“True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well

express'd” – Essay on Criticism
Preface:
 In the early 18th Century, poetry was limited. There
were few lyrics, little or no love poetry, no epics, no
dramas or songs of nature worth considering.
 The only prominent forms of literature were satires
and didactic verses and Pope had mastered both
these writing genres.
 His works proved to be quite influential as many
foreign writers and English poets looked to him as
their model.
Life of Pope:
 He was born in 1688 in London.
 Due to prejudice against Catholics in public schools
and also due to his weakness and deformity, Pope
received very little school education.
 Instead, he started reading English books and soon
developed great knowledge about the classics.
 He made literature his life work and considered
Dryden to be his only master.
 He had written ‘Pastorals’ when he was just 16 and
a few years later he wrote the famous poem ‘Essay
on Criticism’.

“Fools rush in where angles fear to tread.”

 His following works soon became famous and after
the publication of ‘Rape of the Lock’ in 1712, he was
regarded as the best poet of England.
 For the next 12 years, Pope indulged in poetry and
translated Homer’s works. The financial success of
his work made him wealthy.
 He died in 1744.
Works of Pope:
 His works can be separated into three groups –
Early period, Middle period and Later period of his
life.
 In the first period he wrote his ‘Pastorals’, ‘Windsor
Forest’, ‘Messiah’, ‘Essay on Criticism’ and ‘Rape of
the Lock’.
 In the second period of his life, he mainly
translated Homer’s works.
 In the third period, he wrote the ‘Dunciad’ and the
Epistles, which contained the famous ‘Essay on
Man’ and ‘Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot’.
 ‘Essay on Criticism’ sums up the art of poetry as
taught first by Horace, then by Boileau and the
18th-century classicists. It was written in heroic
couplets.
 ‘Rape of the Lock’ is a masterpiece of its kind. Pope
constructed, not a ballad nor and epigram but a
long poem in which all the mannerisms of society
are pictured I minutest details and satirized with
the most delicate wit.
 It was originally consisting only two cantos but
after its success, Pope decided to lengthen it by
three more cantos.
 Pope’s Iliad was financially the most successful of
his books. Not only do his words follow literary
fashions but even the Homeric characters lose their
strength and become men of the fashionable court.
 The ‘Essay’ is the best known and the most quoted
of all Pope’s works.
 The purpose of the essay is, in Pope’s words, to
“vindicate the ways of God to man”,
The vindication is perfectly accomplished in four
poetical epistles, concerning man’s relations to the
universe, to himself, to society and to happiness.
 The ‘Dunciad’ (1728) turned out to be a coarse and
revengeful satire upon all literary men of the age
who had aroused Pope’s anger by their criticism.

“All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction which thou canst see
All discard, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reasons spite
One truth is clear, whatever is, is right.”