and instead of perspicuity and lucid order, we have but too often obscurity and confusion." And in another place: "What rare numbers are here! Would not one swear that this youngster had espoused some antiquated muse, who had sued out a divorce from some superannuated sinner, upon account of impotence, and who, being poxed by her former spouse, has got the gout in her decrepid age, which makes her hobble so damnably[1]." No less peremptory is the censure of our hypercritical Historian
"I dare not say any thing of the Essay on Criticism in verse; but if any more curious reader has discovered in it something new which is not in Dryden's prefaces, dedications, and his essay on dramatic poetry, not to mention the French critics, I should be very glad to have the benefit of the discovery[2]
He is followed (as in fame, so in judgment) by the modest and simple-minded
Who, out of great respect to our poet not naming him, doth yet glance at his Essay, together with the Duke of Buckingham's, and the Criticisms of Dryden, and of Horace, which he more openly taxeth[3]: "As to the numerous treatises, essays, arts, &c. both in verse and prose, that have been written by the moderns on this ground-work, they do but hackney the same thoughts over again, making them still more trite. Most of their pieces are nothing but a pert, insipid heap of common place. Horace has even in his Art of Poetry thrown out several things which plainly shew, he thought an Art of Poetry was of no use, even while he was writing one."
To all which great authorities, we can only oppose that of
"[4]The Art of Criticism (saith he) which was published some months since, is a master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another, like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose-writer. They are some of them uncommon, but such as the reader must assent to, when he sees them explain'd with that ease and perspicuity in which they are delivered. As
