On An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

The beauty and power of poetry and prose asserts itself when it is able to express an idea, a notion, a sentiment, an affirmation or a renunciation in a way that is so perfect and lucid that it stands as a crystallisation of truth. As Alexander Pope encapsulates in his An Essay on Criticism:

True wit is nature to advantage dress’d, what oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d.

This perfectly epitomises the exhilarating feeling of revelation when a vague emotion, a foetus of an idea you might be struggling with is suddenly found expressed exquisitely by another. Many such phrases have permeated into the very strata of English culture as epigrams and axioms, although the names of the authors might have become obscured in the mist of time. Their writings inevitably suffer metaphorical castrations to suit the impatient need for snappy witticisms often masquerading as learning. Pope himself, of course, is one of the great poets; one whose abilities even the genius egotist Lord Byron grudgingly admitted can be better than his own on occasions. Also from the same poem, Pope’s famous line ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing’ has entered the English vernacular (although often misquoted as ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’). Whilst beautifully expressed, alone, it loses the perspicacity of the message in its entirety (though this is but a part of a much longer poem).

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian springs:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fir'd 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 advanc'd, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleas'd 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 attain'd, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthen'd way,
Th' increasing prospects tire our wand'ring eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!"

Socrates was recorded to have said that the mark of wisdom lies in the knowledge of one’s own ignorance. Indeed echoed in this poem is the notion that the pursuit of knowledge is a journey with no end, as with each step we reveal ever more the vastness of our ignorance. The heroic meter and imagery rises soaring and crisp in the mind’s eye, as if breathing in the unsullied air of the mountains, to end with a note of humility and awe at the realisation of how little we know. But this is why the quest for knowledge, despite its demands and coquettishness, is both fulfilling and humbling. Indeed, drinking largely sobers us again.