I have generally found a Scotchman with a little literature very
disagreeable. He is a superficial German or a dull Frenchman. The Scotch
will attribute merit to people of any nation rather than the English; the
English have a morbid habit of petting and praising foreigners of any sort,
to the unjust disparagement of their own worthies.
* * * * *
You will find this a good gage or criterion of genius,--whether it
progresses and evolves, or only spins upon itself. Take Dryden's Achitophel
and Zimri,--Shaftesbury and Buckingham; every line adds to or modifies the
character, which is, as it were, a-building up to the very last verse;
whereas, in Pope's Timon, &c. the first two or three couplets contain all
the pith of the character, and the twenty or thirty lines that follow are
so much evidence or proof of overt acts of jealousy, or pride, or whatever
it may be that is satirized. In like manner compare Charles Lamb's
exquisite criticisms on Shakspeare with Hazlitt's round and round
imitations of them.
_August_ 7. 1832.