'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' - the meaning and origin of this phrase Famous Last Words Browse phrases beginning with: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing more like this... Proverbs Meaning A small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they are more expert than they really are. Origin 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' and 'a little learning is a dangerous thing' have been used synonymously since the 18th century. The version 'a little learning' is widely attributed to Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744). It is found in An Essay on Criticism, 1709, and I can find no earlier example of the expression in print: A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. The similarity of the two phrases is demonstrated by what appears to be an impromptu coining of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' in a piece in The monthly miscellany; or Gentleman and Lady's Complete Magazine, Vol II, 1774, in which the writer misquoted Pope: Mr.

Pope says, very truly, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." Both Pope's original verse and the misquotation of it were predated by an anonymous author, signing himself 'A B', in the collection of letters published in 1698 as The mystery of phanaticism: "Twas well observed by my Lord Bacon, That a little knowledge is apt to puff up, and make men giddy, but a greater share of it will set them right, and bring them to low and humble thoughts of themselves. Again, there is a degree of misquotation here; what 'my Lord Bacon', the English politician and philosopher Francis Bacon, Viscount St Alban, actually said, in The Essays: Of Atheism, 1601, was: "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion." So, who coined the phrase? It appears to have been a group effort. Bacon can be credited with the idea, Pope with the 'learning' version and the mysterious 'A B' with the 'knowledge' version.

Alexander Pope Essay - Pope, Alexander (Poetry Criticism) - eNotes.com Pope, Alexander (Poetry Criticism) Alexander Pope 1688–1744 English poet, critic, translator, and essayist. Deemed the perfecter of the English heroic couplet, Pope is considered the foremost writer of the Augustan Age and one of the most forceful poetic satirists of all time. His verse is viewed as the ultimate embodiment of eighteenth-century neoclassical ideals. These ideals, such as order, beauty, sophisticated wit, and refined moral sentiment, are exemplified throughout his verse, but particularly in such works as An Essay on Criticism (1711) and the mockheroic poem The Rape of the Lock (1712). Like these works, virtually all of Pope's writings are concerned with the moral, social, and intellectual state of humanity, which he considered of utmost relevance to his craft. Pope's most controversial work and most often considered his masterpiece, The Dunciad (1728), severely satirizes London writers who Pope believed had unjustly maligned him or who he considered contributors to the dissolution of Augustan ideals in England.

Although satire, inspired by that of Roman poet Horace, represents much of his literary corpus and claim to critical praise, Pope is also highly revered for his monumental translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and for his critical discussions of poetry and aesthetics. Biographical Information Pope was born in London and was the only child of a moderately wealthy linen merchant, Alexander, and his second wife Edith. Under the Anglican rule of William of Orange and Mary Stuart, who ousted the Catholic monarch James II in the year of Pope's birth, Pope's family, like all Roman Catholics living in England at the time, faced numerous restrictions. They were, for example, forbidden by law to practice their religion openly, to hold public office, or to attend public schools and universities. Also enacted at this time was a law prohibiting Catholics from residing within ten miles of London, and so the Popes relocated to nearby Windsor Forest, beside the Thames. Under these circumstances, Pope received his education irregularly through private tutors and Catholic priests but was largely self-taught. By the age of twelve, he was already well versed in Greek, Roman, and English literature and diligently emulated the works of his favorite poets.

At this time, though, Pope contracted a tubercular condition from infected milk, which caused permanent curvature of the spine and severely stunted growth; as a result, he attained a maximum height of only four feet, six inches, and throughout adulthood was so physically disabled that he required daily care. Yet, this did not deter Pope from the literary life he sought. By his teens, after voluminous reading of the classics, he had come to regard the heroic couplets of John Dryden as the highest, most sustained form of English poetry yet produced, and so he decided to pattern his verse after this Restoration master. During periodic visits to London at this time, Pope met three of Dryden's contemporaries: the poet William Walsh, and dramatists William Wycherley and William Congreve. Through the influence of these writers, Pope's manuscript of his early bucolic poems, the Pastorals, captured the attention of publisher Jacob Tonson, then Britain's leading publisher, and in 1709 the Pastorals appeared in Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies. Pope later became friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, publishers of the Spectator, and contributed poems and articles to their journal during the next few years.

