Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 1.djvu/441

Rh diversion, which if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.

But to return to Blenheim, that work so much admired by some, and censured by others. I have often wished he had wrote it in Latin, that he might be out of the reach of the empty criticks, who could have as little understood his meaning in that language as they do his beauties in his own.

False criticks have been the plague of all ages; Milton himself, in a very polite court, has been compared to the rumbling of a wheel-barrow: he had been on the wrong side, and therefore could not be a good poet. And this, perhaps, may be Mr. Philips's case.

But I take generally the ignorance of his readers to be the occasion of their dislike. People that have formed their taste upon the French writers can have no relish for Philips: they admire points and turns, and consequently have no judgement of what is great and majestick: he must look little in their eyes, when he soars so high as to be almost out of their view. I cannot there fore allow any admirer of the French to be a judge of Blenheim, nor any who takes Rh