Couplets on Wit-Alexander Pope’s witty and pointed poetic satire brought him infamy during his lifetime. It has also made critical evaluation of Pope in the years since his death more prone to interpretation based on the critic’s personal feelings about such satire than perhaps any other poet in history.

Pope was born the only child of Alexander and Edith Pope in 1688. The senior Pope, a linen-draper, had recently converted to Catholicism, and moved from London to Berkshire to avoid the anti-Catholic sentiment that ran rampant in London at the time.

 

 

Couplets on Wit by Alexander Pope

But our Great Turks in wit must reign alone
And ill can bear a Brother on the Throne.

Wit is like faith by such warm Fools profest
Who to be saved by one, must damn the rest.

Some who grow dull religious strait commence
And gain in morals what they lose in sence.

Wits starve as useless to a Common weal
While Fools have places purely for their Zea.

Now wits gain praise by copying other wits
As one Hog lives on what another sh—.

Wou’d you your writings to some Palates fit
Purged all you verses from the sin of wit
For authors now are so conceited grown
They praise no works but what are like their own.