But the Edinburgh Reviewers, and the Lakers, and Hunt and his school, and every body else with their school, and even Moore without a school, and dilettanti lecturers at institutions, and elderly gentlemen who translate and imitate, and young ladies who listen and repeat, baronets who draw indifferent frontispieces for bad poets, and noblemen who let them dine with them in the country, the small body of the wits and the great body of the blues, have latterly united in a depreciation, of which their fathers would have been as much ashamed as their children will be. In the meantime, what have we got instead? The Lake school, which began with an epic poem," written in six weeks," (so Joan of Arc proclaimed herself,) and finished with a ballad composed in twenty years, as "Peter Bell's " creator takes care to inform the few who will inquire. What have we got instead? A deluge of flimsy and unintelligible romances, imitated from Scott and myself, who have both made the best of our bad materials and erroneous system. What have we got instead? Madoc, which is neither an epic nor any thing else? Thalaba, Kehama, Gebir, and such gibberish, written in all metres and in no language. Hunt, who had powers to have made the Story of Rimini" as perfect as a fable of Dryden, has thought fit to sacrifice his genius and his taste to some unintelligible notions of Wordsworth, which I defy him to explain. Moore has But why continue? All, with the exception of Crabbe, Rogers, and Campbell, who may be considered as having taken their station, will, by the blessing of God, survive their own reputation, without attaining any very extraordinary period of longevity. Of course there must be a still further exception in favour of those who, having never obtained any reputation at all, unless it be among provincial literati, and their own families, have none to lose, and of Moore, who, as the Burns of Ireland, possesses a fame which cannot be lost.

The greater part of the poets mentioned, however, have been able to gather together a few followers. A paper of the Connoisseur says, that "it is observed by the French, that a cat, a priest, and an old woman, are sufficient to constitute a religious sect in England." The same number of animals, with some difference in kind, will suffice for a poetical one. If we take Sir George Beaumont instead of the priest, and Mr. Wordsworth for the old woman, we shall nearly complete the quota required; but I fear that Mr. Southey will but indifferently represent the CAT, having shown himself but too distinctly to be of a species to which that noble creature is peculiarly hostile.

Nevertheless, I will not go so far as Wordsworth in his postscript, who pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame; which being interpreted, means that William Wordsworth is not quite so much read by his cotemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present popularity: he recited, and without the strongest impression of the moment, who would have gotten the Iliad by heart, and given it to tradition? Ennius, Terence, Plautus, Lucretius, Horace, Virgil, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Sappho, Anacreon, Theocritus, all the great poets of antiquity, were the delight of their cotemporaries. The very existence of a poet, previous to the invention of printing, depended upon has present popularity; and how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is evident; the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers for their MSS.; and that the taste of their cotemporaries was corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of whom have but barely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, were all the darlings of the cotemporary reader. Dante's poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it, States negotiated for his ashes, and

[The well-known lines under Milton's picture, —

*Three poets, in three distant ages born," &c.]

The Rev. Richard Hole. He published in early life a versification of Figal, and in 1789, "Arthur, a Poetical Romance." He died in 1803.j

disputed for the sites of the composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. Wordsworth to try the same experiment with his Smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have have been crowned in the Capitol, but for his death.

It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the Italian. In our own Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden, 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 sale of his work, in proportion to the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been honoured by his cotemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after its publication, than that of "The Excursion" in the same number, with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of time, and of thousands in point of general readers. Notwithstanding Mr. Wordsworth's having pressed Milton into his service as one of those not presently popular, to favour his own purpose of proving that our grandchildren will read him (the said William Wordsworth), I would recommend him to begin first with our grandmothers. But he need not be alarmed; he may yet live to see all the envies pass away, as Darwin and Seward, and Hoole, and Hole, and Hoyle have passed away; but their declension will not be his ascension; he is essentially a bad writer, and all the failures of others can never strengthen him. He may have a sect, but he will never have a public; and his "audience" will always be "few," without being "fit,"except for Bedlam.

It may be asked, why, having this opinion of the present state of poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others well knew-possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the ear of the public for the time being I have not adopted a different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct rather than encourage the taste of the day. To this I would answer, that it is easier to perceive the wrong than to pursue the right, and that I have never contemplated the prospect of filling (with Peter Bell, see its preface) permanently a station in the literature of the country." Those who know me best know this, and that I have been considerably astonished at the temporary success of my works, having flattered no person and no party, and expressed opinions which are not those of the general reader. Could I have anticipated the degree of attention which has been accorded me, assuredly I would have studied more to deserve it. But I have lived in far countries abroad, or in the agitating world at home, which was not favourable to study or reflection; so that almost all I have written has been mere passion,-passion, it is true, of different kinds, but always passion: for in me (if it be not an Irishism to say so) my indifference was a kind of passion, the result of experience, and not the philosophy of nature. Writing grows a habit, like a woman's gallantry; there are women who have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only; so there 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

3 Charles Hoyle, of Trinity College, Cambridge, author of “Exodus," an epic in thirteen books.]

4 [Peter Bell first saw the light in 1798. During this long interval, pains have been taken at diferen times to make the production less unworthy of a favour ble reception; or rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of my country.WORDSWORTH, 1819.]

