Page:The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, Volume 3.djvu/73

Rh despised; nor should his dignity of mind be without its praise, had he not paid the homage to greatness which he denied to genius, and degraded himself by conferring that authority over the national taste, which he takes from the poets, upon men of high rank and wide influence, but of less wit and not greater virtue.

Here is again discovered the inhabitant of Cheapside, whose head cannot keep his poetry unmingled with trade. To hinder that intellectual bankruptcy which he affects to fear, he will erect a Bank for Wit.

In this poem he justly censured Dryden's impurities, but praised his powers; though in a subsequent edition he retained the satire and omitted the praise. What was his reason, I know not; Dryden was then no longer in his way.

His head still teemed with heroick poetry, and (1705) he published Eliza in ten books. I am afraid that the world was now weary of contending about Blackmore's heroes; for I do not remember that by any author, serious or comical, I have found Eliza either praised or blamed. She "dropped," as it seems, "dead-born from the press." It is never Rh