope calls attention to certain aspects of developing one’s craft. Just as a mountain climber’s view is restricted at the start of their climb – “Short views we take” – young artists are filled with naivety about the work required to achieve their goals. As they progress, the scope of work required for their art broadens and deepens: “New, distant scenes of endless science rise!”. Even when they crest that particular summit, it is only a checkpoint along other similar hikes. The path of mastery and excellence is an extensive, lifelong trek.
• Tricolon: Pope uses tricolon in “No monstrous height, or breadth, or length” to create an impactful sense of dimension. This appears again in the line “Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be”, which is used to emphatically express the impossibility of perfect art.
• Allusions: Pope alludes to a number of classical figures, fictional characters, and concepts in this section. Don Quixote appears from lines 267 to 284, and is used to address impractical imposition critics can make on art. He also alludes to classical poets like Timotheus and contemporary poets like Denham as examples of prime artists.
• Apostrophe: Pope launches into a diatribe against artists dealing in obscenity. His tone is charged, and he uses apostrophe to directly address critics, such as “your darts engage” and “point your thunder”. He asks critics to attack immoral artists with their strongest firepower. Pope employs this literary device to express strong emotions and speak directly to critics.
• Personification: This is used in several instances throughout the poem to create vivid imagery. Envy is personified as a shade pursuing wit’s substance in line 466. Similarly, pride, malice, and folly are personified as negative forces, opposing Dryden.

Detailed Analysis

Lines 201-214

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,
She gives in large recruits of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swell’d with wind;
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense!
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.

Pope argues that pride is the chief reason people make mistakes in their thinking and judgment. Its effect seems to be almost intoxicating, robbing “fools” of their better judgement and thinking. Pope’s contempt for pride is shown through the fricative consonance featuring in “never-failing vice of fools”. This utilises the repeated harsh “f” and “v” sounds to convey Pope’s disdain.

Pride is personified as a conspirator and the defender of fools’ “void of sense”. By personifying pride, Pope highlights that it is equally culpable for the poisoning of literary criticism, whilst also emphasising its power. It changes the way people think, write, and reason.

Nature, in giving and withholding gifts, is also personified as a woman. Pope suggests that in the absence of natural talent, nature gives “needful pride”. This relates back to Part One, in which Pope refers to critics as talentless and self-indulgent. Pride is a constant flaw, particularly in people who lack wisdom and good sense. Pope identifies it as a defining characteristic of fools. In an implied metaphor, Pope likens pride to an air-filled balloon. While it may seem big, it is virtually empty: so does pride attempt to make up for what a person lacks in ability or understanding.

Employing another implied metaphor, Pope asserts that “right reason” is like wind, driving away the “cloud” of pride,. The “Truth” revealed as a result is metaphorically depicted as sunlight: through this, Pope implies truth is the only guiding light.

He concludes the stanza with advice: don’t rely on your judgment alone. You must understand your strengths and flaws: listen to your friends, who may state your good points, and your foes, who will likely point out your weaknesses.

Lines 215-232

A little learning is a dang’rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir’d at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But more advanc’d, behold with strange surprise
New, distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas’d at first, the tow’ring Alps we try,
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 attain’d, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen’d way,
Th’ increasing prospect tires our wand’ring eyes,
Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

“A little learning” is one of Pope’s most famous epigrams, and suggests that being educated and intelligent makes you a formidable force. Knowledge is championed as the ultimate power.

The “Pierian spring” alludes to the Greek mythical spring associated with the Muses. It was believed that drinking from it granted one knowledge and inspiration. Taking sips makes one drunk with overconfidence, but drinking deeply makes one wiser, more informed, and more modest in estimating one’s knowledge. This demonstrates how those with superficial amounts of education can believe their skill or talent to be greater than it is. True education sobers one’s perspective.

The following lines of this stanza contain an extended metaphor in which Pope compares artistic pursuit to a hike up a mountain. In youth, we are brave but naive and are inspired by ambition. We want to produce great works: but, from our limited vantage, we can’t see where this path will take us. Our view is “bounded” by the hills around us; we see only a small part of the big picture when we begin. But as we advance, we discover, in “strange surprise,” new things to learn, new inexhaustible revelations. The sibilant alliteration and consonance of “see”, “lengths”, advanc’d”, “strange”, “surprise”, distant”, “scenes”, “endless”, “science”, and “rise”, combined with the use of enjambment, creates a hissing sound, calls attention to these new sights. It conveys a tone of wonder and passion as Pope highlights the false sense of confidence this stage of learning brings.

However, the reality becomes clear in the following lines, as Pope uses the analogy to reveal that there is much work left to be done. The journey can seem so extreme and long that an artist thinks it impossible to surmount, but Pope underlines that the pursuit of art is a lifelong endeavour.

