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 Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets,
published in 1733 ～ 1734, with part of a larger poem projected
but not completed.
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It consists of four epistles addressed to Bolingbroke, and
perhaps to some extent inspired by his fragmentary
philosophical writings. Its objective is to vindicate the ways of
God to man; to prove that the scheme of the universe is the best
of all possible schemes, in spite of appearances of evil, and that
our failure to see the perfection of the whole is due to our limited
vision. “Partial Ⅲ” is “universal Good”， and “self-love and social”
are both directed to the same end： “All are but parts of one
stupendous whole/Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.”
The epistles deal with man's relations to the universe, to himself
as an individual, to society, and to happiness. In it Pope also
attempts to prove that “Whatever is, is right.”
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The Rape of the Lock
 The Rape of the Lock is a poem in two cantos. It was published in 1712
and subsequently enlarged to five cantos and thus published in 1714.

Lord Petre has forcibly cut off a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair
and the incident gave rise to a quarrel between the families. With the
idea of allaying this, Pope treated the subject in a playful mock-heroic
poem, on the model of Boileau's Le Lutrin. He presents Belinda at her
toilet, a game of ombre, the snipping of the lock while Belinda sips her
coffee, the wrath of Belinda and her demand that the lock be restored,
the final wafting of the lock, as a new star, to adorn the skies. The poem
was published in its original form with Miss Fermor's permission. Pope
then expanded the sketch by introducing the machinery of sylphs and
gnomes. One of Pope's most brilliant performances, it has also been
one of his most popular; Dr Johnson called it “the most attractive of all
ludicrous compositions,” in which “New things are made familiar and
familiar things are made new.”
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Essay on Criticism
 Essay on Criticism is a didactic poem in heroic
couplets, published anonymously in 1711. It begins with
an exposition of the rules of taste and the authority to
be attributed to the ancient writers on the subject. The
laws by which a critic should be guided are then
discussed, and instances are given of critics who have
departed from them.
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4. Pope’s contribution
 Pope was a representative of the Enlightenment and one of the first to
introduce rationalism to England. He thought that the existing social
system was the ideal one and sensed the approaching of the rapid
moral, political and cultural deterioration. He was quite well aware that
commercialization and money-worship were invading all aspects of
traditional civilization of reason, classical learning, good taste and
public morality. Thus he assumed the role of preserving the traditional
civilization and above all, protecting permanent order (political order,
social order, aesthetic order, etc.).

With the growth of Romanticism, Pope's poetry was increasingly
seen as artificial and he was usually regarded as the poet not of nature
but of art. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that a
serious attempt was made to rediscover the richness, variety and
complexity of the great poet in the Age of Reason and him the master
of ration.
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5. Appreciation of Essay on
Criticism
 The excerpt is taken from the second part of the long
poem Essay on Criticism. It demonstrates the danger
of “a little learning” and of the self-conceitedness of
some people in learning and emphasizes the
importance of learning intensively and extensively
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