Pope's growing understanding of the commercial aspects of publishing and his established position as the prominent poet of the age led him to obtain enough money to render him the first independently wealthy, full-time writer in English history. Pope's huge financial and literary successes enraged lessfortunate London writers and critics. Due to his success, as well as his Catholic religion and unpopular Tory politics, Pope attracted abusive critical and personal attack with nearly every new literary venture he began. He closely oversaw the publication of virtually everything he wrote, often editing and reissuing his works in updated and collected volumes. During his later years, Pope began revising his poems in preparation of a complete, edited edition of his works. He died in 1744 of acute asthma and dropsy before completing this task. Major Works Pope's first published poetic work, the Pastorals, a series of four poems named after the seasons, is consciously affined with the verse of Virgil, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Dryden. This sequence was inspired by Pope's youth in Windsor Forest and idealizes shepherd life. An Essay on Criticism is at once a treatise of literary theory and working manual of versification.

It is divided into three parts: part one creates a vision of the golden era of art and criticism, part two presents a vision of decay and disorder in literary criticism, and part three puts forth a means of reformation and restoration in literary endeavors, emphasizing in particular the basic precepts of clarity, impartiality, and public responsibility. Composed at the age of twenty-three, this work rendered literary London awestruck, for it displayed not only a precocious mastery of the couplet form but originated a wealth of impeccably expressed eighteenth-century sentiments, including "To err is human, to forgive divine" and "A little learning is a dangerous thing," which have since become firmly embedded in English and American culture. The Rape of the Lock was first published in two cantos in 1712 and expanded to five cantos in 1714. This work is ostensibly based on a real-life incident that occurred in 1711, when a young man publicly cut a lock of hair from the head of a young, beautiful female relation. The Rape of the Lock was written on the request of a friend to heal the estrangement between the two families.

Influenced by the fusion of high humor and moralization characteristic of the Spectator, the charming, slightly irreverent depiction of English high society in The Rape of the Lock quickly endeared the poem to readers throughout the country. "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717) is poem based on a well-known tragic love story between Pierre Abélard, a French philosopher and theologian, and Héloïse, a pupil twenty-one years his junior who became his lover, the mother of his child, and later his secret wife. When her family learned about the relationship, they had Abélard castrated; he became a monk and Héloïse became a nun. Pope's poem is written in the form of a letter from Héloïse to Abélard years after their separation and addresses the conflict between love of God and love of man.

Until the publication of The Dunciad, Pope had refrained from wholesale refutation of critical and personal attacks, but pent-up anger at being caricatured as an ape, a madman, and a literary scoundrel, as well as growing impatience with what he saw as a widespread profanation of the writer's responsibility to society, led him to the tradition of satire which was to become his focus for the remainder of his career. In the first edition of The Dunciad, Pope designated as his chief victim Lewis Theobald, a writer who had heavily criticized Pope for his emendations and modernizations of Shakespeare. The following year, Pope published The Dunciad, Variorum, which included mock-pedantic footnotes intensifying his attack on the reputations and abilities of a host of London critics and writers. In 1743, Pope expanded The Dunciad to four books and broadened its satirical scope to encompass the whole of English society, which he believed by then to be near moral collapse: "Lo! thy dread Empire, CHAOS is restored; / Light dies before thy uncreating word; / Thy hand, great Anarch!

lets the curtain fall; / And Universal Darkness buries all." An Essay on Man (1734) is a philosophical poem that addresses the nature of humankind, God's design for the world, and the role of humankind within this system. Pope incorporated numerous philosophical and theological theories into this work, particularly those of two influential thinkers, Lord Shaftesbury, who believed that man was by nature social and benevolent, and Thomas Hobbes, who believed man was selfish and impelled by passion and self-preservation. An Essay on Man is generally optimistic in tone, with Pope declaring at the conclusion of the poem: "And all our knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW." Critical Reception Since Pope's death, the merit of his literary achievements has been hotly debated. During the second half of the eighteenth century, such critics as Joseph Warton, William Warburton, and Samuel Johnson all accorded Pope high status as a gifted versifier, critic, and translator. Yet, none deemed his major poems poetry in its highest form.

