In a speech delivered by Mr. Macaulay some time since
at Edinburgh, the orator ridiculed the canon in Pope's well-known couplet on the danger of a little learning. Upon this Professor Forbes, in a lecture on the Danger of Super, facial Knowledge, joins issue with Mr. Macaulay; upholding the dictum of Pope by reason and the authority of Bacon. As an introductory lecture to embryo philosophers, the views are apt, though the composition is not striking. But, curiously, both the orator and the professor misunderstand the passage which they take for a text.
The notion of laying down a rule for the mass of mankind, was utterly removed from Pope 'a idea. He was directing what would now be called the " special training" of a professional critic. He had far too much sense and sagacity to suppose that the bulk even of professional men or men of leisure could or would
" Know well each ancient's proper character;
His fable, subjects, scope in every page,
Religion, country, genius of his age."
Nor is it enough, he holds, for the critic to be familiar with the master- pieces of art; he must bring even them to the test of nature. Of the propriety of the rules as regards " public instructers," perhaps this con- troversy is a proof. Had the disputants drunk a little deeper of Pope's Pierian spring, they would not have attributed to him a meaning he never intended. Had they even read on to the first couplet of the next para- graph that follows the line " a little learning is a dangerous thing," they would have seen what was in his mind : " A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ."
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