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An Essay on Criticism Summary & Analysis
by Alexander Pope

An Essay on Criticism Summary & Analysis
by Alexander Pope

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

1A little learning is a dangerous thing;

2Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

3There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

4And drinking largely sobers us again.

5Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

6In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,

7While from the bounded level of our mind,

8Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

9But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise

10New, distant scenes of endless science rise!

11So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try,

12Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;

13The eternal snows appear already past,

14And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

15But those attained, we tremble to survey

16The growing labours of the lengthened way,

17The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

18Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Introduction

    • Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" seeks to lay down rules of good taste in poetry criticism, and in poetry itself. Structured as an essay in rhyming verse, it offers advice to the aspiring critic while satirizing amateurish criticism and poetry. The famous passage beginning "A little learning is a dangerous thing" advises would-be critics to learn their field in depth, warning that the arts demand much longer and more arduous study than beginners expect. The passage can also be read as a warning against shallow learning in general. Published in 1711, when Alexander Pope was just 23, the "Essay" brought its author fame and notoriety while he was still a young poet himself.

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Summary

    • It's dangerous to learn only a little bit about the arts (or any subject). If you don't study in depth, as though drinking deeply from the mythical fountain of knowledge, you won't really understand anything. Small sips from the fountain of knowledge go to our head, but drinking deeply returns us to thinking clearly. As adventurous young critics or artists, excited by our first inspiration from the Muse (goddess of the arts), we strive for the heights of achievement. From the limited vantage point of our own minds, we take a shortsighted view of the future and don't look back at the ground we've covered. Once our study is more advanced, we're surprised to see whole new areas of knowledge looming ahead of us! At first, we're happy to tackle these huge metaphorical mountains. We climb the valleys and seem to walk on air. We seem to have left the cold, harsh terrain behind already, and we assume that the first mists and slopes we make it past are also the last. But once we conquer them, we're shaken to see the increasing difficulty of the path stretching farther and farther ahead of us. The widening landscape exhausts us and tempts us to quit. Hills give way to hills, and mountains pile on top of mountains!

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Themes

    • Theme Shallow Learning vs. Deep Understanding

      Shallow Learning vs. Deep Understanding

      Part of a longer poem on artistic and critical taste, "A little learning is a dangerous thing" contrasts the shallow arrogance of novice critics (or artists) with the informed humility of their more experienced counterparts. According to the poem's speaker, people who have learned only a "little" about the arts are dangerously prone to overconfidence, because they don't know how much they don't know. By contrast, people who have learned a lot are "sober[ed]" by how much they still have to learn. Extensive experience in the field is the only way to discover how vast and challenging the field is. Thus, the passage urges readers to study the arts in depth rather than superficially—and warns that serious study will humble rather than flatter them.

      The speaker argues that it's "dangerous" to learn only a "little" about the arts because limited understanding breeds overconfidence and faulty judgment. The speaker warns that if readers don't "Drink deep" from "the Pierian spring"—the mythical fountain of the Muses, Greek goddesses of artistic inspiration—they won't really "taste" it at all. That is, if they content themselves with "shallow" knowledge of the arts, they'll be foolishly "intoxicate[d]" by false sophistication. Only by going deeper into the subject, as if "drinking" deeply from that intoxicating fountain, will they (paradoxically) gain a "sober[ing]" wisdom.

      Switching metaphors, the speaker compares an education in the arts to mountain climbing, and young critics/artists to naive climbers who imagine they've conquered "the Alps" when the climb has barely begun. The speaker advises that, rather than assuming they know everything after learning a few things (taking just a few steps on that metaphorical climb), students of the arts should expect a long, humbling struggle.

      When "fearless youth" believe they will conquer "the heights of Arts" almost immediately, the speaker warns that they're taking "Short views" (i.e., being shortsighted). As learners become more "advanced" in the field, "[n]ew, distant scenes of endless science"—of endless knowledge still to be gained—open up before them. Metaphorically, the more "mountains" we've "attained" in the arts, the more mountains appear on the horizon, daring us to conquer them.

      The speaker warns that the "growing labours" of such an education can be daunting. The challenge "tires our wandering eyes," tempting people to quit and try something else. Yet while this passage doesn't actually urge students of the arts to give up, it doesn't exactly give them a pep talk, either. It's a "sober[ing]" reality check and a fair warning against premature arrogance, applicable well beyond the arts. If a novice doesn't learn their field "deep[ly]," the speaker suggests, they may as well have learned nothing at all. In fact, they've deceived themselves, and their faulty judgement may deceive others.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

    • Lines 1-4

      A little learning is a dangerous thing;
      Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
      There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
      And drinking largely sobers us again.

