No More Learning

' On
the contrary, it is one of the most conventional of all Pope's works. It
has nothing of the lively fancy of 'The Rape of the Lock', little or
nothing of the personal note which stamps the later satires and epistles
as so peculiarly Pope's own. Apart from its brilliant epigrammatic
expression the 'Essay on Criticism' might have been written by almost
any man of letters in Queen Anne's day who took the trouble to think a
little about the laws of literature, and who thought about those laws
strictly in accordance with the accepted conventions of his time. Pope
is not in the least to be blamed for this lack of originality. Profound
original criticism is perhaps the very last thing to be expected of a
brilliant boy, and Pope was little more when he planned this work. But
boy as he was, he had already accomplished an immense amount of
desultory reading, not only in literature proper, but in literary
criticism as well. He told Spence in later years that in his youth he
had gone through all the best critics, naming especially Quintilian,
Rapin, and Bossu. A mere cursory reading of the Essay shows that he had
also studied Horace, Vida, and Boileau. Before he began to write he had,
so he told Spence, "digested all the matter of the poem into prose. " In
other words, then, the 'Essay on Criticism' is at once the result of
Pope's early studies, the embodiment of the received literary doctrines
of his age, and, as a consecutive study of his poems shows, the
programme in accordance with which, making due allowance for certain
exceptions and inconsistencies, he evolved the main body of his work.

It would, however, be a mistake to treat, as did Pope's first editor,
the 'Essay on Criticism' as a methodical, elaborate, and systematic
treatise. Pope, indeed, was flattered to have a scholar of such
recognized authority as Warburton to interpret his works, and permitted
him to print a commentary upon the 'Essay', which is quite as long and
infinitely duller than the original. But the true nature of the poem is
indicated by its title. It is not an 'Art of Poetry' such as Boileau
composed, but an 'Essay'. And by the word "essay," Pope meant exactly
what Bacon did,--a tentative sketch, a series of detached thoughts upon
a subject, not a complete study or a methodical treatise.
All that we
know of Pope's method of study, habit of thought, and practice of
composition goes to support this opinion. He read widely but
desultorily; thought swiftly and brilliantly, but illogically and
inconsistently; and composed in minute sections, on the backs of letters
and scraps of waste paper, fragments which he afterward united, rather
than blended, to make a complete poem, a mosaic, rather than a picture.

Yet the 'Essay' is by no means the "collection of independent maxims
tied together by the printer, but having no natural order," which De
Quincey pronounced it to be. It falls naturally into three parts. The
first deals with the rules derived by classic critics from the practice
of great poets, and ever since of binding force both in the composition
and in the criticism of poetry. The second analyzes with admirable
sagacity the causes of faulty criticism as pride, imperfect learning,
prejudice, and so on. The third part discusses the qualities which a
true critic should possess, good taste, learning, modesty, frankness,
and tact, and concludes with a brief sketch of the history of criticism
from Aristotle to Walsh. This is the general outline of the poem,
sufficient, I think, to show that it is not a mere bundle of poetic
formulae. But within these broad limits the thought of the poem wanders
freely, and is quite rambling, inconsistent, and illogical enough to
show that Pope is not formulating an exact and definitely determined
system of thought.

Such indeed was, I fancy, hardly his purpose. It was rather to give
clear, vivid, and convincing expression to certain ideas which were at
that time generally accepted as orthodox in the realm of literary
criticism. No better expression of these ideas can be found anywhere
than in the 'Essay' itself, but a brief statement in simple prose of
some of the most important may serve as a guide to the young student of
the essay.

In the first place, the ultimate source alike of poetry and criticism is
a certain intuitive faculty, common to all men, though more highly
developed in some than others, called Reason, or, sometimes, Good Sense.
The first rule for the budding poet or critic is "Follow Nature. " This,
by the way, sounds rather modern, and might be accepted by any romantic
poet. But by "Nature" was meant not at all the natural impulses of the
individual, but those rules founded upon the natural and common reason
of mankind which the ancient critics had extracted and codified from the
practice of the ancient poets.