Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/115

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and Ovid
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tlemen, that sometimes they overflow with Words. This proceedeth, I believe, from their daily Complaisance, which runs them into Variety of Expressions on the same Subject; whereas Your Scholars are more close, and as if their Learning were as narrow as their Fortune, they are frugal of their Words, and not willing to let any go for Ornament, if it will not serve for Use. Some People may call this a small Piece of Criticism; all that I would prove by it, if it be not well founded, is, that Ovid was a Man of Breeding, and tho' Virgil and Horace were Courtiers too, yet they fell short of him in Court-

liness