te of nature, as he was for bringing society
back to the savage state: so that the only thing remarkable left in the
world by this change, would be the persons who had produced it. A
thorough adept in this school of poetry and philanthropy is jealous of
all excellence but his own. He does not even like to share his
reputation with his subject; for he would have it all proceed from his
own power and originality of mind. Such a one is slow to admire any
thing that is admirable; feels no interest in what is most interesting
to others, no grandeur in any thing grand, no beauty in anything
beautiful. He tolerates only what he himself creates; he sympathizes
only with what can enter into no competition with him, with "the bare
trees and mountains bare, and grass in the green field." He sees nothing
but himself and the universe. He hates all greatness and all pretensions
to it, whether well or ill-founded. His egotism is in some respects a
madness; for he scorns even the admiration of himself, thinking it a
presumption in any one to suppose that he has taste or sense enough to
understand him. He hates all science and all art; he hates chemistry, he
hates conchology; he hates Voltaire; he hates Sir Isaac Newton; he hates
wisdom; he hates wit; he hates metaphysics, which he says are
unintelligible, and yet he would be thought to understand them; he hates
prose; he hates all poetry but his own; he hates the dialogues in
Shakespeare; he hates music, dancing, and painting; he hates Rubens, he
hates Rembrandt; he hates Raphael, he hates Titian; he hates Vandyke; he
hates the antique; he hates the Apollo Belvidere; he hates the Venus of
Medicis. This is the reason that so few people take an interest in his
writings, because he takes an interest in nothing that others do!--The
effect has been perceived as something odd; but the cause or principle
has never been distinctly traced to its source before, as far as I know.
The proofs are to be found every where--in Mr. Southey's Botany Bay
Eclogues, in his book of Songs and Sonnets, his Odes and Inscriptions,
so well parodied in the Anti-Jacobin Review, in his Joan of Arc, and
last, though not least, in his Wat Tyler:

"When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"

(--or the poet laureat either, we may ask?)--In Mr. Coleridge's Ode to
an Ass's Foal, in his Lines to Sarah, his Religious Musings; and in his
and Mr. Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, _passim_