Write a critical appreciation of the poem 'essay on man '.
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Critical Reception
Upon publication, An Essay on Man made Pope the toast of literati everywhere, including his inveterate foes in London, whom he deceived into celebrating the poem, since he had published it anonymously. His avowed enemy Leonard Welsted, for instance, declared the poem “above all commendation.” This assessment typified the initial critical and popular response in England, which was generally echoed throughout Europe over the next two decades. Such notable figures as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Immanuel Kant rhapsodized about the poem's literary aesthetics and philosophical insights. However, the early universal appeal of An Essay on Man soon gave way to controversy inspired by a small but vocal community of metaphysicians and clergymen, who perceived challenges and threats in the poem's themes to their respective authority. These critics determined that its values, despite its themes, were essentially poetic and not coherently philosophical by any means. Within fifty years of its publication, the prevailing critical opinion of the poem mirrored that of Samuel Johnson, who noted, “Never were penury of knowledge and vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised.” This consensus persisted throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, as commentators also trivialized the work's poetic achievements—as they generally did Pope's other writings. Widely neglected and relegated to the dustbin of literary history, An Essay on Man has been often perceived as an historical curiosity disconnected from contemporary concerns, literary and otherwise. However, a number of recent critics have sought to rehabilitate the poem's status in the canon by focusing on its language and ideas in terms of the genre of philosophical poetry. Other commentators have attempted to reevaluate the poem's ideas within the context of early eighteenth-century thought in an effort to demonstrate that Pope derived his theodicy—or explanation of the ways of God—from the various philosophical and theological positions held by his intellectual peers.