As authors generally think themselves the
best poets, because they cannot go out of themselves to judge
sincerely of their betters, so it is with critics, who, having first
taken a liking to one of these poets, proceed to comment on him and
to illustrate him; after which they fall in love with their own
labours to that degree of blind fondness that at length they defend
and exalt their author, not so much for his sake as for their own.
It is a folly of the same nature with that of the Romans themselves
in their games of the circus. The spectators were divided in their
factions betwixt the Veneti and the Prasini; some were for the
charioteer in blue, and some for him in green. The colours
themselves were but a fancy; but when once a man had taken pains to
set out those of his party, and had been at the trouble of procuring
voices for them, the case was altered: he was concerned for his own
labour, and that so earnestly that disputes and quarrels,
animosities, commotions, and bloodshed often happened; and in the
declension of the Grecian empire, the very sovereigns themselves
engaged in it, even when the barbarians were at their doors, and
stickled for the preference of colours when the safety of their
people was in question.
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