      Lines 1-4 introduce the argument that Alexander Pope will develop throughout this 18-line stanza, which is a famous (and fairly self-contained) passage from a longer poem called "An Essay on Criticism." Essentially, the passage argues that becoming an expert in the arts is hard and humbling—but necessary in order to have anything worthwhile to say as a critic.

      Pope makes this argument via two extended metaphors: one spanning lines 1-4 and the other spanning the rest of the passage. The first metaphor alludes to "the Pierian spring," which, in Greek mythology, was the sacred spring of the nine Muses (goddesses of art and science). Think of it as a fountain of wisdom, or a metaphorical source of artistic knowledge and inspiration.

      According to Pope, a critic (or artist) should "Drink deep" from this spring rather than settling for a quick taste:

      A little learning is a dangerous thing;
      Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
      There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
      And drinking largely sobers us again.

      In other words, "we" (as critics) have to consume a lot of knowledge in order to really know anything at all. Settling for "shallow" knowledge, or "A little learning," is "dangerous" in the sense that it causes us to fool ourselves (and potentially others). It goes to our heads, "intoxicat[ing]" our "brain[s]" with the delusion that we understand more than we actually do. Only by "drinking largely"—studying the subject deeply—do we become "sober[]," or humble and realistic about the limits of our understanding.

      Notice how this metaphor plays ironically on the connotations of "intoxicate" and "sober[]," words normally associated with alcohol. Unlike alcohol, Pope implies, knowledge makes us more sober as we consume more of it. And through sharply drawn antithesis, Pope makes clear that consuming a lot of knowledge—not "A little"—is exactly what critics should do. In fact, he hints that "Drink[ing] deep" in this way will make critics themselves "deep" rather than "shallow."

      Like all of "An Essay on Criticism"—and virtually all of Pope's poetry!—these lines take the form of heroic couplets. In other words, they're rhymed couplets of iambic pentameter (lines that follow a five-beat, "da-DUM, da-DUM" rhythm). These first two couplets function almost as a quatrain, tracing a single complex metaphor across four memorable lines.

    • Lines 5-8

      Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
      In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts,
      While from the bounded level of our mind,
      Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,

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    • Lines 9-10

      But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
      New, distant scenes of endless science rise!

    • Lines 11-14

      So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try,
      Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky;
      The eternal snows appear already past,
      And the first clouds and mountains seem the last;

    • Lines 15-18

      But those attained, we tremble to survey
      The growing labours of the lengthened way,
      The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
      Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Symbols

    • Symbol The Mountains/Alps

      The Mountains/Alps

      The poem's "mountains," or "Alps" (as in the famous European mountain range), are part of an extended metaphor comparing an education in the arts to a long trek over the mountains. Gaining expertise as an artist/critic is so challenging, the speaker suggests, that it feels like crossing one mountain after another only to find more peaks rising ahead of you. This metaphor plays on the traditional symbolism associated with mountains, which often represent difficult challenges or lofty achievements.

      Many conventional metaphors associate overcoming obstacles with climbing mountains, or accomplishing something impressive with reaching a mountaintop (think of an idiom like "the peak of your profession"). Mountains are also traditionally linked with artistic prestige in particular: in Greek mythology, for example, Mount Parnassus (a real-life Greek mountain range) was said to be the home of the Muses.

      Pope draws on all these associations here, suggesting that the obstacles one overcomes in the arts lead only to more obstacles, and the achievements one gain lead only to fresh challenges. Whatever expertise or prestige one manages to acquire, there's always some next level they haven't reached yet.

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      This passage of "An Essay on Criticism" is packed with alliteration. In fact, the "Essay" as a whole, and Pope's work in general, uses this device frequently. Pope was known for his witty, epigrammatic style, and alliteration helps make his observations all the more crisp and memorable.

      It's no accident, for example, that the famous and often-quoted first line of this passage—"A little learning is a dangerous thing"—features an alliterative phrase. That line then pairs with the second half of its rhyming couplet, which starts with alliteration:

      Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

      Notice, too, how the /d/ sounds here echo the one in "dangerous" (line 1), and how the /dr/ sound echoes more faintly in the following lines ("draughts," "drinking"). All in all, these sonic repetitions make for a tightly woven, highly memorable four lines.

      Once readers start noticing the alliteration in this passage, they'll realize how deliberate it is. Phrases like "strange surprise," "scenes of endless science," and "labours of the lengthened way" are clearly meant to please the ear and trip off the tongue.

