Alexander Pope

• Pope was an eighteenth-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after William Shakespeare and Alfred Tennyson.

• An Essay On Criticism is one of the first major poems written by Pope. Despite the title, the poem is not as much an original analysis as it is compilation of Pope's reading of different "ancients". It is the only significant critical treatise in English written in verse; it is famous for its polished lines, many of which have become proverbial ( to err is human, to forgive is divine).

• The key term in Pope's Essay is 'Nature'

• It is not Nature as the Romantics were to understand it, wild and mysterious, but something reflecting deep order, moderation, universal laws.

• According to Pope, past percept and past examples are to be respected not simply for their antiquity but because they enshrine Nature's laws.

• In his treatise Pope offers a history of literary criticism: the great critics of the classical past had 'methodiz'd' Nature, suppressed 'licence' and brought a golden age.

• It is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets. It is a verse essay primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age. The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice. It also represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.

• The poem was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past.

• He discusses the lows to which a critic should adhere while critiquing poetry, and points out that critics serve an important function in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to the practice of attacking them.

• The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses the moral qualities and virtues inherent in the ideal critic, who, Pope claims, is also the ideal man as a tool to make the argument that poetry only conveys a separate reality, but that it has a long venerable history, and it does not lie. It is defensible in its own right as a mean to move readers to virtuous action.

• He discusses the lows to which a critic should adhere while critiquing poetry, and points out that critics serve an important function in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to the practice of attacking them.

• The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses the moral qualities and virtues inherent in the ideal critic, who, Pope claims, is also the ideal man as a tool to make the argument that poetry only conveys a separate reality, but that it has a long venerable history, and it does not lie. It is defensible in its own right as a mean to move readers to virtuous action.