If it be correct to express human thought by writing whole pages of vague and bald abstract metaphysic, and then trying to explain them by concrete concetti, which bear an entirely accidental and mystical likeness to the notion which they are to illustrate, then let the metaphysic be as abstract as possible, the concetti as fanciful and far-fetched as possible.

Again, the reader is informed that 'Whoever can bear these'namely, certain concetti from Tasso and Guarini'may be assured he hath no Taste for Pastoral.'

We feel the same discord looking at them as we do while reading the occasional concetti in Petrarch; and all the more in each case does the discord pain us because we know that it results from their specific quality carried to excess.