Could I have my will of the heathen, I would lock him up from all access of new ideas; I would exclude all critics that would not swear me first (upon their Virgil) that they would feed him with nothing but the old, safe, familiar notions and sounds (the rightful aborigines of his brain),--Gray, Akenside, and Mason. In these sounds, reiterated as often as possible, there could be nothing painful, nothing distracting. God bless me, here are the birds, smoking hot! All that is gross and unspiritual in me rises at the sight! Avaunt friendship and all memory of absent friends! C. LAMB. XXVII. TO COLERIDGE. _August_ 26, 1800. George Dyer is the only literary character I am happily acquainted with. The oftener I see him, the more deeply I admire him. He is goodness itself. If I could but calculate the precise date of his death, I would write a novel on purpose to make George the hero. I could hit him off to a hair. George brought a Dr. Anderson [1] to see me. The Doctor is a very pleasant old man, a great genius for agriculture, one that ties his breeches-knees with packthread, and boasts of having had disappointments from ministers. The Doctor happened to mention an epic poem by one Wilkie, called the "Epigoniad," in which he assured us there is not one tolerable line from beginning to end, but all the characters, incidents, etc., verbally copied from _Homer_. George, who had been sitting quite inattentive to the Doctor's criticism, no sooner heard the sound of _Homer_ strike his pericraniks, than up he gets, and declares he must see that poem immediately: where was it to be had? An epic poem of eight thousand lines, and _he_ not hear of it! There must be some things good in it, and it was necessary he should see it, for he had touched pretty deeply upon that subject in his criticisms on the Epic. George had touched pretty deeply upon the Lyric, I find; he has also prepared a dissertation on the Drama, and the comparison of the English and German theatres. As I rather doubted his competency to do the latter, knowing that his peculiar _turn_ lies in the lyric species of composition, I questioned George what English plays he had read. I found that he _had_ read Shakspeare (whom he calls an original, but irregular, genius), but it was a good while ago; and he has dipped into Rowe and Otway, I suppose having found their names in Johnson's Lives at full length; and upon this slender ground he has undertaken the task. He never seemed even to have heard of Fletcher, Ford, Marlowe, Massinger, and the worthies of Dodsley's Collection; but he is to read all these, to prepare him for bringing out his "Parallel" in the winter. I find he is also determined to vindicate poetry from the shackles which Aristotle and some others have imposed upon it,--which is very good-natured of him, and very necessary just now! Now I am _touching_ so _deeply_ upon poetry, can I forget that I have just received from Cottle a magnificent copy of his Guinea Epic.