Page:A Dissertation on Reading the Classics and Forming a Just Style.djvu/160

116 into a Course of Similitudes, confounding their Subject by the Multitude of Likenesses, and making it like so many Things, that it is like Nothing at all. This triﬂing Humour is good for nothing, but to convince us, that the Author is in the dark himself; and while he is likening his Subject to every Thing, he knoweth not what it is like.

There is another tedious Fault in some Simile Men, which is drawing their Comparisons into a great Length and Minute Particulars, where it is of no Importance, whether the Resemblance holdeth or no. But the true Art of illustrating Rh