so unintermitting, as that of poetry; and, indeed, as that of literary composition in general, if it be such as at all satisfies the demands both of the taste and of sound logic. How difficult and delicate a task even the mere mechanism of verse is, may be conjectured from the failure of those who have attempted poetry late in life. Where, then, a man has, from his earliest youth, devoted his whole being to an object which, by the admission of all civilized nations in all ages, is honorable as a pursuit, and glorious as an attainment; what, of all that relates to himself and his family, if only we except his moral character, can have fairer claims to his protection, or more authorize acts of self-defence than the elaborate products of his intellect, and intellectual industry? Prudence itself would command us to show, even if defect or diversion of natural sensibility had prevented us from feeling, a due interest and qualified anxiety for the offspring and representatives of our nobler being. I know it, alas! by woful experience! I have laid too many eggs in the hot sand of this wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion. The greater part, indeed, have been trod under foot, and are forgotten; but yet no small number have crept forth into life, some to furnish feathers for the caps of others, and still more to plume the shafts in the quivers of my enemies; of them that, unprovoked, have lain in wait against my soul.

"Sic vos, non vobis mellificatis, apes!"

An instance in confirmation of the note, p. 27, occurs to me as I am correcting this sheet, with the FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS open before me. Mr. Seward first traces Fletcher's lines:

"More foul diseases than e'er yet the hot

Sun bred through his burnings, while the dog

Pursues the raging lion, throwing the fog

And deadly vapour from his angry breath,

Filling the lower world with plague and death, "—

To Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar,"

"The rampant lion hunts he fast

With dogs of noisome breath,

Whose baleful barking brings, in haste,

Pyne, plagues, and dreary death!"

He then takes occasion to introduce Homer' simile of the sight of Achilles's shield to Priam, compared with the Dog Star, literally thus

"For this indeed is most splendid, but it was made an evil sign, and brings many a consuming disease to wretched mortals." Nothing can be more simple as a description, or more accurate as a simile; which, says Mr. S. is thus finely translated by Mr. Pope:

"Terrific Glory! for his burning breath

Taints the red air with fevers, plagues, and death!"

Now here (not to mention the tremendous bombast) the Dog Star, so called, is turned into a real Dog-a very odd Dog—a fire, fever, plague, and death-breathing, red-air-tainting Dog: and the whole visual likeness is lost, while the likeness in the effects is rendered absurd by the exaggeration. In Spenser and Fletcher, the thought is justifiable; for the images are at least consistent, and it was the intention of the writers to mark the seasons by this allegory of visualized Puns.

CHAPTER III.

'The author's obligations to critics, and the probable occasion-Principles of modern criticism-Mr. Southey's works and character.

To anonymous critics in reviews, magazines, and news journals of various name and rank, and to satirists, with or without a name, in verse or prose, or in verse text aided by prose comment, I do seriously believe and profess, that I owe full two thirds of whatever reputation and publicity I happen to possess. For when the name of an individual has occurred so frequently, in so many works, for so great a length of time, the readers of these works, (which with a shelf or two of BEAUTIES, ELEGANT EXTRACTS and ANAS, form nine tenths of the reading public)* cannot but be familiar with the name, without distinctly remembering whether it was introduced for an eulogy or for censure. And this becomes the more likely, if (as I believe) the habit of perusing periodical works may be properly added to Averrhoe's † catalogue of ANTI-MNEMONICS, or weakeners of the memory. But where this has not been the case,

*For as to the devotees of the circulation libraries, I dare not compliment their pass time, or rather kill time, with the name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility; while the whole materiel and imagery of the doze is supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura manufactured at the printing office, which pro tempore fixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms of one man's delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should, therefore, transfer this species of amusement, (if indeed those can be said to retire a musis, who were never in their company, or relaxation be attributable to those whose bows are never bent,) from the genus, reading, to that comprehensive class characterized by the power of reconciling the contrary yet co-existing propensities of human nature, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme, (by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre,) this genus comprises as its species, gaming, swinging, or swaying on a chair or gate; spitting over a bridge; smoking; snuff-taking; tete-a-tete quarrels after dinner between husband and wife; conning, word by word, all the advertisements of the daily advertiser in a public house on a rainy day, &c. &c. &c.

+ Ex. gr. Pediculos e capillis excerptus in arenam jacere incontusos; eating of unripe fruit; gazing on the clouds, and (in genere) on moveable things suspended in the air; riding among a multitude of camels; frequent laughter; listening to a series of jests and hurmorous anecdotes, as when (so to modernize the learned Saracen's meaning) one man's droll story of an Irishman, inevitably occasions another's droll story of a Scotchman, which, again, by the same sort of conjunction disjunctive, leads to some etourderie of a Welchman, and that again to some sly hit of a Yorkshireman; the habit of reading tomb-stones in churchyards, &c. By-the-by, this catalogue, strange as it may appear, is not insuscepti ble of a sound psychological commentary.

