To Write Aright: Pope's "Essay on Criticism" Quiz

Answer: watches

Alexander Pope published "An Essay on Criticism" in 1711, when he was merely 22 years old. One might be tempted to think his work was an exercise in arrogance, given his age, for older and more experienced writers and critics would surely laugh or be insulted at what a young writer could possibly offer them. Nevertheless, Pope's "Essay" became his first real success, and many critics praised it.

For example, Joseph Addison wrote in "Spectator" 253, that Pope's piece combined the "most known and most received observations on the subject of literature and criticism".

Answer: Homer

As an Augustan, Pope believed that writers and critics alike should allow themselves to be guided by Nature (that which makes up the common essence of each category or species of items in the universe) and the Ancients (those who wrote and lived during Classical times, i.e. the ancient Greeks and Romans). Pope's praise of Homer is high indeed, for he claims that reading Homer is no different from observing Nature itself. Furthermore, as a product of the Enlightenment, Pope believed in the Great Chain of Being, an explanation of the universe that placed all things into categories that were themselves arranged in a hierarchical plan from highest (God) to lowest (the elements). Pope believed in a structured and ordered universe created by a logical God, and he thought human beings achieved their best when they understood this structure and order and lived accordingly.

This partly explains his insistence on following tradition and following the Ancients, who he believed had understood this structure and order and had understood the nature of the universe and the nature of human beings.

This also partly explains the structure and order of his own poem "An Essay on Criticism", which he writes in heroic couplets. The entire essay is really a poem with every two lines rhyming and every line adhering to the rhythm of iambic pentameter. Every line consists of ten syllables, five two-syllable metrical feet with the second syllable receiving an emphasis each time. The opening two lines would be read something like this: "'Tis HARD | to SAY | if GREAT | er WANT | of SKILL / Ap PEAR | in WRIT | ing OR | in JUDG | ing ILL".

Answer: every foe

Pope's advice seems relatively sound, doesn't it? You cannot trust yourself to be honest with yourself about your own faults, so you have to go outside yourself. Thus, you turn to your friends, but friends aren't always that honest with you either. After all, they care about you and your feelings. On the other hand, I'm certain most of your foes would be happy (if not thrilled) to be brutally honest with you about your flaws.

In the end, turning to both your friends and your foes will more than likely give you a balanced and accurate understanding of who or what you are.

Answer: spring

The Pierian spring is a reference to the water flowing on Mount Olympus, a spring sacred to the Muses. Thus, the Pierian spring in Pope's poem becomes a metaphor for the source of knowledge and creative inspiration. His point is this: people are prideful, as he's already established, so once they get a little bit of knowledge about something, they conceitedly become know-it-alls.

They become "drunk" so to speak on the little bit of knowledge they've imbibed, so their heads swell and they suddenly think they know everything. On the other hand, if they were to drink deeply, they would discover that there is an infinite amount of knowledge and that they know hardly any of all there is to know.

As Socrates suggested, the wise man understands that he really knows nothing at all. Thus, Pope advises, "Drink deep, or taste not", for the man who knows little but thinks he knows a great deal is a dangerous man.

He follows this couplet with another: "There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, / And drinking largely sobers us again" (lines 217-18). Most would, of course, believe that the more one drinks, the more inebriated one becomes; this is how drinking alcohol works.

However, Pope wittily points out just the opposite with knowledge; the less one drinks of it, the drunker one becomes.

Answer: leaves

Pope argues that the length of a work or that the proponderance of words in a work has nothing to do with whether that work is of artistic quality. In fact, according to him, the opposite is usually the case. If one were to dig beneath the layer of rotting leaves covering a forest's floor, one would find nothing that was producing anything akin to fruit. Likewise, by the time one searches beneath all of the words of a lengthy piece, one often finds nothing much has been said, nothing fruitful anyway. Nevertheless, Pope's "Essay on Criticism" is three books in length and is 744 lines long itself, despite his advice to avoid verbosity.

Interestingly, Pope claimed he wrote his "Essay" in heroic couplets and in the form of a poem partially because he felt it would help reign in any attempts to be overly wordy.

Answer: beauty

Pope argued adamantly that a critic should focus entirely on the written work he was judging and what that work's overall purpose was, "And if the means be just, the conduct true, / Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due" (lines 257-58). Pope was also frustrated by "ad hominem" attacks from would-be critics.

When other writers could not find anything to criticize in Pope's work, they often turned to belittling him because of his Catholic faith (which also led to his being barred from attending a university, receiving patronage, and even voting) and his physical deformities (a childhood illness had left him crippled, hunched, stunted, and in pain for most of his life). Finally, Pope also argues that if critics' only desire is to find something to gripe about, then they'll surely find it, for no one can create a perfect work: "Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, / Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er could be" (lines 253-54).

In other words, a critic's goal should not be to search for perfection.

Answer: right

In this section of "An Essay on Criticism", Pope also attacks those who cannot think for themselves: "Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, / But catch the spreading notion of the town" (lines 408-09). This couplet also makes use of eye-rhyme--words that appear visually to rhyme but, of course, audibly do not. Later, he criticizes those who rebel just for the sake of rebelling: "So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng / By chance go right, they purposely go wrong" (lines 426-27).

Answer: fathers

As we judge others who have come before us, so will we also be judged by those who come after us, and sometimes more harshly. Thus, we are reminded to keep a broader, wiser, and humbler perspective as we judge one another. Pope also points out that when we judge, we should not arrogantly use ourselves as the standard by which we judge others: "Some valuing those of their own side or mind, / Still [always] make themselves the measure of mankind: / Fondly [foolishly] we think we honor merit then, / When we but praise ourselves in other men" (lines 452-55).

Answer: befriend

Again, Pope's advice makes good sense. When we praise another after he or she has waited to see what fifty others are going to say, our words seem rather hollow and meaningless then. We seem to be "jumping on the bandwagon" instead of being sincere.

Answer: divine

"To err is human, to forgive divine" has reached essentially the status of being a cliche, it is spoken and written so much. It is indeed a powerful line. We are reminded that being human is easy: all we have to do is make mistakes. However, if we truly wish to achieve a life closer to godliness, then we must learn to forgive. Thus, the critic's chief quality should be forgiveness, not a keen ability to discern faults. How completely different from our usual notions of what critics are supposed to be. Of minor note here is Pope's use of a slant rhyme, two or more words that almost sound as if they rhyme but do not. Pope's use of slant rhyme here reinforces his own claims; he demonstrates that humans are not perfect in his failure to create an absolute rhyme, yet who would criticize Pope's failure after considering the profoundness of the couplet and its beauty?