The thoughts remain to be consider'd, and they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they flow more or less naturally from the persons describ'd, on such and such occasions.

The vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see Ovid full of them, and Chaucer altogether without them, will think me little less than mad, for preferring the Englishman to the Roman: yet, with their leave, I must presume to say that the things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are unnatural.

Would any man who is ready to die for love describe his passion like Narcissus?
Would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_,[11] and a dozen more of such expressions, pour'd on the neck of one another, and signifying all the same thing?
If this were wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death?
This is just John Littlewit in _Bartholomew Fair_,[12] who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit.

On these occasions the poet should endeavor to raise pity; but instead of this, Ovid is tickling you to laugh.

Virgil never made use of such machines, when he was moving you to commiserate the death of Dido: he would not destroy what he was building.