of his enemies, and internally writhing beneath his kindness in pointing this out to him,) and have own contempt, he would fain conceal, under anony- published what is allowed to be the very worst prose mous bluster, and a vain endeavor to obtain the that ever was written, to prove that Pope was no esteem of others, after having for ever lost his own, poet, and that William Wordsworth is? his leprous sense of his own degradation. What is In other points, are they respectable, or respected? there in such a man to "envy? Who ever envied Is it on the open avowal of apostasy, on the patronthe envious? Is it his birth, his name, his fame, or age of government, that their claim is founded? his virtues, that I am to "envy?" I was born of Who is there who esteems those parricides of their the aristocracy, which he abhorred; and am sprung, own principles? They are, in fact, well aware that by my mother, from the kings who preceded those the reward of their change has been any thing but whom he has hired himself to sing. It cannot, honor. The times have preserved a respect for then, be his birth. As a poet, I have, for the past political consistency, and, even though changeable, eight years, had nothing to apprehend from a com- honor the unchanged. Look at Moore: it will be petition; and for the future," that life to come in long ere Southey meets with such a triumph in every poet's creed," is open to all. I will only re- London as Moore met with in Dublin, even if the mind Mr. Southey, in the words of a critic, who, if government subscribe for it, and set the money still living, would have annihilated Southey's lite- down to secret service. It was not less to the man rary existence now and hereafter, as the sworn foe than to the poet, to the tempted but unshaken of charlatans and impostors, from Macpherson down- patriot, to the not opulent but incorruptible fellowwards, that "those dreams were Settle's once and citizen, that the warm-hearted Irish paid the Ogilby's;" and for my own part, I assure him, that proudest of tributes. Mr. Southey may applaud whenever he and his sect are remembered, I shall himself to the world, but he has his own heartiest be proud to be "forgot." That he is not content contempt; and the fury with which he foams against with his success as a poet may reasonably be be- all who stand in the phalanx which he forsook, is, lieved he has been the ninepin of reviews; the as William Smith described it, "the rancor of the Edinburgh knocked him down, and the Quarterly renegado," the bad language of the prostitute who set him up; the government found him useful in stands at the corner of the street, and showers her the perodical line, and made a point of recommend- slang upon all, except those who may have bestowed ing his works to purchasers, so that he is occasion-upon her her "little shilling." ally bought, (I mean his book, as well as the au- Hence his quarterly overflowings, political and thor,) and may be found on the same shelf, if not literary, in what he has himself terized "the upon the table, of most of the gentlemen employed ungentle craft," and his especial wrath against Mr. in the different offices. With regard to his private Leigh Hunt, notwithstanding that Hunt has done virtues, I know nothing-of his principles, I have more for Wordsworth's reputation as a poet (such heard enough. As far as having been, to the best as it is), than all the Lakers could in their interof my power, benevolent to others, I do not fear the change of self-praises for the last twenty-five years. comparison; and for the errors of the passions, was And here I wish to say a few words on the present Mr. Southey always so tranquil and stainless? Did state of English poetry. That this is the age of he never covet his neighbor's wife? Did he never the decline of English poetry will he doubted by calumniate his neighbor's wife's daughter, the off- few who have calmly considered the subject. That spring of her he coveted? So much for the apostle there are men of genius among the present poets of pantisocracy. makes little against the fact, because it has been Of the "lofty-minded, virtuous" Wordsworth, well said, that "next to him who forms the taste one anecdote will suffice to speak his sincerity. In of his country, the greatest genius is he who cora conversation with Mr. upon poetry, he rupts it." No one has ever denied genius to concluded with, "After all, I would not give five Marino, who corrupted not merely the taste of shillings for all that Southey has ever written." Italy, but that of all Europe, for nearly a century. Perhaps this calculation might rather show his The great cause of the present deplorable state of esteem for five shillings than his low estimate of Dr. English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd Southey; but considering that when he was in his and systematic depreciation of Pope, in which need, and Southey had a shilling, Wordsworth is for the last few years, there has been a kind said to have had generally a sixpence out of it, it of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most bas an awkward sound in the way of valuation. opposite opinions have united upon this topic. This anecdote was told me by persons who, if Warton and Churchill began it, having borrowed quoted by name, would prove that its genealogy is poetical as well as true. I can give my authority for this; and am ready to adduce it also for Mr. Southey's circulation of the falsehood before men tioned. Of Coleridge, I shall say nothing-why, he may divine. the hint probably from the heroes of the Dunciad, and their own internal conviction that their proper reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious of poets-he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his reproach-was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. GoldI have said more of these people than I intended smith, and Rogers, and Campbell, his most sucin this place, being somewhat stirred by the remarks cessful disciples; and Hayley, who, however feeble, which induced me to commence upon the topic. I has left one poem "that will not be willingly let see nothing in these men as poets, or as individuals-die" (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the little in their talents, and less in their characters, reputation of that pure and perfect style; and to prevent honest men from expressing for them Crabbe, the first of living poets, has almost equalled