POPE AS A CRITIC—ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR SCHOLARS AND TEACHERS

BRITISH CRITICISM DURING THE 18^th CENTURY –Blamiers

The Eighteenth Century I: The Age of Addison and Pope

M. Phil English, Bharathiar University--Blamiers—

Approaches--Unit II

Additional critical materials for students of M.Phil (English)

S. SREEKUMAR

POPE AS A CRITIC—ADDITIONAL NOTES FOR SCHOLARS AND TEACHERS

[Teachers of MPhil classes are advised to provide additional learning materials for their scholars as the materials from the text books are not sufficient for a clear estimate of the critic concerned]

ALEXANDER POPE

As a critic Pope is remembered more for his Essay on Criticism than for his other critical writings—Preface to the Works of Shakespeare, Imitation of the Epistles of Horace to Augustus & Preface to the Translation of the Iliad.

Essay on Criticism is modelled on Horace’s Ars Poetica, Vida’s De Arte Poetica. Pope’s chief concern in this essay is not so much the poet as the critic, not so much the art of poetry as the art of criticism. In this work Pope follows the ideas of Aristotle, Quintilian, Longinus, Bossu, Rapin and others. There is hardly any observation in it that may be called Pope’s own. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, one of the close friends of Pope said that ‘it was all stolen’.

Essay on Criticism  is divided into three parts—

u   The First Part [lines 1-200] makes general observations on the art of criticism.

u   The Second Part [lines 201- 559] describes the causes of wrong criticism.

u   The Last Part [560-744] lays down rules for the critic.

Pope’s Classicism

In his criticism Pope follows the classical tradition. In his ‘Essay’ he sums up the critical tenets of the neo-classical school of poetry that began with Waller and gained ground with Dryden and Addison.

Pope defines criticism as ‘true taste’ which is a gift of nature. He wants criticism to be guided by ‘those rules of old’ which ‘learned Greece’ discovered in human nature.

    Be Homer’s works your study and delight,

    Read them by day, and meditate by night.

The same advice was given by Horace to the ‘would-be-writer’. Pope believed that ‘to copy Nature’ was to copy the Ancients.

Pope preferred Ancients like Aristotle, Horace, Dionysius, Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus and moderns like Vida, Boileau, Sheffield, Roscommon and Walsh.

On the function of Criticism

To Pope Criticism is no more than the art of judging aright. A critic is born to judge, as  a poet is born to write.

Pope, like Ben Jonson before him, believed that ‘to judge poets is only the faculty of poets’. This condition is difficult to fulfil. Aristotle was a critic without ever being a poet.

Pope lays down other conditions also for the poet.

A critic is to be learned, disinterested, and free form all those ills that beset right judgement, such as pride, envy, caprice and the like. He particularly condemns judgement by parts rather than by the whole.

Remarks on Literature

The ‘Essay’ makes a few observations on the art of writing too, which also recall the utterances of the earlier critics. The best of these are those on wit, diction, and verse.

Pope offers his own definition for wit

    True Wit is nature to advantage dress’d,

    What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d

Pope’s observation on diction was culled out from Horace and Quintillion. Pope wanted to be customary in the choice of words. They should be neither too new not too old.

In versification, pope condemns cheap musical devices, such as equal syllables, open vowels, expletives, excessive use of monosyllables, stale rhymes, and the needless resort to the Alexandrine.

Pope’s Deviations from Classicism

Pope is aware of the limitations of neo-classical criticism. A blind imitation of the rules of the classics, he says, does not necessarily make for greatness in literature. He admits the superiority of inspiration over art. Pope believed that there are graces beyond the reach of art.

Pope also believed that the classical rules are not binding on all ages and nations as tastes differ from age to age and country to country. 

He says in ‘Preface’ to Shakespeare, “to judge Shakespeare by Aristotle’s rules is like trying a man by the laws of one country who acted under those of another”. Hence no special privilege is to be given to the Ancients. Here Pope is undoing all that he had said earlier.

Estimate of his Criticism

1. There is little originality in his criticism.

2. Its only merit lies in felicity of expression. He collected ideas from various authors and presented them beautifully as never before.

3. His criticism also worked as a healthy check for the excesses growing in English poetry.

4. For Pope Poetry was an art of imitation, and its value has to be understood by the extent to which it ‘gains the heart’. This standard alone is to be considered.

These additional materials are purely meant for the use of scholars and teachers.

Dr. S. Sreekumar