is their _vulgarity_. By this I do not mean that they are _coarse_,
but "shabby-genteel," as it is termed. A man may be _coarse_ and yet
not _vulgar_, and the reverse. Burns is often coarse, but never
_vulgar_. Chatterton is never vulgar, nor Wordsworth, nor the higher
of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all its
branches. It is in their _finery_ that the new under school are
_most_ vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we
called at Harrow "a Sunday blood" might be easily distinguished from
a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his
boots the best blackened, of the two;--probably because he made the
one, or cleaned the other, with his own hands.

In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the
latter, I know nothing; of the former, I judge as it is found. Of my
friend Hunt, I have already said, that he is any thing but vulgar in
his manners; and of his disciples, therefore, I will not judge of
their manners from their verses. They may be honourable and
_gentlemanly_ men, for what I know; but the latter quality is
studiously excluded from their publications. They remind me of Mr.
Smith and the Miss Broughtons at the Hampstead Assembly, in
"Evelina." In these things (in private life, at least,) I pretend to
some small experience; because, in the course of my youth, I have
seen a little of all sorts of society, from the Christian prince and
the Mussulman sultan and pacha, and the higher ranks of their
countries, down to the London boxer, the "_flash and the swell_," the
Spanish muleteer, the wandering Turkish dervise, the Scotch
highlander, and the Albanian robber;--to say nothing of the curious
varieties of Italian social life. Far be it from me to presume that
there ever was, or can be, such a thing as an _aristocracy_ of
_poets_; but there _is_ a nobility of thought and of style, open to
all stations, and derived partly from talent, and partly from
education,--which is to be found in Shakspeare, and Pope, and Burns,
no less than in Dante and Alfieri, but which is nowhere to be
perceived in the mock birds and bards of Mr. Hunt's little chorus. If
I were asked to define what this gentlemanliness is, I should say
that it is only to be defined by _examples_--of those who have it,
and those who have it not. In _life_, I should say that most
_military_ men have it, and few _naval_;--that several men of rank
have it, and few lawyers;--that it is more fr