Lines 233-252

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ,
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find,
Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind;
Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight,
The gen’rous pleasure to be charm’d with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,
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,
But the joint force and full result of all.
Thus when we view some well-proportion’d dome,
(The world’s just wonder, and ev’n thine, O Rome!’
No single parts unequally surprise;
All comes united to th’ admiring eyes;
No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear;
The whole at once is bold, and regular.

In this stanza, Pope expands upon a concept he introduced in Part 1 of this poem: judging a work by the intent of its author. The best critical approach looks at the whole piece of art, remembering to walk in the writer’s shoes. Lines 235 to 238 bid the ideal reader to approach the work in its entirety. The reader should not come with the malicious intent to find faults, metaphorically stated as “malignant dull delight”, as this would mean missing out on the joy of reading a brilliant work.

However, Pope claims that some authors intentionally produce boring, emotionless, and forgettable work to avoid criticism. They may achieve their aim of producing immaculate work, but the product is lifeless and sleep-inducing. Pope describes these poems in a metaphor as having “cold” and “low” impact, implying a lack of passion. This also relates back to the climbing metaphor, as these writers appear to be stuck at the bottom of the mountain, at “low” elevation, reflecting the “eternal snow” in the heartlessness of their work.

Pope stresses that true beauty is in the parts’ union, not in each part itself. He highlights this in another metaphor, using a face as a representation of literary works. We don’t single out a particular feature of a face to praise: we say the face – the compound effect of all the features – is beautiful.

To illustrate this, Pope alludes to the “well-proportion’d dome,” the Pantheon in Rome. One of the few well-preserved classical Roman architectural structures, universally recognized as a world wonder, is a massive hemispherical dome, a unified whole “bold, and regular” consisting of the “joint force and full results of all” its parts. In the visual imagery and a use of tricolon, “No monstrous height, or breadth, or length” is isolated.

Note the pun on the word “dome”: while it does refer to the structure, it also relates back to the face metaphor. A “dome” is at times used to refer to one’s head – therefore, Pope strengthens the parallelism between art and human features.

Lines 253-266

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.
In ev’ry work regard the writer’s end,
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.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit:
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know such trifles, is a praise.
Most critics, fond of some subservient art,
Still make the whole depend upon a part:
They talk of principles, but notions prize,
And all to one lov’d folly sacrifice.

Pope submits that searching for a perfect work of art is an unattainable goal. He emphasizes this through tricolon of negatives “ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be”. This represents the inability of perfect art to exist in the past, present, and future.

He enjoins the critic to judge a work based on what the creator intended to do, and praise it despite its faults, as long as they used good methods and stayed true to their goal. In a brilliant use of self-referentiality to illustrate his point, Pope uses “compass,” a deficient form of “encompass,” in line 256 to keep true to his intention of maintaining the verse in iambic pentameter. As such, he breaks a rule to create a better piece of literature.

Lines 259 and 260 present a simile: men of intelligence sometimes accept minor errors to avoid bigger ones, as gentlemen, or men of social graces, do. It is worth committing a lesser sin to avert the committal of a greater one. While Pope previously championed literary rules, he neglects others here: this disparity is created by those who make the rules. Those created by the literary greats, such as Homer or Virgil, should be followed unquestioningly, as they are the masters of the art form. However, those created by critics should be readily ignored, as they serve only to confine work, as they are created by the unlearned.

Some critics have a fondness for a less important part of an art form, and they judge an entire work based only on that small part, missing how all the pieces fit together. Even when they claim to have grand principles, they cling to narrow prejudices. They damn a work for understanding it only through the lens of their “lov’d folly”.

Pope’s use of consonance in instances such as “faultless piece”, “conduct true”, and “lov’d folly” adds a musical quality to the verse, while also emphasising the passionate tone with which he writes.

Lines 267-284

Once on a time, La Mancha’s knight, they say,
A certain bard encount’ring on the way,
Discours’d in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e’er could Dennis of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desp’rate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle’s rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produc’d his play, and begg’d the knight’s advice,
Made him observe the subject and the plot,
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 Stagirite.”
“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.”

Using a dramatized illustration of an interaction between a bard and “La Mancha’s knight” – an allusion to the eponymous hero of Miguel Cervantes’ famous novel ‘Don Quixote‘ – Pope elaborates on the idea introduced in the last stanza. In their meeting, both characters agree on what constitutes good art. Dennis, referred to in line 270, alludes to the critic John Dennis – a contemporary of Pope with whom he had a well-known literary feud, and this was likely meant as a satirical jab. Dennis was known for a strict and pedantic adherence to classical rules of criticism. Pope uses a simile to describe the knight in his manner as Dennis when criticizing a classical Greek drama: speaking with an air of authority, wisdom, and correctness, projecting the image of someone who believes they are absolutely right.

