We must make it our main Business and Study to think and write well, and not labour to submit other People's Palates and Opinions to our own; which is the greater difficulty of the two.
One should serve his time to learn how to make a Book, just as some men do to learn how to make a watch, for there goes something more than either Wit or Learning to the setting up for an Author. A Lawyer of this Town was an able, subtle and experienc'd Man in the way of his Business, and might for ought I know, have come to be Lord Chief Justice, but he has lately miscarried in the Good Opinion of the World, only by Printing some Essays which are a Master-piece—in Nonsense.
It is a more difficult matter to get a Name by a Perfect Composure, than to make an indifferent one valued by that Reputation a Man has already got in the World.
There are some things which admit of no mediocrity; such as Poetry, Painting, Musick and Oratory—What Torture can be greater than to hear Doctor F—— declaim a flat Oration with formality and Pomp, or D—— read his Pyndaricks with all the Emphasis of a Dull Poet.
We have not as yet seen any excellent Piece, but what is owing to the Labour of one single Man: Homer, for the purpose, has writ the Iliad; Virgil, the Æneid; Livy his Decads; and the Roman Orator his Orations; but our modern several Hands present us often with nothing but a Variety of Errors.
There is in the Arts and Sciences such a Point of Perfection, as there is one of Goodness or maturity in Fruits; and he that can find and relish it must be allowed to have a True Tast; but on the contrary, he that neither perceives it, nor likes any thing on this side, or beyond it, has but a defective Palate. Hence I conclude that there is a bad Taste and a good one, and that the disputing about Tastes is not altogether unreasonable.
The Lives of Heroes have enricht History and History in requital has embellished and heightened the Lives of Heroes, so that it is no easie matter to determine which of the two is more beholden to the other: either Historians, to those who have furnished them with so great and noble a matter to work upon; or those great Men, to those Writers that have convey'd their names and Atchievements down to the Admiration of after-Ages.
There are many of our Wits that feed for a while upon the Ancients, and the best of our Modern Authors: and when they have squeez'd out and extracted matter enough to appear in Print and set up for themselves, most ungratefully abuse them, like children grown strong and lusty by the good milk they have sucked, who generally beat their Nurses.
A Modern Author proves both by Reasons and Examples that the Ancients are inferior to us; and fetches his Arguments from his own particular Tast, and his Examples from his own Writings. He owns, That the Ancients tho' generally uneven and uncorrect, have yet here and there some fine Touches, and indeed these are so fine, that the quoting of them is the only thing that makes his Criticisms worth a Mans reading 'em.
Some great Men pronounce for the Ancients against the Moderns: But their own Composures are so agreeable to the Taste of Antiquity, and bear so great a resemblance with the Patterns they have left us, that they seem to be judges in their own Case and being suspected of Partiality, are therefore ceptionable.