r ballad-Enniuses,
whose beauties, had Virgil lived with Addison, he would have
inlaid into his mosaic. The bigotry of classical taste, which
is not always accompanied by a natural one, and rests securely
on prescribed opinions and traditional excellence, long
contemned our vernacular genius, spurning at the minstrelsy of
the nation; Johnson's ridicule of "Percy's Reliques" had its
hour, but the more poetical mind of Scott has brought us back
to home feelings, to domestic manners, and eternal nature.

[345] I shall content myself with referring to "The Character of
Richard St--le, Esq.," in Dr. Wagstaffe's Miscellaneous Works,
1726. Considering that he had no personal knowledge of his
victim, one may be well surprised at his entering so deeply
into his private history; but of such a character as Steele,
the private history is usually too public--a mass of scandal
for the select curious. Poor Steele, we are told, was
"arrested for the maintenance of his bastards, and afterwards
printed a _proposal_ that the public should take care of
them;" got into the House "not to be arrested;"--"his _set_
speeches there, which he designs to get _extempore_ to speak
in the House." For his literary character we are told that
"Steele was a jay who borrowed a feather from the peacock,
another from the bullfinch, and another from the magpye; so
that _Dick_ is made up of borrowed colours; he borrowed his
humour from Estcourt, criticism of Addison, his poetry of
Pope, and his politics of Ridpath; so that his qualifications
as a man of genius, like Mr. T----s, as a member of
Parliament, _lie in thirteen parishes_." Such are the pillows
made up for genius to rest its head on!

Wagstaffe has sometimes delicate humour; Steele, who often
wrote in haste, necessarily wrote incorrectly. Steele had this
sentence: "And ALL, as one man, will join in a common
indignation against ALL who would perplex our obedience:" on
which our pleasant critic remarks--"Whatever contradiction
there is, as some suppose, in _all joining against all_, our
author has good authority for what he says; and it may be
proved, in spite of Euclid or Sir Isaac, that everything
consists of _two