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l»oets uiil\, ail l'or whicli you must ransack innumerable mètres, and God only knows how mâny writers of the da\, without findinj,' a little of the same qualities, — with the addition, too, of \\it, of Mhich the latter hâve none. I hâve not, ho\\ever, forgotten Thomas Krown tlie Younger, northe Fudge B^amily, nor Whistlecraft; but that is not wit — it is humour. I will say nothing of the hannony of Pope and Dryden in comparison, for there is not a Hving poet (except Rogers, GifTord, Campbell, and Crabbe,) who can v\rite an lieruic couplet. The fact is, that the exquisite beauty of their versification has Mithdi-awn the public attention from their other excellences, as the vulgar e\Q v\ ill 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: aïKl because he is ahvays 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 's\ill undertake to cite more lines teeming with /mag/^aiion 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 dow n the character of Sporus, xvith ail the wonderful pla} of fancy vvhich 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 w ill you fmd them?

I merely mention one instance of many, in reply to tbc

injustice done to the memory of him w ho harmonisée! our poetical language. The attorney's clcrks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier ta distort themselves to the new tnodels, than to toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They m ère hesides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen Ehzabeth, the true English, as every J)ody in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of literary treason.

Blank verse, A\hich, unless in tlie drama, no one except Milton ever m rote m ho could rliyme, became the order of the day, — or else such rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware that Johnson bas said, after some hésitation, that he could not « prevail upon himself to Avish that Milton had been a l'hymer. » The opinions of Ihat truly great man, whom it is also tho présent fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that déférence which time will restore to him from ail; but, \\ith ail humility, I ara not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not- bave 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 Tasse, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily hâve grafted on our language. Tlie Seasons of Thomson would bave been lietter in' rhyme, although still inferior to bis Castie of Inditlence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might bave taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the présent laureate's Odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of Mr. Southey.

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To the lieaven-born genii and inspired young schveners ulthe day much of this will appear paradox : it wili ajipear so even to tlie higher ordcr of our critics; but it m as a Iruism twenty years ago, and it wïW be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. Inthemean time, I \vill conclude \\illi two quotations, both intended for some of my old classical friends who liave still enough of Cambridge about them to tliink themselves lionoured by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in tlieir collège, and to recollect that their earliest English poetical pleasures \vere dra^ n 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 criticism hâve been made \^ hich liave taught our récent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, meiodious, and moral poet. The conséquences of this ^ant of due esteem for a writer whom the good sensé of our predecessors had raised to his proper station hâve bcen 7iumevous and degrading enough. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it nffects our poetical numbcrs alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires présent retlection. »

Tiie second is from the volume of a }oung person learning to M rite poetry, and beginning by teaching the art, Hear him :

« But ye were dead Tu things ye kiiew not of — were clusely wed To musty laws lined oui with wretched rulc And compass vile ; so that ye taught a school Of doits to smoolli, inlay, and chip and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob"s wit, Tkeir verses tallied. Easy was Ihe lask : A tliuusand liandiciaflsnien wore the mask

t)E LORD BYRON 2l9

01" poesy. lU-fated, impious race,

That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,

And did not know it; no, they went about

Holding a poor decrepil standard oat

Mark'd with most flimsy mottes, and in large

The name of one Boileau! »

A liltle before, the manner of Pope is termed,

« A scism, Nurtured by fop-pery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land. »

I tlîought « foppery » was a conséquence of refinement; but n'importe.

The above x\ ill suffice to show the notions enterlained by the new performers on the Enghsh lyre of him Avho 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 bas learnt to write suchhnes and such sentiments as the above. He says « easy was the task » of imitating Pope, or it may be of equalling him, I présume. I recommend him to try before he is so positive on the subjcct, and them compare what he Avill hâve then m ritten and w hat he bas note written \\ ith 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 titlej, from whence the above canons are taken. Pope's was written al nincteen, and published at twenty-two.

Such are the triumphs of the new schools, and such their scholars. The disciples of Pope were Johnson, Golds-