Today was one of those days where I just couldn’t seem to get much done. I barely even read any of ‘Editors on Editing’ so I’ll have to save my first impressions post for tomorrow. It’s been pretty good so far, but I haven’t sunk my teeth into it yet. The reason being, I have to admit, is that I got distracted by a rabbit hole again. For some reason I started to wonder about that saying, ‘To err is human,’ and where it came from, so I looked it up and couldn’t stop reading. It comes from a poem called ‘An Essay on Criticism,’ and though it’s one of Alexander Pope’s best known works, I think it’s so good it might still be under-referenced somehow. Throughout part one, Pope shares his unapologetic thoughts on literary critics, with a healthy dose of criticism of his own. I mean just read this banger of a stanza where he talks about the types of people who can pass for poets and critics:

Some have at first for wits then poets passed
Turned critics next and proved plain fools at last
Some neither can for wits nor critics pass
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.
Those half-learned witlings, numerous in our isle,
As half-formed insects on the banks of Nile
Unfinished things one knows not what to call
Their generation is so equivocal
To tell them would a hundred tongues require,
Or one vain wits that might a hundred tire.

I guess they didn’t mince words back in the day because damn. I’ve never felt like being horse nor ass is a bad thing, but now I’m wondering if I even qualify as anything other than a heavy mule.

Anyway I should probably get back on it tomorrow, but this was just too funny to pass up.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley