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 fame had some serious
drawbacks in the moral character of some of his writings. And it will be
found on inquiry that Byron, to get his instance against Cambridge, had to
go back eighteen years, passing over seven intermediate productions, of
which he had either never heard, or which he would not cite as waking a
genuine poet's fires.
The conclusion seems to be that the _Aboriginal Britons_ is a remarkable
youthful production, not equalled by subsequent efforts.
To enhance the position in which the satirist placed himself, two things
should be remembered. First, the glowing and justifiable terms in which
Byron had spoken,--a hundred and odd lines before he found it convenient to
say no Cambridge poet could compare with Richards,--of a Cambridge poet who
died only three years before Byron wrote, and produced greatly admired
works while actually studying in the University. The fame of Kirke
White[433] still lives; and future literary critics may perhaps compare his
writings and those of Richards, simply by reason of the curious relation in
which they are here placed alongside of each other. And it is much to
Byron's credit that, in speaking of the deceased Cambridge poet, he forgot
his own argument and its exigencies, and proved himself only a paradoxer
_pro re nata_.
Secondly, Byron was very unfortunate in another passage of the same poem:
{272}
"What varied wonders tempt us as they pass!
The cow-pox, tractors, galvanism, and gas.
In turns appear, to make the vulgar stare,
Till the swoln bubble bursts--and all is air!"
Three of the bubbles have burst to mighty ends. The metallic tractors are
disused; but the force which, if anything, they put in action, is at this
day, under the name of mesmerism, used, prohibited, respected, scorned,
assailed, defended, asserted, denied, declared utterly obscure, and
universally known. It was hard lines to select for candidates for oblivion
not one of whom got in. I shall myself, I am assured, be some day cited for
laughing at the great discovery of ----: the blank is left for my reader to
fill up in his own way; but I think I shall not be so unlucky in four
different ways.