Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet,
and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a
wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if
they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter,
it is a work of supererogation.
For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as
ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than
they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that
went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did,
for contraries are best set off with contraries.
He has found out a way to save the expense of much wit and sense; for he
will make less than some have prodigally laid out upon five or six words
serve forty or fifty lines. This is a thrifty invention, and very easy,
and, if it were commonly known, would much increase the trade of wit and
maintain a multitude of small poets in constant employment. He has found
out a new sort of poetical Georgics, a trick of sowing wit like
clover-grass on barren subjects which would yield nothing before. This
is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room
left for new invention. He will take three grains of wit like the
elixir, and projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into
gold. All the business of mankind has presently vanished; the whole
world has kept holiday; there have been no men but heroes and poets, no
women but nymphs and shepherdesses; trees have borne fritters, and
rivers flowed plum-porridge.
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