considerable contempt, in prose or rhyme, as it the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down happen. Mr. Southey has the Quarterly for his by a single poem in the Antijacobin; and the field of rejoinder, and Mr. Wordsworth his post-Cruscans, from Merry to Jerningham, who were scripts to Lyrical Ballads," where the two great annihilated (if Nothing can be said to be anni instances of the sublime are taken from himself and lated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome satiMilton. "Over her own sweet voice the stock-rists. may dove broods;" that is to say, she has the pleasure At the same time, Mr. Southey was favoring the of listening to herself, in common with Mr. Words- public with Wat Tyler and Joan of Arc, to the worth upon most of his public appearances. "What great glory of the Drama and Epos. I beg pardon, divinity doth hedge" these persons, that we should Wat Tyler, with Peter Bell, was still in MS., and respect them? Is it Apollo? Are they not of those it was not till after Mr. Southey had received his who called Dryden's Ode "a drunken song?" who have discovered that Gray's Elegy is full of faults, "The Loves of the Triangles," the joint production of Mrs. Canaing (see Coleridge's Life, vol. i. no e, for Wordsworth's and Frere. Malmsey butt, and Mr. Wordsworth became quali-Kehama, Gebir, and such gibberish, written in all fied to guage it, that the great revolutionary tragedy metres and in no language. Hunt, who had powers came before the public and the Court of Chancery, to have made "the Story of Rimini" as perfect as Wordsworth was peddling his lyrical ballads, and a fable of Dryden, has thought fit to sacrifice his brooding a preface, to be succeeded in due course genius and his taste to some unintelligible notions by a postscript; both couched in such prose as must of Wordsworth, which I defy him to explain. give peculiar delight to those who have read the Moore has but why continue ?-All, with prefaces of Pope and Dryden; scarcely less cele- the exception of Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell, brated for the beauty of their prose, than for the who may be considered as having taken their charms of their verse. Wordsworth is the reverse station, will, by the blessing of God, survive their of Molière's gentleman who had been " talking own reputation, without attaining any very extraprose all his life, without knowing it;" for he ordinary period of longevity. Of course there must thinks that he has been all his life writing both be a still further exception in favor of those who, prose and verse, and neither of what he conceives having never obtained any reputation at all, unless to be such can be properly said to be either one or it be among provincial literati, and their own the other. Mr. Coleridge, the future vates, poet families, have none to lose; and of Moore, who, as and seer of the Morning Post, (an honor also the Burns of Ireland, possesses a fame which canclaimed by Mr. Fitzgerald, of the "Rejected Ad- not be lost. dresses,") who ultimately prophesied the downfall The greater part of the poets mentioned, howof Bonaparte, to which he himself mainly con-ever, have been able to gather together a few tributed, by giving him the nickname of "the Cor- followers. A paper of the Connoisseur says, that sican," was then employed in predicating_the" it is observed by the French, that a cat, a priest, damnation of Mr. Pitt, and the desolation of Eng- and an old woman, are sufficient to constitute a land, in the two very best copies of verses he ever religious sect in England." The same number of wrote: to wit, the infernal eclogue of "Fire, Famine, animals, with a difference in kind, will suffice for a and Slaughter," and the "Ode to the departing Year." poetical one. If we take Sir George Beaumont These three personages, Southey, Wordsworth, instead of the priest, and Mr. Wordsworth for the and Coleridge, had all of them a very natural old woman, we shall nearly complete the quota antipathy to Pope; and I respect them for it, as required; but I fear that Mr. Southey will but the only original feeling or principle which they indifferently represent the CAT, having shown himhave contrived to preserve. But they have been self but too distinctly to be of a species to which joined in it by those who have joined them in no- that noble creature is peculiarly hostile. thing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole Nevertheless, I will not go so far as Wordworth heterogeneous mass of living English poets, except-in his postscript, who pretends that no great poet ing Crabbe, Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, ever had immediate fame; which being interpreted, both by precept and practice, have proved their means that William Wordsworth is not quite so adherence; and by me, who have shamefully much read by his cotemporaries as might be deviated in practice, but have ever loved and desirable. This assertion is as false as it is foolish. honored Pope's poetry with my whole soul, and Homer's glory depended upon his present popahope to do so till my dying day. I would rather larity: he recited,-and without the strongest imsee all I have ever written lining the same trunk in pression of the moment, who would have gotten which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern the Iliad by heart, and given it to tradition? Eaepic poem at Malta, in 1811, (I opened it to take nius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, out a change after the paroxysm of a tertian, in the Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, absence of my servant, and found it lined with the Theocritus, all the great poets of antiquity, were name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur street, and the delight of their cotemporaries. The very with the epic poetry alluded to), than sacrifice what existence of a poet, previous to the invention of I firmly believe in as the Christianity of English printing, depended upon his present popularity; poetry, the poetry of Pope. and how often has it impaired his future fame? But the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the Lakers, Hardly ever. History informs us that the best and Hunt and his school, and every body else have come down to us. The reason is evident; the with their school, and even Moore without a most popular found the greatest number of transcrischool, and dilettanti lecturers at institutions, bers