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Workshop on Reading Pope's An Essay on Criticism.
On Interpretation -1997
Valerie Bystrom and Thad Curtz

Form small groups (3 or 4). Take out paper and pencil.

1. Consider these four couplets:

Let such teach others who themselves excel,
And censure freely who have written well. (15-16)

Some have at first for wits, then poets passed,
Turned critics next, and proved plain fools at last. (36-37)

Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
Not is it Homer nods, but we that dream. (179-80)

Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of every friend and every foe. (213-14)

a. These are heroic couplets, each with four distinct units (the two halves of each line, which are separated by a caesura, that is by some pause in the punctuation or in the construction of the sentences.) How do the four parts work together in each to convey the sense poetically? Mark them up and jot down notes.

b. Talk with your group.

c. Let's hear what you came up with.

2. Read:

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.
Fired 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 advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering 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 attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labors of the lengthened way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise! (215- 232)

a. The couplets in #1 are "closed"; the thought is complete in the two
lines. Most often, the heroic couplet is a distinct part of a longer
thought, as here. How does Pope make the couplets work cumulatively in
this verse paragraph? Mark up the passage.

b. Talk with your group.

c. Let's hear what you came up with.

3. Consider:

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 the' unending corn, and skims along the main. (370-73)

a. Well, this is a sentence from that famous passage exemplifying the
wedding of sound and sense. So, what does Pope do?

b. Talk to your team.

c. Let's hear what you came up with.

4. Consider:

Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
And with out Method talks us into Sense,
Will like a Friend familiarly convey
The truest Notions in the easiest way.
He, who Supream in Judgement, as in Wit,
Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ,
Yet judg'd with Coolness tho' he sung with Fire;
His Precepts teach but what his Works inspire. (653-60)

And

Thee, bold Longinus! All the Nine inspire,
And bless their critic with a poet's fire.
An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust,
With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just;
Whose own example strengthens all his laws,
And is himself that great sublime he draws. (675-80)

a. In these passages Pope characterizes two ancient poet/critics. Based on
what Pope says and how he says it, what can you surmise about these
writers? How are they different? How the same?

b. Talk to others in your group.

c. Let's hear what you came up with.