How+exactly+would+you+conquer+nature?

On line 652, Pope says "Who conquer'd nature, should preside o'er wit."

I'm not sure if I understand this. Pope seems to be contradicting himself a little bit. How exactly does one go about conquering nature? Does he mean in writing? I thought writing was supposed to be as close to nature as possible... not conquering it. And how exactly would one conquer nature in writing anyway? It's hard for writing to even come close to nature (depending on your definition), how would it conquer it? And if he doesn't mean in writing, then what does he mean?? 1205469526

Tough 'un. Hm.. lemme think. Maybe by conquering nature, he just means being able to imitate it perfectly, to defeat its secrecy and produce something so perfect it too is just like nature, despite being man made. Yeah, they are supposed to, according to him, reflect nature, because nature is naturally beautiful, perfect in itself, and impossible to really match with something as poor an imitation as our own artistic attempts. So in fact, conquering nature is pretty much impossible, but always to be desired. Does that idea make sense or do you think I'm off? Cuz I'm not trusting myself on this one... 1205470509

Exactly. Conquered in this sense simply means mastered. As we have discussed in religion class, we can master anything that we can define. That was the whole purpose behind God choosing his own name. We really need to keep that in mind. "Who conquer'd nature, should preside o'er wit." is a pretty way of saying that the person who understand the many complexities of nature should be able to write brilliant works of art. There is nothing conceited or dominating about it: people who get the world write good poetry 1205470947