Opposite the passage,
"to be misled
By Jeffrey's heart, or Lamb's Boeotian head,"
is written, "This was not just. Neither the heart nor the head of
these gentlemen are at all what they are here represented." Along the
whole of the severe verses against Mr. Wordsworth he has scrawled
"Unjust,"--and the same verdict is affixed to those against Mr.
Coleridge. On his unmeasured attack upon Mr. Bowles, the comment
is,--"Too savage all this on Bowles;" and down the margin of the page
containing the lines, "Health to immortal Jeffrey," &c. he
writes,--"Too ferocious--this is mere insanity;"--adding, on the
verses that follow ("Can none remember that eventful day?" &c.), "All
this is bad, because personal."
Sometimes, however, he shows a disposition to stand by his original
decisions. Thus, on the passage relating to a writer of certain
obscure Epics (v. 793.), he says,--"All right;" adding, of the same
person, "I saw some letters of this fellow to an unfortunate poetess,
whose productions (which the poor woman by no means thought vainly of)
he attacked so roughly and bitterly, that I could hardly regret
assailing him;--even were it unjust, which it is not; for, verily, he
_is_ an ass." On the strong lines, too (v. 953.), upon Clarke (a
writer in a magazine called the Satirist), he remarks,--"Right
enough,--this was well deserved and well laid on."
To the whole paragraph, beginning "Illustrious Holland," are affixed
the words "Bad enough;--and on mistaken grounds besides." The bitter
verses against Lord Carlisle he pronounces "Wrong also:--the
provocation was not sufficient to justify such acerbity;"--and of a
subsequent note respecting the same nobleman, he says, "Much too
savage, whatever the foundation may be." Of Rosa Matilda (v. 738.) he
tells us, "She has since married the Morning Post,--an exceeding good
match." To the verses, "When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall,"
&c., he has appended the following interesting note:--"This was meant
at poor Blackett, who was then patronised by A.I.B.[104];--but _that_
I did not know, or this would not have been written; at least I think
not."
Farther on, where Mr. Campbell and other poets are mentioned, the
following gingle on the names of their respective poems is
scribbled:--
"Pretty Miss Jacqueline
Had a nose aquiline;
And would assert rude
Things of Miss Gertrude;
While Mr. Marmion
Led a great army on,
Making Kehama look
Like a fierce Mamaluke."
Opposite the paragraph in praise of Mr. Crabbe he has written, "I
consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times in point of
power and genius." On his own line, in a subsequent paragraph, "And
glory, like the phoenix mid her fires," he says, comically, "The devil
take that phoenix--how came it there?" and his concluding remark on
the whole poem is as follows:--
"The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had never been
written; not only on account of the injustice of much of the critical
and some of the personal part of it, but the tone and temper are such
as I cannot approve.