Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move; For fools admire, but men of sense approve: As things seem large which we through mists descry; Dulness is ever apt to magnify. Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. Thus wit, like faith, by each man is apply'd To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside. Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, And force that sun but on a part to shine, Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; Tho' each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days. Regard not, then, if wit be old or new, But blame the false, and value still the true. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22} A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies ev'ry fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought! NOTES. Pope's "Essay on Criticism" was published in 1711. It consists of 724 lines, and is written in heroic couplets--that style of poetic composition in which Pope excelled all others. It is full of sound critical precepts, put together with considerable art, and expressed in a manner which, at the time of its production, insured the popularity of the poem and the fame of its author. It was probably suggested by Boileau's "Art Poétique," which was founded on Horace's "Ars Poetica," and it in turn on Aristotle's rules, very commonly known among the classical poets. "The Essay," says De Quincey, "is a collection of independent maxims tied together into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural order or logical dependence; generally so vague as to mean nothing. And, what is remarkable, many of the rules are violated by no man so often as by Pope, and by Pope nowhere so often as in this poem." 1. =Conceit.= Affected wit. "Conceit is to nature what paint is to beauty; it is not only needless but impairs what it would improve."--_Pope._ 2. =fit.= Proper. "Fit audience find, though few" (Milton, "Paradise Lost," V, 7).