Their authors are of the same level; fit to
represent them on a mountebank's stage, or to be masters of the
ceremonies in a bear-garden. Yet these are they who have the most
admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, that as
their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading
better books, and by conversation with men of judgment), they soon
forsake them; and when the torrent from the mountains falls no more,
the swelling writer is reduced into his shallow bed, like the
Mancanares at Madrid, with scarce water to moisten his own pebbles.
There are a middle sort of readers (as we held there is a middle
state of souls), such as have a farther insight than the former, yet
have not the capacity of judging right; for I speak not of those who
are bribed by a party, and knew better if they were not corrupted,
but I mean a company of warm young men, who are not yet arrived so
far as to discern the difference betwixt fustian or ostentations
sentences and the true sublime. These are above liking Martial or
Owen's epigrams, but they would certainly set Virgil below Statius
or Lucan.
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