What, at the end of two centuries, remains of all that pomp, of all the loud applauses which then fatigued the echoes of fame? When we see that, of all the poetry and poems he composed, there are few, perhaps none, which can be read through without our being shocked at every step by their repugnance; when we see that his most studied and favourite work, the _Jerusalem_,[P] is a compound of absurdities, wherein the little excellence we meet with, makes the abuse of his talent but the more deplored; when we see that of so many hundreds of comedies, there is scarcely one that can be called good; and finally, that of the many thousands of verses which his inexhaustible vein produced, there are so few that remain engraved on the tablets of good taste,--can we do less than exclaim, where are now the foundations of that edifice of glory raised in homage of a single man by the age in which he lived, and which still surprises and excites the envy of those who contemplate it from afar? It was not possible for works written with so much precipitation to have any other result, with his utter forgetfulness of all rules, and neglect of all great models; without plan, without preparation, without study, or attention to nature. The necessity of writing hastily for the theatre, when he had accustomed the public to almost daily novelties, unsettled, and, as it were, relaxed all the springs of his genius, carrying the same hurry and negligence into all his other writings.[Q] Hence it is that, with the exception of some short poems in which he improved the happy inspiration of the moment, there are, in all his others, unpardonable faults of invention, of composition, and of style. Fatal facility! which corrupted all his excellencies, which led him to obscure the clearness, the harmony, the elegance, the freedom, the affluence, and even the strength with which he was alike gifted; giving place to unappropriate figures, to historic or fabulous allusions pedantic and ill-timed; to frigid and prolix explanations of the very thing he had said before; to weakness in short, to shallowness, to an insufferable tone, into which the rich abundance and amiable purity of his diction and versification degenerated.