ying Spencer's sister,
Who's lost a lord, and gained a Mister.

LI. REFORMATION OF THE KNAVE OF HEARTS.

This is an exquisite satire on the attempts at criticism which were
current in _pre-Edinburgh Review_ days, when the majority of the
journals were mere touts for the booksellers. The papers in
question are taken from Nos. 11 and 12 of the _Microcosm_,
published on Monday, February 12th, 1787--when Canning was
seventeen years of age.

The epic poem on which I shall ground my present critique has for its
chief characteristics brevity and simplicity. The author--whose name I
lament that I am, in some degree, prevented from consecrating to
immortal fame, by not knowing what it is--the author, I say, has not
branched his poem into excrescences of episode, or prolixities of
digression; it is neither variegated with diversity of unmeaning
similitudes, nor glaring with the varnish of unnatural metaphor. The
whole is plain and uniform; so much so, indeed, that I should hardly be
surprised if some morose readers were to conjecture that the poet had
been thus simple rather from necessity than choice; that he had been
restrained, not so much by chastity of judgment, as sterility of
imagination.

Nay, some there may be, perhaps, who will dispute his claim to the
title of an epic poet, and will endeavour to degrade him even to the
rank of a ballad-monger. But I, as his commentator, will contend for
the dignity of my author, and will plainly demonstrate his poem to be
an epic poem, agreeable to the example of all poets, and the consent of
all critics heretofore.

First, it is universally agreed that an epic poem should have three
component parts--a beginning, a middle, and an end; secondly, it is
allowed that it should have one grand action or main design, to the
forwarding of which all the parts of it should directly or indirectly
tend, and that this design should be in some measure consonant with,
and conducive to, the purposes of morality; and thirdly, it is
indisputably settled that it should have a hero. I trust that in none
of these points the poem before us will be found deficient. There are
other inferior properties which I shall consider in due order.

Not to keep my readers longer in suspense, the subject of the poem is
"The Reformation of the Knave of Hearts". It is not improbable that
some may object to me that a knave is an unworthy hero for an epic
poem--that a hero ought to be