, but is elaborated with great emphasis in Pope's later utterance on the principles of literature, the well-known
Epistle to Augustus
. Finally with the establishment of the reign of Reason in France under Louis XIV, and in England a little later, the full day had come, and literary sins of omission and commission that might be winked at in such an untutored genius as Shakespeare were now unpardonable. This last dogma explains the fact that in the brief sketch of the history of criticism which concludes the
Essay
, Pope does not condescend to name an English poet or critic prior to the reign of Charles II.
It would be beside the purpose to discuss these ideas to-day or to attempt an elaborate refutation of their claims to acceptance. Time has done its work upon them, and the literary creed of the wits of Queen Anne's day is as antiquated as their periwigs and knee-breeches. Except for purposes of historical investigation it is quite absurd to take the
Essay on Criticism
seriously.
And yet it has even for us of to-day a real value. Our age absolutely lacks a standard of literary criticism; and of all standards the one least likely to be accepted is that of Pope and his fellow-believers. Individual taste reigns supreme in this democratic age, and one man's judgment is as good as, perhaps a little better than, another's. But even this democratic and individual age may profit by turning back for a time to consider some of the general truths, as valid to-day as ever, to which Pope gave such inimitable expression, or to study the outlines of that noble picture of the true critic which St. Beuve declared every professed critic should frame and hang up in his study. An age which seems at times upon the point of throwing classical studies overboard as useless lumber might do far worse than listen to the eloquent tribute which the poet pays to the great writers of antiquity. And finally nothing could be more salutary for an age in which literature itself has caught something of the taint of the prevailing commercialism than to bathe itself again in that spirit of sincere and disinterested love of letters which breathes throughout the
Essay