n." "You may," he adds,
after giving copious extracts from both poems, "persist in saying that
Mr. Hayley's are the best. Your business then is to prove it." This,
indeed, had been a very hazardous affair for our medical critic, whose
poetical feelings were so equable, that he acknowledges "Mr. Scott's
poem is just and elegant," but "Mr. Hayley's is likewise just and
elegant;" therefore, if one man has written a piece "just and
elegant," there is no need of another on the same subject "just and
elegant."

To such an extreme point of egotism was a modest and respectable
author most cruelly driven by the callous playfulness of a poetical
critic, who himself had no sympathy for poetry of any quality or any
species, and whose sole art consisted in turning about the canting
dictionary of criticism. Had Homer been a modern candidate for
poetical honours, from him Homer had not been distinguished, even from
the mediocrity of Scott of Amwell, whose poetical merits are not,
however, slight. In his Amoebean eclogues he may be distinguished as
the poet of botanists.

FOOTNOTES:

[99] So sensible was even the calm Newton to critical attacks, that
Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for
twenty years, for contradicting Newton in his old age; for
no man was of "a more fearful temper." Whiston declares that
he would not have thought proper to have published his work
against Newton's "Chronology" in his lifetime, "because I
knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it
would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet's
chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. Locke's thorough
confutation of the Bishop's metaphysics about the Trinity
hastened his end." Pope writhed in his chair from the light
shafts which Cibber darted on him; yet they were not tipped
with the poison of the Java-tree. Dr. Hawkesworth, _died
of criticism_.--Singing-birds cannot live in a storm.

[100] In one of his own publications he quotes, with great
self-complacency, the following lines on himself:--

"The wits who drink water and suck sugar-candy,
Impute the strong spirit of Kenrick to brandy:
They are not so much out; the matter in short is,
He sips _aqua-vitae_ and spits _aqua-fortis_."

[101] Dr. Kenrick's character and career is thus summed up in the