ouch
of a morning, but do not carry the reader out of the poet's mind to the
scenes and events recorded. They have neither action, character,
nor interest, but are a sort of _gossamer_ tragedies, spun out, and
glittering, and spreading a flimsy veil over the face of nature. Yet
he spins them on. Of all that he has done in this way the _Heaven and
Earth_ (the same subject as Mr. Moore's _Loves of the Angels_) is the
best. We prefer it even to _Manfred_. _Manfred_ is merely himself,
with a fancy-drapery on: but in the dramatic fragment published in the
_Liberal_, the space between Heaven and Earth, the stage on which
his characters have to pass to and fro, seems to fill his Lordship's
imagination; and the Deluge, which he has so finely described, may be
said to have drowned all his own idle humours.

We must say we think little of our author's turn for satire. His
"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" is dogmatical and insolent, but
without refinement or point. He calls people names, and tries to
transfix a character with an epithet, which does not stick, because
it has no other foundation than his own petulance and spite; or he
endeavours to degrade by alluding to some circumstance of external
situation. He says of Mr. Wordsworth's poetry, that "it is his
aversion." That may be: but whose fault is it? This is the satire of
a lord, who is accustomed to have all his whims or dislikes taken for
gospel, and who cannot be at the pains to do more than signify his
contempt or displeasure. If a great man meets with a rebuff which he
does not like, he turns on his heel, and this passes for a repartee.
The Noble Author says of a celebrated barrister and critic, that he was
"born in a garret sixteen stories high." The insinuation is not true; or
if it were, it is low. The allusion degrades the person who makes, not
him to whom it is applied. This is also the satire of a person of birth
and quality, who measures all merit by external rank, that is, by
his own standard. So his Lordship, in a "Letter to the Editor of My
Grandmother's Review," addresses him fifty times as "_my dear Robarts_;"
nor is there any other wit in the article. This is surely a mere
assumption of superiority from his Lordship's rank, and is the sort of
_quizzing_ he might use to a person who came to hire himself as a valet
to him at _Long's_--the waiters might laugh, the public will not. In
like manner, in the controversy about Pope, he claps Mr. Bowles on the
b