error in the whole design.

I have already declared who are the only persons that are the
adequate object of private satire, and who they are that may
properly be exposed by name for public examples of vices and
follies, and therefore I will trouble your lordship no further with
them. Of the best and finest manner of satire, I have said enough
in the comparison betwixt Juvenal and Horace; it is that sharp well-
mannered way of laughing a folly out of countenance, of which your
lordship is the best master in this age. I will proceed to the
versification which is most proper for it, and add somewhat to what
I have said already on that subject. The sort of verse which is
called "burlesque," consisting of eight syllables or four feet, is
that which our excellent Hudibras has chosen. I ought to have
mentioned him before when I spoke of Donne, but by a slip of an old
man's memory he was forgotten. The worth of his poem is too well
known to need my commendation, and he is above my censure. His
satire is of the Varronian kind, though unmixed with prose. The
choice of his numbers is suitable enough to his design as he has
managed it; but in any other hand the shortness of his verse, and
the quick returns of rhyme, had debased the dignity of style. And
besides, the double rhyme (a necessary companion of burlesque
writing) is not so proper for manly satire, for it turns earnest too
much to jest, and gives us a boyish kind of pleasure. It tickles
awkwardly, with a kind of pain to the best sort of readers; we are
pleased ungratefully, and, if I may say so, against our liking. We
thank him not for giving us that unseasonable delight, when we know
he could have given us a better and more solid. He might have left
that task to others who, not being able to put in thought, can only
makes us grin with the excrescence of a word of two or three