Such appraisals foreshadowed the prominent nineteenthcentury critical viewpoint, that of Pope as a crafty wordsmith who was oblivious to the "highest" poetic subjects—the documentation of personal experience and the natural world, subjects with which Romantic poets concerned themselves. Recapitulating this stance near the end of the century, Matthew Arnold asserted that the works of Pope and his literary predecessor, Dryden, represented classics of English prose rather than poetry. However, the emergence of new critical methodologies in the twentieth century, along with the publication of a complete edition of Pope's works and a resurgence in Augustan literature, has helped vindicate Pope as a classic English poet and widely broadened the public's understanding and appreciation of his works. Despite having been written during Pope's adolescent and early adult years, such poems as the pastorals, "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," Windsor-Forest, and "Eloisa to Abelard," have been highly acclaimed since their first appearance as exemplary poems of beauty, human passion, and suffering. The charge that Pope abandoned these concerns to his detriment in later years has been refuted by modern scholars who emphasize the workings of not only a keen intellect but of a feeling, fully sensitive individual as well.

Although these works have been labeled trite or historically unimportant in comparison to Pope's major works, they remain outstanding initial demonstration of the poet's control of meter and language. Undoubtedly Pope's most publicly cherished work is The Rape of the Lock. Celebrated as a masterstroke of English originality in his lifetime and scrutinized as an ethereal curiosity in the nineteenth century, it has, in the present century, attracted profuse, diverse interpretation, from character analyses to examinations of Pope's political motivations and extensive literary allusions to The Iliad, The Aeneid, and Paradise Lost. Perhaps the approach that has most illuminated this work in relation to Pope's others is that which focuses on his concurrent acceptance of and satiration of high English society. At present, Pope's literary reputation is exceedingly high. He ranks as the unquestioned master of the heroic couplet, and this, combined with his keen satiric and moral sensibility, affords Pope an exalted position as one of the most proficient and powerful versifiers of all time. Start Free Trial Start your free trial with eNotes to access more than 30,000 study guides. Get help with any book.

An Essay on Criticism | Poetry Foundation An Essay on Criticism By Alexander Pope Introduction Alexander Pope, a translator, poet, wit, amateur landscape gardener, and satirist, was born in London in 1688. He contacted tuberculosis of the bone when he was young, which disfigured his spine and purportedly only allowed him to grow to 4 feet, 6 inches. Pope grew up on his father’s property at Binfield in Windsor Forest, where he read avidly and gained an appreciation for the natural world. Though he remained in ill health throughout his life, he was able to support himself as a translator and writer. As a Catholic at that time in Britain, he was ineligible for patronage, public office, or a position at a university. A sharp-penned satirist of public figures and their behavior, Pope had his supporters and detractors. He was friends with Jonathan Swift, Dr. John Arbuthnot, and John Gay. Pope’s poems include the “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” and the mock epic “The Rape of the Lock.” To read his work is to be exposed to the order and wit of the 18th century poetry that preceded the Romantic poets.

Pope primarily used the heroic couplet, and his lines are immensely quotable; from “An Essay on Criticism” come famous phrases such as “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” “A little learning is a dang’rous thing,” and “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” After 1718 Pope lived on his five-acre property at Twickenham by the Thames. He cultivated a much-visited garden that contained a grotto, and featured the formal characteristics of a French garden and the newer more natural “English” landscape style. Pope wrote “An Essay on Criticism” when he was 23; he was influenced by Quintillian, Aristotle, Horace’s Ars Poetica, and Nicolas Boileau’s L’Art Poëtique. Written in heroic couplets, the tone is straight-forward and conversational. It is a discussion of what good critics should do; however, in reading it one gleans much wisdom on the qualities poets should strive for in their own work.

In Part I of “An Essay on Criticism,” Pope notes the lack of “true taste” in critics, stating: “’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none / Go just alike, yet each believes his own.” Pope advocates knowing one’s own artistic limits: “Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, / And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.” He stresses the order in nature and the value of the work of the “Ancients” of Greece, but also states that not all good work can be explained by rules: “Some beauties yet, no precepts can declare, / For there’s a happiness as well as care.” In Part II, Pope lists the mistakes that critics make, as well as the defects in poems that some critics short-sightedly praise. He advocates looking at a whole piece of work, instead of being swayed by some of its showier or faulty parts: “As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, / T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit.” He advises against too much ornamentation in writing, and against fancy style that communicates little of merit.

