aced man, fond of ale, and a cheerful
talker, with a thick utterance, so that he gobbled like a turkey-cock.
Some of his verses are cheerful. This is from the _Ode on the Approach
of Summer_:

Haste thee, Nymph! and hand in hand
With thee lead a buxom band;
Bring fantastic-footed Joy,
With Sport, that yellow-tressed boy:
Leisure, that through the balmy sky
Chases a crimson butterfly.
Bring Health, that loves in early dawn
To meet the milk-maid on the lawn;
Bring Pleasure, rural nymph, and Peace,
Meek, cottage-loving shepherdess!

It is all like this, fluent and unnecessary. Perhaps no verses in
English were ever made so exactly in the approved fashion of modern Latin
verses. Warton writes pleasantly, his cento of reminiscences is skilful,
and his own epithets are sometimes happy, yet nothing comes of it. His
work suggests the doubt whether any modern Latin verse, even the best,
would deceive an intelligent citizen of ancient Rome.

The strange thing about the Romantic Revival is that an epidemic of this
sort of imitation at last produced real poetry and real romance. The
industrious simulation of the emotions begot the emotions simulated. Is
there not a story told of a young officer who, having dressed himself in
a sheet to frighten his fellows, was embarrassed by the company of a real
ghost, bent on the same errand; and retired from the enterprise, leaving
it wholly to the professional? That, at any rate, is very much what
happened to the Romantic impersonators.

Another parallel may perhaps be found in the power of vulgarity to
advance civilization. Take, for instance, the question of manners.
Politeness is a codification of the impulses of a heart that is moved by
good will and consideration for others. If the impulses are not there,
the politeness is so far unreal and insincere--a cheap varnish. Yet it
is insisted on by society, and enforced by fear and fashion. If the
forms are taught, the soul of them may be, and sometimes is, breathed in
later. So this imitative and timid artifice, this conformity to opinions
the ground and meaning of which is not fully understood, becomes a great
engine of social progress. Imitation and forgery, which are a kind of
literary vulgarity, were the school of Romanticism in its nonage. Some
of the greater poets who passed this way went on to express things
subtler and more profound than had found a voice in the poetry that they
imita