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 dang'rous 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.
In poets as true genius is but rare,

True taste as seldom is the critic's share;"

;

Both must alike from heav'n derive their light,
These born to judge, as well as those to write.
Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely, who have written well.'

1 Dryden's Epilogue to All for Love :

This difference grows,
Betwixt our fools in verse, and yours in

prose.

2 An extravagant assertion. Those who can appreciate, are beyond comparison more numerous than those who can produce, a work of genius.

3 Qui scribit artificiose, ab aliis commode scripta facile intelligere proterit. Cic. ad Herenn. lib. iv. De pictore, sculptore, fictore, nisi artifex, judicare non potest. Pliny.-POPE.

VOL. II. POETRY,

Poets and painters must appeal to the world at large. Wretched indeed would be their fate, if their merits were to be decided only by their rivals. It is on the general opinion of persons of taste that their individual estimation must ultimately rest, and if the public were excluded from judging, poets might write and painters paint for each other. ROSCOE.

The execution of a work and the appreciation of it when executed are separate operations, and all experience

D

Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment too?

Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find
Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind:1
Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light,

The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right;
But as the slightest sketch, if justly traced,
Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,
So by false learning is good sense defaced:
Some are bewildered in the maze of schools,"
And some made coxcombs nature meant but fools."
In search of wit, these lose their common sense,
And then turn critics in their own defence:"

has shown that numbers pronounce justly upon literature, architecture, and pictures, though they may not be able to write like Shakespeare, design like Wren, or paint like Reynolds. Taste is acquired by studying good models as well as by emulating them. Pope, perhaps, copied Addison, Tatler, Oct. 19, 1710: "It is ridiculous for any man to criticise on the works of another who has not distinguished himself by his own performances."

1 Omnes tacito quodam sensu, sine ulla arte aut ratione, quæ sint in artibus ac rationibus, recta et prava dijudicant. Cic. de Orat. lib. iii.POPE.

2 The phrase 66 more disgraced" implies that slight sketches "justly traced" are a disgrace at best, whereas they have often a high degree of merit.

3 Plus sine doctrina prudentia, quam sine prudentia valet doctrina. Quint.-POPE.

4 Between ver. 25 and 26 were these lines, since omitted by the author:

Many are spoiled by that pedantic throng, Who with great pains teach youth to reason wrong.

Tutors, like virtuosos, oft inclined [[mind,
By strange transfusion to improve the
Draw off the sense we have, to pour in new;
Which yet, with all their skill, they ne'er
could do.-POPE.

The transfusion spoken of in the fourth verse of this variation is the transfusion of one animal's blood into another.-WAKEFIELD.

5 "Nature," it is said in the Spectator, No. 404, "has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making, by applying his talents otherwise than nature designed." The idea is expressed more happily by Dryden in his Hind and Panther:

For fools are doubly fools endeav'ring to be wise.

Pope contradicts himself when he says in the text that the men made coxcombs by study were meant by nature but for fools, since they are among his instances of persons upon whom nature had bestowed the "seeds of judgment," and who possessed "good sense till it was defaced by

false learning."

Dryden's Medal:

The wretch turned loyal in Lis own de fence.

Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write,
Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite.'
All fools have still an itching to deride,
And fain would be upon the laughing side.'
If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite,'

There are who judge still worse than he can write.
Some have at first for wits, then poets passed,
Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last.
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass."
Those half-learned witlings, num'rous in our isle,
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile;'
Unfinished things, one knows not what to call,
Their generation's so equivocal:'

1 The couplet ran thus in the first edition, with less neatness and perspicuity :

Those hate as rivals all that write; and others

But envy wits as eunuchs envy lovers.

The inaccuracy of the rhymes excited him to alteration, which occasioned a fresh inconvenience, that of similar rhymes in the next couplet but one.-WAKEFIELD.

Dryden's Prologue to the Second Part of the Conquest of Granada:

They who write ill, and they who ne'er durst write,

Turn critics out of mere revenge and spite.

