A Passage from Pope

This week for outside reading, I read Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism,” which is on pages 441-458 of the NA. I wanted to focus on a particular passage of his, and dissect it a bit:

Nature to all things fix’d the Limits fit,

And wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit:

As on the Land while here the Ocean gains,

In other Parts it leaves wide sandy Plains;

Thus in the Soul while Memory prevails,

The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails;

Where Beams of warm Imagination play,

The Memory’s soft Figures melt away.

One Science only will one Genius fit;

So vast is Art, so narrow Human Wit:

Not only bounded to peculiar Arts,

But oft in those, confin’d to single Parts.

(Pope, lines 52-63, NA 442)

The argument that Pope is making through this passage seems deeply grounded in Romanticism, and, although Emerson is born after Pope has already passed, they write of the same ideas. Pope says “Nature…wisely curb’d proud Man’s pretending Wit” (lines 52-53) to possibly mean that nature has sort of brought the human mind back down to earth, that is, nature has humbled the human mind because the mind is limited. And so the connection can be found to Emerson because he argues that the mind, through poetry, will always fall short. Pope blatantly brings out this notion of the fall of the mind by saying “The solid Pow’r of Understanding fails” (line 57). Emerson would also argue that poetry itself has fallen away, but it can, however, point to the ideal world that poets can never reach. Pope would agree, saying that our “narrow Human Wit” (line 61) is “confin’d to single Parts” (line 63). Having said that, I find it interesting that Pope used an actual poem to express his feelings on the human mind and the ideal world, which poets can never reach, according to Emerson.