An Essay on Criticism

“’Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill

Appear in writing or in judging ill

But, of the two, less dangerous is th’offence

To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.

Some few in that, but numbers err in this,

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss;

A fool might once himself alone expose,

Now one in verse makes many more in prose.

’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none

Go just alike, yet each believes his own.”

Alexander Pope’s poem begins with an emphasis on the popularity of literary criticism and the related claim that poorly written criticism causes more damage than poorly written poetry. He uses rhyme scheme and enjambment (a sentence that carries over without pause from one line to the next) to emphasize the number of foolish critics and the extent of critical disagreement. The rhyming couplets emphasize end-stopped lines with “expose” and “pose,” heightening the contrast between the writer’s influence and the critic’s. Meanwhile, the enjambment between “none” and “Go just alike” creates a sense of disjunction, mimicking the discord of critical voices in much the same way the slant rhyme (“none” and “own) does.

“Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,

And wisely curbed proud man’s pretending wit.

As on the land while here the ocean gains,

In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;

Thus in the soul while memory prevails,

The solid power of understanding fails;

Where beams of warm imagination play,

The memory’s soft figures melt away.”

Pope conveys a sense of interplay between imagination, reason, and the limits of human knowledge with a simile. The ebb and flow of human understanding is explained with a description of the balance between land and sea. He extends the language of the simile into the description of memory and understanding by using words like “solid power” to equate understanding to land and “memory’s soft figures” to suggest it is as changeable as the waves or shore.