But to continue. You call upon Lord Byron, always supposing him not the author, to disclaim" with all gentlemanly haste," &c. &c. I am told that Lord B. is in a foreign country, some thousand miles off it may be; so that it will be difficult for him to hurry to your wishes. In the meantime, perhaps you yourself have set an example of more haste than gentility; but "the more haste the worse speed."

Let us now look at the charge itself, my dear Roberts, which appears to me to be in some degree not quite explicitly worded:

"I bribed my Grandmother's Review, the British."

I recollect hearing, soon after the publication, this subject discussed at the tea-table of Mr. Sotheby the poet, who expressed himself, I remember, a good deal surprised that you had never reviewed his epic poem of" Saul," nor any of his six tragedies; of which, in one instance, the bad taste of the pit, and, in all the rest, the barbarous repugnance of the principal actors, prevented the performance. Mrs. and the Misses S. being in a corner of the room, perusing the proof sheets of Mr. S.'s poems in Italy, or on Italy, as he says, ( 1 wish, by the by, Mrs. S. would make the tea a little stronger,) the male part of the conversazione were at liberty to make a few observations on the poem and passage in question; and there was a difference of opinion. Some thought the allusion was to the British Critic;" others, that by the expression, "My Grandmother's Review," it was intimated that "my grandmother" was not the reader of the review, but actually the writer; thereby insinuating, my dear Roberts, that you were an old woman; because, as people often say, "Jeffrey's Review," "Gifford's Review," in lieu of Edinburgh and Quarterly so my Grandmother's Review" and Roberts's might be almost synonymous. Now, whatever colour this insinuation might derive from the circumstance of your wearing a gown, as well as from your time of life, your general style, and various passages of your writings, I will take upon myself to exculpate you from all suspicion of the kind, and assert, without calling Mrs. Roberts in testimony, that if ever you should be chosen Pope, you will pass through all the previous ceremonies with as much credit as any pontiff since the parturition of Joan. It is very unfair to judge of sex from writings, particularly from those of the British Review. We are all liable to be deceived; and it is an indisputable fact, that many of the best articles in your journal, which were attributed to a veteran female, were actually written by you yourself; and yet to this day there are people who could never find out the difference. But let us return to the more immediate question.

I agree with you, that it is impossible Lord Byron should be the author, not only because, as a British peer and a British poet, it would be impracticable for him to have recourse to such facetious fiction, but for some other reasons which you have omitted to state. In the first place, his Lordship has no grandmother. Now, the author-and we may believe him in this-doth expressly state that the "British" is his "Grandmother's Review;" and if, as I think I have distinctly proved, this was not a mere figurative allusion to your supposed intellectual age and sex, my dear friend, it follows, whether you be she or no, that there is such an elderly lady still extant. And I can the more readily credit this, having a sexagenary aunt of my own, who perused you constantly, till unfortunately falling asleep over the leading article of your last number, her spectacles fell off and were broken against the fender, after a faithful service of fifteen years, and she has never been able to fit her eyes since; so that I have been forced to read you aloud to her; and this is in fact the way in which I became acquainted with the subject of my present letter, and thus determined to become your public correspondent.

In the next place, Lord B.'s destiny seems in some sort like that of Hercules of old, who became the author of all

Whether it be the British Critic, or the British Review, against w the nut be lont prefers so grave a charge, or rather so facetions an Aation, we are at a lose to determine. The latter les taught it worth

unappropriated prodigies. Lord B. has been supposed the author of the " Vampire," of a " Pilgrimage to Jerusalem," "To the Dead Sea," of "Death upon the Pale Horse," of odes to" La Valette," to " Saint Helena," to the Land of the Gaul," and to a sucking child. Now, he turned out to have written none of these things. Besides, you say, he knows in what a spirit of, &c. you criticise:- Are you sure he knows all this? that he has read you like my poor dear aunt? They tell me he is a queer sort of a man; and I would not be too sure, if I were you, either of what he has read or of what he has written. I thought his style had been the serious and terrible. As to his sending you money, this is the first time that ever I heard of his paying his reviewers in that coin, I thought it was rather in their own, to judge from some of his earlier productions. Besides, though he may not be profuse in his expenditure, I should conjecture that his reviewer's bill is not so long as his tailor's.

