“To err is human”

A passage from page 87 of Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision is getting considerable attetion. The passage begins a section of the ruling entitled “Refusal to Admit Error”:

The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) first declared, “To err is human, to forgive is divine.” Defendants apparently are of a different mind. After some four years of investigation and litigation, the only error (“inadvertent,” of course) that they acknowledge is the tripling of the size of the Trump Tower Penthouse, which cannot be gainsaid. Their complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological.

What Pope wrote, in An Essay on Criticism (1711), line 525:

[To Err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine.]

Or with our capitalization and spelling: “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Or if one eschews the semicolon, “To err is human, to forgive, divine.” The first half, as errare humanum est , has been attributed to Seneca the Younger.

Pope added the contrast between the human and the divine. He didn’t include a second is. But to err is human, and I don’t think Judge Engoron was erring in any matter of greater consequence.

[Text of Pope’s poem from a Harvard Library photostat of An Essay on Criticism (1711).]