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Clue: "An Essay on Criticism" writer

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Clue: "An Essay on Criticism" author

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An Essay on Criticism

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Alexander Pope, a translator, poet, wit, amateur landscape gardener, and satirist, was born in London in 1688. He contracted tuberculosis of the bone when he was young, which disfigured his spine and purportedly only allowed him to grow to 4 feet, 6 inches. Pope grew up on his father’s property at Binfield in Windsor Forest, where he read avidly and gained an appreciation for the natural world. Though he remained in ill health throughout his life, he was able to support himself as a translator and writer. As a Catholic at that time in Britain, he was ineligible for patronage, public office, or a position at a university.   A sharp-penned satirist of public figures and their behavior, Pope had his supporters and detractors. He was friends with Jonathan Swift, Dr. John Arbuthnot, and John Gay. Pope’s poems include the “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot” and the mock epic “The Rape of the Lock.” To read his work is to be exposed to the order and wit of the 18th century poetry that preceded the Romantic poets. Pope primarily used the heroic couplet, and his lines are immensely quotable; from “An Essay on Criticism” come famous phrases such as “To err is human; to forgive, divine,” “A little learning is a dang’rous thing,” and “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”   After 1718 Pope lived on his five-acre property at Twickenham by the Thames. He cultivated a much-visited garden that contained a grotto, and featured the formal characteristics of a French garden and the newer more natural “English” landscape style.   Pope wrote “An Essay on Criticism” when he was 23; he was influenced by Quintillian, Aristotle, Horace’s Ars Poetica , and Nicolas Boileau’s L’Art Poëtique . Written in heroic couplets, the tone is straight-forward and conversational. It is a discussion of what good critics should do; however, in reading it one gleans much wisdom on the qualities poets should strive for in their own work. In Part I of “An Essay on Criticism,” Pope notes the lack of “true taste” in critics, stating: “’Tis with our judgments as our watches, none / Go just alike, yet each believes his own.” Pope advocates knowing one’s own artistic limits: “Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, / And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.” He stresses the order in nature and the value of the work of the “Ancients” of Greece, but also states that not all good work can be explained by rules: “Some beauties yet, no precepts can declare, / For there’s a happiness as well as care.”   In Part II, Pope lists the mistakes that critics make, as well as the defects in poems that some critics short-sightedly praise. He advocates looking at a whole piece of work, instead of being swayed by some of its showier or faulty parts: “As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, / T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit.” He advises against too much ornamentation in writing, and against fancy style that communicates little of merit. In his description of versification, his lines enact the effects of clumsy writing: “And ten low words oft creep in one dull line,” and “A needless Alexandrine ends the song, / That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.” In Part III, Pope discusses what critics should do, holding up the “Ancients” as models, including Aristotle (the “Stagirite”) who was respected by the lawless poets: “Poets, a race long unconfin’d and free, / Still fond and proud of savage liberty, / Receiv’d his laws; and stood convinc’d ‘twas fit, / Who conquer’d nature, should preside o’er wit.”

'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence To tire our patience, than mislead our sense. Some few in that, but numbers err in this, Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss; A fool might once himself alone expose, Now one in verse makes many more in prose.        'Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own. In poets as true genius is but rare, True taste as seldom is the critic's share; Both must alike from Heav'n derive their light, These born to judge, as well as those to write. Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well. Authors are partial to their wit, 'tis true, But are not critics to their judgment too?        Yet if we look more closely we shall find Most have the seeds of judgment in their mind; Nature affords at least a glimm'ring light; The lines, tho' touch'd but faintly, are drawn right. But as the slightest sketch, if justly trac'd, Is by ill colouring but the more disgrac'd, So by false learning is good sense defac'd; Some are bewilder'd in the maze of schools, And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools. In search of wit these lose their common sense, And then turn critics in their own defence: Each burns alike, who can, or cannot write, Or with a rival's, or an eunuch's spite. All fools have still an itching to deride, And fain would be upon the laughing side. If Mævius scribble in Apollo's spite, There are, who judge still worse than he can write.        Some have at first for wits, then poets pass'd, Turn'd critics next, and prov'd plain fools at last; Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. Those half-learn'd witlings, num'rous in our isle As half-form'd insects on the banks of Nile; Unfinish'd things, one knows not what to call, Their generation's so equivocal: To tell 'em, would a hundred tongues require, Or one vain wit's, that might a hundred tire.        But you who seek to give and merit fame, And justly bear a critic's noble name, Be sure your self and your own reach to know, How far your genius, taste, and learning go; Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet, And mark that point where sense and dulness meet.        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. Like kings we lose the conquests gain'd before, By vain ambition still to make them more; Each might his sev'ral province well command, Would all but stoop to what they understand.        First follow NATURE, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchang'd, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of art. Art from that fund each just supply provides, Works without show, and without pomp presides: In some fair body thus th' informing soul With spirits feeds, with vigour fills the whole, Each motion guides, and ev'ry nerve sustains; Itself unseen, but in th' effects, remains. Some, to whom Heav'n in wit has been profuse, Want as much more, to turn it to its use; For wit and judgment often are at strife, Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife. 'Tis more to guide, than spur the Muse's steed; Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed; The winged courser, like a gen'rous horse, Shows most true mettle when you check his course.        Those RULES of old discover'd, not devis'd, Are Nature still, but Nature methodis'd; Nature, like liberty, is but restrain'd By the same laws which first herself ordain'd.        Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites, When to repress, and when indulge our flights: High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd, And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; Held from afar, aloft, th' immortal prize, And urg'd the rest by equal steps to rise. Just precepts thus from great examples giv'n, She drew from them what they deriv'd from Heav'n. The gen'rous critic fann'd the poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire. Then criticism the Muse's handmaid prov'd, To dress her charms, and make her more belov'd; But following wits from that intention stray'd; Who could not win the mistress, woo'd the maid; Against the poets their own arms they turn'd, Sure to hate most the men from whom they learn'd. So modern 'pothecaries, taught the art By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools. Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey, Nor time nor moths e'er spoil'd so much as they: Some drily plain, without invention's aid, Write dull receipts how poems may be made: These leave the sense, their learning to display, And those explain the meaning quite away.        You then whose judgment the right course would steer, Know well each ANCIENT'S proper character; His fable, subject, scope in ev'ry page; Religion, country, genius of his age: Without all these at once before your eyes, Cavil you may, but never criticise. Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day, and meditate by night; Thence form your judgment, thence your maxims bring, And trace the Muses upward to their spring; Still with itself compar'd, his text peruse; And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.        When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd, Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law, And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw: But when t' examine ev'ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. Convinc'd, amaz'd, he checks the bold design, And rules as strict his labour'd work confine, As if the Stagirite o'erlook'd each line. Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them.        Some beauties yet, no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry, in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. If, where the rules not far enough extend, (Since rules were made but to promote their end) Some lucky LICENCE answers to the full Th' intent propos'd, that licence is a rule. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, May boldly deviate from the common track. Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend; From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, Which, without passing through the judgment, gains The heart, and all its end at once attains. In prospects, thus, some objects please our eyes, Which out of nature's common order rise, The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice. But tho' the ancients thus their rules invade, (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made) Moderns, beware! or if you must offend Against the precept, ne'er transgress its end; Let it be seldom, and compell'd by need, And have, at least, their precedent to plead. The critic else proceeds without remorse, Seizes your fame, and puts his laws in force.        I know there are, to whose presumptuous thoughts Those freer beauties, ev'n in them, seem faults. Some figures monstrous and misshap'd appear, Consider'd singly, or beheld too near, Which, but proportion'd to their light, or place, Due distance reconciles to form and grace. A prudent chief not always must display His pow'rs in equal ranks, and fair array, But with th' occasion and the place comply, Conceal his force, nay seem sometimes to fly. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream.        Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, Above the reach of sacrilegious hands, Secure from flames, from envy's fiercer rage, Destructive war, and all-involving age. See, from each clime the learn'd their incense bring! Hear, in all tongues consenting pæans ring! In praise so just let ev'ry voice be join'd, And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind! Hail, bards triumphant! born in happier days; Immortal heirs of universal praise! Whose honours with increase of ages grow, As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow! Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound, And worlds applaud that must not yet be found! Oh may some spark of your celestial fire The last, the meanest of your sons inspire, (That on weak wings, from far, pursues your flights; Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes) To teach vain wits a science little known, T' admire superior sense, and doubt their own!

Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. Whatever Nature has in worth denied, She gives in large recruits of needful pride; For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find What wants in blood and spirits, swell'd with wind; Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence, And fills up all the mighty void of sense! If once right reason drives that cloud away, Truth breaks upon us with resistless day; Trust not yourself; but your defects to know, Make use of ev'ry friend—and ev'ry foe.        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. Fir'd at first sight with what the Muse imparts, In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts, While from the bounded level of our mind, Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind, But more advanc'd, behold with strange surprise New, distant scenes of endless science rise! So pleas'd at first, the tow'ring Alps we try, Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky; Th' eternal snows appear already past, And the first clouds and mountains seem the last; But those attain'd, we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way, Th' increasing prospect tires our wand'ring eyes, Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!        A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ, Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find, Where nature moves, and rapture warms the mind; Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit. But in such lays as neither ebb, nor flow, Correctly cold, and regularly low, That shunning faults, one quiet tenour keep; We cannot blame indeed—but we may sleep. In wit, as nature, what affects our hearts Is not th' exactness of peculiar parts; 'Tis not a lip, or eye, we beauty call, But the joint force and full result of all. Thus when we view some well-proportion'd dome, (The world's just wonder, and ev'n thine, O Rome!' No single parts unequally surprise; All comes united to th' admiring eyes; No monstrous height, or breadth, or length appear; The whole at once is bold, and regular.        Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. In ev'ry work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend; And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due. As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit, T' avoid great errors, must the less commit: Neglect the rules each verbal critic lays, For not to know such trifles, is a praise. Most critics, fond of some subservient art, Still make the whole depend upon a part: They talk of principles, but notions prize, And all to one lov'd folly sacrifice.        Once on a time, La Mancha's knight, they say, A certain bard encount'ring on the way, Discours'd in terms as just, with looks as sage, As e'er could Dennis of the Grecian stage; Concluding all were desp'rate sots and fools, Who durst depart from Aristotle's rules. Our author, happy in a judge so nice, Produc'd his play, and begg'd the knight's advice, Made him observe the subject and the plot, The manners, passions, unities, what not? All which, exact to rule, were brought about, Were but a combat in the lists left out. "What! leave the combat out?" exclaims the knight; "Yes, or we must renounce the Stagirite." "Not so by Heav'n" (he answers in a rage) "Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage." So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain. "Then build a new, or act it in a plain."        Thus critics, of less judgment than caprice, Curious not knowing, not exact but nice, Form short ideas; and offend in arts (As most in manners) by a love to parts.        Some to conceit alone their taste confine, And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art. True wit is nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd, Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. For works may have more wit than does 'em good, As bodies perish through excess of blood.        Others for language all their care express, And value books, as women men, for dress: Their praise is still—"the style is excellent": The sense, they humbly take upon content. Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place; The face of Nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay: But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears, and improves whate'er it shines upon, It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd: For diff'rent styles with diff'rent subjects sort, As several garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence, Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense; Such labour'd nothings, in so strange a style, Amaze th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile. Unlucky, as Fungoso in the play, These sparks with awkward vanity display What the fine gentleman wore yesterday! And but so mimic ancient wits at best, As apes our grandsires, in their doublets dress'd. In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old; Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Not yet the last to lay the old aside.        But most by numbers judge a poet's song; And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong: In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire, Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, Not mend their minds; as some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire, While expletives their feeble aid do join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line, While they ring round the same unvaried chimes, With sure returns of still expected rhymes. Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze", In the next line, it "whispers through the trees": If "crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep", The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep". Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigour of a line, Where Denham's strength, and Waller's sweetness join. True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence, The sound must seem an echo to the sense. Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar. When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise! While, at each change, the son of Libyan Jove Now burns with glory, and then melts with love; Now his fierce eyes with sparkling fury glow, Now sighs steal out, and tears begin to flow: Persians and Greeks like turns of nature found, And the world's victor stood subdu'd by sound! The pow'r of music all our hearts allow, And what Timotheus was, is Dryden now.        Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such, Who still are pleas'd too little or too much. At ev'ry trifle scorn to take offence, That always shows great pride, or little sense; Those heads, as stomachs, are not sure the best, Which nauseate all, and nothing can digest. Yet let not each gay turn thy rapture move, For fools admire, but men of sense approve; As things seem large which we through mists descry, Dulness is ever apt to magnify.        Some foreign writers, some our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside. Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, And force that sun but on a part to shine; Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; (Though each may feel increases and decays, And see now clearer and now darker days.) Regard not then if wit be old or new, But blame the false, and value still the true. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with quality, A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woeful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! Before his sacred name flies every fault, And each exalted stanza teems with thought!        The vulgar thus through imitation err; As oft the learn'd by being singular; So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong: So Schismatics the plain believers quit, And are but damn'd for having too much wit.        Some praise at morning what they blame at night; But always think the last opinion right. A Muse by these is like a mistress us'd, This hour she's idoliz'd, the next abus'd; While their weak heads, like towns unfortified, Twixt sense and nonsense daily change their side. Ask them the cause; they're wiser still, they say; And still tomorrow's wiser than today. We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. Once school divines this zealous isle o'erspread; Who knew most Sentences, was deepest read; Faith, Gospel, all, seem'd made to be disputed, And none had sense enough to be confuted: Scotists and Thomists, now, in peace remain, Amidst their kindred cobwebs in Duck Lane. If Faith itself has different dresses worn, What wonder modes in wit should take their turn? Oft, leaving what is natural and fit, The current folly proves the ready wit; And authors think their reputation safe Which lives as long as fools are pleased to laugh.        Some valuing those of their own side or mind, Still make themselves the measure of mankind; Fondly we think we honour merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men. Parties in wit attend on those of state, And public faction doubles private hate. Pride, Malice, Folly, against Dryden rose, In various shapes of Parsons, Critics, Beaus; But sense surviv'd, when merry jests were past; For rising merit will buoy up at last. Might he return, and bless once more our eyes, New Blackmores and new Milbourns must arise; Nay should great Homer lift his awful head, Zoilus again would start up from the dead. Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue, But like a shadow, proves the substance true; For envied wit, like Sol eclips'd, makes known Th' opposing body's grossness, not its own. When first that sun too powerful beams displays, It draws up vapours which obscure its rays; But ev'n those clouds at last adorn its way, Reflect new glories, and augment the day.        Be thou the first true merit to befriend; His praise is lost, who stays till all commend. Short is the date, alas, of modern rhymes, And 'tis but just to let 'em live betimes. No longer now that golden age appears, When patriarch wits surviv'd a thousand years: Now length of Fame (our second life) is lost, And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast; Our sons their fathers' failing language see, And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be. So when the faithful pencil has design'd Some bright idea of the master's mind, Where a new world leaps out at his command, And ready Nature waits upon his hand; When the ripe colours soften and unite, And sweetly melt into just shade and light; When mellowing years their full perfection give, And each bold figure just begins to live, The treacherous colours the fair art betray, And all the bright creation fades away!        Unhappy wit, like most mistaken things, Atones not for that envy which it brings. In youth alone its empty praise we boast, But soon the short-liv'd vanity is lost: Like some fair flow'r the early spring supplies, That gaily blooms, but ev'n in blooming dies. What is this wit, which must our cares employ? The owner's wife, that other men enjoy; Then most our trouble still when most admir'd, And still the more we give, the more requir'd; Whose fame with pains we guard, but lose with ease, Sure some to vex, but never all to please; 'Tis what the vicious fear, the virtuous shun; By fools 'tis hated, and by knaves undone!        If wit so much from ign'rance undergo, Ah let not learning too commence its foe! Of old, those met rewards who could excel, And such were prais'd who but endeavour'd well: Though triumphs were to gen'rals only due, Crowns were reserv'd to grace the soldiers too. Now, they who reach Parnassus' lofty crown, Employ their pains to spurn some others down;        And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each ill author is as bad a friend. To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise! Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, Nor in the critic let the man be lost! Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine.        But if in noble minds some dregs remain, Not yet purg'd off, of spleen and sour disdain, Discharge that rage on more provoking crimes, Nor fear a dearth in these flagitious times. No pardon vile obscenity should find, Though wit and art conspire to move your mind; But dulness with obscenity must prove As shameful sure as impotence in love. In the fat age of pleasure, wealth, and ease, Sprung the rank weed, and thriv'd with large increase: When love was all an easy monarch's care; Seldom at council, never in a war: Jilts ruled the state, and statesmen farces writ; Nay wits had pensions, and young Lords had wit: The fair sat panting at a courtier's play, And not a mask went unimprov'd away: The modest fan was lifted up no more, And virgins smil'd at what they blush'd before. The following licence of a foreign reign Did all the dregs of bold Socinus drain; Then unbelieving priests reform'd the nation, And taught more pleasant methods of salvation; Where Heav'n's free subjects might their rights dispute, Lest God himself should seem too absolute: Pulpits their sacred satire learned to spare, And Vice admired to find a flatt'rer there! Encourag'd thus, wit's Titans brav'd the skies, And the press groan'd with licenc'd blasphemies. These monsters, critics! with your darts engage, Here point your thunder, and exhaust your rage! Yet shun their fault, who, scandalously nice, Will needs mistake an author into vice; All seems infected that th' infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundic'd eye.

