Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 2.djvu/100

94 lamented the exuberance of false wit and the deficiency of true, he proposes that all wit should be re-coined before it is current, and appoints masters of assay who shall reject all that is light or debased.

Thus stands the passage in the last edition; but in the original there was an abatement of the censure, beginning thus:

Blackmore, finding the censure resented, and the civility disregarded, ungenerously omitted the softer part. Such variations discover a writer who consults his passions more than his virtue; and it may be reasonably supposed that Dryden imputes his enmity to its true cause. Rh