Shall I give you what I think a prudent opinion? I don't mean to insinuate, God forbid ! but if, by any accident, there should have been such a correspondence between you and the unknown author, whoever he may be, send him back his money: I dare say he will be very glad to have it again; it can't be much, considering the value of the article and the circulation of the journal; and you are too modest to rate your praise beyond its real worth.-Don't be angry, you won't, at this appraisement of your powers of eulogy; for on the other hand, my dear friend, depend upon it your abuse is worth, not its own weight,- that's a feather, but your weight in gold. So don't spare it: if he has bargained for that, give it handsomely, and depend upon your doing him a friendly office.

I know

But I only speak in case of possibility; for, as I said before, I cannot believe, in the first instance, that you would receive a bribe to praise any person whatever; and still less can I believe that your praise could ever produce such an offer. You are a good creature, my dear Roberts, and a clever fellow; else I could almost suspect that you had fallen into the very trap set for you in verse by this anonymous wag, who will certainly be but too happy to see you saving him the trouble of making you ridiculous. The fact is, that the solemnity of your eleventh article does make you look a little more absurd than you ever yet looked, in all probability, and at the same time does no good; for if any body believed before in the octave stanzas, they will believe still, and you will find it not less difficult to prove your negative, than the learned Partridge found it to demonstrate his not being dead, to the satisfaction of the readers of almanacs.

What the motives of this writer may have been for (as you magnificently translate his quizzing you) “stating, with the particularity which belongs to fact, the forgery of a groundless fiction," (do pray, my dear R., talk a little less "in King Cambyses' vein,") I cannot pretend to say; perhaps to laugh at you, but that is no reason for your benevolently making all the world laugh also. I approve of your being angry; I tell you I am angry too; but you should not have shown it so outrageously. Your solemn "if somebody personating the Editor of the, &c. &c. has received from Lord B.,or from any other person," reminds me of Charley Incledon's usual exordium when people came into the tavern to hear him sing without paying their share of the reckoning" if a maun, or ony maun, or any other maun," &c. &c.; you have both the same redundant eloquence. But why should you think any body would personate you? Nobody would dream of such a prank who ever read your compositions, and perhaps not many who have heard your conversation. But I have been inoculated with a little of your prolixity. The fact is, my dear Roberts, that somebody has tried to make a fool of you, and what he did not succeed in doing, you have done for him and for yourself.

With regard to the poem itself, or the author, whom I cannot find out, (can you?) I have nothing to say, my business

its while, in a public paper, to make a serious reply. As we are not so sudy inclined, we shall leave our share of this acusation to its fate.. Brit. Critic.]

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."1 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 meantime, 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," than in the "Excursion." If you search for passion, where is it to be found stronger than in the epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, or in Palamon and Arcite? Do you wish for invention, imagination, sublimity, character? seek them in the Rape of the Lock, the Fables of Dryden, the Ode of Saint Cecilia's Day, and Absalom and Achitophel: you will discover in these two poets only, all for which you must ransack innumerable metres, and God only knows how many writers of the day, without finding a tittle of the same qualities, with the addition, too, of wit, of which the latter have none. I have not, however, forgotten Thomas Brown the Younger, nor the Fudge Family 2, nor Whistlecraft; but that is not witit is humour. I will say nothing of the harmony of. pe and Dryden în comparison, for there is not a living poet (except Rogers, Gifford, Campbell, and Crabbe,) who can write an heroic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their versification has withdrawn the public attention from their other excellences, as the vulgar eye wiil rest more upon the splendour of the uniform than the quality of the troops. It is this very harmony, particularly in Pope, which has raised the vulgar and atrocious cant against him: - because his versification is perfect, it is assumed that it is his only perfection; because his truths are so clear, it is asserted that he has no invention; and because he is always intelligible, it is taken for granted that he has no genius. We are sneeringly told that he is the " Poet of Reason," as if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking passage for passage, I will undertake to cite more lines teeming with imagination from Pope than from any two living poets, be they who they may. To take an instance at random from a species of composition not very favourable to imagination - Satire: set down the character of Sporus3, with all the wonderful play of fancy which is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same variety where will you find them?