Excited in their shared values of utmost respect for Aristotle’s rules in lines 271 and 272, the bard shares his work with the knight and produces it for the knight’s review. The poet is confident in his work, following all the classical guidelines for his play’s plot and structure. A rhetorical question is formed as Pope emphasises that the bard’s work possesses all of the necessary components, asking what could possibly be missing.

Conflict starts when the knight takes issue with the bard omitting a combat scene. Of course, the poet omits this because it would be impractical to stage a realistic battle on the stage. This, the bard protests, will violate the principle of unity according to the “Stagirite”. In classical drama, battles were often announced by messengers on the stage. Staging a grand battle would break the audience’s immersion in the play, but La Mancha’s knight will not hear of it. Up to this moment, the voice of reason, he turns quixotic and demands an impossible spectacle, even if it means enlarging the stage or staging out in the open: “Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage”.

The deeper significance of this conflict is that Don Quixote, a knight living and striving for chivalric ideals in his adventures, places inordinate importance on battles that a bard does not need in his art. He is also a symbol of radical, innovative, but impractical idealism.

Lines 285-288

Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice,
Curious not knowing, not exact but nice,
Form short ideas; and offend in arts
(As most in manners) by a love to parts.

This stanza serves to recap the preceding ones. Pope points out that whimsical critics, in being partial to only an aspect of poetry, form deficient ideas and, thus, criticize very poorly. Pope’s tone of certainty is particularly notable in this line, as he elevates himself to an authoritative status. It is notable that he effectively criticises the critics, perhaps perpetrating the same behaviours he disparages them for.

Lines 289-304

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at ev’ry line;
Pleas’d with a work where nothing’s just or fit;
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus, unskill’d to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev’ry part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dress’d,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d,
Something, whose truth convinc’d at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
For works may have more wit than does ’em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood.

Pope shines a light here on writers who fire off wild thoughts through their works without caring to make them coherent. Their work is a collection of ideas run rife – a disorganized and unrefined pile – expressed in line 292 with a mouthful of “w” alliterates. Artists who lack skill often try to hide their lack of mastery in an unwieldy effusion of ideas. They rely on embellishments to conceal a lack of structural control. Through a simile, he compares poets to painters who over decorate because they do not know how to do basic sketches. As such, Pope singles out excessive decorative language and ideas as concealment of poor knowledge.

True wit, Pope states, is to present thoughts in a way that enhances rather than obscures. The artist should clear the reader’s way to understanding. The effect of true art should be to make the viewer instantly recognize what they did not know they knew. In two antitheses, he compares how light is accentuated by shade with how modest presentation makes brilliance in art shine. This suggests a balance is needed in all things to become truly refined.

Pope concludes the stanza with a simile that compares immoderate wit in a work of literature with a body that possesses too much blood. Both vessels burst with something which is only valuable to it in moderation.

Lines 305-336

Others for language all their care express,
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still—”the style is excellent”:
The sense, they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
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,
Clears, and improves whate’er it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words express’d,
Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d:
For diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort,
As several garbs with country, town, and court.
Some by old words to fame have made pretence,
Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense;
Such labour’d nothings, in so strange a style,
Amaze th’ unlearn’d, and make the learned smile.
Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play,
These sparks with awkward vanity display
What the fine gentleman wore yesterday!
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress’d.
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,
Not yet the last to lay the old aside.

Pope criticizes the superficial writer who sacrifices substance for elaborate language and style. In an extended metaphor, he compares these writers of insubstantial eloquence to a tree that invests in leaves at the expense of making fruit. While clear writing, likened to the sun, illuminates without distortion, this type of superficial writing, “like prismatic glass,” distorts and obfuscates. In lines 311 and 312, sibilance creates the vivid impression of easy, effusive speech that fluidly disperses and evaporates, leaving no discernible mark.

Pope returns to his praise of nature as the ultimate guide for good art, as he compares words to leaves in a simile. The fruit, then, becomes a symbol of substance: the philosophical message that runs throughout literary works. Pope claims that where words are used in excess, there is no real substance to be found.

In a metaphor, Pope highlights expression as a fashion style, which is often unfit for the subject, with the illustration that different clothes fit different social settings. A grand style will not dignify a shallow idea. This is emphasised by the metaphor of bad writing as a “clown” using decorative language as “regal purple”: this colour is associated with regal class due to the highly expensive nature of purple dyes. Pope furthers his point about style through visual parallelism, with the repetition of “diff’rent” drawing the relationship between style and subject: “For diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort”.

