Authors are partial to their wit, ’tis true,
But are not critics to their judgement too?
Yet if we look more closely, we shall find
20 Most have the seeds of judgement in their mind:
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;
30 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 Maevius 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.
40 Those half-learn’d witlings, numerous 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;
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;
50 Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dullness 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.
60 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 several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
First follow Nature, and your judgement frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
70 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.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
In some fair body thus th’ informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole;
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains,
Itself unseen, but in th’ effects remains.
80 Some, to whom Heav’n in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more to turn it to its use,
For wit and judgement often are at strife,
Though meant each other’s aid, like man and wife.
’Tis more to guide than spur the Muse’s steed;
Restrain his fury than provoke his speed:
The wingèd courser, like a gen’rous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized;
90 Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.
Hear how learn’d Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress and when indulge our flights:
High on Parnassus’ top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, th’ immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples giv’n,
She drew from them what they derived from Heav’n.
100 The gen’rous critic fanned the poet’s fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then Criticism the Muse’s handmaid proved,
To dress her charms, and make her more belov’d,
But foll’wing wits from that intention strayed:
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid;
Against the poets their own arms they turned,
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned.
So modern ’pothecaries, taught the art
By doctors’ bills to play the doctor’s part,
110 Bold in the practice of mistaken rules
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e’er spoiled so much as they;
Some drily plain, without invention’s aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made.
These leave the sense their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.
You then whose judgement the right course would steer,
Know well each ancient’s proper character;
120 His fable, subject, scope in every page,
Religion, country, genius of his age;
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticize.
Be Homer’s works your study and delight,
Read them by day, and meditate by night;
Thence form your judgement, thence your maxims bring,
And trace the Muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.
130 When first young Maro in his boundless mind
A work t’ outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic’s law,
And but from Nature’s fountains scorned to draw;
But when t’ examine ev’ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design,
And rules as strict his laboured work confine
As if the Stagyrite o’erlooked each line.
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;
140 To copy Nature is to copy them.
Some beauties yet no precepts can declare,
For there’s a happiness as well as care.
Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach,
And which a master-hand alone can reach.
If, where the rules not far enough extend
(Since rules were made but to promote their end),
Some lucky licence answers to the full
Th’ intent proposed, that licence is a rule.
150 Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take,
May boldly deviate from the common track.
Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend,
And rise to faults true critics dare not mend;
From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part,
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,
Which, without passing through the judgement, gains
Th
e heart, and all its end at once attains.
In prospects thus, some objects please our eyes,
Which out of Nature’s common order rise,
160 The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.
But though the ancients thus their rules invade
(As kings dispense with laws themselves have made),
Moderns, beware! or if you must offend
Against the precept, ne’er transgress its end;
Let it be seldom, and compelled by need,
And have at least their precedent to plead;
The critic else proceeds without remorse,
Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.
I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts
170 Those freer beauties, e’en in them, seem faults.
Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportioned to their light, or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display
His pow’rs in equal ranks and fair array,
But with th’ occasion and the place comply,
Conceal his force, nay, seem sometimes to fly.
Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
180 Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.
Still green with bays each ancient altar stands,
Above the reach of sacrilegious hands,
Secure from flames, from envy’s fiercer rage,
Destructive war, and all-involving age.
See, from each clime the learn’d their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting paeans ring!
In praise so just let ev’ry voice be joined,
And fill the gen’ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days,
190 Immortal heirs of universal praise!
Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow;
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be found!
O may some spark of your celestial fire
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire
(That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights,
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes),
To teach vain wits a science little known,
200 T’ admire superior sense, and doubt their own.
Part II
Causes hindering a true judgement. Pride. Imperfect learning. Judging by parts, and not by the whole. Critics in wit, language, versification only. Being too hard to please, or too apt to admire. Partiality – too much love to a sect – to the ancients or moderns. Prejudice or prevention. Singularity. Inconstancy. Party spirit. Envy. Against envy, and in praise of good nature. When severity is chiefly to be used by critics.
Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgement, 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 swelled with wind;
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,
210 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 every 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.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
220 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 advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
Th’ eternal snows appear already passed,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But those attained, we tremble to survey
230 The growing labours of the lengthened 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 charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
240 Correctly cold, and regularly low,
That shunning faults one quiet tenor 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 proportioned dome
(The world’s just wonder, and ev’n thine, O Rome),
No single parts unequally surprise;
250 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,
260 T’ avoid great errors must the less commit;
Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays,
For not to know some 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 encountering on the way,
Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
270 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,
Produced his play, and begged 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;
280 ‘Yes, or we must renounce the Stagyrite.’
‘Not so, by Heaven! (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 on a plain.’
Thus critics, of less judgement 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 con
fine,
290 And glitt’ring thoughts struck out at ev’ry line,
Pleased with a work where nothing’s just or fit,
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled 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 dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
300 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,
310 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.
320 A vile conceit in pompous words expressed
Is like a clown in regal purple dressed:
For diff’rent styles with diff’rent subjects sort,
As sev’ral 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 learnèd smile.
Unlucky as Fungoso in the play,
These sparks with awkward vanity display
330 What the fine gentleman wore yesterday;
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires in their doublets dressed.
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,
The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics) Page 4