Alexander Pope (1688–1744)• Pope specifies two further guidelines for the critic.• The first is to recognize the overall unity of a work, and thereby to avoid falling into partial assessments based on the author’s use of poetic conceits, ornamented language, and meters, as well as those which are biased toward either archaic or modern styles or based on the reputations of given writers.• Finally, a critic needs to possess a moral sensibility, as well as a sense of balance and proportion.
16. Alexander Pope (1688–1744)• Pope’s final strategy in the Essay is to equate the classical literary and critical traditions with nature, and to sketch a redefined outline of literary history from classical times to his own era. Pope insists that the rules of nature were merely discovered, not invented, by the ancients
17. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)• Of his numerous achievements, Samuel Johnson is perhaps best remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, first published in 1755. Of almost equal renown are his Lives of the English Poets (1783) and his eight-volume edition of Shakespeare