Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 | Page 7

wonderful play of fancy which is scattered over it, and place by its side an equal number of verses, from any two existing poets, of the same power and the same variety--where will you find them?
"I merely mention one instance of many in reply to the injustice done to the memory of him who harmonised our poetical language. The attorneys clerks, and other self-educated genii, found it easier to distort themselves to the new models than to toil after the symmetry of him who had enchanted their fathers. They were besides smitten by being told that the new school were to revive the language of Queen Elizabeth, the true English; as every body in the reign of Queen Anne wrote no better than French, by a species of literary treason.
"Blank verse, which, unless in the drama, no one except Milton ever wrote who could rhyme, became the order of the day,--or else such rhyme as looked still blanker than the verse without it. I am aware that Johnson has said, after some hesitation, that he could not 'prevail upon himself to wish that Milton had been a rhymer.' The opinions of that truly great man, whom it is also the present fashion to decry, will ever be received by me with that deference which time will restore to him from all; but, with all humility, I am not persuaded that the Paradise Lost would not have been more nobly conveyed to posterity, not perhaps in heroic couplets, although even they could sustain the subject if well balanced, but in the stanza of Spenser, or of Tasso, or in the terza rima of Dante, which the powers of Milton could easily have grafted on our language. The Seasons of Thomson would have been better in rhyme, although still inferior to his Castle of Indolence; and Mr. Southey's Joan of Arc no worse, although it might have taken up six months instead of weeks in the composition. I recommend also to the lovers of lyrics the perusal of the present laureate's odes by the side of Dryden's on Saint Cecilia, but let him be sure to read first those of Mr. Southey.
"To the heaven-born genii and inspired young scriveners of the day much of this will appear paradox; it will appear so even to the higher order of our critics; but it was a truism twenty years ago, and it will be a re-acknowledged truth in ten more. In the mean time, I will conclude with two quotations, both intended for some of my old classical friends who have still enough of Cambridge about them to think themselves honoured by having had John Dryden as a predecessor in their college, and to recollect that their earliest English poetical pleasures were drawn from the 'little nightingale' of Twickenham.
"The first is from the notes to a Poem of the 'Friends[5],' pages 181, 182.
"'It is only within the last twenty or thirty years that those notable discoveries in criticism have been made which have taught our recent versifiers to undervalue this energetic, melodious, and moral poet. The consequences of this want of due esteem for a writer whom the good sense of our predecessors had raised to his proper station have been NUMEROUS AND DEGRADING ENOUGH. This is not the place to enter into the subject, even as far as it affects our poetical numbers alone, and there is matter of more importance that requires present reflection.'
"The second is from the volume of a young person learning to write poetry, and beginning by teaching the art. Hear him[6]:
"'But ye were dead To things ye knew not of--were closely wed To musty laws lined out with wretched rule And compass vile; so that ye taught a school[7] Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and chip, and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, _Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:_ A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of poesy. Ill-fated, impious race, That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, And did not know it; no, they went about Holding a poor decrepit standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large The name of one Boileau.'
"A little before the manner of Pope is termed
"'A _scism_[8], Nurtured by foppery and barbarism, Made great Apollo blush for this his land.'
"I thought '_foppery_' was a consequence of _refinement_; but _n'importe_.
"The above will suffice to show the notions entertained by the new performers on the English lyre of him who made it most tunable, and the great improvements of their own variazioni.
"The writer of this is a tadpole of the Lakes, a young disciple of the six or seven new schools, in which he has learnt to write such lines and such sentiments as the above. He says, 'easy was the task' of imitating Pope, or it may