probable in
the report, nothing, indeed, but what is more likely than the contrary;
yet I [8] cannot forbear to hint to this writer, and all others, the
danger and weakness of trusting too readily to information. Nothing but
experience could evince the frequency of false information, or enable
any man to conceive, that so many groundless reports should be
propagated, as every man of eminence may hear of himself. Some men
relate what they think, as what they know; some men, of confused
memories and habitual inaccuracy, ascribe to one man, what belongs to
another; and some talk on, without thought or care. A few men are
sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently
diffused by successive relaters.

He proceeds on, examining passage after passage of this essay; but we
must pass over all these criticisms, to which we have not something to
add or to object, or where this author does not differ from the general
voice of mankind. We cannot agree with him in his censure of the
comparison of a student advancing in science, with a traveller passing
the Alps, which is, perhaps, the best simile in our language; that, in
which the most exact resemblance is traced between things, in
appearance, utterly unrelated to each other. That the last line conveys
no new _idea_, is not true; it makes particular, what was before
general. Whether the description, which he adds from another author, be,
as he says, more full and striking than that of Pope, is not to be
inquired. Pope's description is relative, and can admit no greater
length than is usually allowed to a simile, nor any other particulars
than such as form the correspondence.

Unvaried rhymes, says this writer, highly disgust readers of a good ear.
It is, surely, not the ear, but the mind that is offended. The fault,
arising from the use of common rhymes, is, that by reading the past
line, the second may be guessed, and half the composition loses the
grace of novelty.

On occasion of the mention of an alexandrine, the critick observes, that
"the alexandrine may be thought a modern measure, but that _Robert of
Gloucester's Wife_ is an alexandrine, with the addition of two
syllables; and that Sternhold and Hopkins translated the Psalms in the
same measure of fourteen syllables, though they are printed otherwise."

This seems not to be accurately conceived or expressed: an alexandrine,
with the addition of two syllables, is no more an alexandrine, than with
the d