2 In the manuscript there are two more lines, of which the second was afterwards introduced into the Dunciad:

Though such with reason men of sense abhor;

Fool against fool is barb'rous civil war. Though Mævius scribble and the city knight, &c.

The city knight was Sir Richard Blackmore, who resided in Cheapside. "In the early part of Blackmore's time," says Johnson, " a citizen was a term of reproach, and his place of abode was a topic to which his adver

saries had recourse in the penury of scandal."

* Dryden's Persius, Sat. i. 100: Who would be poets in Apollo's spite.

"The simile of the mule," says Warton, "heightens the satire, and is new," but the comparison fails in the essential point. Pope's "half-learn'd witlings," who aim at being wit and critic, are inferior to both, whereas the mule, to which he likens the literary pretender, is in speed and strength superior to the ass.

"I am confident," says Dryden in the dedication of his Virgil, "that you will look on those half-lines hereafter as the imperfect products of a hasty muse, like the frogs and serpents in the Nile, part of them kindled into life, and part a lump of unformed, unanimated mud."

6 The diction of this line is coarse, and the construction defective.WAKEFIELD.

The omission of "them" after "call" exceeds the bounds of poetic licence.

7 Equivocal generation is the production of animals without parents. Many of the creatures

on the

L

To tell 'em would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.'
But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic's noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste, and learning go;'
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.
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 pow'r of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,'
The memory's soft figures melt away.'

Nile were supposed to be of this
class, and it was believed that they
were fashioned by the action of the
sun upon the slime. The notion was
purely fanciful, as was the idea that
the insects were half-formed--
--a com-
pound of mud and organisation.

1 Dryden's Persius, v. 36:

For this a hundred voices I desire

To tell thee what an hundred tongues would tire.

"I have often thought," says the author of the Supplement to the Profound, speaking of Pope's couplet, "that one pert fellow's tongue might tire a hundred pair of attending ears; but I never conceived that it could communicate any lassitude to the tongues of the bystanders before." The evident meaning of Pope is that it would tire a hundred ordinary tongues to talk as much as one vain wit, but the construction is faulty.

2 This is a palpable imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry, 38:

Sumite materiam vestris, qui scribitis,

æquam

Viribus; et versate diu, quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri.-WAKEFIELD.

3

Pope is unfortunate in his selection of instances to illustrate his posi tion that the various mental faculties are never concentrated in the same individual. Men of great intellect have sometimes bad memories, and a good memory is sometimes found in persons of a feeble intellect; but it is a monstrous paradox to assert that a retentive memory and a powerful understanding cannot go together. No one will deny that Dr. Johnson and Lord Macaulay were gifted with vigorous, brilliant minds; yet the memory of the first was extraordinary, and that of the second prodigious. In general, men of transcendent abilities have been remark. able for their knowledge.

4

Dryden, in his Character of a
Good Parson :

But when the milder beams of mercy play.
-WAKEFIELD.

5 From the second couplet, apparently meant to be the converse of the first, one would suppose that he

One science only will one genius fit;
So vast is art, so narrow human wit:'
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,

But oft in those confined to single parts.

Like kings we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his sev'ral province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.

First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard," which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,'
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,*
At once the source, and end, and test of art.

this reason men can rarely attain to the highest skill in more than one department, however many accomplishments they may possess in a minor degree. The native power to shine in various callings may exist, but the practice which can alone make perfect, is wanting.

2 These are the words of Lord Shaftesbury in his Advice to an Author: "Frame taste by the just standard of nature." The principle is as old as poetry, and has been laid down by multitudes of writers; but the difficulty, as Bowles remarks, is to determine what is "nature," and what is "her just standard." "Nature" with Pope meant Homer. • Roscommon's Essay:

Truth still is one: Truth is divinely bright;
No cloudy doubts obscure her native light.
-WAKEFIELD.

4 Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Sir William Soame and Dryden, canto i.

Love reason then, and let whate'er you
write
[light.
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and