Every one acknowledges, it would be a wild notion to expect perfection
in any work of man: and yet one would think the contrary was taken for
granted, by the judgment commonly passed upon poems. A critic supposes
he has done his part, if he proves a writer to have failed in an
expression, or erred in any particular point: and can it then be
wondered at, if the poets in general seem resolved not to own themselves
in any error? For as long as one side will make no allowances, the other
will be brought to no acknowledgments.

I am afraid this extreme zeal on both sides is ill-placed; poetry and
criticism being by no means the universal concern of the world, but only
the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who
read there.

Yet sure, upon the whole, a bad author deserves better usage than a bad
critic; for a writer's endeavour, for the most part, is to please his
readers, and he fails merely through the misfortune of an ill judgment;
but such a critic's is to put them out of humour,--a design he could
never go upon without both that and an ill temper.

I think a good deal may be said to extenuate the fault of bad poets.
What we call a genius, is hard to be distinguished by a man himself from
a strong inclination: and if his genius be ever so great, he cannot at
first discover it any other way than by giving way to that prevalent
propensity which renders him the more liable to be mistaken. The only
method he has is to make the experiment by writing, and appealing to the
judgment of others: now if he happens to write ill (which is certainly
no sin in itself) he is immediately made an object of ridicule. I wish
we had the humanity to reflect, that even the worst authors might, in