Learn then what morals critics ought to show, For 'tis but half a judge's task, to know. 'Tis not enough, taste, judgment, learning, join; In all you speak, let truth and candour shine: That not alone what to your sense is due, All may allow; but seek your friendship too.        Be silent always when you doubt your sense; And speak, though sure, with seeming diffidence: Some positive, persisting fops we know, Who, if once wrong, will needs be always so; But you, with pleasure own your errors past, And make each day a critic on the last.        'Tis not enough, your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do; Men must be taught as if you taught them not; And things unknown proposed as things forgot. Without good breeding, truth is disapprov'd; That only makes superior sense belov'd.        Be niggards of advice on no pretence; For the worst avarice is that of sense. With mean complacence ne'er betray your trust, Nor be so civil as to prove unjust. Fear not the anger of the wise to raise; Those best can bear reproof, who merit praise.        'Twere well might critics still this freedom take, But Appius reddens at each word you speak, And stares, Tremendous ! with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry! Fear most to tax an honourable fool, Whose right it is, uncensur'd, to be dull; Such, without wit, are poets when they please, As without learning they can take degrees. Leave dangerous truths to unsuccessful satires, And flattery to fulsome dedicators, Whom, when they praise, the world believes no more, Than when they promise to give scribbling o'er. 'Tis best sometimes your censure to restrain, And charitably let the dull be vain: Your silence there is better than your spite, For who can rail so long as they can write? Still humming on, their drowsy course they keep, And lash'd so long, like tops, are lash'd asleep. False steps but help them to renew the race, As after stumbling, jades will mend their pace. What crowds of these, impenitently bold, In sounds and jingling syllables grown old, Still run on poets, in a raging vein, Even to the dregs and squeezings of the brain, Strain out the last, dull droppings of their sense, And rhyme with all the rage of impotence!        Such shameless bards we have; and yet 'tis true, There are as mad, abandon'd critics too. The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head, With his own tongue still edifies his ears, And always list'ning to himself appears. All books he reads, and all he reads assails, From Dryden's Fables down to Durfey's Tales. With him, most authors steal their works, or buy; Garth did not write his own Dispensary . Name a new play, and he's the poet's friend, Nay show'd his faults—but when would poets mend? No place so sacred from such fops is barr'd, Nor is Paul's church more safe than Paul's churchyard: Nay, fly to altars; there they'll talk you dead: For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks; It still looks home, and short excursions makes; But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks; And never shock'd, and never turn'd aside, Bursts out, resistless, with a thund'ring tide.        But where's the man, who counsel can bestow, Still pleas'd to teach, and yet not proud to know? Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite; Not dully prepossess'd, nor blindly right; Though learn'd, well-bred; and though well-bred, sincere; Modestly bold, and humanly severe? Who to a friend his faults can freely show, And gladly praise the merit of a foe? Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfin'd; A knowledge both of books and human kind; Gen'rous converse; a soul exempt from pride; And love to praise, with reason on his side?        Such once were critics; such the happy few, Athens and Rome in better ages knew. The mighty Stagirite first left the shore, Spread all his sails, and durst the deeps explore: He steer'd securely, and discover'd far, Led by the light of the Mæonian Star. Poets, a race long unconfin'd and free, Still fond and proud of savage liberty, Receiv'd his laws; and stood convinc'd 'twas fit, Who conquer'd nature, should preside o'er wit.        Horace still charms with graceful negligence, And without methods talks us into sense, Will, like a friend, familiarly convey The truest notions in the easiest way. He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ, Yet judg'd with coolness, though he sung with fire; His precepts teach but what his works inspire. Our critics take a contrary extreme, They judge with fury, but they write with fle'me: Nor suffers Horace more in wrong translations By wits, than critics in as wrong quotations.        See Dionysius Homer's thoughts refine, And call new beauties forth from ev'ry line!        Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, The scholar's learning, with the courtier's ease.        In grave Quintilian's copious work we find The justest rules, and clearest method join'd; Thus useful arms in magazines we place, All rang'd in order, and dispos'd with grace, But less to please the eye, than arm the hand, Still fit for use, and ready at command.        Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire, And bless their critic with a poet's fire. An ardent judge, who zealous in his trust, With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just; Whose own example strengthens all his laws; And is himself that great sublime he draws.        Thus long succeeding critics justly reign'd, Licence repress'd, and useful laws ordain'd; Learning and Rome alike in empire grew, And arts still follow'd where her eagles flew; From the same foes, at last, both felt their doom, And the same age saw learning fall, and Rome. With tyranny, then superstition join'd, As that the body, this enslav'd the mind; Much was believ'd, but little understood, And to be dull was constru'd to be good; A second deluge learning thus o'er-run, And the monks finish'd what the Goths begun.        At length Erasmus, that great, injur'd name, (The glory of the priesthood, and the shame!) Stemm'd the wild torrent of a barb'rous age, And drove those holy Vandals off the stage.        But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days, Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays! Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread, Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head! Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive; Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live; With sweeter notes each rising temple rung; A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung. Immortal Vida! on whose honour'd brow The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow: Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, As next in place to Mantua, next in fame!        But soon by impious arms from Latium chas'd, Their ancient bounds the banished Muses pass'd; Thence arts o'er all the northern world advance; But critic-learning flourish'd most in France. The rules a nation born to serve, obeys, And Boileau still in right of Horace sways. But we, brave Britons, foreign laws despis'd, And kept unconquer'd, and uncivilis'd, Fierce for the liberties of wit, and bold, We still defied the Romans, as of old. Yet some there were, among the sounder few Of those who less presum'd, and better knew, Who durst assert the juster ancient cause, And here restor'd wit's fundamental laws. Such was the Muse, whose rules and practice tell "Nature's chief master-piece is writing well." Such was Roscommon—not more learn'd than good, With manners gen'rous as his noble blood; To him the wit of Greece and Rome was known, And ev'ry author's merit, but his own. Such late was Walsh—the Muse's judge and friend, Who justly knew to blame or to commend; To failings mild, but zealous for desert; The clearest head, and the sincerest heart. This humble praise, lamented shade! receive, This praise at least a grateful Muse may give: The Muse, whose early voice you taught to sing, Prescrib'd her heights, and prun'd her tender wing, (Her guide now lost) no more attempts to rise, But in low numbers short excursions tries: Content, if hence th' unlearn'd their wants may view, The learn'd reflect on what before they knew: Careless of censure, nor too fond of fame, Still pleas'd to praise, yet not afraid to blame, Averse alike to flatter, or offend, Not free from faults, nor yet too vain to mend.

