"takes it up after him, even in the same age, and makes an ancient
heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dictates a letter for her just
before her death to the ungrateful fugitive, and, very unluckily for
himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much superior in
force to him on the same subject. I think I may be judge of this,
because I have translated both. The famous author of 'The Art of
Love' has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master
in his own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which
he finds. Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old shift, he
has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed with his soft
admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in their esteem."

Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden,
I should not venture to observe that the taste of most of our
English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic. He quotes
Monsieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of the readers of
poetry; in the first of which he comprehends the rabble of readers,
whom he does not treat as such with regard to their quality, but to
their numbers and the coarseness of their taste. His words are as
follows: "Segrais has distinguished the readers of poetry,
according to their capacity of judging, into three classes." [He
might have said the same of writers too if he had pleased.] "In the
lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits, such
things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who like
nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble, a
conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant expression.
These are mob readers. If Virgil and Martial stood for Parliament-
men, we know already who would carry it. But though they made the
greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of
it is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors,