their _hints_ without their motions of _fury and pride of soul_,
because they want fire enough to agitate their spirits; and these we
call cold writers. Others, who have a great deal of fire, but have not
excellent organs, feel the fore-mentioned _motions_, without the
extraordinary _hints_; and these we call fustian writers." His
_motions_ and his _hints_, as he describes them, in regard to cold or
fustian writers, seem to include the extreme points of his own
genius.

Another feature strongly marks the race of the Dennises. With a
half-consciousness of deficient genius, they usually idolize some
chimera, by adopting some extravagant principle; and they consider
themselves as original when they are only absurd.

Dennis had ever some misshapen idol of the mind, which he was
perpetually caressing with the zeal of perverted judgment or monstrous
taste. Once his frenzy ran against the Italian Opera; and in his
"Essay on Public Spirit," he ascribes its decline to its unmanly
warblings. I have seen a long letter by Dennis to the Earl of Oxford,
written to congratulate his lordship on his accession to power, and
the high hopes of the nation; but the greater part of the letter runs
on the Italian Opera, while Dennis instructs the Minister that the
national prosperity can never be effected while this general
corruption of the three kingdoms lies open!

Dennis has more than once recorded two material circumstances in the
life of a true critic; these are his _ill-nature_ and the _public
neglect_.

"I make no doubt," says he, "that upon the perusal of the critical
part of these letters, the _old accusation_ will be brought against
me, and there will be a _fresh outcry_ among thoughtless people that I
am _an ill-natured man_."

He entertained exalted opinions of his own powers, and he deeply felt
their public neglect.

"While others," he says in his tracts, "have been _too much
encouraged_, I have been _too much neglected_"--his favourite system,
that religion gives principally to great poetry its spirit and
enthusiasm, was an important point, which, he says, "has been left to
be treated by _a person who has the honour of being your lordship's
countryman_--your lordship knows that persons _so much and so long
oppressed as I have been_ have been always allowed to _say things
concerning themselves_ which in others might be offensive."

His vanity, we see, was equal to his vexation, and as he grew old he
became more enraged;