The acknowledged master of the heroic couplet and one of the primary tastemakers of the Augustan age, British writer Alexander Pope was a central figure in the Neoclassical movement of the early 18th century. He is known for having perfected the rhymed couplet form of his idol, John Dryden, and...

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"An Essay on Criticism" w - Crossword Clue

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• English poet and satirist (1688-1744)
• the head of the Roman Catholic Church

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"An Essay on Criticism" writer

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Answer for the clue ""An Essay on Criticism" writer ", 4 letters: pope

Alternative clues for the word pope

• Benedict, e.g
• Holy Father
• Poet who wrote "To err is human ..."
• One guarded by the Swiss Guard
• One whose job prospects go up in smoke?
• John or Paul, for example
• Innocent, e.g.

Word definitions for pope in dictionaries

Gazetteer Word definitions in Gazetteer Population (2000): 11236 Housing Units (2000): 5827 Land area (2000): 670.136238 sq. miles (1735.644816 sq. km) Water area (2000): 47.151019 sq. miles (122.120574 sq. km) Total area (2000): 717.287257 sq. miles (1857.765390 sq. km) Located within: Minnesota ...

Wikipedia Word definitions in Wikipedia Pope is a village situated in Novi Pazar municipality in Serbia .

Usage examples of pope.

Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy.

Paris the Pope , who was still at Fontainebleau, determined to accede to an arrangement, and to sign an act which the Emperor conceived would terminate the differences between them.

Pope Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, either borrowing some of the more objectionable features of the purgatory doctrine previously held by the heathen, or else devising the same things himself from a perception of the striking adaptedness of such notions to secure an enviable power to the Church, constructed, established, and gave working efficiency to the dogmatic scheme of purgatory ever since firmly defended by the papal adherents as an integral part of the Roman Catholic system.

The Pope would die and the circus would actually begin with the tawdry tinkle of the hurdy-gurdy and monkeys on chains, the trumpet fanfare of a Fellini movie and the clowns and all the freaks and aerialists joining hands, dancing, capering across the screen.

Clement during his latter days to encroach on the perquisites and possessions of the minor Italian States was crystallizing into a fixed purpose of ecclesiastical aggrandizement on the part of the new Pope .