In his description of versification, his lines enact the effects of clumsy writing: “And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,” and “A needless Alexandrine ends the song, / That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.” In Part III, Pope discusses what critics should do, holding up the “Ancients” as models, including Aristotle (the “Stagirite”) who was respected by the lawless poets: “Poets, a race long unconfin’d and free, / Still fond and proud of savage liberty, / Receiv’d his laws; and stood convinc’d ‘twas fit, / Who conquer’d nature, should preside o’er wit.” PART 1 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. Some few in that, but numbers err in this, Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose, Now one in verse makes many more in prose. 'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

In poets as true genius is but rare, True taste as seldom is the critic's share; Both must alike from Heav'n derive their light, These born to judge, as well as those to write. Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well. Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment too? Yet if we look more closely we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind; Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light; The lines, tho' touch'd but faintly, are drawn right. But as the slightest sketch, if justly trac'd, Is by ill colouring but the more disgrac'd, So by false learning is good sense defac'd; Some are bewilder'd 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: 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 Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are, who judge still worse than he can write. Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd, Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last; Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile; Unfinish'd 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 your self and your own reach to know, How far your genius, taste, and learning go; Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.

Nature to all things fix'd the limits fit, And wisely curb'd 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. 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, confin'd to single parts. Like kings we lose the conquests gain'd before, By vain ambition still to make them more; Each might his sev'ral province well command, Would all but stoop to what they understand. First follow NATURE, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchang'd, 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 ev'ry nerve sustains; Itself unseen, but in th' effects, remains. Some, to whom Heav'n in wit has been profuse, Want as much more, to turn it to its use; For wit and judgment 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 winged courser, like a gen'rous horse, Shows most true mettle when you check his course. Those RULES of old discover'd, not devis'd, Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd; Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.

Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites, When to repress, and when indulge our flights: High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd, And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize, And urg'd the rest by equal steps to rise. Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n, She drew from them what they deriv'd from Heav'n. The gen'rous critic fann'd the poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire. Then criticism the Muse's handmaid prov'd, To dress her charms, and make her more belov'd; But following wits from that intention stray'd; Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid; Against the poets their own arms they turn'd, Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn'd. So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, 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 spoil'd 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 judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ANCIENT'S proper character; His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page; Religion, country, genius of his age: Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring, And trace the Muses upward to their spring; Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse; And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse. When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd, Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law, And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw: But when t' examine ev'ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.

Convinc'd, amaz'd, he checks the bold design, And rules as strict his labour'd work confine, As if the Stagirite o'erlook'd each line. Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; 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 propos'd, that licence is a rule. 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 judgment, gains The heart, and all its end at once attains. In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.

But tho' 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 compell'd 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 Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults. Some figures monstrous and misshap'd 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 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, 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 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! 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! Oh 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, T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

Part 2 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, 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! 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 dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again. Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts, 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 advanc'd, behold with strange surprise New, distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try, 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, 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 charm'd with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, That shunning faults, one quiet tenour 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-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; 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, T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, For not to know such 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 encount'ring on the way, Discours'd in terms as just, with looks as sage, 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, Produc'd his play, and begg'd 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; "Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite." "Not so by Heav'n" (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, 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 ev'ry line; 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 ev'ry part, 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 convinc'd at sight we find, 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, 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; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort, As several 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 learned smile.

Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday! And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress'd. 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, Not 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 though thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, 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, 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", In the next line, it "whispers through 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, 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, 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. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 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, 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! 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, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r 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. 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, For fools admire, but men of sense approve; As things seem large which we through mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify. Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. 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, But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; (Though each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days.) 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, 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, A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, 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 through imitation err; As oft the learn'd by being singular; 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; But always think the last opinion right. A Muse by these is like a mistress us'd, This hour she's idoliz'd, the next abus'd; While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. Ask them the cause; they're wiser still, they say; And still tomorrow's wiser than today.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread; 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. If Faith itself has different 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 Which lives as long as fools are pleased 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. 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, Beaus; But sense surviv'd, when merry jests were past; For rising merit will buoy up at last.

Might he return, and bless once more our eyes, New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise; Nay should great Homer lift his awful head, Zoilus again would start up from the dead. 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, 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. Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch wits surviv'd a thousand years: Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost, 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, 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, And each bold figure just begins to live, The treacherous colours the fair art betray, And all the bright creation fades away! Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things, Atones not for that envy which it brings. In youth alone its empty praise we boast, But soon the short-liv'd vanity is lost: Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies, That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies. What is this wit, which must our cares employ? The owner's wife, that other men enjoy; Then most our trouble still when most admir'd, And still the more we give, the more requir'd; Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease, Sure some to vex, but never all to please; 'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun; By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!

