forgotten. If nowadays a
dismal poet were, like Byron, to lament the fact of his birth, and to
hint that he was too good for the world, the _Saturday Review_ would
say that 'they doubted if he _was_ too good; that a sulky poet was a
questionable addition to a tolerable world; that he need not have been
born, as far as they were concerned.' Doubtless, there is much in
Byron besides his dismal exaggeration, but it was that exaggeration
which made 'the sensation', which gave him a wild moment of dangerous
fame. As so often happens, the cause of his momentary fashion is the
cause also of his lasting oblivion. Moore's former reputation was less
excessive, yet it has not been more permanent. The prettiness of a few
songs preserves the memory of his name, but as a poet to _read_ he is
forgotten. There is nothing to read in him; no exquisite thought, no
sublime feeling, no consummate description of true character. Almost
the sole result of the poetry of that time is the harm which it has
done. It degraded for a time the whole character of the art. It said
by practice, by a most efficient and successful practice, that it was
the aim, the _duty_ of poets, to catch the attention of the passing,
the fashionable, the busy world. If a poem 'fell dead', it was
nothing; it was composed to please the 'London' of the year, and if
that London did not like it, why, it had failed. It fixed upon the
minds of a whole generation, it engraved in popular memory and
tradition, a vague conviction that poetry is but one of the many
_amusements_ for the light classes, for the lighter hours of all
classes. The mere notion, the bare idea, that poetry is a deep thing,
a teaching thing, the most surely and wisely elevating of human
things, is even now to the coarse public mind nearly unknown.

As was the fate of poetry, so inevitably was that of criticism. The
science that expounds which poetry is good and which is bad is
dependent for its popular reputation on the popular estimate of poetry
itself. The critics of that day had _a_ day, which is more than can be
said for some since; they professed to tell the fashionable world in
what books it would find new pleasure, and therefore they were read by
the fashionable world. Byron counted the critic and poet equal. The
_Edinburgh Review_ penetrated among the young, and into places of
female resort where it does not go now. As people ask, 'Have you read
_Henry Dunbar_? and what do you think of it?' so they t