for their MSS., and that the taste of their and elderly gentlemen who translate and imitate, cotemporaries was corrupt can hardly be avouched and young ladies who listen and repeat, baronets by the moderns, the mightiest of whom have but who draw indifferent frontispieces for bad poets, barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and noblemen who let them dine with them in the and Tasso, were all the darlings of the cotemcountry, the small body of the wits and the great porary reader. Dante's poem was celebrated long body of the blues, have latterly united in a deprecia- before his death: and, not long after it, states tion, of which their fathers would have been as negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites much ashamed as their children will be. In the of the composition of the Divina Commedia. Pe mean time, what have we got instead? The Lake trarch was crowned in the Capitol. Ariosto was school, which begun with an epic poem, written in permitted to pass free by the public robber who had six weeks, (so Joan of Arc proclaimed herself,) and read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend finished with a ballad composed in twenty years, as Mr. Wordsworth to try the same experiment with "Peter Bell's" creator takes care to inform the his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding the critifew who will inquire. What have we got instead? cisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, in the Capitol, but for his death. imitated from Scott and myself, who have both It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of made the best of our bad materials and erroneous the chief poets of the only modern nation in Europe system. What have we got instead? Madoc, which that has a poetical language-the Italian. In our is neither an epic nor any thing else; Thalaba, own, Shakspeare, Spencer, Johnson, Waller, Dry ⚫ Goldsmith has anticipated the definition of the Lake poetry, as far as such things can be defined. "Gentlemen, the present piece is not of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; there are none of your Turnuses or Dios in it; it is an historical description of nature. I only beg you'll endeavor to make your soul's in unison with mine, and hear with the same enthusiasm with which I have written." Would not this have made a proper proem to the Excursion, and the poet and his pedler? It would have answered perfectly for that purpose, had it not unfortunately been written in good English. den, Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down. But the Epigram of Dryden,* and the very • The well-known lines under Milton's picture,-- "Three poets in three distant ages born," &c. sale of his work, in proportion to the less reading than in the "Excursion." If you search for pas time of its publication, prove him to have been sion, where is it to be found stronger than in the honored by his cotemporaries. I will venture to epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and assert, that the sale of the Paradise Lost was great- Arcite? Do you wish for invention, imagination, er in the first four years after its publication, than sublimity, character? seek them in the Rape of that of "The Excursion' in the same number, the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode of Saint with the difference of nearly a century and a half Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you between them of time, and of thousands in point of will discover in these two poets only, all for which general readers. Notwithstanding Mr. Wordsworth's you must ransack innumerable metres, and God having pressed Milton into his service as one of only knows how many writers of the day, without those not presently popular, to favor his own pur- finding a tittle of the same qualities,-with the adpose of proving that our grandchildren will read him dition, too, of wit, of which the latter have none. (the said William Wordsworth) I would recommend I have not, however, forgotten Thomas Brown the him to begin first with our grandmothers. But he Younger, nor the Fudge Family, nor Whistlecraft; need not be alarmed; he may yet live to see all the but that is not wit-it is humor. I will say nothing of envies pass away, as Darwin and Seward, and Hoole, the harmony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, and Hole, and Hoyle have passed away; but their for there is not a living poet (except Rogers, Gifdeclension will not be his ascension: he is essentially ford, Campbell, and Crabbe), who can write an a bad writer, and all the failures of others can never heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beaustrengthen him. He may have a sect, but he will ty of their versification has withdrawn the public never have a public; and his "audience" will attention from their other excellences, as the vulgar always be "few," without being "fit,"-except for eye will rest more upon the splendor of the uniform Bedlam. than the quality of the troops. It is this very harIt may be asked, why having this opinion of the mony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the present state of poetry in England, and having had vulgar and atrocious cant against him:-because it long, as my friends and others well knew-pos- his versification is perfect, it is assumed that it is Bessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the his only perfection; because his truths are so clear, ear of the public for the time being-I have not it is asserted that he has no invention; and because adopted a different plan in my own compositions, he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that and endeavored to correct rather than encourage he has no genius. We are sneeringly told that he the taste of the day. To this I would answer, that is the "Poet of Reason," as if this was a reason it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the for his being no poet. Taking passage for passage, right, and that I have never contemplated the pros- I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with pect "of filling (with Peter Bell, see its Preface) imagination from Pope than from any two living permanently a station in the literature of the coun- poets, be they who they may. To take an instance try." Those who know me best, know this, and at random from a species of composition not very that I have been considerably astonished at the favorable to imagination-Satire: set down the temporary