--_The Monthly Review_.
_The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts_. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELL[E]Y. Italy.
1819. pp. 104.
There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parca quod satis
est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
intellect.
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