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 his 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

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

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

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

disputed for the sites of the compositi 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 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 3 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 different times to make the production less unworthy of a favourable reception; or rather, to fit it for filling permanently a station, however humble, in the literature of my country.WORDSWORTH, 1819.]

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 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 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 excellences, 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 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

1 [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 condernning 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."]

["Let Sporus tremble A. What? that thing of silk Spor, 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 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 everybody 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 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 balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser or of Tasso, or in the 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 Indolence; 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 laurcate'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 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 meantime, 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 the Poem of the "Friends."4

"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 undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our prede cessors 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 poctical 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: 5

Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,

Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,

In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,

Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies,
His wit all see-saw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the tard,
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 trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust."

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 tha 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 th that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a Le ambitious of public notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's deprecia of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genes, which, malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion' seems actually inspired is the Titans, and is as sublime as schylus. 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 re-forming his style upon de 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, 1 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 4, Hayley, and the author of the Paradise of Coquettes; to whom may be added 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

1 It was at least a grammar "school."

2 So spelt by the author.

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

"Envy her own snakes shall feel,

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

"Ah! 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 ruin stalk'd the stately hind;
The fox obscene to gaping tombs retires,
And savage howlings fill the sacred quires."

"Hail, 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 nighty names shall sound,
And worlds applaud that must not yet be 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
Citheron's echoes answer to his call,
And half the mountain rolls into a wall."

"So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost,
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast;
Pale suns, unfeit, at distance roll away,
And on th' impassive ice the lightnings play;
Eternal snows the growing mass supply,

Till the bright mountains prop the incumbent sky,
As Atlas fix'd, each hoary pile appears,

The gather'd winter of a thousand years.

scholar who has not made his master ashamed of him? unless it be Sotheby, who has imitated everybody, and occasionally surpassed his models. Scott found peculiar favour and imitation among the fair sex: there was Miss Holford 6, and Miss Mitford7, 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 9, 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 d-d 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-proportion'd dome,
The world's just wonder, and even thine, O Rome!
No single parts unequally surprise,

All comes united to the admiring eyes:

No monstrous height, or breadth, or length 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 poet, 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 Jobinson, If Pope is not a poet, where is poetry to be found?" Even in descriptive poetry, the lowest department of the art, he will be found, on a fair exa nination, to surpass any living writer.

4 [Thomas James Matthias, Esq., the well-known author of the Pursuits of Literature, Imperial Epistle to Kien Long, &c. In 1814, Mr. M. elited an edition of Gray's Works, 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 Greece and of ancient Latium, we are invited to contemplate the literary and poetical dignity of modern Italy. If the influence of their persuasion and of their example should prevail, a strong and steady light may be relumined and diffused amongst us, a light which may once again conduct the powers of our rising poets from wild whirling words, from crude, rapid, and uncorrected productions, from an overweening presumption, and from the delusive 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." -Preface to Gray.]

5 (Dr. Thomas 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 Village," &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 bookseller, whose bills' are never lifted,' he adds, totidem verbis, God d-n him, and them both. I laughed, and so would you too, at the way in which this execration is introduced. The said Hogg is a strange being, but of great, though uncouth, powers. I think very highly of him as a poet; but he, and half of these Scotch and Lake troubadours are spoilt by living in little circles and petty societies." — Byron Letters.]

VOLTAIRE.

Having stated that Bacon was frequently incorrect in his citations from history, I have thought it necessary in what regards so great a name (however trifling), to support the assertion by such facts as more immediately occur to me. They are but trifles, and yet for such trifles a schoolboy would be whipped (if still in the fourth form); and Voltaire for half a dozen similar errors has been treated as a superficial writer, notwithstanding the testimony of the learned Warton:-"Voltaire, a writer of much deeper research than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the literature and customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration and comprehension." For another distinguished testimony to Voltaire's merits in literary research, see also Lord Holland's excellent Account of the Life and Writings of Lope de Vega, vol. i. p. 215. edition of 1817.2

Voltaire has even been termed "a shallow fellow," by some of the same school who called Dryden's Ode" a drunken song;"-a school (as it is called, I presume, from their education being still incomplete) the whole of whose filthy trash of Epics, Excursions, &c. &c. &c. is not worth the two words in Zaïre," Vous pleurez3," or a single speech of Tancred: a school, the apostate lives of whose renegadoes, with their tea-drinking neutrality of morals, and their convenient treachery in politics-in the record of their accumulated pretences to virtue can produce no actions (were all their good deeds drawn up in array) to equal or approach the sole defence of the family of Calas, by that great and unequalled genius-the universal Voltaire.

I have ventured to remark on these little inaccuracies of "the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any other country, ever produced," merely to show our national injustice in condemning generally the greatest genius of France for such inadvertencies as these, of which the highest of England has been no less guilty. Query, was Bacon a greater intellect than Newton?

CAMPBELL.S

Being in the humour of criticism, I shall proceed, after having ventured upon the slips of Bacon, to touch upon one or two as trifling in their edition of the British Poets, by the justly celebrated Campbell. But I do this in good will, and trust it will be so taken. If anything could add to my opinion of the talents and true feeling of that gentleman, it would be his classical, honest, and triumphant defence of Pope, against the vulgar cant of the day, and its existing Grub-street.

The inadvertencies to which I allude are,

Firstly, in speaking of Anstey, whom he accuses of having taken "his leading characters from Smollett." Anstey's Bath Guide was published in 1766. Smollett's Humphry Clinker (the only work of Smollett's from which Tabitha, &c. &c. could have been taken) was written during Smollett's last residence at Leghorn in 1770-" Argal," if there has been any borrowing, Anstey must be the creditor, and not the debtor. I refer Mr. Campbell to his own data in his lives of Smollett and Anstey.

Secondly, Mr. Campbell says in the life of Cowper (note to page 358, vol. vii.) that he knows not to whom Cowper alludes in these lines:

"Nor he who, for the bane of thousands born,

Built God a church, and laugh'd his word to scorn."

1 Dissertation I.

2 [Till Voltaire appeared, there was no nation more ignorant of its neighbours' literature than the French. He first exposed, and then corrected, this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer to whom the authors of other nations, especially of England, are so indebted for the extension of their fame in France, and, through France, in Europe. There is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another. Yet, by a strange fatality, he is constantly represented as the enemy of all literature but his own; and Spaniards, Englishmen, and Italians vie with each other in inveighing against his occasional exaggeration of faulty passages; the authors of which, till he pointed out their beauties, were hardly known beyond the country in which their language was spoken. Those who feel such indig. nation at his misrepresentations and oversights, would find it difficult to produce a critic in any modern language, who, in speaking of foreign literature, is better informed or more candid than Voltaire; and they certainly

809

The Calvinist meant Voltaire, and the church of Ferney, with its inscription " Deo erexit Voltaire." Thirdly, in the life of Burns, Mr. Campbell quotes Shakspeare thus:

"To gild refined gold, to paint the rose,

Or add fresh perfume to the violet."

This version by no means improves the original, which is as follows:

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,

To throw a perfume on the violet," &c.-King John.

A great poet quoting another should be correct: he should also be accurate, when he accuses a Parnassian brother of that dangerous charge "borrowing:" a poet had better borrow anything (excepting money) than the thoughts of another-they are always sure to be reclaimed; but it is very hard, having been the lender, to be denounced as the debtor, as is the case of Anstey versus Smollett.

As there is" honour amongst thieves," let there be some amongst poets, and give each his due,-none can afford to give it more than Mr. Campbell himself, who, with a high reputation for originality, and a fame which cannot be shaken, is the only poet of the times (except Rogers) who can be reproached (and in him it is indeed a reproach) with having written too little.

3