Each am’rous nymph prefers her gifts in vain,
On you their gifts are all bestowed again.
For you the swains the fairest flow’rs design,
And in one garland all their beauties join;
Accept the wreath which you deserve alone,
In whom all beauties are compris’d in one.
In 1711 appeared the Essay on Criticism, also written in heroic couplets. The poem professes to set forth the gospel of “wit” and “nature” as it applies to the literature of the period. The work is clearly immature. There is nothing novel in its theories, which are conventionality itself; but it dresses the aged theories so neatly and freshly that the poem is a lasting monument to the genius of the writer. It is full of apt, quotable lines that have become imbedded in the language:
A little learning is a dangerous thing!...
And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art....
To err is human: to forgive, divine....