real Greatness enough to consider a Detection of their Errors, as a Warning to their Conduct, and an Advantage to their Fame; But no discerning Judgment will consider it as ill Nature, in one Writer, to mark the Faults of another.  A general Practice of that Kind wou’d be the highest Service to poetry.  No Disease can be cur’d, till its Nature is examin’d; and the first likely Step towards correcting our Errors, is resolving to learn impartially, that we have Errors to be corrected.

I will, therefore, with much Freedom, but no manner of Malice, remark an Instance or two, from no mean Writers, to prove, that our Poetry has been degenerating apace into mere Sound, or Harmony; nor ought This to be consider’d as an invidious Attempt, since whatever Pains we take, about polishing our Numbers, where we raise not our Meaning, are as impertinently bestowed, as the Labour wou’d be, of setting a broken Leg after the Soul has left the Body.  The Gunners have a Custom, when a Ball is too little for the Bore of their Canon, to wrap Towe about it, till it fills the Mouth of the Piece; after which, it is discharg’d, with a Thunder, proportionable to the Size of the Gun; But its Execution at the Mark, will immediately discover, that the Noise of the Discharge was a great deal too big for the Diameter of the Bullet.  It is just the same thing with an unsinewy Imagination, sent abroad in sounding Numbers; The Loftiness of the Expression will astonish shallow Readers into a temporary Admiration, and support it, for a while; but the Bounce, however loud, goes no farther than the Ear; The Heart remains unreach’d by the Languor of the Sentiment.

Poetry, the most elevated Exertion of human Wit, is no more than a weak and contemptible Amusement, wanting Energy of Thought, or Propriety of Expression.  Yet we may run into Error, by an injudicious Affectation of attaining Perfection, as Men, who are gazing upward, when they shou’d be looking to their Footsteps, stumble frequently against Posts, while they have the Sun in Contemplation.

In attempting, for Example, to modernize so lofty an Ode as the 104th Psalm, the Choice of Metaphors shou’d, methinks, have been considered, as one of the most remarkable Difficulties.  There seems to have been a Necessity, that they shou’d be noble, as well as natural; and yet, if too much rais’d, they wou’d endanger an Extinction of the Charms, which they were design’d to illustrate.  That powerful Imagination of ’the Sea, climbing over the Mountains Tops, and rushing back, upon the Plains, at the Voice of God’s Thunder,’ ought certainly to have been express’d with as much Plainness as possible:  And, to demonstrate how ill the contrary Measure has succeeded, one need only observe how it looks in Mr. Trapp’s Metaphorical Refinement.

      “The Ebbing Deluge did its Troops recal,
       Drew off its Forces, and disclos’d the Ball,
       They, at th’ Eternal’s Signal march’d away.”