Alexander Pope was an 18th century English poet best known for his satirical verse and translation of Homer. One of his most famous works is An Essay on Criticism, in which he argues that good critics follow nature's laws and aim to help poets improve rather than attack them. The poem also examines the qualities of ideal critics and their role in upholding virtue through literary criticism. It had a significant influence on literary ideals of Pope's era.

1. Alexander Pope

2. • 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).

3. • 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.

4. • 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.

5. • 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.

6. • 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.