Besides temporary or accidental biases of this kind, there seem to be sects and parties in taste and criticism (with a set of appropriate watch-words) coeval with the arts of composition, and that will last as long as the difference with which men’s minds are originally constituted. There are some who are all for the elegance of an author’s style, and some who are equally delighted with simplicity. The last refer you to Swift as a model of English prose—thinking all other writers sophisticated and naught—the former prefer the more ornamented and sparkling periods of Junius or Gibbon. It is to no purpose to think of bringing about an understanding between these opposite factions. It is a natural difference of temperament and constitution of mind. The one will never relish the antithetical point and perpetual glitter of the artificial prose-style; as the plain unperverted English idiom will always appear trite and insipid to the others. A toleration, not an uniformity of opinion is as much as can be expected in this case: and both sides may acknowledge, without imputation on their taste or consistency, that these different writers excelled each in their way. I might remark here that the epithet _elegant_ is very sparingly used in modern criticism. It has probably gone out of fashion with the appearance of the _Lake School_, who, I apprehend, have no such phrase in their vocabulary. Mr. Rogers was, I think, almost the last poet to whom it was applied as a characteristic compliment. At present it would be considered as a sort of diminutive of the title of poet, like the terms _pretty_ or _fanciful_, and is banished from the _haut ton_ of letters. It may perhaps come into request at some future period.—Again, the dispute between the admirers of Homer and Virgil has never been settled, and never will: for there will always be minds to whom the excellences of Virgil will be more congenial, and therefore more objects of admiration and delight than those of Homer, and _vice versâ_. Both are right in preferring what suits them best, the delicacy and selectness of the one, or the fulness and majestic flow of the other. There is the same difference in their taste that there was in the genius of their two favourites. Neither can the disagreement between the French and English school of tragedy ever be reconciled, till the French become English, or the English French.[65] Both are right in what they admire, both are wrong in condemning the others for what they admire. We see the defects of Racine, they see the faults of Shakespear probably in an exaggerated point of view. But we may be sure of this, that when we see nothing but grossness and barbarism, or insipidity and verbiage in a writer that is the God of a nation’s idolatry, it is we and not they who want true taste and feeling. The controversy about Pope and the opposite school in our own poetry comes to much the same thing. Pope’s correctness, smoothness, &c. are very good things and much to be