success of my works, having flattered no character of Sporus, with all the wonderful play person and no party, and expressed cpinions which of fancy which is scattered over it, and place by its are not those of the general reader. Could I have side an equal number of verses, from any two existanticipated the degree of attention which has been ing poets, of the same power and the same variety accorded me, assuredly I would have studied more where will you find them? to deserve it. But I have lived in far countries I merely mention one instance of many, in reply abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which to the injustice done to the memory of him who was not favorable to study or reflection; so harmonized our poetical language. The attorneys' tnat almost all I have written has been mere pas- clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier sion,-passion, it is true, of different kinds, but to distort themselves to the new models, than to always passion; for in me (if it be not an Irishism toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted to say so) my indifference was a kind of passion, their fathers. They were besides smitten by being the result of experience, and not the philosophy of told that the new school were to revive the language nature. Writing grows a habit, like a woman's of Queen Elizabeth, the true English: as every gallantry: there are women who have had no in- body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better trigue, but few who have had but one only; so there than French, by a species of literary treason. are millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have written only one. And thus, having written once, I wrote on; encouraged no doubt by the success of the moment, yet by no means anticipating its duration, and I will venture to say, scarcely even wishing it. But then I did other things besides write, which by no means contributed either to improve my writings or my prosperity. I have thus expressed publicly upon the poetry of the day, the opinion I have long entertained and expressed of it to all who have asked it, and to some who would rather not have heard it: as I told Moore not very long ago "we are all wrong except Rogers, Crabbe, and Campbell." Without being old in years, I am old in days, and do not feel the adequate spirit within me to attempt a work which should show what I think right in poetry, and must content myself with having denounced what is wrong. There are, I trust, younger spirits rising up in England, who, escaping the contagion which has swept away poetry from our literature, will recall it to their country, such as it once was and may still be. In the mean time, the best sign of amendment will be repentance, and new, and frequent editions of Pope and Dryden. There will be found as comfortable metaphysics, and ten times more poetry in the "Essay on Man,"| • "Let Sports tremble-A. What? that thing of silk, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. Or spite, or ammut, or rhymes, or blasphemies, And did not know it; no, they went about A little before, the manner of Pope is termed, "A scism," Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land." ↑ I thought "foppery," was a consequence of finement: but n'importe. The above will suffice to show the notions enter Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,-or else such rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not "prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer." The opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference which time will restore to him from all, but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject if well tained by the new performers on the English lyre balanced, but in the stanza of Spencer or of Tasso, of him who made it most tuneable, and the great or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of improvements of their own "variazioni." Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indo- which he has learnt to write such lines and such lence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, sentiments as the above. He says "easy was the although it might have taken up six months instead task " of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling of weeks in the composition. I recommend also him, I presume. I recommend him to try before he to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present is so positive on the subject, and then compare what laureate's Odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint he will have then written and what he has now wit Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of ten with the humblest and earliest compositions of Mr. Southey. Pope, produced in years still more youthful than To the heaven-born genii and inspired young those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new "Esscriveners of the day much of this will appear par-say on Criticism," entitled "Sleep and Poetry,” (an adox: it will appear so even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be a reacknowledged truth in ten more. † As a balance to these lines, and to the sense and sentiment of thes In the mean time, I will conclude with two quota-school, I will put down a passage or two from Pope's earliest poems, tions, both intended for some of my old classical at random :friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves honored by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the "little nightingale" of Twickenham. The first is from the notes to the poem of the "Friends."* "It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticisms have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection." The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him: + "But ye were dead Of poesy. Il-fated, impious race, That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, • Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson, In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated Nov. 12, 1821, Lord Byron says,-" Mr. Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written, of a decline produced by his having burst a blood-vessel on reading the article on his Endymion,' in the Quarterly Review. I have read the article before and since; and although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do Justice to his own genius, which, malgré all the So spelt by the author. "Envy her own snakes shall feel, O'er heaps of ruin stalk'd the stately hind; Whose honors with increase of ages grow, T'admire superior sense, and doubt their own!” "Amphion there the loud creating lyre "So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost, "Thus, when we view some well-proportion'd dome, All comes united to the admiring eyes: fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His A thousand similar passages crowd upon me, all composed by Pope beke fragment of Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as his two-and-twentieth year; and yet it is contended that he is no poet, and sublime as Fachylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he we are told so in such lines as I beg the reader to compare with these pra himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not ful verses of the "no poet." Must we repeat the question of Jo taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical" If Pope is not a poet, where is poetry to be found?" Even in descri models of the language." poetry, the lowest department of the art, he will be found, on a fair examine tion, to surpass any living writer. It was at least a grammar “school." minous_title,) from whence the above canons are of naming him, by the same species of courtesy taken. Pope's was written at nineteen, and pub- which has induced him to designate me as the lished at twenty-two. author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and Poets, he may perhaps recall to mind that I merely such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were express an opinion long ago entertained and speciJohnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, fied in a letter to Mr. James Hogg, which he the Gifford, Matthias, Haley, and the author of the said James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of Paradise of Coquettes; to whom may be added pens, showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814, Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, as he himself informed me in his answer, telling me Merivale, and others who have not had their full by way of apology, that "he'd be dd if he could fame, because "the race is not always to the swift, help it;" and I am not conscious of any thing like nor the battle to the strong," and because there is "envy or "exacerbation" at this moment which a fortune in fame as in all other things. Now, of induces me to think better or worse of Southey, all the new schools-I say all, for, "like Legion, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now, they are many"-has there appeared a single scholar although I do know one or two things more which who has not made his master ashamed of him? have added to my contempt for them as individuals. unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated every body, And, in return for Mr. Wilson's invective, I shall and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott found content myself with asking one question: Did he peculiar favor and imitation among the fair sex: never compose, recite, or sing any parody or parothere was Miss Holford, and Miss Mitford, and Miss dies upon the Psalms (of what nature this deponent Francis; but, with the greatest respect be it spoken, saith not), in certain jovial meetings of the youth none of his imitators did much honor to the origi- of Edinburgh? It is not that I think any great nal, except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the harm if he did; because it seems to me that all deappearance of The Bridal of Triermain," and pends upon the intention of such a parody. If it "Harold the Dauntless," which in the opinion of be meant to throw ridicule on the sacred original, it some equalled if not surpassed him; and lo! after is a sin; if it be intended to burlesque the profane three or four years, they turned out to be the Mas-subject, or to inculcate a moral truth, it is none. If ter's own compositions. Have Southey, or Cole- it were, the unbelievers' Creed, the many political ridge, or t'other fellow, made a follower of renown? parodies of various parts of the Scriptures and Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in liturgy, particularly a celebrated one of the Lord's the "City of the Plague." Has Moore, or any Prayer, and the beautiful moral parable in favor of other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable toleration by Franklin, which has often been taken imitator, or rather disciple? Now, it is remark- for a real extract from Genesis, would all be sins of able, that almost all the followers of Pope, whom I a damning nature. But I wish to know, if Mr. have named, have produced beautiful and standard Wilson ever has done this, and if he has, why he works, and it was not the number of his imitators should be so very angry with similar portions of who finally hurt his fame, but the despair of imi- Don Juan ?-Did no "parody profane" appear in tation, and the ease of not imitating him sufficiently. any of the earlier numbers of Blackwood's MagaThis, and the same reason which induced the Athen-zine? ian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides,| I will now conclude this long answer to a short "because he was tired of always hearing him called article, repenting of having said so much in my own the Just," have produced the temporary exile of defence, and so little on the "crying, left-hand fallPope from the State of Literature. But the term ings off and national defections" of the poetry of of his ostracism will expire, and the sooner the better, not for him, but for those who banished him, and for the coming generation, who "Will blush to find their fathers were his foea." the present day. Having said this, I can hardly be expected to defend Don Juan, or any other "living" poetry, and shall not make the attempt. And although I do not think that Mr. John Wilson has in this instance treated me with candor or consideration, I trust that the tone I have used in speaking I will now return to the writer of the article which of him personally will prove that I bear him as lithas drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly tle malice as I really believe at the bottom of his take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and heart he bears towards me; but the duties of an acquirements, well known to the public as the editor, like those of a tax-gatherer, are paramount author of the "City of the Plague," "Isle of and peremptory. I have done. Palms," and other productions. I take the liberty BYRON. |