rticular unhappiness) they
wanted the benefit of converse: But of that I shall speak hereafter,
in a place more proper for it. Their audiences knew no better; and
therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those, who call
theirs the golden age of poetry, have only this reason for it, that
they were then content with acorns before they knew the use of bread;
or that [Greek: Alis druos] was become a proverb. They had many who
admired them, and few who blamed them; and certainly a severe critic
is the greatest help to a good wit: he does the office of a friend,
while he designs that of an enemy; and his malice keeps a poet within
those bounds, which the luxuriancy of his fancy would tempt him to
overleap.

But it is not their plots which I meant principally to tax; I was
speaking of their sense and language; and I dare almost challenge any
man to shew me a page together which is correct in both. As for Ben
Jonson, I am loth to name him, because he is a most judicious writer;
yet he very often falls into these errors: and I once more beg the
reader's pardon for accusing him of them. Only let him consider, that
I live in an age where my least faults are severely censured; and that
I have no way left to extenuate my failings, but by showing as great
in those whom we admire:

_Caedimus, inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis._

I cast my eyes but by chance on Catiline; and in the three or four
last pages, found enough to conclude that Jonson writ not correctly.

--Let the long-hid seeds
Of treason, in thee, now shoot forth in deeds
Ranker than horror.

In reading some bombast speeches of Macbeth, which are not to be
understood, he used to say that it was horror; and I am much afraid
that this is so.

Thy parricide late on thy only son,
After his mother, to make empty way
For thy last wicked nuptials, worse than they
That blaze that act of thy incestuous life,
Which gained thee at once a daughter and a wife.

The sense is here extremely perplexed; and I doubt the word _they_ is
false grammar.

--And be free
Not heaven itself from thy impiety.

A synchysis, or ill-placing of words, of which Tully so much complains
in oratory.

The waves and dens of beasts could not receive
The bodies that those souls were frighted _from_.

The preposition in the end of the sentence; a common fault with him,
and which I have but lately observed in my own writings.

What all the several ills that