yet the reader will be apt to suspect, that there must be something more than usually strong and extensive in a reputation, that could either require or stand so merciless and long-continued a cannonading. Without any feeling of anger, therefore, (for which, indeed, on my own account, I have no pretext,) I may yet be allowed to express some degree of surprise, that after having run the critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults which I had, nothing having come before the judgment seat in the interim, I should, year after year, quarter after quarter, month after month, (not to mention sundry petty periodicals of still quicker revolution," or weekly or diurnal,") have been for at least seventeen years consecutively, dragged forth by them into the foremost ranks of the proscribed, and forced to abide the brunt of abuse, for faults directly opposite, and which I certainly had not. How shall I explain this? Whatever may have been the case with others, I certainly cannot attribute this persecution to personal dislike, or to envy, or to feelings of vindictive animosity. Not to the former; for, with the exception of a very few who are my intimate friends, and were so before they were known as authors, I have had little other acquaintance with literary characters than what may be implied in an accidental introduction, or casual meeting in a mixt company. And, as far as words and looks can be trusted, I must believe that, even in these instances, I had excited no unfriendly disposition.* Neither

* Some years ago, a gentleman, the chief writer and conductor of a celebrated review, distinguished by its hostility to Mr. Southey, spent a day or two at Keswick. That he was, without diminution on this account, treated with every hospitable attention by Mr. Southey and myself, I trust I need not say. But one thing I may venture to notice, that at no period of my life do I remember to have received so many, and such high colored compliments in so short a space of time. He was likewise circumstantially informed by what series of accidents it had happened, that Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Southey, and I, had become neighbors; and how utterly unfounded was the supposition, that we considered ourselves as belonging to any common school, but that of good sense, confirmed by the longestablished models of the best times of Greece, Rome, Italy, and England; and still more groundless the notion, that Mr. Southey, [for, as to myself, I have published so little, and that little of so little importance, as to make it almost ludicrous to mention my name at all,] could have been concerned in the formation of a poetic sect with Mr. Wordsworth, when so many of his works had been published, not only previously to any acquaintance between them, but before Mr. Wordsworth himself had written any thing but in a diction ornate, and uniformly sustained; when, too, the slightest examination will make it evident, that between those and the after writings of Mr. Southey, there exists no other difference than that of a progressive degree of excellence from progressive development of power, and progressive facility from habit and increase of experience. Yet among the first articles which this man wrote after his return from Keswick, we were characterized as "the School of whining and hypochondriacal poets that haunt the Lakes." In reply to a letter from the same gentleman, in which he had asked me, whether I was in earnest in prefering the style of Hooker to that of Dr. Johnson, and Jeremy Taylor to Burke, I stated, somewhat at large, the comparative excellences and defects which characterised our best prose writers,

by letter, or in conversation, have I ever had dispute or controversy beyond the common social interchange of opinions. Nay, where I had reason to suppose my convictions fundamentally different, it has been my habit, and I may add, the impulse of my nature, to assign the grounds of my belief, rather than the belief itself; and not to express dissent, till I could establish some points of complete sympathy, some grounds common to both sides, from which to commence its explanation.

Still less can I place these attacks to the charge of envy. The few pages which I have published, are of too distant a date; and the extent of their sale a proof too conclusive against their having been popular at any time, to render probable, I had almost said possible, the excitement of envy on their account; and the man who should envy me on any other, verily he must be envy-mad !

Lastly; with as little semblance of reason could I suspect any animosity towards me from vindictive feelings as the cause. I have before said, that my acquaintance with literary men has been limited and distant; and that I have had neither dispute nor controversy. From my first entrance into life, I have, with few and short intervals, lived either abroad or in retirement. My different essays on subjects of national interest, published at different times, first in the Morning Post and then in the Courier, with my courses of lectures on the principles of criticism as applied to Shakspeare and Milton, constitute my whole publicity; the only occasions on which from the reformation to the first half of Charles II.; and that of those who had flourished during the present reign, and the preceding one. About twelve months afterwards, a review appeared on the same subject, in the concluding paragraph of which the reviewer asserts, that his chief motive for entering into the discussion, was to separate a rational and qualified admiration of our elder writers, from the indiscriminate enthusiasm of a recent school, who praised what they did not understand, and caricatured what they were unable to imitate. And, that no doubt might be left concerning the persons alluded to, the writer annexes the names of Miss BAILIE, R. SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, and COLERIDGE. For that which follows, I have only hear-say evidence, but yet such as demands my belief; viz. that on being questioned concerning this apparently wanton attack, more especially with reference to Miss Bailie, the writer had stated as his motives, that this lady, when at Edinburgh, had declined a proposal of introducing him to her; that Mr. Southey had written against him; and Mr. Wordsworth had talked contemptuously of him; but that as to Coleridge, he had noticed him merely because the names of Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge always went together. But if it were worth while to mix together, as ingredients, half the anecdotes which I either myself know to be true, or which I have received from men incapable of intentional falsehood, concerning the characters, qualifications, and motives of our annoymous critics, whose decisions are oracles for our reading public, I might safely borrow the words of the apocryphal Daniel; "Give me leave, O SOVEREIGN PUBLIC, and I shall slay this dragon without sword or staff." For the compound would be the " Pitch, and fat, and hair, which Daniel took, and did seethe them together, and made lumps thereof, and put into the dragon's mouth, and so the dragon burst in sunder; and Daniel said, LO, THESE ARE THE GODS YE

WORSHIP."