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 mo'ment, 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 ex'pressed 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 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.

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 his Detached Thoughts:'

One of my notions different from those of my cotemporaries, 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.'

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," 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 on 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, nor Whistlecraft; but that is not wit-it is 'humour. I will say nothing of the harmony of Pope and Dryden in 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 'excellencies, as the vulgar eye will 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 in'vention; and because he is always intelligible, it is 'taken for granted that he has no genius. We are

passage

'sneeringly told that he is the Poet of Reason,' as ' if this was a reason for his being no poet. Taking 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 compo'sition not very favourable to imagination-Satire : 'set down the character of Sporus, with all the won'derful 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 har'monized our poetical language. The attorneys' clerks, ' and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models than to toil after 'the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that 'the new school were to revive the language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, '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 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 Para

'dise Lost would not have been more nobly conveyed 'to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject if well balanced, 'but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the

6

terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton 'could easily have grafted on our language. The 'Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of In'dolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, ' although it might have taken up six months instead ' of weeks in the composition. I recommend also

to the lovers 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 scri' veners of the day much of this will appear paradox ; 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 re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the 'mean time, I will conclude with two quotations, both ' intended for some of my old classical friends who 'have still enough of Cambridge about them to think 'themselves honoured 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 a Poem of the "Friends," pages 181, 182.

"It is only within the last twenty or thirty years 'that those notable discoveries in criticism have been 'made which have taught our recent versifiers to

* Written by Lord Byron's early friend, the Rev. Francis Hodgson.

' 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

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 dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit,

Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,

'Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:

The strange verses that follow are from a poem by Keats.-In a manuscript note on this passage of the pamphlet, dated November 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 bloodvessel 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. Kea's's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgrè all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of" Hyperion" seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus, He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models ' of the language.'