However, as politics began to retreat from the English national consciousness, as the monarchy and religious debate appeared to reach an easier truce, a new aristocratic influence became evident upon the literature of the period, as exemplified in the highly artificial neo-Classical literary style of Alexander Pope. Pope favored brittle, social couplets, satire, and an aphoristic style to advance his ideas in poetic form. Pope was more concerned with what was good art for the individual artist than what was good political or scientific philosophy for the masses.
Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" (1711) like Locke's political essays, attempted to synthesize ancient and modern thought. But Pope's essay determines what was best for the individual and the artist in society, rather than for
Unlike Locke, Pope counsels against assuming all humans to be equal. Rather the poet stresses distinctions of ability: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: / There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, / and drinking largely sobers us again." The form of Pope's aristocratic evaluation of ability also underlines the poet's stress upon making general propositions about the class-based nature of human difference, rather than trying to find human similarities, as Locke was particularly concerned to do, in the earlier religiously and politically divided England of the era when Locke wrote his greatest works. Pope had the later luxury, in more peaceful times, to write poems such as "The Rape of the Lock," dealing with minor, social court intrigues of people whom he knew well in society, and the luxury as well to be able to reflect upon the need of the individual artist as well as the common English citizen.
Works Cited
Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1690.
Pope, Alexander. "An Essay on Criticism." 1710.
