ling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no purpose to think
of bringing about an understanding between these opposite factions. It
is a natural difference of temperament and constitution of mind. The one
will never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of the
artificial prose style; as the plain, unperverted English idiom will
always appear trite and insipid to the others. A toleration, not an
uniformity of opinion, is as much as can be expected in this case;
and both sides may acknowledge, without imputation on their taste or
consistency, that these different writers excelled each in their way. I
might remark here that the epithet _elegant_ is very sparingly used
in modern criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with the
appearance of the _Lake School,_ who, I apprehend, have no such phrase
in their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers was, I think, almost the last poet to
whom it was applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it would
be considered as a sort of diminutive of the title of poet, like the
terms _pretty_ or _fanciful_, and is banished from the _haut ton_ of
letters. It may perhaps come into request at some future period. Again,
the dispute between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never been
settled and never will, for there will always be minds to whom the
excellences of Virgil will be more congenial, and therefore more objects
of admiration and delight than those of Homer, and _vice versa._
Both are right in preferring what suits them best, the delicacy and
selectness of the one, or the fulness and majestic flow of the other.
There is the same difference in their tastes that there was in the
genius of their two favourites. Neither can the disagreement between the
French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled till the French
become English or the English French.(5) Both are right in what they
admire, both are wrong in condemning the others for what they admire. We
see the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear probably in
an exaggerated point of view. But we may be sure of this, that when we
see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage, in
a writer that is the god of a nation's idolatry, it is we and not they
who want true taste and feeling. The controversy about Pope and the
opposite school in our own poetry comes to much the same thing. Pope's
correctness, smoothness, etc., are very good things and much to be
commended in him. But it is