The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-05-21
MinOritiFs

Sidney Smith having once proposed,
as an entertaining change in human
affairs, that every thing should be de.
cided by minorities, as they we're almost
always in the right, a writer in All the
Year Round considers how this princi pie
would have worked applied to the rep
utatiOn Of poets:
''There would be q terrible thinning
of England's sons Of song. That Para
disc Lost, which has nothing meritori-
GUS about it save its length, although
some people are pleased to call it q
poem, would in itself suffice to drag
Milton from his high estate, even if he
were not responsible for an indignantly
splendid mask, a parcel of sonnets, of
which only two are not absolutely bad,
supdry lesser pieces whose popularity
IS not excellence, ana the vulgar Iyci-
das, in which there is no nature for
THERE'S mO truth, no art for there is moth
ing new, but something akin to impiety,
clothed in harsh diction, unpleasing
numbers, and uncertain rhymes. John
Dryden must pay the penalty as the
author of THE Hind and the Panther,
the worst poem of the age; and Pope,
all tune and no meaning, has no claim
for merciful consideration on account of
his unintelligible essays, his barbarous
rhapsody upon Windsor Forest, or the
pert, insipid heap of commonplace he
dignifed with the title AN Essay on
Criticism. The fact that he obtained ad-
mittance into literary society because
his person was as ridiculous as his
writings, should not save the fimsy
poems, wanting alike in genius, dignity,
fancy, and fire, of Oliver Goldsmith;
or excuse the preserving of that incO-
herent piece of stuff, without plot or
incident, known as She Stops to Con-
GUer'-as much out of place in O lit
erary collection as the works of Cowper,
a good man but no poet; or of Crabbe,
who wrote the very converse of poetry.
The vicious stvle and vulgar sentiment
taIty of Thomson call for his exclusion
from good company, along with the
poet who passed that Judgment upon
The Seasons, and who, in his own long,
weak, lame lucubrations, wavering so
prettily between pathos and silline8-
:. Both by precept and example shows,
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose-;
besides having achieved the writing of
the very worst poem ever printed in
QuartO volume, The White Doe of
RyIstone,' the sad outcome Of poetical
ipt"xication, produced by ,xtreme self
ad1irati II. Despite his nobility, to
which Byron, great in so little a way,
owed his awakIug one morning and find
ing himself famous, he must be put out
il the cold with the gratuitousIy non
sensical Keats, given to setting forth
the most homogeneous ideas in the most
uncOuth language with Shelley. who,
setting grammar and common sense
equally y defiance, warred sgainst rea-
son, taste, and virtue in dri7eling prose
run mad-all briIliance, confusion, and
vacuity; and with Scott, one of the
poets who ere no poets, who obtained a
spurious fame by writing limitations of
black. letter ballads, and literary pantO-
mines i'll the worst dialects Of the Eng
Esh language, making one believe
helmets were always pastebOaTd and
horses always hobby.
" Unkindes5 cut of ell, under the
dispensatiop, we SHOULD be
compelled to part company with Shaks-
peare. There can be no doubt about
that: for we are assured he was sadly
deficient in Judgment, lacked inventive
power. and was utterly out of his ele
nent in tragedy ; that he could only
rave without reason, rule, or coherency;
md, when at his best, but produce
mere farces, without salt or SAVIOR,
7beIein there is not so much meaning
IS in the neiQhirg of a horse OF the
yrOWiiDg Of a dog"