xix
A fount of tears, afford me such a stream
As will not let the burning fire prevail."
One is surprised how a man of talents could write in this way, only twenty-one years after the death of his countryman Ariosto.
But Ariosto had shewn himself above a servile adherence to a court, which seems to have been fond of dictating in every thing; and after his death, inferior poets became subservient to it's fashions. They cut their imaginations after the court pattern; which has always a tendency to be artificial. Natural and original genius frightens the instinctive sense of inferiority, that belongs to worldly power. For the same reason, the moment that ordinary patronage ceases to elevate the self love of the patron, and becomes a debt owed, rather than a gift obliging; or the moment it