Holding these pronounced views, aggressively loyal in every thought and action, General Pope was naturally in antagonism with the policy of the President.

Only Albedo stayed with the Pope as His Holiness walked into the room, allowing the kissing of his ring and touching the heads of the gathered men and women as they knelt again.

Finally His Holiness, Pope Urban XVI, took his seat in the straight-backed throne with Albedo standing behind him.

Where Pope or Racine had one rule of metre, Victor Hugo has twenty, and he observes them as rigorously as an algebraist or an astronomer observes the rules of calculation or demonstration.

For the ordinary history of the popes , their life and death, their residence and absence, it is enough to refer to the ecclesiastical annalists, Spondanus and Fleury.

The first twelve articles are devoted to the pope , the annates, the appointment of foreigners to German benefices, the appeal of cases to Rome, the asserted authority of the papacy over bishops, the emperor, and other rulers.

Synagogue of Satan to hurl thunderbolts against the Holy Apostolic See, and diabolically to decree the subjection of the Pope to the Council, the confiscation of his annates, dearer to him than the apple of his eye, and finally his own deposition.

The popes of Rome later took it upon themselves to ritually anoint the emperors into their exalted office as part of the ceremony of coronation, as if a pope should have the power to create a messiah.

Accuracy of thought has seldom been more recklessly offered up to pungency of expression than in the above-cited aphorism of Pope .

Its Pope , its College of Cardinals and its Apocrypha Cardinals were all fair game.

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'An Essay on Criticism' poet Crossword Clue

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A Reviewer’s Life

The material constraints of writing criticism today.

I have been a freelance book reviewer for twenty years, which means that several times a week, the postal carrier delivers packages of books—some that I requested, some that I didn’t know I wanted, and some that I won’t ever want. A year and a half ago I received in this manner a book that I did want, Darryl Pinckney’s Come Back in September, about his friendship and apprenticeship with the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick. The front cover features a photo of Hardwick looking prim and elegant on the low steps outside 15 West Sixty-Seventh Street in Manhattan, where she lived in a top-floor duplex from 1961 until her death in 2007. On the back cover are two photographs of her dramatic two-story living room.

I often think about this room. Its ceilings appear to be twenty feet high. Next to the built-in bookshelves and requisite rolling ladder, swag curtains frame an enormous window, giving a the­atrical effect. A Juliet balcony gently interrupts one wall. Floating in the middle of the room is a writing desk, really a library table, from which a ceramic bust of a young man rises, like a gravestone, between two lamps. I showed the pictures to my husband once. “Oh,” he said. “She lived in the Morgan Library.”

My own desk is wedged into one corner of the bedroom I share with my husband, behind the children’s trampoline, between a hulking armoire and an ugly IKEA thing exploding with file boxes and rolls of scribbled-on paper that I really ought to throw away. Cairns of books are at my feet. If I turn my head just so I can glimpse a cluster of grocery bags brimming with toys and still more books, which I plan, someday, to sell or give away. Sometimes I pile the bags on top of each other to reduce their footprint, and when they threaten to topple, spread them out again.

What interests me about the photographs of Hardwick’s living room is that they provide evidence of the environment in which a brilliant and original mind worked. The couch on which she sat when she thought about Donne or Melville expressed a sensibility, but it also incubated one. On my way to my own desk, I catch a glimpse of the bags filled with crap. Whether or not I acknowledge it, the crap is always buried in the piece. Sometimes it rises right to the top.

criticism is an act of autobiography. The work of making an argu­ment, coming to a judgment, or simply choosing which books or objects to give time and attention to is inevitably, helplessly, an expression of values—and an expression of self. Our tastes tell on us as much as our syntax and tone; that mysterious compound called sensibility is formed by some strange alchemy of innate tendencies, life experiences, and material circumstances. In the pursuit of explicating a text, observing its patterns and structure, how it works, what it means, I also explicate myself—revealing what catches my interest, where my attention lingers. I might do this more, or less, intentionally, but I always do it.

Whatever is going on in the life of the critic is going to show up in her reading; it can’t not. Reading, writing, and thinking have experiential texture. The place and context in which I do those activities shapes them. Whether we are informed by political events or everyday life, it is not always possible, or desirable, to block out the noise of the world. When I write criticism, then, I try to use this fact of myself in some way. I might openly acknowledge why I am so invested in some aspect of a work. I might try to think through myself, pushing to arrive at a point at the very far edge of what I can see. I am a passionate adherent of close reading, the practice of being carefully attentive to words that are not our own. But close reading always involves the critic layering her own point of view over or next to the text’s, even as she observes, explains, interprets, evaluates. What I should not do is pretend that my reading is definitive, neutral, objective, or somehow free of myself and my environment. I write criticism to encounter an object, and I read criticism to encounter another person encountering an object. If I wanted a randomized controlled trial, I would be in the sciences.

There is something hopeful about writing a review. It’s like putting a mes­sage in a bottle or sending up a flare.

Of course, the money one is paid to write a piece is one of the material constraints that shapes the work of criticism. Word rates have not increased in decades, while the cost of living goes up every year. According to Cathy Curtis’s A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick , beginning in the late 1990s Hardwick was paid about $4,000 per New York Review of Books essay—an amount com­parable to what writers are paid to write long book reviews today at a marquee publication like NYRB or The New Yorker . (Small publications pay much less.) Newspaper book reviews have been contracting for decades, and while magazines like The Nation and The Atlantic cover books, the hourly rate on a piece, once you do the calculation, is dismal. “Little” magazines and online reviews are wonderful for the culture, but no one could pay the rent writ­ing for those outlets alone. If you have a secure academic job and write reviews on the side, it’s nice work. For the freelancer—I am one—it’s a foolish undertaking. As Russell Jacoby noted nearly forty years ago, one reason there are not more full-time freelance writers is that most take staff writer positions or university jobs or quit writing altogether. It is impossible to know what ideas never came into the world because someone couldn’t or wouldn’t accept an hourly rate that barely covers the babysitter.

if the criticism I write is always limited by the fact that it is I who am writing it, bounded as I am by material constraints, it is also true that within that limit a profound freedom of thought persists. Sometimes when I read, I do have the sensation of blocking out the immediate physical world, journeying to an entirely different place, losing the sense of my body. It’s not just leaving myself behind that is freeing; it’s discovering myself. Writing a review is the best, maybe the only, way I can discover what I think. I don’t come to reviewing with my ideas already formed; I have to build them, sentence by sentence. For me, writing a review is a way of getting closer to an object, taking it apart to understand how it works. I get closer to and farther away from myself in the process, even as I know that I will inevitably ask questions that betray myself and my interests. The question I am most aware of asking has to do with point of view: I want to understand an object’s way of looking at the world. What would I have to believe about the world in order for this book to be true ? This is the kind of question I get most excited about asking.

