But
when the Idea, which a Poet strives to raise, is in itself
magnificent and striking, the Dawb of Metaphor, or any spumy
Colourings of Rhetoric can but deaden, and efface it.
If Sir Richard had said, concerning the Skies, on any other
Subject but This, of the Creation, that they were 'spun thin, and
wove, on Nature's finest Loom,' the Thought had been so far from
Impropriety, as to have been pleasing, and praise-worthy; But
when the Image he wou'd set before us, is the Maker of Heaven and
Earth, in all the dreadful Majesty of his Omnipotence, producing
at a Word, the noblest Part of the Creation, and 'spreading out
the Heavens as a Curtain'; In this tremendous Exercise of his
Divinity, to compare him to a Weaver, and his Expansion of the
Skies, to the low Mechanism of a 'Loom,' is injudiciously to
diminish an Idea, he pretends to heighten and illustrate.
I will end with a Word or two concerning the different Measure of
the Verse, in which the following Poem is written; and which is
apt to disgust Readers, not well grounded in Poetry, because it
requires a fuller Degree of Attention than the Couplet, and, as
Mr. Cowley has said of it,
... Will no unskilful Touch endure,
But flings Writer and Reader too, that sits not sure.
I have, in another Place, endeavoured by Arguments to demonstrate
the Preference of this Kind of Verse to any other; I will here
observe only, from my Experience of other Writers, that it wins,
insinuates, and grows insensibly upon the Relish of a Reader,
till the little seeming Harshness, which is supposed to be in it,
softens gradually away, and leaves a vigorous Impression behind
it, of mixed Majesty and Sweetness.
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