      In general, Pope was highly conscious of sound effects in his poetry—the "Essay on Criticism" features his famous, and alliterative, claim that "The sound must seem an echo to the sense"—and he specialized in writing lines that stick in the mind. (He's been called the most quotable author in the English language after Shakespeare!) Zingy, alliterative language is a big part of what makes his style so catchy.

    • Antithesis

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    • Irony

    • Extended Metaphor

    • Repetition

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • A little learning
    • Pierian spring
    • Draughts
    • Intoxicate
    • Largely
    • Sobers
    • Fired
    • The Muse
    • Imparts
    • Tempt
    • Bounded level
    • Short views
    • Science
    • Alps
    • Mount
    • O'er
    • Vales
    • Tread
    • Attained
    • Survey
    • The lengthened way
    • Prospect
    • Peep
    A little learning

    • A superficial or beginner's understanding of a subject (in other words, only a little learning).

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

    • Form

      "An Essay on Criticism," from which this single stanza is excerpted, consists entirely of rhyming couplets. The poem is also written in iambic pentameter (i.e., it consists of five-beat lines that generally follow a da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm). Rhyming iambic pentameter couplets are known as heroic couplets, since this form was associated, early in the English-language tradition, with epic and narrative poetry.

      Pope turned to heroic couplets in virtually all of his poems. For the most part, he used this crisp, sprightly form to satirical or witty effect. (Though he also, for example, translated Homer's Iliad into the same form—and that's an epic without much comedy in it!) The two halves of a Pope couplet will often work together as a kind of setup and punchline. Here, for example, readers can see that effect in lines 3-4:

      There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
      And drinking largely sobers us again.

      This rhyme pair creates a concise, witty paradox: "drinking" only a little "learning" will make you drunk, but drinking a lot will make you "sober[]." (In other words, a little bit of education in the arts will go to your head; an extensive education will humble you.)

      Pope's couplets are evocative in other ways, too. As they pile up in the long sentence spanning lines 11-18, they mimic the metaphorical mountains that seem to pile one on top of another ("Alps on Alps arise!").

    • Meter

      All of "An Essay on Criticism," including this excerpt, is written in iambic pentameter. In other words, the poem's lines typically contain five iambs (metrical feet, or units, that consist of an unstressed followed by a stressed syllable). The typical line's rhythm sounds like "da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM"—though, like most metrical poems, this one contains occasional variations.

      These variations can be quite expressive. In fact, it's in this same poem that Pope famously says of poetry: "The sound must seem an echo to the sense." In other words, sound and meaning should go hand in hand—ideally, for example, a line about smooth waters should flow smoothly, while a line about rough waters should sound choppy and rough.

      Readers can hear an example of this kind of expressive variation in lines 11-12:

      So pleased | at first, | the tow- | ering Alps | we try,
      Mount o'er | the vales, | and seem | to tread | the sky;

      Line 11 flows according to the standard iambic pentameter pattern (for metrical purposes, "towering" counts as two syllables here: TOW-ring). Line 12, however, begins with a trochaic foot (stressed-unstressed) rather than an iambic foot (unstressed-stressed). The variation makes the line briefly seem to struggle a bit—like someone "Mount[ing]" (climbing) the slopes of mountain "vales" (valleys). But by the end of the line, which describes a feeling of walking on air ("tread[ing] the sky"), the meter is smooth again. The rhythm matches the imagery; the sound echoes the sense.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      All of Pope's "Essay on Criticism," including the passage excerpted here, consists of rhyming couplets. Thus, the rhyme scheme of the passage is AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHII.

      Rhymed couplets written in iambic pentameter (as these are) are also known as heroic couplets. The name comes from their traditional association with epics and other narrative poetry. (See Form and Meter sections for more context.)

      However, Pope used heroic couplets for many purposes throughout his career, including mock-epic poetry, verse epistles (letters in the form of poems), and verse "essays" like this one. The crisp, consistent rhyme pairs allowed him to flex his wit to the maximum, with the first line in a pair often serving as a kind of setup and the second as a punchline.

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Speaker

    • The speaker of "An Essay on Criticism" is anonymous; readers never learn this person's gender, age, etc. That said, it's fair to read the speaker as the author himself. Alexander Pope was an opinionated, sharp-tongued poet and critic, and the distinctive voice of his poems captures his prickly public persona. While the "A little learning" passage applies to the "Arts" in general, the "Essay" as a whole also comments more specifically on the literary scene of Pope's day and reflects the critical tastes and beliefs that Pope upheld elsewhere in his writing.

