Page:The Poetical Works of Thomas Parnell (1833).djvu/100

52 which, the poet sits down without any plan, and heaps up splendid images without any selection; when the reader grows dizzy with praise and admiration, and yet soon grows weary, he can scarcely tell why. Our poet on the contrary gives out his beauties with a more sparing hand. He is still carrying his reader forward, and just gives him refreshment sufficient to support him to his journey's end. At the end of his course, the reader regrets that his way has been so short, he wonders that it gave him so little trouble, and so resolves to go the journey over again.

His poetical language is not less correct than his couplets are pleasing. He found it at that period at which it was brought to its highest pitch of refinement, and ever since his time it has been gradually debasing. It is indeed amazing, after what has been done by Dryden, Addison, and Pope, to improve and harmonize our native tongue, that their successors should have taken so much pains to involve it in pristine barbarity. These misguided innovators have not been content with restoring antiquated words and phrases, but have indulged themselves in the most licentious transpositions and the harshest constructions, vainly imagining that the more their writings were unlike prose, the more they resemble poetry. They have adopted a language of their own, and call upon mankind for admiration. All those who do not understand them are silent, and those who make out their meaning, are willing to praise, to show they