A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
An Essay on Criticism speaks of critics of literature and their
responsibility as well as the many flaws and improvements that
need to be underwent by such a critic. Pope starts off this stanza
by stating ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing‘. This could refer
to a critic’s irresponsibility when judging a poet’s work, whereby
the critics are easily swayed by small parts of the poem, which
could negatively impact the poem’s meaning, hence why it’s
‘dangerous’.
The Pierian Spring in Macedonia was sacred to the Muses, so in
order to ‘taste the Pierian spring’ the critic (and poet) needs to
‘drink deep’, i.e., read widely. A little learning is a dangerous
thing because it can lead the critic to think they know it all when
they, in fact, know very little. A little learning is more dangerous
than complete ignorance, because it gives you the illusion of
knowledge when you, in fact, have only cursory knowledge of the
subject:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
In other words, drinking only shallowly from the spring will make
you drunk with your own knowledge, but drinking deeply or
‘largely’ brings you back to reality so you have a fairer and more
accurate assessment of what you do and don’t know. So it is with
learning: the more we learn, as the old adage has it, the less we
know.