rather than developing the involved action of an affecting
drama. Are there critics who would pronounce Dennis to be a
very _sensible_ brother? It is here too he calls Steele "a
twopenny author," alluding to the price of the "Tatlers"--but
this cost Dennis dear!

[42] "The narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in
the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to
have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual
violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who
attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the
first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple
child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner
entered the room, but he cried out 'the devil was come!'" The
constant idiosyncrasy he had that his writings against France
and the Pope might endanger his liberty, is amusingly hit off;
"he perpetually starts and runs to the window when any one
knocks, crying out ''Sdeath! a messenger from the French King;
I shall die in the Bastile!'"--ED.

DISAPPOINTED GENIUS

TAKES A FATAL DIRECTION BY ITS ABUSE.

How the moral and literary character are reciprocally influenced, may
be traced in the character of a personage peculiarly apposite to these
inquiries. This worthy of literature is ORATOR HENLEY, who is rather
known traditionally than historically.[43] He is so overwhelmed with
the echoed satire of Pope, and his own extravagant conduct for many
years, that I should not care to extricate him, had I not discovered a
feature in the character of Henley not yet drawn, and constituting no
inferior calamity among authors.

Henley stands in his "gilt tub" in the Dunciad; and a portrait of him
hangs in the picture-gallery of the Commentary. Pope's verse and
Warburton's notes are the pickle and the bandages for any Egyptian
mummy of dulness, who will last as long as the pyramid that encloses
him. I shall transcribe, for the reader's convenience, the lines of
Pope:--

Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,
Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands;
How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!
How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!
Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson, preach in vain.
Oh! great restorer of the good old stage,
Pre