If wit so much from ign'rance undergo, Ah let not learning too commence its foe! Of old, those met rewards who could excel, And such were prais'd who but endeavour'd well: Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due, Crowns were reserv'd to grace the soldiers too. Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown, Employ their pains to spurn some others down; And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each ill author is as bad a friend. To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise! Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, Nor in the critic let the man be lost! Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine. But if in noble minds some dregs remain, Not yet purg'd off, of spleen and sour disdain, Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times.

No pardon vile obscenity should find, Though wit and art conspire to move your mind; But dulness with obscenity must prove As shameful sure as impotence in love. In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease, Sprung the rank weed, and thriv'd with large increase: When love was all an easy monarch's care; Seldom at council, never in a war: Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ; Nay wits had pensions, and young Lords had wit: The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, And not a mask went unimprov'd away: The modest fan was lifted up no more, And virgins smil'd at what they blush'd before. The following licence of a foreign reign Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain; Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation, And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; Where Heav'n's free subjects might their rights dispute, Lest God himself should seem too absolute: Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, And Vice admired to find a flatt'rer there!

Encourag'd thus, wit's Titans brav'd the skies, And the press groan'd with licenc'd blasphemies. These monsters, critics! with your darts engage, Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage! Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice, Will needs mistake an author into vice; All seems infected that th' infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye. Part 3 Alexander Pope Quotes - BrainyQuote Alexander Pope Quotes Find on Amazon: Alexander Pope Cite this Page: Citation Pope | poetry.literaturelearning.org poetry.literaturelearning.org Pope Alexander Pope 1688-1744 He was a pragmatist, a flawed egotist who sought superiority through associating with elderly notables. He claimed a nobler ancestry than he had; dated his poems earlier than they were written to attest to his genius; gathered the letters he had written to others; rewrote them and changed not only dates, times, places but the person to whom they were originally written even fabricating some that were never sent.

In London, still in his teens, he made it a point to hang about in Will’s coffee-house and Button’s coffee-house where he might exchange wit with influential literarians. These flaws prompted Thomas DeQuincey to write: “Alexander Pope, the most brilliant of all wits who have at any period applied themselves to the poetic treatment of human character what is picturesque, or arresting what is fugitive.” “He is a poet of an age in which the creative art of the Elizabethans, and their happy voice of song, was exchanged for satire and wit.” John Dennis 1801 The career of this eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope, has three distinct spheres of influence. We prefer the term “spheres of influence” in recognition of Palmer’s view of Pope “He must always see himself through the eyes of somebody else” and William Hazlitt’s “he judged of the feelings of others by his own.” The first or pastoral period, 1698 to 1712, published Windsor Forest and Essay on Criticism.

There were three influences: William Wycherley, comic dramatist of the Restoration, William Walsh, who suggested the translation of Homer’s Iliad, and Sir William Trumbull, English statesman, who was impressed by Pope’s translation of the Iliad (1715) and encouraged him to translate the whole of Homer's works. Pope’s first pastoral, Spring or Damon, was dedicated to him. “Cease to contend, for, Daphnis, I decree, The bowl to Strephon, and the lamb to thee: Blest Swains, whose Nymphs in ev'ry grace excel; Blest Nymphs, whose Swains those graces sing so well! Now rise, and haste to yonder woodbine bow'rs, A soft retreat from sudden vernal show'rs, The turf with rural dainties shall be crown'd, While op'ning blooms diffuse their sweets around. For see! the gath'ring flocks to shelter tend, And from the Pleiads fruitful show'rs descend.” Damon Pope’s pastorals were written at the age of sixteen and were the outcome of his friendship with exceedingly older individuals, most were at or near sixty.

The four pastorals: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, are imitations of the three chief pastoralists: Spenser, Virgil, and Theocritus. In the second or climactic sphere, roughly 1712 to 1728, Pope fell under the influence of Jonathan Swift. He wrote the mock-heroic The Rape of the Lock and Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. Of the latter poem Pope wrote of him ”as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well.” The final or anti-climactic period from 1728 to 1744 belongs to Bolingbroke and First Epistle of the First Book of Horace. At this time Pope produced essays, moral and satiric, particularly An Essay on Man and at age forty, his tour de force The Dunciad, a bitter satire with a grand ending: “Lo! Thy dread empire Chaos is restor’d: Light dies before thy uncreating word: They hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall.

