In the work
which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
injudicious composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
office,--not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
bramble,--but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.
And, in the _first_ place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
length and minuteness of those descriptions of antient dresses and
manners, and buildings; and ceremonies, and local superstitions; with
which the whole poem is overrun,--which render so many notes necessary,
and are, after all, but imperfectly understood by those to whom
chivalrous antiquity has not hitherto been an object of peculiar
attention.
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