would it be if such a work as this history, which hath employed some thousands of hours in the composing,
should be liable to be condemned, because some particular chapter, or perhaps chapters, may be obnoxious
to very just and sensible objections. And yet nothing is more common than the most rigorous sentence
upon books supported by such objections, which, if they were rightly taken (and that they are not always),
do by no means go to the merit of the whole. In the theatre especially, a single expression which doth
not coincide with the taste of the audience, or with any individual critic of that audience, is sure to be
hissed; and one scene which should be disapproved would hazard the whole piece. To write within such
severe rules as these is as impossible as to live up to some splenetic opinions: and if we judge according
to the sentiments of some critics, and of some Christians, no author will be saved in this world, and no
man in the next.