Note 276 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM. (continued 2)

Here he forms the tenses wrong.—Wakefield.

Pope told Caryll that he did not speak in this couplet "of learning in general, but of polite learning,—criticism, poetry, etc.—which was the only learning concerned in the subject of the Essay." He at the same time confessed his belief that the learning which the monks possessed "was barely kept alive by them." The explanation would not contribute to conciliate the offended catholics.