I need not say their poets are of the same paste with
their admirers. They affect greatness in all they write, but it is
a bladdered greatness, like that of the vain man whom Seneca
describes an ill habit of body, full of humours, and swelled with
dropsy. Even these, too, desert their authors as their judgment
ripens. The young gentlemen themselves are commonly misled by their
pedagogue at school, their tutor at the university, or their
governor in their travels, and many of these three sorts are the
most positive blockheads in the world. How many of these flatulent
writers have I known who have sunk in their reputation after seven
or eight editions of their works! for indeed they are poets only for
young men. They had great success at their first appearance, but
not being of God, as a wit said formerly, they could not stand.
I have already named two sorts of judges, but Virgil wrote for
neither of them, and by his example I am not ambitious of pleasing
the lowest or the middle form of readers.
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