I merely mention one instance of many, in reply to the injustice done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The attorneys' clerks, and other self

[I certainly ventured to differ from the judgment of my noble friend, no less in his attempts to depreciate that peculiar walk of the art in which he himself so grandly trod, than in the inconsistency of which I thought him guilty, in condemning all those who stood up for particular "schools " of poetry, and yet, at the same time, maintaining so exclusive a theory of the art himself. How little, however, he attended to either the grounds or degrees of my dissent from him will appear by the following wholesale report of my opinion in "Detached Thoughts:"-" One of my notions different from those of my contemporaries, is, that the present is not a high age of English poetry. There are more poets (soi-disant) than ever there were, and proportionally less poetry. This thesis I have maintained for some years, but, strange to say, it meeteth not with favour from my brethren of the shell. Even Moore shakes his head, and firmly believes that it is the grand age of British poesy."— MOORE.]

2 [In 1812, Mr. Moore published "The Two-penny Post-bag; by Thomas Brown the Younger; and in 1818, "The Fudge Family in Paris."]

3

["Let Sporus tremble A. What? that thing of silk Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt, that stinks and sings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys;
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.

Whether in florid impotence he speaks.

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeals;

educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the symmetry of him who h enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language A Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than Freach, by a species of literary treason.

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 tur 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 ume will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been toore nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject if weil balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily hare grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to has Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc so worse, although it might have taken up six months rastead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovĒTS of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's Odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of Mr. Southey.

To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day much of this will appear paradox: it will appear sa even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a trem twenty years ago, and it will be a re-acknowledged truth is ten more. In the meantime, I will conclude with two qu tations, both intended for some of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to the themselves honoured by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their earest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the ute nightingale" of Twickenham. The first is from the notes is the Poem of the "Friends."

"It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that close notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energiaz, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this wat of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been XCMEZOTS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter st the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical members alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection."

The second is from the volume of a young person learning Hear to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. him: 5

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spits támself aby mat,
In puns, or politics, or tales, of lie,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies,
His wit all see-saw, between that an this.
Now high, now low, now master up, now MAN,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing that acting either part,
The trifling bead, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest,
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trost.
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.”
Prod. to sat]

4 [Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson 5 [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 tais was written, of a decline produced by his having bursi a blood rese 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 tak that a man should permit himself to be killed try it. But a young ix little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's diprecia of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genes, malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was unden redly of gewak promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually impaired by the Titans, and is as sabime as Achylus. He is a loss to our interature the more so, as he himself, before its death, is sold to have besu poruajed that he had not taken the right line, and was re-forming búa style upmin thạ more classical models of the language.]

"But ye were dead

To things ye knew not of-were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school!
Of dolls to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of poesy. Ill-fated, impious race,
That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,
And did not know it; no, they went about
Holding a poor decrepit standard out

Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau !"

A little before, the manner of Pope is termed,

"A scism, 2

Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,

Made great Apollo blush for this his land."3

I thought "foppery" was a consequence of refinement! but n'importe.

The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tuneable, and the great improvements of their own ** variazioni."

The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and such sentiments as the above. He says" easy was the task" of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I presume. I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subject, and then compare what he will have then written and what he has now written with the humblest and earliest compositions of Pope, produced in years still more youthful than those of Mr. Keats when he invented his new" Essay on Criticism," entitled "Sleep and Poetry" (an ominous title), from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's was written at nineteen, and published at twenty-two.

Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Goldsmith, Rogers, Campbell, Crabbe, Gifford, Matthias, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise of Coquettes; to whom may be aded Richards, Heber, Wrangham, Bland, Hodgson, Merivale, and others who have not had their full fame, because "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," and because there is a fortune in fame as in all other things. Now, of all the new schools- I say all, for, “like Legion, they are many" has there appeared a single

It was at least a grammar "school."

2 So spelt by the author.

3. As a balance to the lines, and to the sense and sentiment of the new school, I will put down a passage or two from l'ope's earliest poems, taken at random:

"Envy her own snakes shall feel,

And Persecution mourn her laoke wheel,
There Faction roar, Rebellion bite her chain,
And ga ping Furies thirst for blood in vain."

"Ab what avails his glossy varying dyes,
His purple crest, and scarlet circled eyes;
The vivid green his shining plumes unfold,
His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold."

"Round broken columns clasping ivy twined,
O'er heaps of run stalk'd the stately hind;
The for obscene to gaping tomis retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires.”

"Hall, bards triumphant! born in happier days;
Immortal heirs of universal praise!

Whose honours with increase of ages grow,
As streams roll down, enlarging as they flow:
Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet he found
Oh may some spark of your celestial fire,
The last, the meanest of your sons inspire,
(That on weak wings, from far pursues your flights;
Glows while he reads, but trembles as he writes),
To teach vain wits a science little known,
Tadmire superior sense, and doubt their own!"

