But I will not take Mr. Rymer's
work out of his hands: he has promised the world a critique on that
author wherein, though he will not allow his poem for heroic, I hope
he will grant us that his thoughts are elevated, his words sounding,
and that no man has so happily copied the manner of Homer, or so
copiously translated his Grecisms and the Latin elegances of Virgil.
It is true, he runs into a flat of thought, sometimes for a hundred
lines together, but it is when he has got into a track of Scripture.
His antiquated words were his choice, not his necessity; for therein
he imitated Spenser, as Spencer did Chaucer. And though, perhaps,
the love of their masters may have transported both too far in the
frequent use of them, yet in my opinion obsolete words may then be
laudably revived when either they are more sounding or more
significant than those in practice, and when their obscurity is
taken away by joining other words to them which clear the sense--
according to the rule of Horace for the admission of new words.
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