He seems, at the same time, to be aware that this doctrine is not likely to find general favour; and that an objection will be taken up by those with whom it is unpalatable, grounded in the poet's liability to be seduced, beguiled, transported, misled, by his sympathy with that which is in the art specifically his own—the inventive power. And he admits the danger; but rebuts the objection by averring that, on the other side, the critic who is not a poet has his own temptation. He will be run away with by his intellectual propensities; the opinion of his own infallibillity; the pleasure of pronouncing sentence—dispositions all, that move to a hasty, and are adverse to a generous, decision.
"Poets are partial to their wit, 'tis true,
But are not critics to their judgment, too?"
The two arts, poetry and the criticism of poetry, thus running together, so as that in the mind of the poet they are one thing, and that it is hard well to distinguish in speaking of them in prose, it will not seem surprising if Pope, intending to write of the lesser, and so inveigled into writing of the greater, should not always distinctly know of which he writes.
Let us cite a celebrated passage as an example of such almost unavoidable confusion.
"First fathom nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same.
Unerring Nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light;
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source, and end, and test of art.
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show, and without pomp presides.
In some fair body thus the informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole,
Each motion guides, and every nerve sustains,
Itself unseen, but in th' effect remains.
Some, to whom heaven in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide than spur the muse's steed
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed;
The winged courser, like a generous horse,
Shows most his mettle when you check his course."
Now, lend your ears. Pray, attend.
It these memorable twenty lines—memorable by the truth of the thinking, and the spirited or splendid felicity of expression—the subject of the rules delivered is for two verses—Criticism Proper, that is to say, the faculty of judging in the mind of the critic, who is not necessarily a poet, and whose function in the world is the judgment of the work produced and complete, and exposed for free censure.
"First fathom nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same."
This general reference to the fountain-head of law and of power, is spoken to the critic—the writer of critiques—the public censurer—the man of judgment.
For the next four lines, the creative power, and the presiding criticism in the mind of the poet, and the judicial criticism in the mind of the official critic, are all three in hand together.