Its goodness must be tried another way.

Let's judge it then, and, if we've any skill,

Commend what's good, though we commend it ill.

There will be praise enough; yet not so much,

As if the world had never any such:

Ben Johnson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Shakespeare, are,

As well as you, to have a poet's share.

You, who write after, have, besides, this curse,

You must write better, or you else write worse.

To equal only what was writ before,