He that has an idea of perfection in the work he undertakes may fail in it; he that has not, must: and yet he will be vain. For every little degree of beauty, how short or improper soever, will be looked on fondly by him; because it is all pure gains, and more than he promised to himself; and because he has no test, or standard in his judgment, with which to chastise his opinion of it.
Now this idea of perfection is, in poetry, more refined than in other kinds of writing; and because more refined, therefore more difficult; and because more difficult, therefore more rarely attained; and the non-attainment of it is, as I have said, the source of our vanity. Hence the poetic clan are more obnoxious to vanity than others. And from vanity consequently flows that great sensibility of disrespect, that quick resentment, that tinder of the mind that kindles at every spark, and justly marks them out for the genus irritabile among mankind. And from this combustible temper, this serious anger for no very serious things, things looked on by most as foreign to the important points of life, as consequentially flows that inheritance of ridicule, which devolves on them, from generation to generation. As soon as they become authors, they become like Ben Jonson's angry boy, and learn the art of quarrel.
Concordes animæ—dum nocte prementur;
Heu! quantum inter se bellum, si lumina vitæ
Attigerint, quantas acies stragemque ciebunt!
Qui Juvenes! quantas ostentant, aspice, vires.
Ne, pueri! ne tanta animis assuescite bella.
Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo,
Sidereo flagrans clypeo, et cœlestibus armis,
Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!