AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill True taste as seldom is the critic's share;" ; Both must alike from heav'n derive their light, 1 Dryden's Epilogue to All for Love : This difference grows, 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, Yet, if we look more closely, we shall find The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right; 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, 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, There are who judge still worse than he can write. 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, And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit. Nile were supposed to be of this 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, 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 But when the milder beams of mercy play. 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; But oft in those confined to single parts. Like kings we lose the conquests gained before, First follow nature, and your judgment frame 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; 4 Translation of Boileau's Art of Poetry by Sir William Soame and Dryden, canto i. Love reason then, and let whate'er you |