Cobwebs of criticismA review of the first reviewers of the 'Lake', 'Satanic', and 'Cockney' schools . associates with wretches who seem almost to havelost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scrupleto avow practices which are not only not named, but I believeseldom conceived, in England. The morality here assigned toLord Byrons associates, and by implication to himself also, isperhaps no more than one stage above that of Count Cencihimself. That Shelley could ever afterwards enjoy the societyand acknowledge the friendship of the man of whom he hadcause to write in these terms is on
Cobwebs of criticismA review of the first reviewers of the 'Lake', 'Satanic', and 'Cockney' schools . associates with wretches who seem almost to havelost the gait and physiognomy of man, and who do not scrupleto avow practices which are not only not named, but I believeseldom conceived, in England. The morality here assigned toLord Byrons associates, and by implication to himself also, isperhaps no more than one stage above that of Count Cencihimself. That Shelley could ever afterwards enjoy the societyand acknowledge the friendship of the man of whom he hadcause to write in these terms is only to be accounted for on theground that with a disproportionate sense of the superiority ofByrons genius compared with his own, he was destitute of thatrobust manly passion that would have made the subject of suchstrictures, if true, an object of detestation and loathing. Shelley^ 231 porary with him felt this in some uncertain way,though they could not realize it, and their slanderousaccusations of licentiousness were the inapt andshameful speech in which their vague feeling ex-pressed THE QUARRELS OF CRITICS. DISCERNING readers of the extracts given inforegoing chapters will not be betrayed bythe unanimity of censure which they exhibit intosupposing that there was harmony among the criticsthemselves. Reviewers who were at one in con-demning Wordsworth and in reviling Shelley wereassuredly not brought into closer sympathy by thatcircumstance ; but the accident of disagreement as tothe merits of a poet furnished occasion for the bitterestfeud. It says much for the hold that literature hadon the public mind in the first years of the centurythat the long-continued and singularly acrimoniouscontroversies appearing constantly in the periodicalpress, touching the treatment of authors by critics,could be tolerated and even enjoyed. An importantpart of the Noctes Ambrosianae is concerned with thedelinquencies of the Edinhurgh Review in this par-ticular. One of the features o
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Keywords: ., bookauthorwordsworthcollection, bookcentury1800, booksubjectengl
