Essay on Criticism ..by Alexander Pope ..General Outline

I came across a very beautiful poem, Essay on Criticism , by Alexander Pope. Here i a attempt to put my understanding of the poem. 

In order to do the paraphrasing, I searched a little bit on the net and found the following 'general outline' helpful for proceeding in my work. Over here I produce that General Outline:

By : Walter Jackson Bate

The Essay on Criticism is more profitably introduced by a topical summary of its themes than by an analysis of its premises. For its premises and aims are those of the entire neoclassic tradition. And the poem itself is a statement or summary of them rather than an individual argument or analysis. The essay may be described as falling into three parts, with the following subdivisions:

I. General qualities needed by the critic (1-200):

A. Awareness of his own limitations (46-67).

B. Knowledge of Nature in its general forms (68-87).

1. Nature defined (70-79).

2. Need of both wit and judgment to conceive it (80-87).

C. Imitation of the Ancients, and the use of rules (88-200).

1. Value of ancient poetry and criticism as models (88-103).

2. Censure of slavish imitation and codified rules (104-117).

3. Need to study the general aims and qualities of the Ancients (118-140).

4. Exceptions to the rules (141-168).

II. Particular laws for the critic (201-559):

Digression on the need for humility (201-232).

A. Consider the work as a total unit (233-252).

B. Seek the author's aim (253-266).

C. Examples of false critics who mistake the part for the whole (267-383).

1. The pedant who forgets the end and judges by rules (267-288).

2. The critic who judges by imagery and metaphor alone (289-304).

3. The rhetorician who judges by the pomp and colour of the diction (305-336).

4. Critics who judge by versification only (337-343).

Pope's digression to exemplify "representative meter" (344-383).

D. Need for tolerance and for aloofness from extremes of fashion and personal mood (384-559).

1. The fashionable critic: the cults, as ends in themselves, of the foreign (398-405), the new (406-423), and the esoteric (424-451).

2. Personal subjectivity and its pitfalls (452-559).

III. The ideal character of the critic (560-744):

A. Qualities needed: integrity (562-565), modesty (566-571), tact (572-577), courage (578-583).

B. Their opposites (584-630).

C. Concluding eulogy of ancient critics as models (643-744).