Criticism is a relationship with an object, and as such it involves all of the regular psychic drama—idealization and fantasy; avoid­ance, hostility, and disappointment; the desire to know and a fas­cination with what is unknown; displacement from our own life onto the object. The person writing criticism has to always be on guard that the irritations and frustrations of writing do not get taken out on the object under review. Even pieces that begin in love and admiration can end in resentment and hate. I have noticed that after writing a review, I often lose interest in the author or resist reading their next book. If reviewing is a way to know something deeply, it’s also a way to say goodbye.

in the popular imagination , the critic is usually evil, sneering, vicious, or frustrated at their own thwarted artistic dreams. But the truth is, people who do this quite insane and marginal thing of writing criticism do it because they have a passionate attachment to literature. There’s little money or power in it, and no fame. Writing book reviews today is a vocation, not a career. It’s for people who still believe, against all practicality, that a life organized around lit­erature is worth more than a life organized around money. “Making a living is nothing,” Hardwick once wrote. “The great difficulty is making a point, making a difference—with words.”

I always say that I write for myself, to find out what I think or what I can do. But it’s also true that the main reason I write reviews is because people ask me to. Writing a novel that might end up in the drawer makes sense to me; writing a review that might end up there does not. Criticism is a conversation—with oneself but also with one’s editors, with readers, and with other reviewers. There is something hopeful about writing a review. It’s like putting a mes­sage in a bottle or sending up a flare. I’m at my little desk, trying not to look at the bags on the floor. Who knows where the person who will read the piece is sitting?

Louise Glück’s Late Style

The critic as friend, rachel cusk, you might also like, white noise, new and improved, the feminism of elizabeth hardwick, new perspectives, enduring writing..

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The ritual of dressing for the Hollywood Bowl

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If you want to go to the Hollywood Bowl, you have to really want to go to the Hollywood Bowl. It is one of the most frustrating landmarks in a city that has made arduous travel an art form. I can think of numerous times when I’ve had both the opportunity and the interest to go to the Bowl and passed. I went so far as to skip an LCD Soundsystem concert at the Bowl in 2018 that I had already bought tickets for. Instead, I slept. The only thing that could roust me from my peaceful slumber was the most grotesque vision imaginable: an undulating river of red lights in front of me. The choked arteries of traffic winding down the hill from the Hollywood Bowl. I awoke in a cold sweat, comforted by the realization that I was still at home. There were no cars. I was safe.

Going to a show at the Bowl is not a “night out.” It is days of planning, recon and meal prep. And this year, it’s only going to get more complicated. The L.A. Phil, which manages the Bowl, opted to close parking lots to make room for more ride-share and shuttle bus traffic . L.A. Phil interim executive director Daniel Song told The Times in March, “People don’t like getting to the Bowl, but everyone loves the Bowl. So if there’s a barrier [for] someone to be able to come to the Bowl, we’re going to try to fix that and we’re going to try to mitigate that as best as we can.” The theory behind scrapping 350 of the Bowl’s 1,700-plus parking spots is to have fewer cars going in and out of the area on a concert night. I guess I don’t see how that helps if people who would otherwise drive still take Ubers or Lyfts or taxis. Those are still cars, last I checked.

Entertainment & Arts

Hollywood Bowl parking is about to get harder. L.A. Phil boss says it’s for a good reason

The Hollywood Bowl says Lots B and C will be closed off to concertgoers driving to the venue this season, except those who purchase accessible parking passes.

March 29, 2024

I like to compare going to the Hollywood Bowl to a hike or camping trip, with its myriad hazards and environmental concerns. When do we eat? What’s the weather like? Should we pack a blanket? Everyone has their Hollywood Bowl ritual, the tidy little agenda that helps alleviate the chaos of L.A.’s most stunning existential crisis. Besides the obvious, I struggle the most with what to wear. I want to dress up, because I dress up for everything. I dress up to clean out my rain gutters, so I’m naturally going to want to dress up for John Williams night . That’s just how I am. But the Bowl often demands sensible attire. A suit and hard-bottom shoes mean you’d better not walk. This is summer in Los Angeles, so you should wear something that breathes. Linen, perhaps? Just stay away from shorts. This is not Venice Beach or a family barbecue in Reseda, for God’s sake.

You can tell people struggle with the dress code at the Bowl. It’s an elevated experience that demands a sense of reverence, but it’s also an event that requires one to lug a cooler full of cheese up a hill. You could show out, but should you? The Bowl is not a fashion show ( unless it very much is ). A band T-shirt just might be enough for you to get by. In 2015, I went to the Bowl to see Grace Jones, with Future Islands opening . Obviously, I bought a Grace Jones T-shirt that night and I still like to wear it to the Bowl as a sort of ancient (2015 feels like centuries ago) relic. And I almost always bring some sort of jacket . I beg of you to please bring a light layer, because even when it’s the deepest, darkest days of summer, there will be a breeze at night.

The Bowl is a place where I would not be shocked to see adult men in flip-flops mingling with a family of four in matching caftans. Like other cultural institutions in Los Angeles, no one would dare tell you what to wear.

The Bowl is a place where I would not be shocked to see adult men in flip-flops mingling with a family of four in matching caftans. Like other cultural institutions in Los Angeles, no one would dare tell you what to wear. I feel a similar sense of sartorial drift at the Music Center. If I’m going to the opera or a musical at the Ahmanson, shouldn’t I look nice? Well, yes, but also, my rule of dress is always to adapt to the occasion.

The Bowl is not a monolith. How you should dress for Vampire Weekend is totally different from how you’d dress for Harry Connick Jr.’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular. The wide range of programming and vibes means you really can come as you are. But who are you? Dress defines identity, or maybe vice versa. But clothes and sense of self are inherently connected. Even if you put almost no effort into what you wear, that says something. Primarily, it says, “I put almost no effort into what I wear.” Music functions in the same way, illustrating in broad strokes who you want the world to think you are. When I mentioned I saw Grace Jones, I’m sure you, dear reader, made some assumptions about me. Probably first and foremost that I must be incredibly cool. Also, pretty old. And that I probably own a skirt . If I told you I saw Depeche Mode at the Bowl, you’d assume I have an all-black wardrobe and smoke weird European clove cigarettes (one of those things is not true).

