"

All this is so true in literary history, that he who affects to
suspect the sincerity of Pope's declaration, may flatter his sagacity,
but will do no credit to his knowledge.

If thus great poets pour their lamentations for having devoted
themselves to their art, some sympathy is due to the querulousness of
a numerous race of _provincial bards_, whose situation is ever at
variance with their feelings. These usually form exaggerated
conceptions of their own genius, from the habit of comparing
themselves with their contracted circle. Restless, with a desire of
poetical celebrity, their heated imagination views in the metropolis
that fame and fortune denied them in their native town; there they
become half-hermits and half-philosophers, darting epigrams which
provoke hatred, or pouring elegies, descriptive of their feelings,
which move derision: their neighbours find it much easier to ascertain
their foibles than comprehend their genius; and both parties live in a
state of mutual persecution. Such, among many, was the fate of the
poet HERRICK; his vein was pastoral, and he lived in the elysium of
the west, which, however, he describes by the sullen epithet, "Dull
Devonshire," where "he is still sad." Strange that such a poet should
have resided near twenty years in one of our most beautiful counties
in a very discontented humour. When he quitted his village of
"Deanbourne," the petulant poet left behind him a severe "farewell,"
which was found still preserved in the parish, after a lapse of more
than a century. Local satire has been often preserved by the very
objects it is directed against, sometimes from the charm of the wit
itself, and sometimes from the covert malice of attacking our
neighbours. Thus he addresses "Deanbourne, a rude river in Devonshire,
by which, sometime, he lived:"--

Dean-bourn, farewell!
Thy rockie bottom that doth tear thy streams,
And makes them frantic, e'en to all extremes.
Rockie thou art, and rockie we discover
Thy men,--
O men! O manners!--
O people currish, churlish as their seas--

He rejoices he leaves them, never to return till "rocks shall turn to
rivers." When he arrives in London,

From the dull confines of the drooping west,
To see the day-spring from the pregnant east,

he, "ravished in spirit," exclaims, on a view of the metropolis--

O place! O people! manners form'd to please
All nations, customs, kindreds, languages!

But he fervently entre