that their proper
reputation can be as nothing till the most perfect and harmonious
of poets--he who, having no fault, has had REASON made his
reproach--was reduced to what they conceived to be his level; but
even they dared not degrade him below Dryden. Goldsmith, and
Rogers, and Campbell, his most successful disciples; and Hayley,
who, however feeble, has left one poem 'that will not be willingly
let die' (the Triumphs of Temper), kept up the reputation of that
pure and perfect style; and Crabbe, the first of living poets, has
almost equalled the master. Then came Darwin, who was put down by a
single poem in the Antijacobin; and the Cruscans, from Merry to
Jerningham, who were annihilated (if _Nothing_ can be said to be
annihilated) by Gifford, the last of the wholesome English
satirists. * * *

"These three personages, S * *, W * *, and C * *, had all of them a
very natural antipathy to Pope, and I respect them for it, as the
only original feeling or principle which they have contrived to
preserve. But they have been joined in it by those who have joined
them in nothing else: by the Edinburgh Reviewers, by the whole
heterogeneous mass of living English poets, excepting Crabbe,
Rogers, Gifford, and Campbell, who, both by precept and practice,
have proved their adherence; and by me, who have shamefully
deviated in practice, but have ever loved and honoured Pope's
poetry with my whole soul, and hope to do so till my dying day. I
would rather see all I have ever written lining the same trunk in
which I actually read the eleventh book of a modern Epic poem at
Malta in 1811, (I opened it to take out a change after the paroxysm
of a tertian, in the absence of my servant, and found it lined with
the name of the maker, Eyre, Cockspur-street, and with the Epic
poetry alluded to,) than sacrifice what I firmly believe in as the
Christianity of English poetry, the poetry of Pope.

"Nevertheless, I will not go so far as * * in his postscript, who
pretends that no great poet ever had immediate fame, which, being
interpreted, means that * * is not quite so much read by his
contemporaries as might be desirable. This assertion is as false
as it is foolish. Homer's glory depended upon his present
popularity: he recited,--and without the strongest impression