When his brilliant conceits are exhausted, he supplies their place with metaphysical quibbles, forced antitheses, bad puns, and execrable charades.

In his fifth sonnet he may, I think, be said to have sounded the lowest chasm of the Bathos.

Upon the whole, that piece may be safely pronounced to be the worst attempt at poetry, and the worst attempt at wit, in the world.
A strong proof of the truth of these criticisms is, that almost all the sonnets produce exactly the same effect on the mind of the reader.

They relate to all the various moods of a lover, from joy to despair:--yet they are perused, as far as my experience and observation have gone, with exactly the same feeling.

The fact is, that in none of them are the passion and the ingenuity mixed in just proportions.