ABSTRACT

I am not surprised that the criticism stands higher in your estimation than in mine. It is evidently the composition of a zealous and indignant friend. The poems, in my opinion, are far above the necessity of any such defence. The attack was not only weak but wicked. Weak, because a man of genius must know, and, minds alone can be ignorant, what breadth of philosophy, what energy and intensity of thought, what insight into the heart, and what observation of nature, are requisite for the production of such poetry. Wicked, to behold such signal gifts not merely with disrespect, but with irreverence and malice.