Likewise, bad are those writers who mimic old styles while writing modern content for effect. For the mismatch of style with content, the unlearned are confused, and the learned give a mocking smile, which Pope states euphemistically in line 327. He alludes to Fungoso, a character in Ben Jonson’s play ‘Every Man in His Humor‘, who constantly tries to imitate a gentleman’s style but fails repeatedly, to comic effect. Simeonisation is used as the “grandsires” are likened to apes, appearing ridiculous in their “doublets”, which is as jarring and discordant a piece of imagery as the phrase used to describe it: “sparks with awkward vanity”.

Pope calls for a measured approach to innovations in style and tradition. Find a middle ground; don’t run ahead of the pack or lag too far behind, or you’ll appear ridiculous.

Lines 337-383

But most by numbers judge a poet’s song;
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire,
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.
These equal syllables alone require,
Tho’ oft the ear the open vowels tire,
While expletives their feeble aid do join,
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes,
With sure returns of still expected rhymes.
Where’er you find “the cooling western breeze”,
In the next line, it “whispers through the trees”:
If “crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep”,
The reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with “sleep”.
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know
What’s roundly smooth, or languishingly slow;
And praise the easy vigour of a line,
Where Denham’s strength, and Waller’s sweetness join.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
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.
Hear how Timotheus’ varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!
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:
Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found,
And the world’s victor stood subdu’d by sound!
The pow’r of music all our hearts allow,
And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.

Pope goes on to explore how sound contributes to good poetry. At first, he criticizes those who only care about how nice a poem sounds, and aren’t interested in its deeper meaning or the technical skill employed. He refers to them metaphorically as “tuneful fools”, comparing them in a simile to people who go to church for the thrill of song, not the sermons’ spiritual benefit.

He uses the lines that point out the various faults of the writers who cater to this low taste. They sound monotonous because of the use of “equal syllables” and “open vowels”. Their ideas and rhymes are unvarying, cliche, and soporific: their writing becomes a symbol of their own mundanity. When they make a poetic choice – for instance, ending a poem with a twelve-foot Alexandrine, it is only for effect. In an evocative simile, Pope likens the needlessly long line to a wounded snake dragging itself along the ground. It is slow, painful, and undesirable: Pope highlights it as being a dying whimper of a lackluster piece of work.

Pope then argues that good poetry is a result of skill acquired through diligent practice and is not accidental, and compares it in a simile to a dancer’s learned grace.

Sound should follow the sense of the line, and the rhythm of the words in the poem should reflect the meaning or feeling the poet wants to convey. Gentle sounds and smooth rhythm should describe a soft wind and a flowing stream – “Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, /
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows”. Harsh sounds and a rough rhythm mimic crashing waves – “But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, / The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar”. Pope primarily achieves this effect through consonance and assonance. The repetition of “o” and “s” sounds create the soft oral pronunciation associated with the stream, while the roughness of the sea is emphasised through the cumulation of jarring consonance.

Similarly, the sense of a laborious task is carried by words picked and arranged to make the reader read with effort and slowly: “The line too labours, and the words move slow”. The repetition of “l” and elongated “o” sounds create the slow, dragging feeling. But if speed is described, one uses quick and light words: “Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main”. Assonance is used more prominently here, aided by the abbreviation of words. This makes the line quick when read aloud.

Just as music can change our feelings, good poetry can also stir emotions and influence us. Pope illustrates this with the Greek musician Timotheus, who by song alone moved Alexander the Great to tears. He uses an anaphora in the repetition of “Now” to emphasize the impact that great poetry can have. The emotions change in rapid succession, highlighting the emotive effect of poetry.

Through parallelism, Pope compares Timotheus in his time with John Dryden, a very influential poet and literary critic of the later 17th century.

This section is dense with classical and contemporary allusions. Ajax is a Greek hero from Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ known for his immense strength. Camilla is a swift female warrior from Virgil’s ‘Aeneid.’ Sir John Denham and Edmund Waller were two contemporaries of Pope, whom he admired for their poetic excellence. The son of the Libyan Jove alludes to Alexander, who became known as such when the oracle at the Siwa Oasis, representing the god Zeus-Ammon, referred to him thus during his visit. From these extensive references, Pope demonstrates his vast knowledge of literature, past and present. This solidifies his standing as an authority on literature and literary criticism, as he has poised himself throughout this poem.

Lines 384-393

Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleas’d too little or too much.
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,
For fools admire, but men of sense approve;
As things seem large which we through mists descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.

