If this Commentary were only a perverse and forced interpretation, as Warton insinuates, it is scarcely likely that Pope would have approved of it so highly, as not only to speak of it in the warmest terms of admiration, but to allow it to accompany his own edition of the poem. To assert that Pope was not the best judge of his own meaning, is an insult not only to his understanding, but to common sense; and to discard the commentary of Warburton, as Warton has done in his edition, in order to replace it by a series of notes, intended to impress the reader with his own opinions, is a kind of infringement on those rights, which had already been decided on by the only person who was entitled to judge on the subject. For these reasons I have thought it advisable, in this edition, to restore the commentary of Warburton entire, which has only been partially done by Mr. Bowles; conceiving that it is as injurious, if not more so, to the commentator, whose object it is to demonstrate the order and consistency of the poem, to deprive him of a portion of his remarks, as it is to deprive him of them altogether.—Roscoe.
Warburton's commentary proceeded upon two assumptions, which are not complimentary to Pope. The first was that a poem which had contracted no obscurity from age, and which consisted of a series of simple precepts, was written in a manner so confused that it would not be intelligible to ordinary readers, unless the whole was retold in cumbrous prose. The second assumption was that Pope was so deficient in power of expression that his ideas were constantly at variance with his words. One of the sarcastic canons of criticism which Edwards deduced from Warburton's Shakspeare was that an editor "may interpret his author so as to make him mean directly contrary to what he says," and certain it is that if Warburton's explanations are correct, Pope's language was often sadly inaccurate. Roscoe, in effect, adopts the last solution, for he urges that Pope, who was the best judge of his own meaning, acknowledged his meaning to be that which Warburton ascribed to him. There is another, and more probable alternative. Though Pope undeniably knew his own meaning best, his vanity may have been gratified by the subtle views which were imputed to him, and he may have had the weakness, in consequence, to adopt interpretations which never crossed his mind when he composed his poem. Since, however, he desired that his works should be read by the light of Warburton's paraphrase, an editor is not warranted in overruling the decision of the author, and on this account the commentary and notes of Warburton are printed in their integrity, though in themselves they are tedious, verbose, and barren.
[ THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF]
W. WARBURTON
ON THE
ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
COMMENTARY.
An Essay.] The poem is in one book, but divided into three principal parts or members. The first, to ver. 201, gives rules for the study of the art of criticism: the second, from thence to ver. 560, exposes the causes of wrong judgment: and the third, from thence to the end, marks out the morals of the critic.
In order to a right conception of this poem, it will be necessary to observe, that though it be entitled simply An Essay on Criticism, yet several of the precepts relate equally to the good writing as well as to the true judging of a poem. This is so far from violating the unity of the subject, that it preserves and completes it: or from disordering the regularity of the form, that it adds beauty to it, as will appear by the following considerations: 1. It was impossible to give a full and exact idea of the art of poetical criticism, without considering at the same time the art of poetry; so far as poetry is an art. These therefore being closely connected in nature, the author has, with much judgment, interwoven the precepts of each reciprocally through his whole poem. 2. As the rules of the ancient critics were taken from poets who copied nature, this is another reason why every poet should be a critic: therefore as the subject is poetical criticism, it is frequently addressed to the critical poet. And 3dly, the art of criticism is as properly, and much more usefully exercised in writing than in judging.
But readers have been misled by the modesty of the title, which only promises an art of criticism, to expect little, where they will find a great deal,—a treatise, and that no incomplete one, of the art both of criticism and poetry. This, and the not attending to the considerations offered above, was what, perhaps misled a very candid writer, after having given the Essay on Criticism all the praises on the side of genius and poetry which his true taste could not refuse it, to say, that "the observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose writer." Spect. No. 235. I do not see how method can hurt any one grace of poetry: or what prerogative there is in verse to dispense with regularity. The remark is false in every part of it. Mr. Pope's Essay on Criticism, the reader will soon see, is a regular piece, and a very learned critic has lately shown that Horace had the same attention to method in his Art of Poetry. See Mr. Hurd's Comment on the Epistle to the Pisos.[297]
Ver. 1. 'Tis hard to say, &c.] The poem opens, from ver. 1 to 9, with showing the use and seasonableness of the subject. Its use, from the greater mischief in wrong criticism than in ill poetry—this only tiring, that misleading the reader. Its seasonableness, from the growing number of bad critics, which now vastly exceeds that of bad poets.
Ver. 9. 'Tis with our judgments, &c.] The author having shown us the expediency of his subject, the art of criticism, inquires next, from ver. 8 to 15, into the proper qualities of a true critic, and observes first, that judgment alone is not sufficient to constitute this character, because judgment, like the artificial measures of time, goes different, and yet each man relies upon his own. The reasoning is conclusive, and the similitude extremely just. For judgment, when it is alone, is generally regulated, or at least much influenced, by custom, fashion, and habit; and never certain and constant but when founded upon and accompanied by taste, which is in the critic, what in the poet we call genius. Both are derived from heaven, and like the sun, the natural measure of time, always constant and equable.