many insignificant phrases, there happen not
something worth preserving; though they themselves, like Indians, know
not the value of their own commodity.

There is yet another way of improving language, which poets especially
have practised in all ages; that is, by applying received words to a
new signification; and this, I believe, is meant by Horace, in that
precept which is so variously construed by expositors:

_Dixeris egregie, notum si callida verbum
Reddiderit junctura novum._

And, in this way, he himself had a particular happiness; using all the
tropes, and particular metaphors, with that grace which is observable
in his Odes, where the beauty of expression is often greater than that
of thought; as, in that one example, amongst an infinite number of
others, "_Et vultus nimium lubricus aspici._"

And therefore, though he innovated a little, he may justly be called a
great refiner of the Roman tongue. This choice of words, and
heightening of their natural signification, was observed in him by the
writers of the following ages; for Petronius says of him, "_Et Horatii
curiosa felicitas._" By this graffing, as I may call it, on old words,
has our tongue been beautified by the three before-mentioned poets,
Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson, whose excellencies I can never
enough admire; and in this they have been followed, especially by Sir
John Suckling and Mr Waller, who refined upon them. Neither have they,
who succeeded them, been wanting in their endeavours to adorn our
mother tongue: But it is not so lawful for me to praise my living
contemporaries, as to admire my dead predecessors.

I should now speak of the refinement of Wit; but I have been so large
on the former subject, that I am forced to contract myself in this. I
will therefore only observe to you, that the wit of the last age was
yet more incorrect than their language. Shakespeare, who many times
has written better than any poet, in any language, is yet so far from
writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of
the subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writers
of ours, or any precedent age. Never did any author precipitate
himself from such height of thought to so low expressions, as he often
does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two
faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise
the other. Neither is the luxuriance of Fletcher, which his friends
have