I read recently a book review that the reviewer must have written to exhibit his luminous intellectual prowess through ridicule of the dull author of the criticized book.

Reflecting on the thin and porous veneer of impartiality that the reviewer applied to his review, an urge to re-read and savor again Alexander Pope’s marvelous “Essay on Criticism” began to swell.

‘Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dang’rous is th’ offense
To tire our patience than mis-lead our sense…

And with the above quote, the pleasures and instructions of this poem have scarcely begun. Dolce et utile.

How often we encounter reviews patently intended, not to guide us through qualities of the work being reviewed, nor to situate the work in a coherent context, but to highlight the reviewer’s breadth of learning and perspicacity. How often we wish the reviewer followed Pope’s exhortation:

But you who seek to give and merit fame,
And justly bear a critic’s noble name,
Be sure yourself and your own reach to know,
How far your genius, taste and learning go;
Launch not beyond your depth, but be discreet,
And mark that point where sense and dullness meet.

What Pope found true in the early eighteenth century, we find true today. Would that each review came appended to a review of the review.