An Essay on Criticism

A simile is a comparison between one object, action, or situation and another, distinguished by its use of “like” or “as.” In An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope sometimes extends a simile across multiple lines, thus making it an epic simile. When he does this, he copies the style of writers like Homer and Milton, thus linking himself to a lineage of great authors and tacitly developing the theme of Literary History and National Identity.

One example of a simile is Pope’s comparison of most people’s naturally sound judgment to a sketch that has been ruined by the way it has been colored in:

Nature affords at least a glimmering light;

The lines, though touched but faintly, are drawn right.

But as the lightest sketch, if justly traced,

Is by ill-colouring but the more disgraced,

So by false learning is good sense defaced (Lines 21-25).

Here, Pope’s simile suggests the way in which false learning destroys (and even, the simile implies, dishonors) the glimmer of reason that exists in a person’s mind.