But first some general comments: “Petty in subject, commonplace in thought, loose and monotonous in treatment” were phrases used by critics to describe the poetry of Alexander Pope. If William Cowper is right that “poetry is a mere mechanic art and every warbler had his tune by heart”. Popes “tune” is the closed couplet, ten syllable iambic stanza, this meter and rhyme comprised nine tenths of his work. He produced numerous faults in grammatical construction. For example in Abelard and Eloise he writes: “There died the best of passions, Love and fame.” which Hazlitt tells us is not a legitimate ellipsis “fame is a not a passion, love is.” His use of figurative language errs on the side of rime over reason. Example: In hyperbole which, by rule of use, must not contain an absurd and contradictory statement.

Pope writes: “When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work t’outlast immortal Rome designed.” An Essay on Criticism His parallel constructions are usually well done: “Hang o’er the box and hover round the ring” “When music softens and when dancing fires” Rape of the Lock His use of the antithesis errs on the side of the extreme: “Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade” “Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball.” Rape of the Lock In use of the anticlimax, from the sublime to the absurd: “Not louder shrieks to pitying heaven are cast When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last.” Rape of the Lock “Go teach eternal wisdom how to rule, Then drop into thyself and be a fool” An Essay on Man “When late I attempted your pity to move, What made you so deaf to my prayers?

Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But, why did you kick me down stairs?” As to poetic diction Pope’s epithets in his Essay on Criticism he writes to the fact that “the necessities of rhyme lead to the unceasing repetition of stereotyped phrases and locutions.” Pope’s epithets range from noun plus noun: “monarch-savage” Odysseus IV; “fury-passion” Epistle III Noun plus present participle: “love-darting eyes”, “laughter-loving dame”, “heart-piercing anguish” Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady Compound noun plus past participles: “moss-grown domes” Elosia and Abelard, “cloud-topped hills” Essay on Man, “sea-girt isles” Iliad III, “heaven-directed spire” Epistle III The largest category is the “adjective or adjective used adverbally joined to a present or past participle.” “fresh-blooming hope” Eloisa; “sliver-quivering rills” Epistle IV; “soft-trickling waters” Iliad XV; “softly-stealing space of time” Odyssey XV “To isles

 of fragrance, lily-silver’d vales Diffusing languor in the panting gales; To lands of singing or of dancing slaves Love-whisp’ring woods and lute-resounding waves.

Dunciad As far as content, his poetry “lacks emotion, passion, and originality.” The complete opposite of what Wordsworth requires of good poetry “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling.” If he is honored not for the content of his work then what are the characteristics that place him as a major player in shaping the development of the English literature movement and as a model for all future poetry? Of his physical characteristics Owen Ruffhead (1769) tells that his mother was forty-six at his birth which today we know may have contributed to Alexander’s many afflictions. This is how Sir Joshua Reynolds describes him at maturity: “He was about four feet, six inches high, very hump-backed and deformed...He had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which are always found in the mouths of crooked persons; and the muscles which ran across the cheek were so strongly marked that they seemed like little chords.” “If Pope’s social advantages were few his physical charms were even less.

Only four feet six in height, he was already a sufferer from Pott’s disease, ‘the little Alexander whom the women laugh at,’ and in middle age was to become really repulsive,...so weak as to stand in perpetual need of female attendance; extremely sensible of cold, so that he wore a kind of fur doublet, under a shirt of a very coarse warm linen with fine sleeves. When he rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so slender, that he enlarged their bulk with three pairs of stockings, which were drawn on and off by the maid; for he was not able to dress or undress himself, and neither went to bed nor rose without help. His weakness made it very difficult for him to be clean. His hair had fallen almost all away...” H. A Auden In An Epistle to Dr.

Abuthnot Pope describes his physical infirmities: “There are, who to my person pay their court, I cough like Horace, and tho’ lean, am short, Ammon’s great Son one shoulder had too high, Such Ovid’s nose, and ‘Sir! You have an Eye’ Go on obliging Creatures, make me see All that disgrac’d my Betters, met in me.” In Immitations of Horace Pope wrote: “Weak tho’ I am of limb, and short of sight, Far from a Lynx, and not a Giant quite, I’ll do what Mead and Cheselden advise, To keep these limbs, and to preserve these eyes.” Throughout his life Pope endured the unkind word of satirists who did not spare the emphasis on his deficient physique.