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The Bowl is, in many ways, the preeminent place in Los Angeles to declare who you are, a music mecca that requires an Oregon Trail-esque commitment to traveling and an outfit to match. The Bowl is a place where everyone in L.A. can congregate. It’s a holy cathedral of culture that admits all (for a fee). I’ll even allow you to wear shorts to Harry Connick Jr on the Fourth of July. Begrudgingly.

Like camping, as soon as you actually get to your destination, you remember why you made the effort in the first place. The Hollywood Bowl is one of the most stunning man-made marvels in the entire city. The grand outdoor setting, the perfect acoustics, the dramatic lighting, the eerily illuminated cross in the background. Bowl season is a chance to revel in the majesty of L.A., to commune with the spirits. Or just have too much wine and develop a headache the next day. As Daniel Song said, everyone loves the Bowl, so we make the effort. Most of the time.

When we try at anything, we tell the world that something matters to us. Nothing illuminates the inner spirit quite like effort. Making the attempt, in whatever form that takes, shows people what we prioritize, whether if it’s getting dressed, listening to music or simply taking in a sunset after a long summer day. When we go to the Hollywood Bowl, we can take satisfaction in knowing that we got out of bed, we got in a car or on the subway, we walked up a hill. We tried. It matters.

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Dave Schilling is a contributing writer for Image. He regularly covers style trends and culture in Los Angeles and has written sharp, witty and hilarious criticism about the joys and peculiarities of fashion in Southern California, including an ode to exposed chest hair; an essay on the beauty of cis straight men in skirts; and a feature on how skinny jeans factor into the gentrification of Northeast L.A. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Guardian, New York Magazine and GQ.

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Instagram Is Not a Cigarette

The surgeon general’s recommendation to add a warning label to social-media apps is not as straightforward as it seems.

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Many teens and adults use the word addictive when describing social-media sites, as if the apps themselves are laced with nicotine. The U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, wants to drive that point home as glaringly as possible: In an op-ed published by The New York Times yesterday, he writes that the country should start labeling such sites as if they’re cigarettes.

Murthy proposes putting an official surgeon’s-general warning—the same type found on tobacco and alcohol products—on social-media websites to “regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe.” Such a warning would require formal congressional approval. To make his case, Murthy cites a 2019 study that found that adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media may be at higher risk for certain mental-health problems; he also pointed to research in which teens reported that social media made them feel worse about their body. “The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children,” he writes. “Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?”

It’s a radical idea, and one with a real basis in science: There is strong evidence that tobacco warnings work, David Hammond, a professor in the school of public-health sciences at Canada’s University of Waterloo, told me. Although no intervention is perfect, such labels reduce tobacco use by reaching the right audience at the moment of consumption, Hammond said, and they are particularly effective at deterring young people. But social media is not tobacco. Some platforms have no doubt caused real harm to many children, but research into the effects of social media on young people has been a mixed bag; even the studies cited by Murthy are not as straightforward as presented in the op-ed. A warning label on a pack of cigarettes is attention-grabbing and succinct: No one wants cancer or heart disease. Social media does not boil down as easily.

Read: No one knows exactly what social media is doing to teens

What would a social-media warning look like? Murthy doesn’t go into further detail in his article, and nothing would be decided until Congress authorized the label. (It’s unclear how likely it is to pass, but there has been bipartisan interest in the topic, broadly speaking; earlier this year, at a congressional hearing on kid safety on the internet , members from both parties expressed frustration with Big Tech CEOs.) It could be a persistent pop-up that a user has to click out of each time they open an app. Or it could be something that shows up only once, in the footer, when a person creates an account. Or it could be a banner that never goes away. To be effective, Hammond told me, the message must be “salient”—it should be noticeable and presented frequently.

Design may be the easy part. The actual warning text within a social app might be hard to settle on, because an absolute, causal link has not yet been shown between, say, Instagram and the onset of depression; by contrast, we know that smoking causes cancer, and why it does so. “One of the reasons that we have such a wide range of opinions is that the work still isn’t quite conclusive,” David S. Bickham of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, whose research on body image was cited in Murthy’s op-ed, told me. One major meta-analysis (a study of studies) found that the effect of digital technology on adolescent well-being was “negative but small” —“too small to warrant policy change.” (That paper has since been critiqued by researchers including Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt, who have contributed writing about teen smartphone use to The Atlantic ; they argue that the study’s methodology resulted in an “underestimation” of the problem. The authors of the original study then “rejected” these critiques by providing additional analysis. And so this goes.) The very fact that there is so much debate doesn’t make for neat public-health recommendations.

In the absence of a firm conclusion, you can imagine a label that would use hedged language—“This app may have a negative effect on teens’ mental health depending on how it’s used,” for example—though such a diluted label may not be useful. I asked Devorah Heitner, the author of Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World , what she would recommend. For starters, she said, any warning should include a line about how lack of sleep harms kids (a problem to which late-night social-media use may contribute). She also suggested that the warning might address young people directly: “If I were going to put something on a label, it would be, like, ‘Hey, this can intensify any feelings you might already be having, so just be thoughtful about: Is this actually making me feel good? If it’s making me feel bad, I should probably put it away .”

Read: End the phone-based childhood now

If Murthy’s label does become a reality, another challenge will be figuring out what constitutes social media in the first place. We tend to think of the social web as a specific set of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. But plenty of sites with social components may fall into this category. Murthy papers over this challenge somewhat in his op-ed. When he writes, “Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms,” he is referring to a study that asked teens only whether they use “social networks like Facebook, Google Plus, YouTube, MySpace, Linkedin, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, or Snapchat.” These platforms do not all have a lot in common, and the study does not draw any definitive conclusions about why using such platforms might be associated with an increased risk of mental-health problems. Murthy’s proposal doesn’t make clear which sites would be required to declare that they are associated with negative health outcomes. Would Roblox or Fortnite qualify? Or a newspaper with a particularly vibrant comments section?

Practical concerns aside, experts I spoke with also worried that the label puts the onus on kids and their parents rather than on the technology companies that make these sites. This is something Murthy acknowledges in his essay, noting that labeling alone won’t make social media safe for kids. “I don’t want the labels to let the social-media companies off the hook, right? Like, Oh, well, we labeled our harmful thing ,” Heitner said. In other words, a warning alone may not solve whatever problems social apps might be causing.

Read: The panic over smartphones doesn’t help teens

Murthy’s proposal comes at a time when parents seem especially desperate to keep teens safe online. Haidt’s latest book about smartphones and kids, The Anxious Generation , has been on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks. Haidt told me over email that he applauds the surgeon general for calling for such labels: “We as a country are generally careful about the consumer products and medications that harm small numbers of children. Yet we have done nothing, absolutely nothing, ever, to protect children from the main consumer product they use every day.”

