Writing Criticism and Making Poems

Where they cannot contest the truth of the common interpretation, they get themselves room for dissertation by imaginary amphibologies, which they will have to be designed by the author. This disposition of finding out different significations in one thing, may be the effect of either too much, or too little wit: for men of a right understanding generally see at once all that an author can reasonably mean, but others are apt to fancy two meanings for a want of knowing one. Not to add, that there is a vast deal of difference between the learning of a critic, and the puzzling of a grammarian. Alexander Pope, note to The Iliad of Homer (1715)

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