ABSTRACT
The Tonson's Miscellanies were in print and the Pastorals lay on the coffee house tables, buried under copies of the Tatler, another beautifully presented display manuscript was going the rounds of Pope's acquaintances. This was the 1709 version of An Essay on Criticism. Having read 'all the best Critics' as a boy, he was, at the age of twenty-one, prepared to issue his own literary manifesto. In the Essay Pope became a critic, motivated by an urge to command the field of competent judges of literature. If the majority of readers still think the Essay on Criticism makes artistic creativity sound a more banal activity than it is, this is largely Pope's own fault. An Essay on Criticism was to become the most misunderstood poem in the language. Pope quotes over sixty people in the Essay, but he gave Longinus the place of honour at the end of his list of praiseworthy ancient critics.