People are frightened. But fear isn’t always the best way to help young people. “The science simply does not support this action and issuing advisories based on fear will only weaken our trust in the institutions that wield them in this way,” Candice L. Odgers, a psychology professor at UC Irvine who studies how adolescents use digital technology (and recently wrote her own article on social-media panic for The Atlantic ), told me over email. “It is time to have a real conversation about adolescent mental health in this country versus simply scapegoating social media.”

After year of turmoil, a Harvard dean proposes a solution: muzzle the faculty

A Harvard dean pulled off the seemingly impossible this week: uniting the opposing factions on Harvard’s campus.

His method? He put forward an argument so offensive to Harvard professors that pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel faculty members joined together to denounce him.

In an op-ed in the student newspaper last week, Dean of Social Science Lawrence Bobo said that faculty members who excessively criticize the university should be subject to discipline. It was a stance that seemed, to Bobo’s critics, like a direct attack on the bedrock academic principle that university faculty should be free to express their opinions.

Not so, Bobo argued, in the essay titled “Faculty Speech Must Have Limits.”

“A faculty member’s right to free speech does not amount to a blank check to engage in behaviors that plainly incite external actors — be it the media, alumni, donors, federal agencies, or the government — to intervene in Harvard’s affairs,” Bobo wrote in the Harvard Crimson.

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His essay came at the end of the most tumultuous year at Harvard in recent memory. Roiled by protest over the Israel-Hamas war, allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia, and a plagiarism scandal that took down its president, the school found itself at the center of a media storm, the subject of multiple federal investigations, and a target of conservative activists decrying diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Outspoken faculty members, Bobo argued, deserve much of the blame for the tumult — and should be sanctioned.

“Is it outside the bounds of acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention into University business? And does the broad publication of such views cross a line into sanctionable violations of professional conduct?” he wrote.

“Yes it is and yes it does.”

The backlash has been swift, and it has united, at least for the moment, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian faculty members.

“I am stunned that a Harvard dean would call for censuring any faculty members’ comments on university affairs. This would be an obvious intrusion on academic freedom,” said former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, who has been sharply critical of some elements of pro-Palestinian activism in recent months.

“[Bobo’s] piece resembles many of the recent actions of the university in its seemingly high-handed approach toward the question of faculty expression and governance,” said Walter Johnson, a history professor who was a faculty adviser for Harvard’s leading pro-Palestinian group during the fall semester.

As criticism of the essay mounted this week, the university distanced itself from Bobo’s argument.

In a statement sent by a Harvard spokesperson, Bobo, who is also a sociology professor, said, “The Crimson Op-ed expresses my personal views as a member of the faculty, seeking to put important questions before the wider Harvard community.”

Another Harvard spokesperson, Jonathan Swain, said, “[T]he views expressed in the op-ed … are [Bobo’s] own and do not represent a position of Harvard University.”

Bobo published the essay at a time of intense debates on campus about free speech and academic freedom — the idea that universities should cultivate an environment that fosters open inquiry without threat of reprisal. It also came at a time of mounting tensions between university administrators and faculty members, who have leveled wide-ranging critiques over what some view as Harvard’s shambolic response to the controversies of the past academic year.

Bobo cast blame specifically on Summers, the former president, who criticized Harvard’s response to the Israel-Hamas war. Bobo wrote of “the appallingly rough manner in which prominent affiliates, including one former University president, publicly denounced Harvard’s students and present leadership.”

Last year, Summers criticized university leaders for failing to immediately distance the school from a controversial statement issued by student groups that held Israel entirely responsible for the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel and the subsequent war in the Gaza Strip. Later he criticized what he viewed as the university’s inadequate response to campus antisemitism, a matter that the US Congress is now investigating . (In December, Summers co-signed a letter of support for then-Harvard president Claudine Gay after she faced intense blowback over her testimony at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.)

Bobo also criticized professors who supported pro-Palestinian student activists, including those who set up an unauthorized encampment on Harvard Yard in April. Some Harvard faculty members attended the encampment. Some professors also served as advisers to students facing discipline for their roles in the encampment (students in disciplinary proceedings are generally entitled to a faculty adviser).

Bobo said some types of faculty support for protesters should be subject to discipline, as well.

“Is it acceptable professional conduct for a faculty member to encourage civil disobedience on the part of students that violates University policies? Faculty advocacy for actions clearly identified as in violation of student conduct rules is extremely problematic. Doing so after students have received official notification of a potential serious infraction is not acceptable. Such behavior should have sanctionable limits as well,” he wrote.

Some professors expressed alarm that an administrator would call for punishing faculty members for their speech.

One Harvard professor, who works in the social sciences, said, “The suggestion that members of an institution should be punished for criticizing that institution represents an authoritarian mindset, with no place in a university.” The professor requested anonymity to criticize “the dean who determines [my] salary, particularly when the dean is saying that deans have the right to punish faculty who criticize deans.”

An influential Harvard faculty group, the Council on Academic Freedom, is writing a rebuttal to Bobo’s op-ed. Some professors contacted Harvard administrators in recent days asking if Bobo’s essay represented a shift in university policy.

After Bobo said on Tuesday that the op-ed represented only his personal views, Summers said: “It is a nice step by Professor Bobo, but he has authority over salaries, setting promotions, and resource allocations and until there is a strong and clear repudiation of his views by those to whom he reports, academic freedom at Harvard will be in jeopardy.”

In December, Bobo, along with hundreds of other faculty members, signed an open letter urging Harvard leaders “to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard’s commitment to academic freedom.”

At the time, then-president Gay was facing scathing criticism, and calls for her resignation, over her testimony at a Republican-led congressional hearing on campus antisemitism. She then faced a series of plagiarism allegations that were first publicized by conservative activists and a conservative news outlet, and then picked up by the mainstream press. In January, she resigned .

Many faculty members resented the outside influence on Harvard’s affairs.

Johnson, the history professor and former adviser to the Palestine Solidarity Committee, is among them. He called Bobo’s essay “presumably well-intentioned,” but ultimately misguided.

“Look, I also wish I could turn down some of my colleagues,” he said. “I’m sure some of them wish they could turn me down. But expanding the already abused disciplinary apparatus of the university to punish faculty for speaking out about the issues, even if in ways that one group or another might view as counterproductive, seems, at the very least, counterproductive.”

The op-ed contained at least one sentiment that many at Harvard agree with.

“After this historic year of endless controversy,” Bobo wrote, “I — like many faculty members — look forward to calmer times on campus.”

Mike Damiano can be reached at [email protected] .