In the famous lines,
Let modest Foster, if he will, excell
Ten metropolitans in preaching well.
Ep. to Satires, v. 131.
I used to suspect that the phrase of preaching well so unlike the concise accuracy of Pope, would not have been hazarded by him, if some eminent writer, though perhaps of an older age and less correct taste than his own, had not set the example. But I had no doubt left when I happened on the following couplet in Mr. Waller.
Your’s sounds aloud, and tells us you excell
No less in courage, than in singing well.
Poem to Sir W. D’Avenant.
Our great poet is more happy in the application of these rhymes on another occasion,
Let such teach others, who themselves excell,
And censure freely, who have written well.
Essay on Crit. v. 15.
The reason is apparent. But here he glanced at the Duke of Buckingham’s,
“Nature’s chief master-piece is writing well.”
XII. “The same pause and turn of expression are pretty sure symptoms of imitation.” These minute resemblances do not usually spring from Nature, which, when the sentiment is the same, hath a hundred ways of its own, of giving it to us.
1. That noble verse in the essay on criticism, v. 625.