I shall now proceed to the more immediate examination of the poem in its different parts. The beginning, say the critics, ought to be plain and simple--neither embellished with the flowers of poetry, nor turgid with pomposity of diction. In this how exactly does our author conform to the established opinion! He begins thus: "The Queen of Hearts She made some tarts". Can anything be more clear! more natural! more agreeable to the true spirit of simplicity? Here are no tropes, no figurative expressions, not even so much as an invocation to the Muse. He does not detain his readers by any needless circumlocution, by unnecessarily informing them what he _is_ going to sing, or still more unnecessarily enumerating what he _is not_ going to sing; but, according to the precept of Horace:-- _In medias res, Non secus ac notas, auditorem rapit--_ That is, he at once introduces us and sets us on the most easy and familiar footing imaginable with her Majesty of Hearts, and interests us deeply in her domestic concerns. But to proceed-- "The Queen of Hearts She made some tarts, All on a summer's day". Here indeed the prospect brightens, and we are led to expect some liveliness of imagery, some warmth of poetical colouring; but here is no such thing. There is no task more difficult to a poet than that of rejection. Ovid among the ancients, and Dryden among the moderns, were perhaps the most remarkable for the want of it. The latter, from the haste in which he generally produced his compositions, seldom paid much attention to the _limae labor_, "the labour of correction", and seldom, therefore, rejected the assistance of any idea that presented itself. Ovid, not content with catching the leading features of any scene or character, indulged himself in a thousand minutiae of description, a thousand puerile prettinesses, which were in themselves uninteresting, and took off greatly from the effect of the whole; as the numberless suckers and straggling branches of a fruit-tree, if permitted to shoot out unrestrained, while they are themselves barren and useless, diminish considerably the vigour of the parent stock. Ovid had more genius but less judgment than Virgil; Dryden more imagination but less correctness than Pope; had they not been deficient in these points the former would certainly have equalled, the latter infinitely outshone the merits of his countryman. Our author was undoubtedly possessed of that power which they wanted, and was cautious not to indulge too far the sallies of a lively imagination. Omitting, therefore, any mention of sultry Sirius, sylvan shade, sequestered glade, verdant hills, purling rills, mossy mountains, gurgling fountains, &c., he simply tells us that it was "All on a summer's day". For my own part I confess that I find myself rather flattered than disappointed, and consider the poet as rather paying a compliment to the abilities of his readers,