which they have once espoused, though it be to the prejudice of
truth, morality, and common justice, and especially in the
productions of the brain. As authors generally think themselves the
best poets, because they cannot go out of themselves to judge
sincerely of their betters, so it is with critics, who, having first
taken a liking to one of these poets, proceed to comment on him and
to illustrate him; after which they fall in love with their own
labours to that degree of blind fondness that at length they defend
and exalt their author, not so much for his sake as for their own.
It is a folly of the same nature with that of the Romans themselves
in their games of the circus. The spectators were divided in their
factions betwixt the Veneti and the Prasini; some were for the
charioteer in blue, and some for him in green. The colours
themselves were but a fancy; but when once a man had taken pains to
set out those of his party, and had been at the trouble of procuring
voices for them, the case was altered: he was concerned for his own
labour, and that so earnestly that disputes and quarrels,
animosities, commotions, and bloodshed often happened; and in the
declension of the Grecian empire, the very sovereigns themselves
engaged in it, even when the barbarians were at their doors, and
stickled for the preference of colours when the safety of their
people was in question. I am now myself on the brink of the same
precipice; I have spent some time on the translation of Juvenal and
Persius, and it behoves me to be wary, lest for that reason I should
be partial to them, or take a prejudice against Horace. Yet on the
other side I would not be like some of our judges, who would give
the cause for a poor man right or wrong; for though that be an error
on the better hand, yet it is still a partiality, and a rich man
unheard cannot be concluded an oppressor. I remember a saying of
King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was doubtless an uncorrupt