If we can advance any propositions that are both true and new, these are indisputably our own, by right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is ol… - Charles Caleb Colton

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.

This tendency, however, to ascribe an universality of genius to great men, led Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satyrical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But, with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Virgil, who, indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.

An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife.