strength
of genius to make a thought shine in its own natural beauties. Poets who
want this strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature,
which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt
after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind
soever escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who,
like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful
simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to supply its
place with all the extravagancies of an irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden
makes a very handsome observation on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to
AEneas, in the following words: "Ovid," says he, speaking of Virgil's
fiction of Dido and AEneas, "takes it up after him, even in the same age,
and makes an ancient heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dictates a
letter for her just before her death to the ungrateful fugitive, and,
very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much
superior in force to him on the same subject. I think I may be judge of
this, because I have translated both. The famous author of 'The Art of
Love' has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in his
own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which he finds.
Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old shift, he has recourse to
witticism. This passes indeed with his soft admirers, and gives him the
preference to Virgil in their esteem."

Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I
should not venture to observe that the taste of most of our English
poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. He quotes Monsieur
Segrais for a threefold distinction of the readers of poetry; in the
first of which he comprehends the rabble of readers, whom he does not
treat as such with regard to their quality, but to their numbers and the
coarseness of their taste. His words are as follows: "Segrais has
distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of
judging, into three classes." [He might have said the same of writers
too if he had pleased.] "In the lowest form he places those whom he
calls Les Petits Esprits, such things as our upper-gallery audience in a
playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a
quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for
Parl