In this stanza, Pope continues advising on how to approach criticism. One should opt for a healthy middle ground, neither too picky nor easily pleased, while appraising a work of art. This is an indirect allusion to Aristotle’s principle of the Golden Mean, keeping with the influence of classical thought on Pope’s poetry.

Elaborating on this introduced idea in lines 386-389, Pope urges that one should not get put off by any insignificant details in the art one views. It reveals either having “great pride”, as if nothing is good enough for the critic, or “little sense”, lacking the discernment to take the little errors that may appear in stride. He addresses that this set of people is put off by “ev’ry trifles” in everything they encounter. These are too critical and can’t value anything. Here, he compares irritable heads to overly sensitive stomachs through a simile. If one has too little sense or too much pride, they will be unable to properly “digest” what they have read. This alludes to a complete lack of understanding among those with these traits.

On the other hand, critics should not be easily moved to “rapture”: they should not be impressed or excited over every clever or flashy maneuver – “gay turn”. “Fools”, easily impressed by superficial things, “admire” without understanding. “Men of sense” only tender approval based on true value revealed after careful consideration. Pope uses the simile of how objects seen through mists tend to appear larger than they are to reflect how showy effects can seem marvelous, seen through the “mists” of dull minds. He claims that it is the standard of these dull minds to “magnify”, as like the air balloon metaphor, they must inflate the worth of their work.

Lines 394-423

Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize.
Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied
To one small sect, and all are damn’d beside.
Meanly they seek the blessing to confine,
And force that sun but on a part to shine;
Which not alone the southern wit sublimes,
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
(Though each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days.)
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,
But catch the spreading notion of the town;
They reason and conclude by precedent,
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,
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 starv’d hackney sonneteer, or me?
But let a Lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refines!
Before his sacred name flies every fault,
And each exalted stanza teems with thought!

Pope now turns to the problem of bias in criticism: how judges allow their prejudices to decide the value of the art they review. In an antithesis, he points out how some people judge writing based on whether it is old or new, if it is native to their place or a cultural import. Whatever they like is brilliant or of good “wit”, and they reject all else. Through a simile, he likens how they apply judgment to a religious sect’s faith.

It is not, as these biased judges believe, limited to a particular region or group of artists. He uses an extended metaphor and a simile of the sun’s radiance across six lines, likening the truth to a sun that shines on both the warm South and the cold North. This simile reinforces the idea that truth, like sunlight, is impartial – naturally widespread and unconfined by geography or cultural bias. In a tricolon, he emphasizes the sun’s, and by extension, the truth’s, enduring and ubiquitous influence: “Which from the first has shone on ages past, / Enlights the present, and shall warm the last”. Once again, this uses the tricolon of past, present, and future, emphasising the unchanging nature of fundamentally good art. Though each era and place may experience periods of clarity and obscurity, just as regions undergo seasonal shifts in sunlight, the essential light of truth remains constant.

Instead of valuing a work by where it originated from, one should look for what is good and true within it and reject the false. Some critics, however, go by what’s in vogue to blame or praise and never develop or exercise their own faculty of discretion and discernment.

In the final lines of this stanza, Pope reserves the worst censure for the sycophant critic who judges a work’s value by those who created it and not the creation itself. These lines drip with the most biting irony and sarcasm. By the metier of this type of critic, good writing is work done by a popular or famous person. “Proud dulness” – an oxymoron – joins with “Quality” to describe the fool who attaches himself to one of high social status or connections.

He is the worst of the “servile herd”, a metaphor which dehumanises biased critics, evoking an animalistic sense of being incapable of independent thought. He roots himself “at the great man’s board” while he peddles nonsense “for my Lord”. A piece of art he would consider “woeful stuff” if written by an unknown writer – “starv’d hackney sonneteer” – transforms into brilliant work if a “Lord” claims to have written it or praises it. His flattery obliterates every fault and exalts every bit of his patron’s work.

Lines 424-429

The vulgar thus through imitation err;
As oft the learn’d by being singular;
So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng
By chance go right, they purposely go wrong:
So Schismatics the plain believers quit,
And are but damn’d for having too much wit.

Less educated people tend to make errors in judgment by copying ideas without understanding. However, the intellectual makes mistakes by trying too hard to be unique and stand out (Pope expresses this contrast using antithesis in lines 424-425). These “learn’d” ones “scorn the crowd” so much that if they are right on a point, these witty ones intentionally choose to go wrong to avoid being lumped together with the masses.

Line 428 uses the religious analogy of Schismatics to illustrate this group. Schismatics break away from a widely held belief or group (like a church) because they believe they have a superior understanding or better interpretation. But this cleverness is a doomed course. There is a subtle irony in line 429, which implies that wit, a positive quality, becomes a bad thing for being too much.

