Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . to seek, and his disposition was asmodest as his Muse was pretentious. His geniality and goodnature break out irresistibly even in his metrical attack uponHume, and even in his letters to the esregfious Miss AnnaSeward he cannot heartily abuse even his rough critic Johnson,but is continually slipping in admiring epithets which his fairbut fiercer correspondent amusingly entreats him to recall. But LITERATURE
Social England : a record of the progress of the people in religion, laws, learning, arts, industry, commerce, science, literature and manners, from the earliest times to the present day . to seek, and his disposition was asmodest as his Muse was pretentious. His geniality and goodnature break out irresistibly even in his metrical attack uponHume, and even in his letters to the esregfious Miss AnnaSeward he cannot heartily abuse even his rough critic Johnson,but is continually slipping in admiring epithets which his fairbut fiercer correspondent amusingly entreats him to recall. But LITERATURE. 599 1802] Johnson, omnivorous reader though he was, declared himselfunable to get beyond the first two pages of The Triumphsof Temper, and posterity perhaps has never got so far. Itsreadability even to a seasoned critic is strictly limited to itsinterest as a deliberate imitation, sometimes declining into adownright parody, of its illustrious model. The frivolousargument of the poem, its mock-heroic manner, its machinery. WILLIAJI KAVLEY (After George Romney.) of boudoir feerie, and the incidents of the drawing-roomsupernatural through which the fable is evolved, are all mostcomically reminiscent of the Rape of the Lock. Every deviceof Popes is there, only his inspiration is wanting—only theaerial fantasy and gossamer grace of his inventions and theintoxicating effervescence of his verse. Every now and thenyou catch a faint far-off flavour of that lightest and brightestof poetic champagne, but always therewith you get also thedisconcerting impression that you are drinking it in themorning out of a bottle that was opened—and left open—thenight before. Taken as a whole, the poem is the most perfect 600 REVOLUTIOX AND REACTION: Tae DeliaCruscans. [1784 ot all imaginable illustrations of the inadequacy of the Popiantradition. Ha^ley is always faultlessly smooth in his versiii-cation, and careful in his workmanship, never slovenly, neverinelegant. The eiTors of his poetic cr
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