Aphoristic Dangers of Alexander Pope

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Recommended: Contribution of Alexander Pope in English literature

If “imitation is the sincerest flattery,” then more than 250 years after his passing Alexander Pope deserves a spot in the ranks as one of the most flattered writers of all time. His works have been dissected of every phrase of possible significance and spilled onto page-a-day calendars and books of wit across the world. The beauty of his catchy maxims is that they are not only memorable, but attempt to convey his philosophy with perfect poetic ingenuity. Unfortunately, his well-achieved goals of “strik[ing] the reader more strongly” (Man 2527), easy retainability of his words, and most decidedly, conciseness, also yield an undesired effect. Utilizing this dicey method of epigrammatic couplets for such serious issues, Pope sacrifices pieces of his intended message, for the sake of rhyme, leading to easily misleading and generalizing messages that are open to scathing criticisms, misunderstandings and the possible loss of his some of his composition’s integrity as well as a confusion of his own convictions.
The keys to great aphorisms are their ability to be applied to more common situations, thereby making them even more memorable by their availability for frequent usage, their ear-catching prominence and their paradoxical nature. That final element is what makes aphorisms so engaging. The most witty and intelligent examples are those that expose two supposed opposites for their ironic closeness and display the fine line between contradiction and a surprisingly parallel relationship between both.
A good example of such a saying is found in line 213 of “An Essay on Criticism.” “Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, / Make use of every friend - and every foe.” Here Pope is in the advising stage of his Essay and uses the surprise ending “and every foe” as a display of irony, in that it’s not only the counsel of friends one needs to depend on, but the unabashed critique of one’s rivals that can prove useful, as well. It is these types of witticisms that are a notorious characteristic of essays in general, but the most enjoyable and artistic part of Pope’s works.
Pope’s true genius is displayed in his one-line masterpieces that do not rely on rhyme to stay memorable. “An Essay on Criticism” is full of these. “For fool rush in where an...

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...cance of Pope’s use of epigrammatic couplets as his rhetorical device of choice in these two essays is that many faults are found in such a method, for the sake of didacticism. True scholars would be able to take his message, had it instead been explicated in prose, and thoroughly, and without uncertainty, been able to learn and build upon his salient arguments. Were his goal merely to advise and entertain, then he did so exceptionally well while building a legendary volume of aphorisms in the process, but if Pope was truly trying to develop and compose an argument for critique and the state of man to follow and imitate Nature, then essayistic prose following the models of Locke and Hobbes would have been more appropriate and less ambiguous.

Works Cited
Pope, Alexander. “An Essay on Criticism.” The Longman Anthology of British
Literature. Volume 1C. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Longman,
1999. 2459-2478

Pope, Alexander. “An Essay on Man.” The Longman Anthology of British
Literature. Volume 1C. Ed. David Damrosch, et al. New York: Longman,
1999. 2526-2535

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