An Essay on Criticism

Oldmixon seems to have had more than one purpose for writing the Essay ; one of them is made quite clear in the second paragraph:
I shall not, in this Essay , enter into the philosophical Part of Criticism which Corneille complains of, and that Aristotle and his Commentators have treated of Poetry, rather as Philosophers than Poets. I shall not attempt to give Reasons why Thoughts are sublime , noble , delicate , agreeable , and the like, but content my self with producing Examples of every Kind of right Thinking, and leave it to Authors of more Capacity and Leisure, to treat the Matter à Fond , and teach us to imitate our selves what we admire in others.
The remarks concerning the English need for guidance in right thinking are obviously intended to prepare a public for Oldmixon's translation of Bouhours' La Manière De Bien Penser . Following the method of Bouhours, who was in turn following Longinus, Oldmixon gives examples from English literature of the various divisions of right thinking and, also like Bouhours, he includes specimens of failures in this art. The bad examples he presents provide ample evidence that the Essay was also serving a Whig polemical purpose, for they are drawn from such writers as Clarendon, Pope and, in particular, Laurence Echard. The tone and nature of Oldmixon's remarks on Echard, whose History he had already criticized at length in the second volume of the Critical History , can be seen in this explanation of his general treatment of that author:
I must sincerely acknowledge, that it was not for Want of Will, that I did not mention what is beautiful in our Historian, but for Want of Opportunity.
Oldmixon's remarks on Pope's Homer are sometimes laudatory, but more often patronizing; the criticism of Pope's Essay on Criticism is quite pointed:
I dare not say any Thing of the last Essay on Criticism in Verse, but that if any more curious Reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in Dryden's Prefaces , Dedications , and his Essay on Dramatick Poetry , not to mention the French Criticks, I should be very glad to have the Benefit of the Discovery.