Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes by R. Brimley Johnson
History
Famous Reviews, Selected and Edited with Introductory Notes by R. Brimley Johnson
Books -- Reviews; Criticism; English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former number,
aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant
recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his
preface to _Rimini_, and the still more facetious instances of his
harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
Hunt's approbation of
--All the things itself had wrote,
Of special merit though of little note.
The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible,
almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had advanced no
dogmas which he was bound to support by examples, his nonsense therefore
is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and being bitten by
Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
poetry.
Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
circumstances....
The two first books, and indeed the two last, are not of such
completion as to warrant their passing the press. p. vii.
Thus, "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit to
appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition--and as
two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have
a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.
Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this "immature and feverish"
work in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we confess
that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of the
tortures of the "_fierce hell_" of criticism, which terrify his
imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to
be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is
of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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