correct what is amiss, and esteem what deserves to be commended.

An _Author_, ought to receive with an equal Modesty both the Praise and
Censure of other People upon his own Works.

A great facility in submitting to other People's Censure is sometimes as
faulty as a great roughness in rejecting it: for there is no Composure
so every way accomplisht, but what would be pared and clipped to nothing
if a man would follow the advice of every finical scrupulous Critick,
who often would have the best Things left out because forsooth, they are
not agreeable to his dull Palate.

The great Pleasure some People take in _criticizing_ upon the _small
Faults_ of a Book so vitiates their Taste, that it renders them unfit to
be _affected_ with it's _Beauties_.

The same Niceness of Judgment which makes some Men write sence, makes
them very often shy and unwilling to appear in Print.

Among the several _Expressions_ We may use for the same Thought, there
is but an individual one which is good and proper; any other but that is
flat and imperfect, and cannot please an ingenious Man that has a mind
to explain what he thinks: And it is no small wonder to me to consider,
what Pains, even the best of Writers are sometimes at, to seek out that
Expression, which being the most simple and natural, ought consequently
to have presented it self without Study.

'Tis to no great purpose that a Man seeks to make himself admir'd by his
Composures: Blockheads, indeed, may oftentimes admire him but then they
are but Blockheads; and as for _Wits_ they have in themselves the seeds