Skip to main content

What does the following extract from Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" mean? True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, What oft was Thought,...

Pope says here that "true wit," by which he means a wise, intelligent and incisive statement or turn of phrase, reflects a truth that already exists in nature but dresses it up or highlights it for people. True wit is not saying anything new or inventing anything new, but unearthing what already exists and making it clearer to people. It brings to clearer consciousness "what oft was Thought," in other words what was already hovering in a cloudy way in people's minds.


However, before a person put the right words around a preexisting truth, that truth was somewhat inchoate (chaotic) or half-formed in people's minds. So people thought it but couldn't express it well: it was "ne'er [never] so well Exprest [expressed]." But once the right words describe the truth in question, we instantly know it to be true: that is the meaning of "Whose truth convinced at Sight we find." (We are convinced of the truth at the sight of the words that describe it well.) These words give us "back the Image of our mind." In other words, the words express what we already think, even if we never had words for the thought.


This is an important verse because it expresses a key Enlightenment belief in a nutshell. The Enlightenment thinkers believed objective truth could be found and that language was a vehicle to make that truth clear. The right language, the perfect words, what never was so well expressed before, became a clear windowpane revealing truth to people. Poor, murky language, on the other hand, was like a foggy or dirty windowpane: it made it difficult to see the truth. Pope here celebrates the person who uses language in a way that illuminates truth.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more