Here is a poem from the anonymous work Martiniad, where Pope is referenced as the founder of the Scriblerus Club: “At Twickenham, chronicles remark, That there dwelt a little parish cleark, A peevish wight, full fond of fame, And Martin Scibbler was his name,0 Meagre and wan and steeple-crown’d, His visage long and shoulders round; His crippled corpse two spindle-pegs Support , instead of human legs; His shrivelled skin’s of dusky grain, A cricket’s voice and monkey’s brain.” And this from James Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, though friendly but still an added grotesquerie: “He came, the bard, a little Druidwight, Of wither’d aspect; but his eyes keen, With sweetness mix’d. In russet brown bedlight,” Two factors interfered with his life prospects. The first was his religion, as a Catholic no avenues of education were open to him, the second was his affliction. As to his lack of formal education: "He thought himself the better," Spence says, "in some respects for not having had a regular education.

He (as he observed in particular) read originally for the sense, whereas we are taught for so many years to read only for words." Then came French and Italian, probably in a similar way. He read translations of the Greek, Latin, French and Italian poets. So by the age of twelve he was determined to make up in brain power what he lacked in physical power. He had decided on poetry but not just poetry but a new kind of poetry; a kind that had not been written ever before; a kind that the public was ready to devour. Today we would call it “supply and demand”. For the answer he turned to a recent acquaintance, William Walsh, who replied “English poetry has accomplished pretty much everything else except correctness. Whoever could introduce that would find a place.” Of this occasion Pope wrote: "About fifteen, I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He used to encourage me much, and used to tell me that there was one way left of excelling; for, though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct, and he desired me to make that my study and aim." (Spence, p. 280).

In the Earl Lectures of 1917 George Herbert Palmer writes: “The metaphysical poets, the men of Donne’s school poured forth in profusion whatever came into their heads, regardless for the most part of lucidity, order, or rule. Herbert is about the only one among them who revised his text, and he did not do it in the interest of clearness...If after setting down what in our first heat we think we have to say, we go over and correct it subsequently, we may reach what years later Wordsworth demanded of poetry, ‘emotion recalled in tranquility.’” Pope was given his focus but what should be the form? At twelve, while translating Horace’s Beatus ille, in “the Quiet Life” he discovered that the couplet could be corrected until it formed the perfect self-contained expression. From then on Pope wrote them on slips of paper as they came to mind to be later fitted into more lengthy poems, prompting critics to claim that much of his work seems disconnected. We now consider the characteristics of the writings of Alexander Pope. Our first characteristic: terse, clarity, plainness, correctness of thought. “Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old.

It is the rust we value not the gold.” Horace Epistle II Swift on his sooty pinions flits the Gnome, And in a vapuur reach'd the dismal dome. No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, The dreaded East is all the wind that blows. Here in a grotto shelter'd close from air, And screen'd in shades from day's detested glare, She sighs for ever on her pensive bed, Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head. Two handmaids wait the throne; alike in place, But diff'ring far in figure and in face. Here stood Ill-nature, like an ancient maid, Her wrinkled form in black and white array'd! With store of prayers for mornings, nights, and noons, Her hand is fill'd; her bosom with lampoons. There Affectation, with a sickly mien, Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen, Practis'd to lisp, and hang the head aside, Faints into airs, and languishes with pride; On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, Wrapt in a gown for sickness and for show.

The fair ones feel such maladies as these, When each new night-dress gives a new disease. On the revival of Spenserian imitations of archaic and obsolete words: “But who is he in closet close y-pent Of sober face with learned dust besprent? Right well mine eyes arede the myster wight On parchment scraps y-fed and Wormius hight.” Dunciad Book III Where’er you find the cooling western breeze, ... it whispers through the trees:, Of crystal streams with pleasing murmur creep The reader;s threaten’d, not in vain, with sleep. Essay on Criticism “In words as fashions the same rule will hole, Alike fantastic if too new or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.” An Essay on Criticism Part II Little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a | Define Little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a at Dictionary.com Share little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a Also,a little learning is a dangerous thing. Knowing a little about something tempts one to overestimate one's abilities.

For example, I know you've assembled furniture, but that doesn't mean you can build an entire wall system; remember, a little knowledge. This maxim, originally a line from Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism (1709), has been repeated with slight variations ever since. It is still heard, although less frequently, and sometimes shortened, as in the example. The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Question: Which poet wrote “A little learning is a dangerous thing”?
Answer: Alexander Pope