Lines 430-451

Some praise at morning what they blame at night;
But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress us’d,
This hour she’s idoliz’d, the next abus’d;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side.
Ask them the cause; they’re wiser still, they say;
And still tomorrow’s wiser than today.
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;
Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read;
Faith, Gospel, all, seem’d made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted:
Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain,
Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane.
If Faith itself has different dresses worn,
What wonder modes in wit should take their turn?
Oft, leaving what is natural and fit,
The current folly proves the ready wit;
And authors think their reputation safe
Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.

Pope addresses people with inconsistent opinions here, who change their minds often and believe their last opinion is correct. The simile of a lover treated well one moment and scorned the next is used to describe these people who praise and then turn to criticize ideas and works of art as if they were fashion trends, without a stable standard.

When critics lack strong convictions, their minds are easily changed to hold different ideas frequently. They vacillate between the sensible and the senseless, and this constant swaying between sides is captured in the simile of an unwalled town easily overrun: “their weak heads, like towns unfortified”. Fortifications, then, are a metaphor for education and sense.

These people attribute this frequent change to getting wiser every day. But if this were true, then their fathers would be foolish and their children would necessarily be smarter than they are. The irony of the situation becomes obvious when we consider that frequently changing one’s mind is a sign of unstable thinking and not wisdom. There is no lasting truth if the next idea necessarily trumps the last.

Pope rejects this by drawing an analogy to debates between religious schools of the past. The schools he refers to, Scotists and Thomists, allude to followers of John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar, and Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican friar, who were active in the 13th century. These groups would argue over complex, often abstract points of doctrine that are mostly irrelevant nowadays and collected in forgotten volumes – “amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane”.

The “kindred cobwebs” refers metaphorically to old, dusty, and neglected things, with which these defunct groups can identify. “Duck Lane” alludes to a street in Pope’s time where people sold old, second-hand, obscure books. He implies that an era’s intellectual obsessions frequently become meaningless in another.

If something as weighty as faith can be interpreted differently over time – “has different dresses worn” – Pope surmises, surely what is considered witty is all the more subject to fashion and change. In its wearing dresses, faith is personified in line 446, just as Muse is called a mistress in line 432. However, what is trendy is not often natural or sensible. The result is that authors who gain fame not by producing truly great work but by writing to the taste of the time will soon fade with the period’s interest.

Lines 452-473

Some valuing those of their own side or mind,
Still make themselves the measure of mankind;
Fondly we think we honour merit then,
When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Parties in wit attend on those of state,
And public faction doubles private hate.
Pride, Malice, Folly, against Dryden rose,
In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus;
But sense surviv’d, when merry jests were past;
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return, and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise;
Nay should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue,
But like a shadow, proves the substance true;
For envied wit, like Sol eclips’d, makes known
Th’ opposing body’s grossness, not its own.
When first that sun too powerful beams displays,
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.

Returning to ideas briefly touched on earlier, Pope now explores how people judge others based on their own narrow view, and how envy is often drawn to talent. We frequently think our beliefs are best and judge others against that. It means that as we praise people who share our views, we implicitly praise ourselves. They confirm our own values. Just like in politics, when people form groups based on their “wit” (intelligence or opinions), these groups frequently get into arguments. When these disagreements are public, it can calcify personal dislike into public hatred.

Pope faces the problem of envy attacking talent. The “meritorious” stimulate the envious, who try to bring them down. These negative attacks, which are personified as a tricolon of “Pride, Malice, Folly,” come from people with different social roles, such as the tricolon of “Parsons, Critics, Beaus” in the case of the talented Dryden. But these waves of malicious attacks wash away eventually, while “the rising merit will buoy up”.

Pope alludes to pests of inferior talents that attack the awe-inspiring meritorious in lines 460 to 465. Blackmore and Milbourn allude to Dryden’s critics who faded into obscurity while his work remained strong. Similarly, Zoilus is alluded to: a Greek critic who hounded Zeus so much that he was known as “the Scourge of Homer”. These instances show how talents are the animating force of these envious critics, causing them to “arise” or “start up from the dead”. This emphasises their parasitic nature, unable to live without the art of others to capitalise on.

In an extended simile, Pope frames talent’s contest with envy from line 463 to 477, as a battle of the sun’s light against insubstantial and fleeting darkness. Personified envy is a shadow-like shade pursuing substantial merit. We are inconvenienced by the “grossness” of the body that prevents us from enjoying illuminating talent, compared in a simile to when an eclipse occurs that blots out the sun. And when the sun burns away the darkness, the opposition, captured in the simile “those clouds at last adorn its way,” only makes the talent’s light improve and wax stronger. These lines use powerful cosmic imagery to describe talent’s antagonism with its detractors.

