He chose to please the
most judicious souls, of the highest rank and truest understanding.
These are few in number; but whoever is so happy as to gain their
approbation can never lose it, because they never give it blindly.
Then they have a certain magnetism in their judgment which attracts
others to their sense. Every day they gain some new proselyte, and
in time become the Church. For this reason a well-weighed judicious
poem, which at its first appearance gains no more upon the world
than to be just received, and rather not blamed than much applauded,
insinuates itself by insensible degrees into the liking of the
reader; the more he studies it, the more it grows upon him, every
time he takes it up he discovers some new graces in it. And whereas
poems which are produced by the vigour of imagination only have a
gloss upon them at the first (which time wears off), the works of
judgment are like the diamond, the more they are polished the more
lustre they receive. Such is the difference betwixt Virgil's
"AEneis" and Marini's "Adone.
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