ABSTRACT
There is something exquisitely discouraging in the conclusions to which a calm review of the effects of contemporary criticism in England must lead every man of tolerably sound judgment; and in regard to no department of literary exertions are these necessary conclusions so discouraging as in that of the criticism of Poetry. This age has unquestionably produced a noble band of British Poets – . . . Scott, and Byron, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Coleridge – . . . Yet, when a man asks of himself, for a moment, what has really been said – what remarks worthy of the name have really been uttered concerning any one of these Poets – how lamentably must we feel the worthlessness of all the criticism of the most critical age ever the world produced. . . . Who can suppose for a moment that the applauses of our Reviewers have contributed a single iota to the splendour of the reputation of the highest? The utmost vanity of the vainest critic alive, can scarcely lead him to flatter himself that the fame of Byron, for example, would have been one whit less, had he never acknowledged, by one expression of admiration, that his spirit was capable of understanding the mastery of Byron.