Lines 474-493

Be thou the first true merit to befriend;
His praise is lost, who stays till all commend.
Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes,
And ’tis but just to let ’em live betimes.
No longer now that golden age appears,
When patriarch wits surviv’d a thousand years:
Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev’n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers’ failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.
So when the faithful pencil has design’d
Some bright idea of the master’s mind,
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,
And each bold figure just begins to live,
The treacherous colours the fair art betray,
And all the bright creation fades away!

From line 474 to line 477, Pope uses direct address as he urges the reader to be a trendsetter when it comes to appreciating art.

As if to stress how important to the artist this timely recognition is, he moves on to compare the ancient times – the classical “golden age” when great writers “patriarch wits” had long-lasting fame of “a thousand years” – to modern works and reputations that don’t last as long: “threescore [years] is all”.

Pope illustrates with a simile how, in time, the talented Dryden would become as “old-fashioned” and inaccessible as Chaucer, because the new generation fails to understand the old style. The short-lived fame, metaphorically called “our second life,” is all the more precious for its ephemeral nature.

In lines 484-493, he uses an extended metaphor that compares the process and eventual decay of a painting to represent the transient nature of artistic fame, and perhaps art itself. The artist’s dedicated skill is the “faithful pencil”, and the creative vision is the “bright idea of the master’s mind”. When he commands, with personified “ready Nature” waiting on him, the artist creates a “new world”. Colors “soften and unite”, and the artist’s creations come forth in “shade and light”. Then, personified “treacherous colors” betray his art, which fades with time.

Lines 494-507

Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things,
Atones not for that envy which it brings.
In youth alone its empty praise we boast,
But soon the short-liv’d vanity is lost:
Like some fair flow’r the early spring supplies,
That gaily blooms, but ev’n in blooming dies.
What is this wit, which must our cares employ?
The owner’s wife, that other men enjoy;
Then most our trouble still when most admir’d,
And still the more we give, the more requir’d;
Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease,
Sure some to vex, but never all to please;
‘Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun;
By fools ’tis hated, and by knaves undone!

Here, Pope deals with the inconveniences of wit or intelligence. He argues that it isn’t worth the envy it brings. The praise one gets for it is short-lived, like a fair spring flower that dies no sooner than it blooms, expressed in the simile in lines 497 and 498. He asks rhetorically what benefit comes from it and answers in the following lines. He metaphorically compares it to a man’s wife shared by others, suggesting that the products of the headaches of wit are mainly for the benefit and are consumed by others. Ironically, the better one is at it – “when most admir’d” – the worse off they are, because then they produce and are “the more requir’d”.

In any case, whatever hard-earned fame is easily lost, and one cannot expect to please all with their gift of wit, and is sure to make enemies. The vicious fear of the expression of wit (Pope likely means satire used as criticism), perhaps because it exposes their evils. The “virtuous shun” it because of its potential for controversy, fools hate it because they can’t understand it, and unscrupulous people abuse it.

Lines 508-515

If wit so much from ign’rance undergo,
Ah let not learning too commence its foe!
Of old, those met rewards who could excel,
And such were prais’d who but endeavour’d well:
Though triumphs were to gen’rals only due,
Crowns were reserv’d to grace the soldiers too.
Now, they who reach Parnassus’ lofty crown,
Employ their pains to spurn some others down;

Pope laments a sad development he witnessed throughout his time. He argues that while ignorance is naturally antagonistic to wit, people of learning should not compound this challenge by making enemies of themselves. Drawing parallels to his classical ideals, he points out that excellent and earnest effort were recognized and rewarded, in great and small alike, according to their achievements. He illustrates this idea with a comparison, in lines 512 and 513, to rewards given to generals and soldiers after successful campaigns.

But, in Pope’s era, literary luminaries “who reach Parnassus’ lofty crown” use their position not to uplift, but to put down and undermine their peers. This marked a shift from a supportive intellectual environment in the past to the present age, damaged by destructive criticism and professional jealousy.

Lines 516-525

And while self-love each jealous writer rules,
Contending wits become the sport of fools:
But still the worst with most regret commend,
For each ill author is as bad a friend.
To what base ends, and by what abject ways,
Are mortals urg’d through sacred lust of praise!
Ah ne’er so dire a thirst of glory boast,
Nor in the critic let the man be lost!
Good nature and good sense must ever join;
To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Pope suggests that when writers are driven by vanity or too much pride in their work (“self-love”), it leads to competition and conflict, a foolish state of affairs. Also, poor writers tend to be reluctant to praise others, or may be insincere. They make bad friends, are untrustworthy, and lack good judgment because they focus more on their status than truth or generosity.

