Pope's an Essay on Criticism

This article was downloaded by: [York University Libraries] On: 06 November 2014, At: 08:52 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Explicator Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vexp20 Pope's an Essay on Criticism Rodney Stenning Edgecombe a a University of Cape Town , South Africa Published online: 30 Mar 2010. To cite this article: Rodney Stenning Edgecombe (2005) Pope's an Essay on Criticism, The Explicator, 63:4, 212-213, DOI: 10.1080/00144940509596944 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00144940509596944 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions D ow nl oa de d by [ Y or k U ni ve rs ity L ib ra ri es ] at 0 8: 52 0 6 N ov em be r 20 14 http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Pope’s AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM Forty-five lines into An Essay in Criticism, Pope begins his discourse on the relationship between nature and art-art in its widest possible sense, which also covers human knowledge: Nature to all things fix’d the Limits fit, And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit: As on the Land while here the Ocean gains, In other Parts it leaves wide sandy plains; Thus in the Soul while Memory prevails, The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails; Where Beams of warm Imaginution play, The Memory’s soft Figures melt away. (24445) The Twickenham edition of An Essay on Criticism supplies a note to “Memo- ry’s soft Figures melt away,” claiming that “The epithet seems to be proleptic, the metaphor being taken from waxen figures melting in the sunshine” (245). This strikes me as being problematic. To begin with, Pope’s comparison is braced by a tight sicutht (adthus) structure (“As on the Lund’; “Thus in the Soul”), and the referents have to be arranged within its compass. There is nothing proleptic about the gestural “thus.” Nature, according to Pope, has limited the human capacity for knowledge, which is finite in the same way that the ocean (to eighteenth-century minds, at least) has a finite volume. And while that body of water tries repeatedly to conquer the continental mass, its effort is doomed by its finitude. It dissolves the coastline at one point (“dis- solves” because Pope’s sicudcut connects “As on the Land while here the Ocean gains” with “The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails”), but does so by relinquishing “wide sandy plains” at another. The result is doubly deficient, for potentially arable land has been absorbed into the salt-estranging sea on the one hand, and on the other, the plains it has been forced to yield up have been spoiled for cultivation. No hope here, as in “Windsor-Forest,’’ that “midst the Desart fruitful Fields arise’’ (Butt 196), but rather a universal desolation brought about by the sea’s Promethean effort, analogous to the human mind’s, to aspire beyond its limits. Its sandy plains will not take the impress of the plough, nor will they retain the water needed for cultivation. Pope’s argument is clear: true knowledge is empirical, and any one human mind must devote itself to mastering whatever portion of that “continent” it is able to, for objective knowledge is predicated on the self-knowledge of “nosce te ipsum” (“Be sure your selfand your own Reach to know” 12441). Memory, being knowledge at one remove from the empirical encounter that generated it, is responsible for dissolving solid knowledge as the ocean dissolves the land. Then the sun, beaming down on those parts of the ocean that have been attenuated by the latter’s concentration on the new point of conquest, evapo- 212 D ow nl oa de d by [ Y or k U ni ve rs ity L ib ra ri es ] at 0 8: 52 0 6 N ov em be r 20 14 rates its water, revealing “wide sandy plains” that have been made infertile and unimpressible by the scouring of salt water. Here, the analogue of the sun is the imagination, associated with pathological heat at least as far back as Shakespeare (“a false creation, / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain,” Mucheth 2.1.38-39). Eleing the vector of self-generated knowledge, the h a g - ination lies at two removes from solid understanding, less valid even than memory. which it turns into vapor, and whose ooze it turns into dry, unreten- tive sand. A dual melting is thus implied by “Memory’s soft Figures melt away”+vaporation, and also the attrition by wind and exposure of whatever data memory had impressed on its dubious sludge. I think, therefore, that scholars have erred in introducing waxen figures into a context that certainly does not need them, and which does not really accommodate them. -RODNEY STENNING EDGECOMBE Universir?, qf C u p Town, South Afncu WORKS CITED Butt, John, ed. The Poems oj‘Alexundrr Pope: A One-Volume Edition ofthe Twickenhum Text with Pope. Alexander. Pustoral Pwtry and An E.SSU.V on Criricism. Ed. E. Audra and Aubrey Williams. Shakespeare, William. Mucl~eth. Ed. Kenneth Muir. London: Methuen, 1972. Selected Annoturions. Loiidon: Methuen, 1963. London: Methuen, 1961. Hemans’s THE CHILD’S LAST SLEEP Suggested by a Monument of Chantrey’s THOU deepest--but when wilt thou wake, fair child?- When the fawn awakes in the forest wild? When the lark’s wing mounts with the breeze of morn? When the first rich breath of the rose is born‘?- Lovely thou deepest, yet something lies Too deep and still on thy soft-seal’d eyes, Mournful, tho’ sweet, is thy rest to see- When will the hour of thy rising be? Not when the fawn wakes. not when the lark On the crimson cloud of the morn floats dark- Grief with vain passionate tears hath wet The hair, shedding gleams from thy pale brow yet, Love with sad kisses, unfelt, hath press’d Thy meek dropt eyelids and quiet breast; 213 D ow nl oa de d by [ Y or k U ni ve rs ity L ib ra ri es ] at 0 8: 52 0 6 N ov em be r 20 14