Rinaldo, by George Frideric Handel, the first…

Rinaldo, by George Frideric Handel, the first Italian opera written for the London stage, premieres on February 24, 2011, at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket.

The story of love, battle and redemption set at the time of the First Crusade is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), and its staging involves many original and vivid effects.

It is a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the trend towards Italian entertainment in English theaters.

Handel will go on to dominate opera in England for several decades.

An Essay on Criticism, one of the first major poems written by the English writer Alexander Pope, is written in a type of rhyming verse called heroic couplets.

The poem first appears in 1711, but had been written in 1709.

It is clear from Pope's correspondence that many of the poem's ideas had existed in prose form since at least 1706.

A verse essay written in the Horatian mode, it is primarily concerned with how writers and critics behave in the new literary commerce of Pope's contemporary age.

The poem covers a range of good criticism and advice.

It also represents many of the chief literary ideals of Pope's age.

Pope contends in the poem's opening couplets that bad criticism does greater harm than bad writing.

Despite the harmful effects of bad criticism, literature requires worthy criticism.

Pope delineates common faults of critics, e.g., settling for easy and cliché rhymes.

Throughout the poem, Pope refers to ancient writers such as Virgil, Homer, Aristotle, Horace and Longinus.

This is a testament to his belief that the "Imitation of the ancients" is the ultimate standard for taste.

Pope also says, "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance" (362–363), meaning poets are made, not born.

As is usual in Pope's poems, the Essay concludes with a reference to Pope himself.

Walsh, the last of the critics mentioned, was a mentor and friend of Pope who had died in 1710.

An Essay on Criticism is famously and fiercely attacked by John Dennis, who is mentioned mockingly in the work.

Consequently, Dennis will also appear in Pope's later satire, The Dunciad.

Part II of An Essay on Criticism includes a famous couplet: A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

This is in reference to the spring in the Pierian Mountains in Macedonia, sacred to the Muses.

The first line of this couplet is often misquoted as "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

Part II is also the source of this famous line: To err is human, to forgive divine.

The line "Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear to Tread" from Part III has become part of the popular lexicon, and has been used for and in various works.