ts, flames,
swans, ivy-clad arches, greyhounds, yea, to young donkeys, than to those
_pirouette_-ing and _very_ active _danseuses_ of the opera; the poetry
of nature, as mountains, waterfalls, storms, summer evenings, and all
manner of landscapes, except Holland and Siberia; the poetry of art,
acqueducts, minarets, Raphael's colouring, and Poussin's intricate
designs; the poetry of ugliness, well seen in monkeys and Skye terriers;
and the poetry of awkwardness, whereof the brightest example is Mr.
trans-Atlantic Rice. And, verily, many other poetries there be, as of
impudence (for which consult the experience of swindlers); of prose,
(for which see Addison); of energy, of sleep, of battle and of peace:
for it is an easy-seeming artfulness, the most fascinating manner of
doing as of saying, complication simplified, and every thing effected to
its bravest advantage. Poetry wants a champion in these days, who will
save her from her friends: O, namby-pamby "lovers of the Nine!" your
innumerous dull lyrics--ay, and mine--your unnatural heroics--I too have
sinned thus--your up-hill sonnets--that labour of folly have I known as
well--in brief, your misnamed poetry, hath done grievous damage to the
cause you toil for. Yet I would avow thus much, for I believe it: as an
average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or
a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the
age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly
may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has
lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has
robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men
of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try
a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom
the greater number of the so-called old English poets could not with
advantage to the ancients justly be compared. Look at '_Johnson's
Lives_.' Who can read the book, and the specimens it glorifies, without
rejoicing in his prose, and thoroughly despising their poetry?--With a
few brilliant exceptions, of course, (for ill-used Milton, Pope--and
shall we in the same sentence put Dryden?--are there,) a more wretched
set of halfpenny-a-liners never stormed mob-trodden Parnassus. The
poetry of Queen Anne's time and thereabouts, I judge to have been at the
lowest bathos of badness; all satyrs, and swains, fulso