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 compared, his text peruse;
And let your comment be the Mantuan muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind1
A work t'outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law,
And but from Nature's fountains scorned to draw;
But when t' examine ev'ry part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design;
And rules as strict his laboured work confine,
As if the Stagirite2 o'erlooked 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 answer to the full
Th' intent proposed, 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,

Zoilus, had these been known without a name,
Had died, and Perault n'er been damned to fame;
The sense of sound antiquity had reigned,
And sacred Homer yet been unprofaned.

None e'er had thought his comprehensive mind

To modern customs, modern rules confined;
Who for all ages writ, and all mankind.

1 Virgil, Eclog.VI.:

Pope.

Cum canerem reges et prælia, Cynthius aurem

Vellit

It is a tradition preserved by Servius, that Virgil began with writing a poem of the Alban and Roman affairs; which he found above his years, and descended first to imitate Theocritus on rural subjects, and afterwards to copy Homer in heroic poetry.-Pope.

2 Aristotle, born at Stagyra, B.C. 384. The great ancient critic, and tutor of Alexander the Great. He died about 423 B.C.

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 though 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 compelled 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 mis-shaped appear,
Considered singly, or beheld too near,

Which, but proportioned 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.1

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 learned their incense bring!
Hear, in all tongues consenting Paans ring!
In praise so just let ev'ry voice be joined,

And fill the general 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,

1 Modeste, et circumspecto judicio de tantis viris pronunciandum est, ne (quod plerisque accidit) damdent quod non intelligunt. Ac s necesse est in alteram errare partem, omnia eorum legentibus placere, quam multa displicere maluerim, Quin.-Pope.

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!

II.

Or 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 voice 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, swelled 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.1

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.
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 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 attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened 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'

1 Pope wisely followed this rule himself. Some faults in this essay which his antagonist Dennis detected, the poet had the good sense to

correct.

2 Diligenter legendum est ac pæne ad scribendi sollicitudinem: nec per partes modo scrutanda sunt omnia sed per lectus liber utique ex intergo resumendus. Quin.-Pope,

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 charmed with wit.
But in such lays as neither ebb nor flow,
Correctly cold, and regularly low,

That shunning faults, one quiet tenor 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-proportioned dome,
(The world's just wonder, and even 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 some 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 loved folly sacrifice.

Once on a time, La Mancha's knight,' they say,
A certain bard encount'ring on the way,

Discoursed in terms as just, with looks as sage,
As e'er could Dennis, of the Grecian stage;
Concluding all were desperate sots and fools,
Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules.
Our author, happy in a judge so nice,

Produced his play, and begged the knight's advice;

1 This incident is taken from a spurius second part of Don Quixote, written by Don Alonzo Fernandez de Avellanada, and translated and remodelled by Le Sage. It will be vainly sought for in Cervante's immortal novel

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; Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets like painters, thus unskilled to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is nature to advantage dressed,1 What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed; Something, whose truth convinced 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 them 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.2 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,

1 Naturam intueamur, hanc sequamur: id facillime accipiunt animi quod agnoscunt. Quin. lib. 8. ch. 3.-Pope.

2 On trust-that is; a common use of the word content in Pope's time,