Ver. 305. _Others for language, &c._] He proceeds secondly to those contracted critics, whose whole concern turns upon language, and shows, from ver. 304 to 337, that this quality, where it holds the principal place in a work, deserves no commendation:--1. Because it excludes qualities more essential. And when the abounding verbiage has choked and suffocated the sense, the writer will be obliged to varnish over the mischief with all the false colouring of eloquence. 2. Secondly, because the critic who busies himself with this quality alone, is unable to make a right judgment of it; because true expression is only the dress of thought, and so must be perpetually varied according to the subject, and manner of treating it. But those who never concern themselves with the sense, can form no judgment of the correspondence between that and the language. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable, &c. Now as these critics are ignorant of this correspondence, their whole judgment in language is reduced to verbal criticism, or the examination of single words; and generally those which are most to his taste, are (for an obvious reason) such as smack most of antiquity, on which account our author has bestowed a little raillery upon it; concluding with a short and proper direction concerning the use of words, so far as regards their novelty and ancientry. Ver. 337. _But most by numbers judge, &c._] The last sort are those, from ver. 336 to 384, whose ears are attached only to the harmony of a poem. Of which they judge as ignorantly and as perversely as the other sort did of the eloquence, and for the same reason. Our author first describes that false harmony with which they are so much captivated; and shows that it is wretchedly flat and unvaried: for Smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong. He then describes the true: 1. As it is in itself, constant; with a happy mixture of strength and sweetness, in contradiction to the roughness and flatness of false harmony: and 2. As it is varied in compliance to the subject, where the sound becomes an echo to the sense, so far as is consistent with the preservation of numbers, in contradiction to the monotony of false harmony. Of this he gives us, in the delivery of his precepts, four beautiful examples of smoothness, roughness, slowness, and rapidity. The first use of this correspondence of the sound to the sense, is to aid the fancy in acquiring a perfecter and more lively image of the thing represented. A second and nobler, is to calm and subdue the turbulent and selfish passions, and to raise and warm the beneficent, which he illustrates in the famous adventure of Timotheus and Alexander, where, in referring to Mr. Dryden's Ode on that subject, he turns it to a high compliment on his favourite poet.