Ver. 19. _Yet, if we look, &c._] But the author having been thus free
with the fundamental quality of criticism, judgment, so as to charge it
with inconstancy and partiality, and to be often warped by custom and
affection, that he may not be misunderstood, he next explains, from ver.
18 to 36, the nature of judgment, and the accidents occasioning those
miscarriages before objected to it. He owns, that the seeds of judgment
are indeed sown in the minds of most men, but by ill culture, as it
springs up, it generally runs wild, either on the one hand, by false
learning, which pedants call philology, and by false reasoning, which
philosophers call school-learning, or, on the other, by false wit, which
is not regulated by sense, and by false politeness, which is solely
regulated by the fashion. Both these sorts, who have their judgment thus
doubly depraved, the poet observes, are naturally turned to censure and
abuse, only with this difference, that the learned dunce always affects
to be on the reasoning, and the unlearned fool on the laughing side. And
thus, at the same time, our author proves the truth of his introductory
observation, that the number of bad critics is vastly superior to that
of bad poets.