The world will never be long pleased with what it does not
readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality,
should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and
entered into by readers of all descriptions.
What we have now mentioned is the cardinal fault of the work before us;
but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether
without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some
passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy,
and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or
picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this
description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who
'Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale,
And driven the beeves of Lauderdale;
Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods,
And given them light to set their hoods.' p. 41.
The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the
same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a
serious poem, to speak of
----'the wind that blows,
And _warms itself against his nose_.
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