he
worms shall have consumed many of those poetical reputations which are at
this time in the cherry-cheeked bloom of health and youth. Old poets
will always retain their value for antiquaries and philologists, modern
ones are far too numerous ever to acquire an accidental usefulness of
this kind, even if the language were to undergo greater changes than any
circumstances are likely to produce. There will now be more poets in
every generation than in that which preceded it; they will increase
faster than your population; and as their number increases, so must the
proportion of those who will be remembered necessarily diminish. Tell
the Fitz-Muses this! It is a consideration, Sir Poet, which may serve as
a refrigerant for their ardour. Those of the tribe who may flourish
hereafter (as the flourishing phrase is) in any particular age, will be
little more remembered in the next than the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs who
were their contemporaries.

_Montesinos_.--Father in verse, if you had not put off flesh and blood so
long, you would not imagine that this consideration will diminish their
number. I am sure it would not have affected me forty years ago, had I
seen this truth then as clearly as I perceive and feel it now. Though it
were manifest to all men that not one poet in an age, in a century, a
millennium, could establish his claim to be for ever known, every
aspirant would persuade himself that he is the happy person for whom the
inheritance of fame is reserved. And when the dream of immortality is
dispersed, motives enough remain for reasonable ambition.

It is related of some good man (I forget who), that upon his death-bed he
recommended his son to employ himself in cultivating a garden, and in
composing verses, thinking these to be at once the happiest and the most
harmless of all pursuits. Poetry may be, and too often has been,
wickedly perverted to evil purposes; what indeed is there that may not,
when religion itself is not safe from such abuses! but the good which it
does inestimably exceeds the evil. It is no trifling good to provide
means of innocent and intellectual enjoyment for so many thousands in a
state like ours; an enjoyment, heightened, as in every instance it is
within some little circle, by personal considerations, raising it to a
degree which may deserve to be called happiness. It is no trifling good
to win the ear of children with verses which foster in them the seeds of
humanity and te