"Amphion there the loud creating lyre
Strikes, and behold a sudden Thebes aspire
Citherron's ectors answer to his call,
Ami half the mountain rolls into a wall."

"So Zerbia's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the const
Pens, unfeit, at distance roll away,
And on thong ure ice the lightnings play;
Eternal Knows the growing mass supply,

Tal the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky,

A Atlas, each hoary jule appears,

The gacher'd winter of a thousand years.

scholar who has not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated every body, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was Miss Holford 6, and Miss Mitford, and Miss Francis; but, with the greatest respect be it spoken, none of his imitators did much honour to the original, except Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, until the appearance of " The Bridal of Triermain," and " Harold the Dauntless," which in the opinion of some equalled if not surpassed him; and lo! after three or four years they turned out to be the Master's own compositions. Have Southey, or Coleridge, or 't other fellow, made a follower of renown? Wilson never did well till he set up for himself in the "City of the Plague." Has Moore, or any other living writer of reputation, had a tolerable imitator, or rather disciple? Now, it is remarkable, that almost all the followers of Pope, whom I have named, have produced beautiful and standard works; and it was not the number of his imitators who finally hurt his fame, but the despair of imitation, and the case of not imitating him sufficiently. This, and the same reason which induced the Athenian burgher to vote for the banishment of Aristides, "because he was tired of always hearing him called the Just," have produced the temporary exile of Pope from the State of Literature. But the term 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 foes."

I will now return to the writer of the article which has drawn forth these remarks, whom I honestly take to be John Wilson, a man of great powers and acquirements, well known to the public as the author of the "City of the Plague," "Isle of Palms," and other productions. I take the liberty of naming him, by the same species of courtesy which has induced him to designate me as the author of Don Juan. Upon the score of the Lake Poets, he may perhaps recall to mind that I merely express an opinion long ago entertained and specified in a letter to Mr. James Hogg, which he the said James Hogg, somewhat contrary to the law of pens, showed to Mr. John Wilson, in the year 1814, as he himself informed me in his answer, telling me by way of apology that "he'd be dd if he could help it;" and I am not conscious of anything like "envy" or "exacerbation" at this moment which induces me to think better or worse of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge as poets than I do now,

"Thus, when we view some well-proport'on'd domne,
The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes:

No monstrous beight, or breadth, or ength appear;
The whole at once is bold and regular."

A thousand similar passages crowd upon me, all composed by Pope before his two-and-twentieth year; and yet it is contended that he is no port, and we are told so in such lines as I beg the reader to compare with these youthful verses of the "no poet." Must we repeat the question of Jo! nson, *If Pipe u not a poet, whère is poetry to be found!" "Even in descriptive poetry, the lowest department of the art, he will be found, on a fair exa mination, to surpa's any living writer.

4 Thomas James Matthias, Esq, the well-known author of the Pursuits of Literature, Imperial Epistle to Kin Long, &c. In 1814, Mr. M. edited an edition of Gray's Werks, which the University of Cambridge published at its own expense. Lord Byron did not admire this venerable poet the less for such criticism as the following:-"After we have paid our primal homage to the bards of (i,eece and of ancient latum, we re invited to contemplate the literary and poet cal dignity of modern Italy. If the influence of their persuasion and of their example should prevad, a strong and steady light may be reu:nined and diffused amongst us, a light which may once again conduct the powers of our rising poets from wild whirling words, from crude, ropit, and uncorrected productions, from an overweening presumption, and from, the delus.ve conceit of a pre-established reputation, to the labour of thought, to patient and repeated revision of what they write, to a reverence for themselves and for an enlightened public, and to the fixed unbending principles of legitimate composition.” -Proface to Gray.]

5. (Dr. I tomas Brown, professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who died in 1820.]

6 [Author of "Wallace, or the Fight of Falkirk," "Margaret of Anjou," and other poems.

7 Miss Mary Russel Mitford, author of “* Christina, or the Maid of the South Seas," "Wallington Hall,” “ Our “Gllage," &c. &c]

8 Miss Eliza Francis published, in 1815, "Sir Willibert de Waverley : or, the Bridal Eve.")

9 ["Oh I have had the most amusing letter from Hogg, the Ettrick minstrel and shepherd. He wants me to recommend him to Murray, and, speaking of his present bookst l'er, whose "Lilis' are never 'üfted,' he adds, totidem verbis, “God d-n him, and them both.” I laughed, and so would you too, at the war in which this execration is introduced. The ward Horg is a strange being, but of great, though unceeth, powers. I think very highly of him as a poet; but he, and half of these Scotch and Lake troubidors are spout by living in little circles and petty societies.” —– Byrum Letters.)