need, and Southey had a shilling, Wordsworth is said to have had generally sixpence out of it, it has an awkward sound in the way of valuation. This anecdote was told me by persons who, if quoted by name, would prove that its genealogy is poetical as well as true. I can give my authority for this; and am ready to adduce it also for Mr. Southey's circulation of the falsehood before mentioned.

Of Coleridge, I shall say nothing why, he may divine. (1)

I have said more of these people than I intended in this place, being somewhat stirred by the remarks which induced me to commence upon the topic. I see nothing in these men as poets, or as individuals little in their talents, and less in their characters, to prevent honest men from expressing for them considerable contempt, in prose or rhyme, as it may happen. Mr. Southey has the Quarterly for his field of rejoinder, and Mr. Wordsworth his postscripts to "Lyrical Ballads," where the two great instances of the sublime are taken from himself and Milton. "Over her own sweet voice the stockdove broods;" that is to say, she has the pleasure of listening to herself, in common with Mr. Wordsworth upon most of his public appearances. "What divinity doth hedge" these persons, that we should respect them? Is it Apollo? Are they not of those who called Dryden's Ode a drunken song?" who have discovered that Gray's Elegy is full of faults, (see Coleridge's Life, vol. i. note, for Wordsworth's

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(1) [See Notices of Lord Byron's Life, antè, Vol. III. p. 223.]

kindness in pointing this out to him,) and have published what is allowed to be the very worst prose that ever was written, to prove that Pope was no poet, and that William Wordsworth is?

In other points, are they respectable, or respected? Is it on the open avowal of apostasy, on the patronage of government, that their claim is founded? Who is there who esteems those parricides of their own principles? They are, in fact, well aware that the reward of their change has been any thing but honour. The times have preserved a respect for political consistency, and, even though changeable, honour the unchanged. Look at Moore: it will be long ere Southey meets with such a triumph in London as Moore met with in Dublin, even if the government subscribe for it, and set the money down to secret service. It was not less to the man than to the poet, to the tempted but unshaken patriot, to the not opulent but incorruptible fellowcitizen, that the warm-hearted Irish paid the proudest of tributes. Mr. Southey may applaud himself to the world, but he has his own heartiest contempt; and the fury with which he foams against all who stand in the phalanx which he forsook, is, as William Smith described it, "the rancour of the renegado," the bad language of the prostitute who stands at the corner of the street, and showers her slang upon all, except those who may have bestowed upon her her "little shilling."

Hence his quarterly overflowings, political and literary, in what he has himself termed "the ungentle craft," and his especial wrath against Mr.

Leigh Hunt, notwithstanding that Hunt has done more for Wordsworth's reputation, as a poet (such as it is), than all the Lakers could in their interchange of self-praises for the last twenty-five years.

And here I wish to say a few words on the present state of English poetry. That this is the age of the decline of English poetry will be doubted by few who have calmly considered the subject. That there are men of genius among the present poets makes little against the fact, because it has been well said, that "next to him who forms the taste of his country, the greatest genius is he who corrupts it." No one has ever denied genius to Marino (1), who corrupted not merely the taste of Italy, but that of all Europe for nearly a century. The great cause of the present deplorable state of English poetry is to be attributed to that absurd and systematic depreciation of Pope, in which, for the last few years, there has been a kind of epidemical concurrence. Men of the most opposite opinions have united upon this topic. Warton and Churchill began it, having borrowed the hint probably from the heroes of the Dunciad, and their own internal conviction 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

(1) [Tassoni was almost the only Italian poet of the era in which he flourished, who withstood the general corruption of taste introduced by Marino and his followers, and by the "imitated imitators" of Lope de Vega; and he opened a new path, in which a crowd of pretenders have vainly endeavoured to follow him.- FOSCOLO.]

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 (1); 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 satirists.

At the same time Mr. Southey was favouring the public with Wat Tyler and Joan of Arc, to the great glory of the Drama and Epos. I beg pardon, Wat Tyler, with Peter Bell, was still in MS., and it was not till after Mr. Southey had received his Malmsey butt, and Mr. Wordsworth (2) became qualified to gauge it, that the great revolutionary tragedy came before the public and the Court of Chancery. Wordsworth was peddling his lyrical ballads, and brooding a preface, to be succeeded in due course by a postscript; both couched in such prose as must give peculiar delight to those who have read the prefaces of Pope and Dryden; scarcely less cele

(1) ["The Loves of the Triangles," the joint production of Messrs. Canning and Frere.]

(2) Goldsmith has anticipated the definition of the Lake poetry, as far as such things can be defined. "Gentlemen, the present piece is not of your common epic poems, which come from the press like paper kites in summer; there are none of your Turnuses or Didos in it; it is an historical description of nature. I only beg you'll endeavour to make your souls in unison with mine, and hear with the same enthusiasm with which I have written." Would not this have made a proper proem to the Excursion, and the poet and his pedler? It would have answered perfectly for that purpose, had it not unfortunately been written in good English.

brated for the beauty of their prose, than for the charms of their verse. Wordsworth is the reverse of Molière's gentleman who had been "talking prose all his life, without knowing it ;" for he thinks that he has been all his life writing both prose and verse, and neither of what he conceives to be such can be properly said to be either one or the other. Mr. Coleridge, the future vates, poet and seer of the Morning Post, (an honour also claimed by Mr. Fitzgerald, of the "Rejected Addresses (1),") who ultimately prophesied the downfall of Buonaparte, to which he himself mainly contributed, by giving him the nickname of " the Corsican," was then employed in predicating the damnation of Mr. Pitt, and the desolation of England, in the two very best copies of verses he ever wrote: to wit, the infernal eclogue of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter," and the "Ode to the departing Year."

These three personages, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, 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