Lords who cannot read,
However destitute of wit,
To make their works for bookcase fit,--
Acknowledged master of those seats,
Cibber his birthday odes repeats."

CHURCHILL, _The Ghost_.]

[Footnote 12: Swift charges Colley with having wronged Grub Street, by
appropriating to himself all the money Britain designed for its
poets:--

"Your portion, taking Britain round,
Was just one annual hundred pound;
Now not so much as in remainder,
Since Cibber brought in an attainder,
Forever fixed by right divine,
A monarch's right, on Grub-Street line."

_Poetry, a Rhapsody_, 1733.]

[Footnote 13: Whatever momentary benefit may result from satire, it is
clear that its influence in the long run is injurious to literature.
The satirist, like a malignant Archimago, creates a false medium,
through which posterity is obliged to look at his contemporaries,--a
medium which so refracts and distorts their images, that it is almost
out of the question to see them correctly. There is no rule, as in
astronomy, by which this refraction may be allowed for and corrected.]

[Footnote 14: London, 1749, 8vo.]

[Footnote 15: Charge to the Poets, 1762.]

[Footnote 16: If the reader cares to hear the best that can be said of
Thomas Warton, let him read the Life of Milton, prefixed by Sir
Egerton Brydges to his edition of the poet. If he has any curiosity to
hear the other side, let him read all that Ritson ever wrote, and Dr.
Charles Symnions, in the Life of Milton, prefixed to the standard
edition of the Prose Works, 1806. Symnions denies to Warton the
possession of taste, learning, or sense. Certainly, to an American,
the character of Joseph Warton, the brother of Thomas, is far more
amiable. Joseph was as liberal as his brother was bigoted. While
Thomas omits no chance of condemning Milton's republicanism, in his
notes to the Minor Poems, Joseph is always disposed to sympathize with
the poet. The same generous temper characterizes his commentary upon
Dryden.]

[Footnote 17: _Sonnet upon the River Lodon_.]

[Footnote 18: Dr. Huddersford's _Salmagundi_.]

[Footnote 19: One of the earlier poems of Alexander Wilson, the
ornithologist, was entitled, _The Laurel Disputed_, and was published
in 1791. We have not met with it; but we apprehend, from title and
date, that it is a _jeu d'esprit_, founded upon the recent
appointment. The poetry o