But by one fatal present she deprived her other gifts of half their value.

He would have been a much greater poet had he been a less clever man.

His ingenuity was the bane of his mind.

He abandoned the noble and natural style, in which he might have excelled, for the conceits which he produced with a facility at once admirable and disgusting.

His muse, like the Roman lady in Livy, was tempted by gaudy ornaments to betray the fastnesses of her strength, and, like her, was crushed beneath the glittering bribes which had seduced her.
The paucity of his thoughts is very remarkable.