Those freer beauties, ev’n in them, seem faults. 170
Some figures monstrous and misshaped appear,
Consider’d singly, or beheld too near,
Which, but proportion’d to their light or place,
Due distance reconciles to form and grace.
A prudent chief not always must display 175
His powers 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,
Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream. 180
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! 185
Hear in all tongues consenting pæans ring!
In praise so just let ev’ry voice be join’d,
And fill the gen’ral chorus of mankind.
Hail, Bards triumphant! born in happier days,
Immortal heirs of universal praise! 190
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 195
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,
T’ admire superior sense, and doubt their own. 200
An Essay on Criticism: Part II
Causes hindering a true judgment. 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 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 5
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: 10
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 dangerous thing; 15
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,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, 20
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, 25
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; 30
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 35
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, 40
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;
‘T is not a lip or eye we beauty call, 45
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; 50
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 every work regard the writer’s end, 55
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; 60
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, 65
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; 70
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools
Who durst depart from Aristotle’s rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,
Produced his play, and begg’d the knight’s advice;
Made him observe the Subject and the Plot, 75
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 Stagyrite.’ 80
‘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 in a plain.’
Thus critics of less judgment than caprice, 85
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 every line; 90
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 every part, 95
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 convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind. 100
; As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit:
For works may have more wit than does them good,
As bodies perish thro’ excess of blood.
Others for language all their care express, 105
And value books, as women men, for dress:
Their praise is still — the Style is excel., lent;
The Sense they humbly take upon content.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. 110
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
The face of Nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like th’ unchanging sun, 115
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 120
Is like a clown in regal purple dress’d:
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; 125
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; 130
And but so mimic ancient wits at best,
As apes our grandsires in their doublets drest.
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, 135
Nor 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 tho thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; 140
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, 145
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,’ 150
In the next line, it ‘whispers thro’ 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, 155
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 160
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.
‘T is not enough no harshness gives offence;
The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 165
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, 170
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! 175
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, 180
And the world’s Victor stood subdued by sound!
The power 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. 185
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; 190
For fools admire, but men of sense approve:
As things seem large which we thro’ mist descry,
Dulness is ever apt to magnify.
Some foreign writers, some our own despise;
The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 195
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, 200
But ripens spirits in cold northern climes;
Which from the first has shone on ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last;
Tho’ each may feel increases and decays,
And see now clearer and now darker days. 205
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, 210
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; 215
A constant critic at the great man’s board,
To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord.
What woful stuff this madrigal would be
In some starv’d hackney sonneteer or me!
But let a lord once own the happy lines, 220
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 thro’ imitation err,
As oft the learn’d by being singular; 225
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, 230
But always think the last opinion right.
A Muse by these is like a mistress used,
This hour she ‘s idolized, the next abused;
While their weak heads, like towns unfortified,
‘Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. 235
Ask them the cause; they ‘re wiser still they say;
And still to-morrow’s wiser than to-day.
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow;
Our wiser sons n
o doubt will think us so.
Once school-divines this zealous isle o’erspread; 240
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. 245
If Faith itself has diff’rent 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, 250
Which lives as long as fools are pleas’d 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. 255
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, beaux:
But sense survived when merry jests were past; 260
For rising merit will buoy up at last.
Might he return and bless once more our eyes,
New Blackmores and new Milbournes must arise.
Nay, should great Homer lift his awful head,
Zoilus again would start up from the dead. 265
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, 270
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. 275
Short is the date, alas! of modern rhymes,
And ‘t is but just to let them live betimes.
No longer now that Golden Age appears,
When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost, 280
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, 285
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, 290
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