      In this passage, the speaker adopts a voice of experience and wisdom, comparing the illusions of "fearless youth" with the "more advanced" perceptions of older critics. By the final lines, the speaker sounds downright world-weary, warning young critics that the "growing labours" of study in the arts may "tire[]" them out.

      Interestingly, however, Pope himself was only 23 when he published the poem! He was very much in the early stages of his own career (in fact, the "Essay" helped make his name). As a young writer, he may have been exaggerating his own maturity somewhat in hopes of establishing greater critical authority.

  • “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing” Setting

    • The "Essay on Criticism" has no defined setting; it's a set of instructions delivered from speaker to reader. This passage does allude to "the Pierian spring" (the sacred fountain of the Muses in Greek mythology) and describe a landscape that includes "the towering Alps." These place descriptions aren't the poem's physical setting, however; they're part of extended metaphors for consuming and acquiring knowledge.

      Because the second metaphor extends over so many lines (lines 6-18), the landscape it describes starts to seem detailed and real. It follows the young knowledge-seeker's journey through a series of challenges, which the speaker compares to "snows," "hills," "mountains," and so on. It even describes the fatigue of reaching one peak only to find endless "Alps" ahead. Again, though, this is all a figurative way of describing a progression from ignorance to (relative) understanding.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “From An Essay on Criticism: A little learning is a dangerous thing”

      Literary Context

      Published when the author was just 23, "An Essay on Criticism" (1711) was one of the poems that made Alexander Pope's name. It's a didactic poem, meaning a poem of instruction (usually with a moralistic flavor), and it's addressed to critics of the arts, especially poetry. As it preaches what Pope considered good critical taste in poetry, it often seems to advise poets themselves. Take this famous passage, for instance:

      True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
      As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
      'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
      The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

      In schooling fellow critics on the art of poetry and rhetoric, Pope was partly emulating a few big-name authors from ancient Rome, including the rhetorician Quintilian and the poet Horace (author of Ars Poetica, a treatise on the art of poetry). Pope's "Essay" name-checks these famous models, and other authors as well.

      The "Essay on Criticism" attracted both acclaim and controversy in English literary circles. Its critical opinions remained highly influential throughout the 18th century, during which Pope became the preeminent poet of what is now called the Augustan period. Other notable writers of this period included Pope's friend and fellow satirist Jonathan Swift (author of the novel Gulliver's Travels) and the critic Samuel Johnson, an admirer of Pope's poems and translations.

      Today, the "Essay" remains most famous for its epigrammatic one-liners, several of which have become idioms—including "To err is human; to forgive, divine" and, of course, "A little learning is a dangerous thing." Pope wrote other verse "essays" as well, including the "Essay on Man," which contemplates the relationship between humankind and God.

      As described by Pope, the "Alps" (lines 11, 18) are a metaphor for the intellectual challenges facing critics. The actual Alps later became an important setting in many of the poems of the British Romantics (late 18th-early 19th century), including Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc" (published 1817) and William Wordsworth's The Prelude (published 1850).

      Historical Context

      Alexander Pope is considered the major poet of the Augustan period, the era of English literature that spanned roughly the first half of the 1700s. This period was named after the Augustan Age of ancient Rome, which lasted from about 43 BCE to 18 AD. As Britannica notes, the Roman period "reached its highest literary expression in poetry, a polished and sophisticated verse generally addressed to a patron or to the emperor Augustus and dealing with themes of patriotism, love, and nature."

      Parts of this description could also apply to the English Augustan period, whose major poets explicitly modeled some of their styles, subjects, and attitudes on the "classical" poets of ancient Rome. For example, Pope's "Essay on Criticism" alludes to, and models some of its specific advice on, the Ars Poetica of Horace, arguably the greatest poet of the Roman Augustan Age. Pope addressed some poetry to aristocratic patrons, too; for example, his "Epistle to Burlington" (one of his Moral Essays in verse) is addressed to his patron Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. Finally, the English Augustan poets, like their Roman predecessors, strove for a highly sophisticated style; Pope's poems are noted for their elegance, cleverness, and biting wit.

      In the first half of the 18th century, Great Britain was consolidating and expanding its empire, both within the British Isles and around the world. It was becoming arguably the most powerful force on the geopolitical stage, much as the Roman Empire had been in antiquity (at least in its part of the globe: Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East). It's no accident, then, that the culture of the English Augustan Age often looked back to ancient Rome for inspiration. In many ways, the British Empire saw itself as the imperial heir to Rome's legacy.

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