l force of the same
amount, and directly opposite," etc. I had never heard of Alfonso X of
Castile,[427] but I ventured to think that if Divine Wisdom had just let
the planets alone it would come to the same thing, with equal and opposite
troubles saved. The paradoxers deal largely in speculation conducted upon
the above explanation. They provide external agents for what they call the
centrifugal force. Some make the sun's rays keep the planets off, without a
thought about what would become of our poor eyes if the _push_ of the light
which falls on the earth were a counterpoise to all its gravitation. The
true explanation cannot be given here, for want of room.

CAMBRIDGE POETS.

Sometimes a person who has a point to carry will assert a singular fact or
prediction for the sake of his point; and {270} this paradox has almost
obtained the sole use of the name. Persons who have reputation to care for
should beware how they adopt this plan, which now and then eventuates a
spanker, as the American editor said. Lord Byron, in "English Bards, etc."
(1809), ridiculing Cambridge poetry, wrote as follows:

"But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath she wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove;
Where Richards[428] wakes a genuine poet's fires,
And modern Britons glory in their sires."[429]

There is some account of the Rev. Geo. Richards, Fellow of Oriel and Vicar
of Bampton, (M.A. in 1791) in the _Living Authors_ by Watkins[430] and
Shoberl[431] (1816). In Rivers's _Living Authors_, of 1798, which is best
fitted for citation, as being published before Lord Byron wrote, he is
spoken of in high terms. The _Aboriginal Britons_ was an Oxford (special)
prize poem, of 1791. Charles Lamb mentions Richards as his school-fellow at
Christ's Hospital, "author of the _Aboriginal Britons_, the most spirited
of the Oxford Prize Poems: a pale, studious Grecian."

As I never heard of Richards as a poet,[432] I conclude that his fame is
defunct, except in what may prove to be a very ambiguous kind of
immortality, conferred by Lord Byron. The awkwardness of a case which time
has broken down {271} is increased by the eulogist himself adding so
powerful a name to the list of Cambridge poets, that his college has placed
his statue in the library, more conspicuously than that of Newton in the
chapel; and this although the greatness of poetic