Pope warns against overweening desire for praise, as this can lead artists and critics to commit ignoble or desperate acts for the attention they crave, and pleads that critics never let their desire for praise and reputation make them let go of their humanity – “nor in the critic let the man be lost”. In judgment, “good nature” and critical discernment (“good sense”) should go hand-in-hand. Pope ends the stanza with his most famous aphorism, and one of the most famous sayings in the English language: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” It is a natural part of being human to make mistakes, but being gracious and considerate is a noble, godlike quality. The visual parallelism here emphasizes the divide between humanity and divinity, which is further enforced by the separating punctuation.

Lines 526-559

But if in noble minds some dregs remain,
Not yet purg’d 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,
Though wit and art conspire to move your mind;
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, and thriv’d with large increase:
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, and young Lords had wit:
The fair sat panting at a courtier’s play,
And not a mask went unimprov’d away:
The modest fan was lifted up no more,
And virgins smil’d at what they blush’d before.
The following licence of a foreign reign
Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain;
Then unbelieving priests reform’d the nation,
And taught more pleasant methods of salvation;
Where Heav’n’s free subjects might their rights dispute,
Lest God himself should seem too absolute:
Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare,
And Vice admired to find a flatt’rer there!
Encourag’d thus, wit’s Titans brav’d the skies,
And the press groan’d with licenc’d blasphemies.
These monsters, critics! with your darts engage,
Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage!
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 jaundic’d eye.

Pope closes the second part of his poem with fire and brimstone, evoking imagery reminiscent of the prophets of the Old Testament. He saves, it seems, the worst ills he sees in his world to be dealt with last: morality and the corruption of art and society.

He advises critics to focus their anger on more deserving evils than the mere character flaws of artists, evils for which there was no shortage and which needed strong condemnation in “these flagitious times.” He singles out “vile obscenity,” crude or immoral content, as something to be given no quarter, and insists it can’t be tolerated even as an expression of art or intelligence. It should be ranked with dullness (the opposite of wit) and considered as shameful as “impotence in love,” implying an utter lack of power or value.

Pope then describes the licentious state of his society: a “fat age of pleasure,” where too much wealth, leisure, and ease have led to moral decay. He paints a picture of a culture where the king was lazy, mistresses (“jilts”) had undue influence on power, and superficial intelligence was rewarded at court. Line 539 summarizes how upside-down things were, while lines 540 to 543 expand upon this image, showing the decline in moral standards. Public displays of immodesty rose, and people openly enjoyed performances they would once have been ashamed of: “what they blush’d before”.

The allusions in lines 544 and 545 establish the historical context for Pope’s acerbic criticism. “The following licence of a foreign reign” refers to the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, when Charles II returned from France after the Interregnum of Cromwell (1649–1660). Charles II introduced the culture of the French court, known for its extravagance, sophistication, and liberal morals, to England, which contrasted starkly with the Puritan morality that had dominated the country during Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

Line 545 alludes to Faustus Socinus, an Italian theologian whose “bold” theological ideas were considered radical and heretical by orthodox Christians like Pope. The “dregs” means the impurities that settle at the bottom of a liquid, and figuratively, the very worst of the thing addressed. In this context, “drain” suggests the worst corrupt ideas spreading throughout society, following the “license of a foreign reign.”

“[U]nbelieving priests” refers sarcastically to clergy who embraced doctrines departing from what Pope considered true faith. They “reform’d the nation,” an irony that does not suggest moral improvement, but rather a transformation of values. This he considered a lowering of standards, which he calls “licenc’d blasphemies.” They made salvation seem easy and encouraged people to question divine authority, thus eroding traditional piety.

“Encourag’d thus,” with license at court and religious laxity, “wit’s Titans brav’d the skies”, a metaphor describing how talented intellectuals and artists became emboldened to challenge traditional authorities and sacred beliefs. This expression alludes to the Titans of Greek myth, powerful primordial deities who rebelled against the Olympian gods. “And the press groan’d” suggests that printing presses were burdened by the sheer volume of material they were producing, while also implying the weight of the “licenc’d blasphemies” being churned out.

Pope adds a caveat while urging critics to attack these pernicious, socially damaging ills in lines 554 and 555. He asks them to avoid the mistake of the “scandalously nice,” an ironic reference to overly prudish or extremely delicate critics who are too sensitive to perceived improprieties. These critics wrongly interpret an author’s work as immoral, “mistake an author into vice”. The fault they find in a work is only a projection of their own shortcomings, and Pope captures this in a simile comparing their distorted judgment to how a jaundiced eye sees objects through a yellow tint.

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