illy. The
sensibility is sickly, and the elevation vertiginous."

"To Cowper," said Sir John, "master of melody as he is, the mischief is
partly attributable. Such an original must naturally have a herd of
imitators. If they can not attain to his excellences, his faults are
always attainable. The resemblance between the master and the scholar is
found chiefly in his defects. The determined imitator of an easy writer
becomes insipid; of a sublime one, absurd. Cowper's ease appeared his
most imitable charm, but ease aggraved is insipidity. His occasional
negligences, his disciples adopted uniformly. In Cowper, there might
sometimes be carelessness in the verse, but the verse itself was
sustained by the vigor of the sentiment. The imitator forgot that his
strength lay in the thought; that his buoyant spirit always supported
itself; that the figure, though amplified, was never distorted; the
image, though bold, was never incongruous; and the illustration, though
new, was never false.

"The evil, however," continued Sir John, "seems to be correcting itself.
The real genius, which exists in several of this whimsical school, I
trust, will at length lead them to prune their excrescences, and reform
their youthful eccentricities. Their good sense will teach that the
surest road to fame is to condescend to tread in the luminous track of
their great precursors in the art. They will see that deviation is not
always improvement; that whoever wants to be better than nature will
infallibly be worse; that truth in taste is as obvious as in morals, and
as certain as in mathematics. In other quarters, both the classic and
the Gothic muse are emulously soaring, and I hail the restoration of
genuine poetry and pure taste."

"I must not," said I, "loquacious as I have already been, dismiss the
subject of conversation without remarking that I found there was one
topic which seemed as uniformly avoided by common consent as if it had
been banished by the interdict of absolute authority, and that some
forfeiture, or at least dishonor and disgrace, were to follow it on
conviction--I mean religion."

"Surely, Charles," said Sir John, "you would not convert general
conversation into a divinity school, and friendly societies into
debating clubs."

"Far from it," replied I, "nor do I desire that ladies and gentlemen
over their tea and coffee should rehearse their articles of faith, or
fill the intervals of carving and eating with introducing d